I am in far too sour of a mood to blog about our perfect vacation to Cancun.  I have wished I was back there just about every day since we returned and I don't need any more of a reminder that I am back to the real world.  This will have to suffice for now :

Don't you feel relaxed just looking at it?

I am ornery because it is the first weekend of the school year and I am off to a retreat with the College of Health Sciences Ambassadors.  Not that I don't enjoy being an ambassador, I wouldn't do it if I didn't, but this is the first time we have been required to go on a retreat and I can think of about a billion other things I would rather be doing this weekend including going to Cincinnati for numerous reasons (boyfriend, IKEA, boyfriend, outlet shopping, boyfriend, etc.).

So, I'm trying to look on the bright side and so far all I've got is that I am home on a Friday night to watch my favorite shows on TLC: Say Yes to the Dress and Four Weddings!  I will be the first to tell you that I am absolutely obsessed with weddings.  When my time comes I can promise you that I will be the ultimate bridezilla (sorry for all those involved). It is almost pathetic how much I think about my wedding and it isn't even in sight.  I like to tell myself that this is normal although I'm not so sure about that.  Anyway, I don't have the whole day planned out yet but there are some things that I do know: I will have at least a string quartet at the ceremony, hopefully I'll have some brass too, but absolutely NO singing.  I will have an outdoor element to the day, although I don't know if it will be the ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, or all of the above.  I will have a crazy dress, definitely nothing plain. My bridesmaids will be in tea length dresses, nothing frumpy for them. I will not write my own vows, too much pressure for sure. I will cry. And when it is over, I will already be planning a vow renewal because the one thing I have been planning my whole life has now happened.

Time to watch Four Weddings and pick up more do's and don'ts for my big day in the far future :)

Walk on if you're walking even if it's an uphill climb

There is not much better than a traffic free drive on a sunny Sunday with some great music.  Actually there are plenty of things better, but today it was pretty nice (until I made it to Lexington and the rain poured down and lightening struck within about twenty feet of my car, or at least that's how it felt :p).  Anyway, I had my iPod plugged in filling the car with John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Elton, and of course plenty of Sweet Baby James, had my sunglasses on and cruise control set.  It was simple and it was good.  I took a nap before I left home but I also had my trusty sucker to keep me alert.  It's a Dixon family secret.  Okay, so it isn't really a secret, but Leslie's cinnamon suckers are just about the best thing to keep you good and awake on a long and/or lonely drive.  They are hot as fire (hence the name "Fire Cubes") so you can't really feel sleepy when your mouth is in that much pain. But they taste good too!

So I made it back to Lexington for the first time in 2 weeks. I waked in to a super smelly kitchen.  It wasn't the trash can, I was smart enough to empty it before I left.  It wasn't in the fridge.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  I was kind of starting to freak out thinking something had crawled up in one of the cabinets and died, it was that bad.  But luckily I found the culprit: a rotten sweet potato in the lazy Susan. Yuck!  It was one of those microwaveable shrink wrapped ones so thankfully I didn't have to actually touch it to throw it away. I won't share a picture of that. I'm sure you're glad.

After dealing with rank the sweet potato and knocking all of the cobwebs and dead bugs out of my mailbox I headed off to Kroger Marketplace (my favorite!) just so I could check out the new addition to Harrodsburg Rd., The Double Crossover Diamond! I don't know about you all, but I thought it was super fun.  But I'm sure that will be different during rush hour, everything in Lexington is different during rush hour.

That's all I've got for tonight.  Cleaning and school prep start tomorrow.  Tonight is Redbox night. :)

I am no Julia Child, Martha Stewart, or even Rachael Ray

There is kind of a running theme when it comes to me and the kitchen: I mess things up.  I am usually okay when it comes to break and bake cookies or boxed cake, but anything more complex than that is guaranteed to cause me trouble.  One year I decided to bake a cake for Anthony's 20th birthday.  I had to top the polka dot fondant cake that he had baked for me for my Birthday earlier that year. It was a funfetti cake and it was adorable but I had to up him by making his cake completely homemade.

