Messay: Why You Should Tell Me Things

          That's a selfish title, but I'm sticking with it. I think that even though this post was inspired by my experiences, it carries with it some truth that could apply to everyone.

          I was having a conversation with a friend recently and she was telling me about something really (really, really) difficult she had been going through. I didn't understand what she was going through, I had never been (and unlikely ever will be) experiencing something like that. So when she told me about it, I didn't have anything intelligent to say. I couldn't say, like I sometimes can, "When I was dealing with that, ______" or "I've noticed that ______ is the same way." I couldn't expand on or really even respond to anything she was saying in a way that was helpful. 

          This isn't the first time this has happened. I have another, different friend, and this happens regularly in our conversations. There are parts of her mind that work in ways I will never understand or experience. But what is so important to me is that she continues to tell them to me, because I think in that there is honest humanity and vulnerability. 

          Humans are vastly different, yet we are forced to interact with each other all the time. Because of this, being aware of—even without understanding—others' different struggles is important. I also think, in a more specific sense, the vulnerability of sharing hurts and struggles with your closest friends is important because it is important to be known. Maybe they don't understand what you're going through or this aspect of you, but experiencing love even around hurt is good for us. 

          So, dear friends, please keep telling me things. I know I won't tell you what you want to hear, but maybe no one can. I may not tell you anything, I may have no good responses at all, but I love to listen. Because I love you. 

Grammar: Tips for Troublesome Words

Lots of things in life are hard—school, laundry, rocks, talking to people. Some things in life shouldn't be hard. Talking. 

Well, talking is hard for me, but there's one part of talking that should be a little easier: grammar. So here's a few tiny tips that may help! 

Affect vs. Effect:

A is the verb, E is the noun. How to remember? Think "A" for "action." Ayeee.

Stationary vs. Stationery

StationAry is nonmoving. Think "A" = "always there."

StationEry is cards and letters. Think (thank John Green for this one) "E" for envelope. 

Adverbs 

This tip is mostly for when you need to write correctly; sometimes with speaking it makes you sound over correct.  Then again, I like to do it correctly when I talk, so I guess it just depends what you're going for. 

Adverbs modify verbs. Often, people use adjectives to modify verbs. It's colloquial in speech, which I don't have a problem with, but in official writing it's better to be correct. Here's an example: 

"Hand that to me real fast."

Because "hand" is a verb, the sentence needs "quickly" rather than "fast." So don't really stress this, but it's good to keep in mind for official writing. 

That's all I have for today! Hope this makes some grammar issues a little easier. Have any confusions you'd like tricks for? Let me know for another grammar post!

No good sign-off ideas,

Charlie 

Messay: Thanks to You I Went Stargazing

          There's something about Vivi, about being around her that makes me—different? think? better. I—well, most of what I want to say isn't in thoughts, much less words. So I guess what I need to say is that when I got back from Nashville and ate dinner, I didn't study. I didn't go to a coffee shop, I didn't go to bed. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants, shoved two Reese's cups into my pocket, and got back in the car. I didn't let myself plan where I was going to drive, I made myself wait to decide the turn directions until I was at each intersection—front gate, right; then I-65 for safety; exit Alford for the hill, but left for the unusual; straight for dark downhillness; then hard right into the abandoned corner lot near a chill intersection. I knew it was the best I'd get—cities aren't the best places to find stargazing outposts. 

          I need to speed up this narration a little, but here's where the story slows down. I parked and grabbed costs and laid on my car roof. I listened to cars and saw stars and listened to Wings and thought things—I tried some to think about the universe, because I knew that's what Viv would do. I succeeded a little, mostly on the way back thinking about my answer to the question "Who do you want to be?" I also just thought about things I can't even remember specifically, and about where I was. 

          It was cold and good and now I'm back and in my bed. 

          Vivi asked at lunch how we'd all grown. She asked at dinner what we were reading. She showed us her art classroom building and won an exhibition at an art museum. She's friends with George and Judith and does it marvelously. She doesn't know what she wants to be; I wonder if she doesn't realize she's already it. 

          Being there made my heart glad, so when I left my heart was sad, and when I got back, I went and looked at the stars. 

December 8 2015

Fashion: The World is Your Runway

One of my favorite parts of traveling is choosing my daily outfits. While some people find putting little effort into what they wear is comfortable and easy, for me, a cute outfit I love makes my whole day more wonderful. 

If you know me, you know that I love dresses. In fact, I love dresses so much that I hardly ever wear pants. I have been recording my outfits on this trip diligently, if not with high quality. Sorry! Anyway, here they are. 

Letter: Notes Around the World

I'm in Italy and Germany for the first three weeks of January, and for some reason I decided it would be fun to leave notes everywhere. They don't have much substance, but they're fun! And I doodle a quote onto a page of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and stick that in there too. I offer a hashtag so I can see if anyone finds them, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of them just get thrown away. Oh well! It's still fun. 

Anyway, I've taken pictures of all of them and their placements. Enjoy looking!

One:

This one went in the pew of a church we visited in Trastevere, Rome. 

Two:

This one I hid at the bookstore.

