Cupcakes and a Haircut

Cupcakes seem to be so in right now. Every other person is either opening a cupcake business or knows a great cupcake recipe and all the rest of us are craving cupcakes. And who could blame us? A cute tiny cake with pretty icing on top of it and deliciousness all throughout...heaven in a tiny paper wrapper.

By the way, the above picture is of my gigantic cupcake/cake carrier I got for Christmas. It's collapsible at it gets to a ridiculously large size that is actually comical it's so huge.

I've been on a major cooking and baking kick lately so Thursday evening my best friend Lindsay was over eating shrimp and grits with me at my house. You can find the recipe here. Oh and, for the record, I was fully satisfied with the results! I added a little bit of half and half and a couple of handfuls of shredded cheese to the grits and YUM!
Anyway, after supper I was thinking aloud "wouldn't it be lovely to have a nice fat cupcake right now?" to which my roommates and Lindsay said "YES!". So, I got out my checkered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook that was Mama Bertha's old one and is chock full of old tried and true recipes and got to work. At this point, it was almost 11pm so I needed to just use the ingredients I had in the house, which did not include confectioner's sugar--up until now I have no idea how to make a frosting without it!
I did however, have all of the ingredients to make the Cooked Orange Frosting and I must say, with Lindsay as my trusty assistant, we made some light, fluffy, silky and delicious cooked frosting!
Here's how you do it:
3 egg whites, whipped to stiff peaks
pour on a sugar/water mixture (3/4c sugar to 1/4 c water heated to 232 degrees)
Whip those two until they form peaks again. Then pour in 1/2tbsp of orange juice and whip again until thick.

It was way easier than I ever thought! Now that I have mastered that, lemon meringue pie is next on the dessert agenda. Wish me luck!



By the way, now I feel the need to mention how often it is difficult as a woman who is opinionated and often less gentle than I'd like to be for me to feel like my gifts and talents, which I know are from the Lord, are useful for His glory. It can be very discouraging to feel like your practical gifts are not as valid or important as someone else's...especially those who are gentle and their sins are less apparent to others. But I know and believe (even if I don't feel it) that a meal and hanging out with someone can truly minister to them and I want to use the gift of enjoying time with people and cooking--and hopefully being decent at it--to glorify the Lord, and that is what I will do.


Onto the haircut, here is the before photo:

A couple of weeks ago I decided to cut my hair again since it had grown out a considerable amount since August when I did the Locks of Love cut. I wanted to get basically the same haircut that I got last time, so I brought in a few pictures of celebrities with cute short haircuts that I brought with me last time. Before I had the chance to spook and change my mind, I handed my stylist the pictures and she got to chopping! One of the pictures (and my favorite cut out of the pictures I brought) was the picture about of Katie Holmes. My hair has natural wave to it and I thought would curl in a similar way if I let it air dry.



I was excited to get a fresh new look and get my split ends taken care of....but I did not know it was going to be THIS short:

Looking at these pictures it doesn't look all that short, but the back is shorter and I feel a little naked. I'm starting to like it more now that I've been able to style is some on my own, but it is a little frustrating to get used to a short haircut when you are not used to short hair.

Please excuse the cheesiness of this photo, I took this at work to send to Sara Jane so she could see my hair curly with my flower hairpiece in. I LOVE my flower clip! I felt funny wearing in the front of my hair when it was longer, but I think now that it is shorter that affords me more funky hair possibilities, including large silk flowers! If you're interested in hairpins like these, JCrew carries them (that's where I got mine...well, the JCrew Outlet clearance table) but I have seen some FABULOUS Etsy sellers making some gorgeous pieces! Like this one, which is small but so very charming and pretty. Sara Jane is also very into Etsy and even bought Christmas gifts from a few Etsy sellers who made some truly beautiful things.

In other news, I'm in a webpage development class right now which is like a completely different language. It's pretty stinkin' exciting though when I write a page of code and validate it and it works! Of course, what I'm learning is really elementary but to me it's like learning Mandarin Chinese and actually understanding it! I have to admit, I leave the labs feeling really proud of myself for making links that work all by writing code...it's like magic. So far, the pages are really basic and boring but I'm looking forward to the end of the semester when hopefully I can build a successful website with my portfolio on it. I'll keep you posted on that.