So, I worked real hard working with fondant for the first time and I thought the outcome was pretty good...











...until we cut it.  It was a crumbly mess and it tasted like vanilla flavored cornbread. Yum!


So since then I have been known for my homemade kitchen mess ups.  One year Beth and I baked my mom a homemade German chocolate cake. It turned out delicious but that was only after the batter overflowed into the bottom on Mom's new oven. We had a miniature cake, burnt to a crisp that I got to climb in the over in and dig out later.  I've made a pineapple upside down cake that fell apart when we flipped it because it wasn't done in the center.  And this year for Anthony's Birthday I made some Samoa (caramel delight for those of us from the south) cup cakes.  I made the icing myself but went for the boxed cake as to decrease the likelihood of screwing them up.  But I managed to miss read 1 1/2 cups as 11 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, so needless to say the icing was super sweet! (No worries, I noticed the mistake before I got all 11 cups in there and I doubled the recipe so it wasn't really that bad) They turned out pretty good, I must say:

So anyway, My Dad's Birthday is next Wednesday and I will be back in Lexington by then so I decided that for his gift (because he never wants anything, he is so hard to buy for!) I would make his favorite desserts: Lemon Ice Box Pie and Pralines and Cream Ice Cream.  Don't worry, I had no plans of making the ice cream myself, just the pralines which proved to be hard enough on their own. The Lemon Ice Box pie seemed easy enough (see recipe here).  No baking, just mixing and pouring...I can do that, right?  Well I ended up pouring the fresh squeezed lemon juice into the mix seeds included.  So that was a hassle digging them out but the pie turned out pretty good.

 

It looks good anyway, we've yet to have a bite.

But the pralines weren't as successful.  I should have known that it was a bad sign that the article from Southern Living with the recipe suggested alternatives for if your pralines don't turn out quite right.  I followed the directions exactly, but the pralines just wouldn't set up.  I'm gonna blame this disaster on the 20+ year old candy thermometer that I used.  Luckily, it didn't matter too much because I scrapped them off of the wax paper and into some vanilla ice cream.

The moral of the story is I am no Julia Child, Martha Steward, or even Rachael Ray.  Which is okay with me, as long as no one is afraid to eat what I bake :p

A Day in the Life

This has been my day thus far:

• Woke up @ 8:30 to say goodbyes to my Saster and Shortcake.  She has lived in Florida for 2 years now and saying goodbye doesn't seem to get much easier.  I will see her at Thanksgiving but I won't see 'Cakes until Christmas.
• Went back to sleep
• Did not get out of my bed until nearly two o'clock. I think I am trying to make up for all of the times that I was unable to sleep in this summer because of school.
• Ate a cold piece of pizza, sharing the crust with Tink.
• Finished reading The Help. It was excellent.  Now I have to find someone to go see the movie with some time this week, because I can't wait until I am back in Lexington.
• Took Tink for a walk outside.  In yesterday's make-up (and shorts) and last night's t-shirt and greased up crazy hair.  I prevented her from rolling around in something gross.  Flashed back to the time that she rolled around in a dead bird.  I tied her to a post and dumped a bucked of soapy water on top of her because I refused to touch her, much less bring her in the house.
• Wrote this blog in my head while outside.
• Remembered that I have almost two weeks worth of laundry to do and then picked up my computer instead. 
• Checked all the blogs that I am "following." Also known as the blogs that I read everyday but don't have the guts to actually follow because that would mean that they could possibly read mine some time. 
• Got sad about how high school/elementary students are already back in school, which basically means summer is over.
• Got sad because I have to go back to Lexington in less than a week and start another semester of Grad school.  A real semester.  Hmph.
• Now I am listening to my mother carry in a load of groceries and feeling guilty that I am not helping her.  Guess I should do that.

I'm back...maybe.

So, I have really neglected my blog. I'm not going to say that I vow to do better, because I don't.  But I do think I will try to start really blogging.  I might even go public, but I'm still thinking on that one.  That's all I have for now.  My family just returned from Mexico yesterday afternoon and I am kind of exhausted still. Look for a blog about that later :)