Three:

This one went on the bus in Rome.

Four:

I put this letter at a gelato shop. 

Five:

I forgot to leave this one somewhere, so I may or may not have thrown it out the window in our hotel room before bed. 

Six:

I also forgot to leave this one, so I hid it between the adjoining doors in our hotel room. It was kinda weird. The picture is an ariel view.

Seven:

I left this one at a store we were in, fancy men's clothing called Chelsea Farmer's Market. 

Anyway. These letters are certainly a little unusual, and probably not very effective, but I love being whimsical and doing things other people don't. I'll keep posting as I continue to do it!

Donuts of the World

I apologize for the terrible title of this post. I planning to keep it live, so if you think of a better one, let me know!

I really like donuts. That may be an understatement. I really really really love donuts. And I'm picky, and I'm opinionated, and I like to try donuts in every new place I visit. This post will log places I have been and places I have yet to be. 

Daylight Donuts, Tulsa, OK

This is one of my favorite donut shops in the world. No pics, sorry. 71st and Yale. YES. 

YoYo Donuts, Birmingham, AL

Favorite donut in Birmingham. No pic again, sorry. 

Okay. Those are the top two. Now it's adventure time!

Top Pot Donuts, Dallas, TX

Tasty-O Donuts, Vero Beach, FL

Rome, Italy

This donut was from a random place outside a subway. 

I also tried this, but it was more of a shortbread than a donut. 

Sublime Donuts, Atlanta, GA

They had a toffee donut that I loved! The strawberry and orange and really all the others I tried were great too. It's just off the Georgia Tech campus! 

Dough, New York City, NY (Brooklyn location)

Carmel almond, graham cracker cheesecake, and salted caramel chocolate. They were fun; the chocolate is the only one I'd make a point to eat again. 

Dun-Well Doughnuts, New York City, NY (Brooklyn)

Crunchy peanut butter and jelly, strawberry sprinkle, ginger, and Oreo. The peanut butter icing was amazing, but the jelly inside wasn't my favorite. The other three were fine; I didn't really like the ginger and wish I would've tried the Rosemary. 

Doughnut Plant, New York City, New York (Manhattan)

Here are all the options . . .

. . . and here's the ones I tried! Peanut butter with banana filling (yes, in a square), Brooklyn blackout, coffee cake, and tres leches. The tres leches was extraordinary, if not dazzlingly delicious. I wouldn't miss not going there again.

The Donut Shoppe, Houston, TX

I hesitate to say it, but this just beat Tulsa's Daylight Donuts for the best chocolate old fashioned donut I've had. The other ones were yummy too!

Recipe Review: Peanut Butter

Welcome to the second installment of Recipe Review! This one focuses on two peanut butter recipes I tried, neither of which I was mindful enough to take a final picture of. My apologies! Thankfully they're from blogs, so you can see the original version there.

Peanut Butter Party Chippers

This recipie is from Picky Palate, where Jenny posts some crazy fun recipes. Here's the picture that inspired me and the accompanying link.
http://picky-palate.com/2015/02/09/salted-caramel-peanut-butter-party-chippers/

Here's the ingredients:

Unfortunately, the recipe depends on a Skippy Limited Edition Salted Caramel Peanut Butter that wasn't in stock by the time I made this recipe. So on the left, you can see my mix of plain peanut butter and Jiff Salted Caramel Hazelnut spread. It turned out a little too rich, so I'd recommend using only peanut butter and just not worrying about the caramel flavor in her recipe.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product (this was before the days of 100 Best Cookies and photographing each recipe way more than necessary), but here's what the dough looked like before it went into the oven:

They were fun! Like I said, a little rich, but I think that'd be fixed if the caramel chocolate spread was left out. 

Brownie Batter Frosted Peanut Butter Bars
These are from Maegan, who's the blogger behind TheBakerMama. She made these bars for her husband's birthday. I made them for my physical therapist's office. They were a little too rich for me, but they were a hit at the office! Here's the link and a picture! If you love rick peanut butter and rich brownies, you'll love these!
http://thebakermama.com/recipes/brownie-batter-frosted-peanut-butter-bars/

the inspiration:

one of Maegan's genius pictures:

To be entirely honest, I think I would try a new recipe before making either of these again, unless I had a particular peanut-butter-brownie-loving friend. They were both fine, but I feel a little "been-there-done-that" about them. The individual blogs, however? Man, I wanna make everything on them. Stay tuned!

baking, bible, bbbbbbbbhmmm,

charlie

has there ever been a worse sign-off in the history of blogging? no? hmm. 

Craft: Tiny Christmas Card

Today's post is a quickie; just wanted to share the details of these fun cards I posted on Instagram! 

I was at Target over Thanksgiving, and these letters from sugar paper for Target caught my eye. 

I grabbed one for each of my friends' initials, alphabetized the rest (that's really not important), and grabbed a set of 10 greeting cards from around the corner. 

I made sure they had glitter gold too, to match the letters!

When I assembled the gifts (cards? gifts? I can't decide. Technically it's a card, but it's functioning as a gift...hm.), I tore the card in half and wrote on the back of the sparkly front. I punched a hole through the top corner, ran some string through the card and the letter, (I just happened to have that pretty gold from Hobby Lobby clearance a long time ago!), and tied a knot or a bow. So cute! 

Shoutout to Target for the supplies for this fun idea! Oh, I forgot to mention—the letters were $2 each, and the cards were less than $1 each. Hooray for affordable presents, because the more presents, the merrier! 

I had planned to attach some sort of treat to the cards, but that hasn't quite worked out yet. I have Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joe's from Trader Joe's, but the bags I have aren't cute. So we'll see how that goes!

Merry Christmas! 

Maddie/Charlie

(I really should figure this name thing out...)

100 Best Cookies Take Forty-Five: Chocolate Revel Bars

Today's recipie was picked by me, Rah, Caroline (she's 8), and Ab (she's 6). Does that explain why we skipped up to number 45? Ok sweet. 

Here's the only special ingredient: weird canned milk! We sometimes already have this in the cabinet, but we didn't today. 

I don't have pictures for every step today, so hang with me. 

Start by beating the butter, then add sugar and baking soda. 

Sodenote: Being home rocks, and one reason is that the lighting for the baking pictures is better than back in Birmingham. It doesn't really matter, but it's kind of nice. 

Add the eggs and vanilla, then add the flour. 

 

Now stir in the oats! The easiest way we found to do this was with our hands...you do you. 

Press two-thirds of this into the pan, spread chocolate* over it, then crumble the rest of the batter on top of the chocolate. 

*To make the chocolate, melt the butter, chocolate, and condensed milk over the stove, then stir in the vanilla. Easy enough!

Stick it in the oven at 350 for 25 minutes. 

Isn't it beautiful? You can see that I tried to make some of the dough into cookies; sadly I forgot about them and they burned. But the oatmeal dough was so yummy that I bet they would've been delicious! 

Here they are all finished! Aren't they pretty?

I'm not gonna give it you ya soft: Honestly, these weren't my favorite. 

I know, I know. Why did I do a whole post on it then? 

For learning! For truth! The people must know!! 

I guess it's because if I'm going to do this whole 100 cookie thing, I'm going to go all out. I'm going to report on *every* recipie, even if I wouldn't recommend that you make them. Though now I'm thinking that next time I dislike a recipie, maybe I won't go as in-depth with the step-by-step. 

The oatmeal dough was delicious, but I really disliked the chocolate layer. So even though I'm giving the "taste" category a low recommendation, you could maybe try the dough for cookies or make a different cover layer. Then again, why would you do that if you could just make oatmeal cookies?

Taste: 4/10

Visual: 8/10

Easy-to-Make: 7/10

Here's the link! 

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/chocolate-revel-bars/

100 Best Cookies Take Twenty-Six: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

We continue the Reble-Thanksgiving recipes with these cute dough balls you saw a hint of in the last post:

Here's the special ingredients for this recipie (If you're new here, "special ingredients" are those that I didn't already have in the cabinet, items I had to go to the store for.):

To make the cookie-dough insid, beat together the butter, brown sugar, and vanilla. 

Add the flour...

and stir it up. 

Toss in the chocolate chips,

and attempt to stir them in. 

I say "attempt," because they didn't stir in very well. Far be it from me to say something has too many chocolate chips, but I willingly admit that these chocolate chips did not incorporate well.  See the chocolate chips sitting around the lump in that picture? All of those wouldn't go in. 

After trying to mix them with my hands for almost five minutes, I resorted to smashing the extra chocolate chips into the dough as formed it into balls. Here they all are! 

You can make them as tiny or big as you like; if you need enough for a party or want to keep some in the freezer, I'd suggest doubling the recipie. After this, stick the balls in the freezer, melt the chocolate, take out the hardened dough, and dip them! 

Because I was making these for Reble for Thanksgiving, I didn't get to dip them; she'll do that next week. But because, of course, I had to, I did try just a few. 

I dunked them in milk chocolate (not the milk/dark mix recommended by the recipie). Regardless, they were delicious! And so fun and cute! And (redundant for emphasis) yummy!

I'm a huge fan of this new recipie. I think cookie dough with no egg is so fun, and these looking like truffles adds even more fun! I'll definitely make these again. (and again. and again. and maybe tomorrow.)

Taste: 9-10

Easy-to-Make: 6/10 (It wasn't actually difficult, but the chocolate chips didn't stir in well and each ball has to be rolled and dipped, so it's a little high maintenance.)

Visual: Not sure because I didn't finish them out, but I'd guess 9/10 or higher! 

So there you have it! Make these fun cookie dough truffles for your next party. Or anything, really. Maybe make a batch, freeze them, and eat one per day. Here's the recipie link!

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-truffles/

Update: I did indeed make these again, so here's some pics! We put sprinkles on some, and I thought that made them so cute. 

This was the first time I'd used a rack when dipping things in chocolate. It enabled lots of the extra chocolate to drip off without pooling like it would have on a tray. And when I moved them to the wax paper, they stayed round because most of the extra chocolate had dripped off already. I'll definitely do that again. Also, using a rack that only has lines going one way made it v easy to clean.