Since my traumatizing encounter with cake balls, I’ve stayed away from any sort of creation that’s supposed to turn out spherical. I’ve made loads of muffins, a bunch of cookies, and even ventured into the realm of homemade hummus (cough, cough, Deanna and her crunchy-granola-frisbee-playing self has rubbed off on me). 

However, since a Christmas gathering at which a group of girlfriends and I absolutely demolished a container of Oreo truffle balls (thanks, Maryanne), I’ve LITERALLY been dreaming about these little nuggets of goodness. If you’re wondering (I know you’re probably not, but I have to give a shout-out!), I found a recipe for them on Six Sister’s Blog, right here http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2011/07/oreo-cookie-truffles.html.

[Side note: if you’re into baking and crafting and cooking their blog is AWESOME.]

After venturing out to our local Wal-Mart to purchase the ingredients and being surprised by a huge display celebrating Oreo’s 100th Birthday (I wish I had taken a photo, this thing was so epically ridiculous. Why in the world do we celebrate the birthday of a cookie? I mean, they’re awesome, but come on!), I came home and got into a fight with my Mom’s gigantic food processor. Good thing she wasn’t home - she would NOT have enjoyed OR approved of the sound that darn thing was making. Too many cookies at once? Not enough speed choices? I have no idea. 

Eventually my cookies were sufficiently crushed into “fine crumbs” as the recipe stated. I’m not sure if I was supposed to gather up the “fine crumbs” that were all over my counter and add those to my bowl, as well, so I opted against that. 

After mixing them with a block of cream cheese, it looked disgustingly like you-know-what this:

So obviously I formed them into perfect little balls and dipped them into perfectly melted chocolate and lifted them out ever so effortlessly!

Sike!

They did come out looking very cute:

But somehow I ended up with 23 instead of the recipe’s specified 42. And I SWEAR TO GOD (sorry, I shouldn’t say God, I know it’s Lent) I only ate ONE cookie. I battled with toothpicks, skewers, turkey lacing nail things, and finally a couple of forks before I figured out how I should dip and remove those balls.

Did I mention the large bowl of Oreo crumbs that I have left over?  The recipe said to crush 9 cookies and save that to sprinkle on top of the balls. Who thought I would need 9 cookies worth of crumbs to sprinkle on 23 balls?

If anyone needs some ice cream topping you know where I live. 

Last year a couple of my friends at BC (Rachel S and Katherine D, I’m not sure exactly who made them but they were AWESOME) were always sporting braided headbands made from strips of old t-shirts. Approximately 1 year, 4 months, 6 days, and 7 hours (but who’s really counting?) after exclaiming [at a bOp! party] that I was going to make some, I finally did it!

After finding some instructions here: http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2011/06/repurposing-tshirts-into-5-strand-braided-headbands.html (yes, I’m sure those of you on Pinterest have all seen these beautiful little nuggets), and pulling out my bag of old t-shirts that I save just for occasions like this, I started in on what I imagined would be an easy project. 

I cut out five strips of fabric from a high school student council shirt, a middle school t-shirt (which just happens to be the same color as BC Superfan Gold, woohoo!), and a youth soccer t-shirt. Surprisingly, without getting needles stuck in my fingers or my eyes, I used my mom’s sewing machine to sew each set of strips together.

They looked like octopuses, and I literally have nightmares about said aquatic creatures, so I didn’t spend a long time admiring this portion of my work. 

I needed to find somewhere to anchor down the tentacle-y thingers in order to braid them, so I used the biggest safety pin EVER and did this:

Yes, this is pinned underneath a couch cushion. Yes, I think, just as all of you do, that the space underneath a couch cushion is creepy and gross, but I did it anyway. Yes, I was sitting on the carpet in a pile of lint from cutting out my fabric strips earlier…and finally, yes, my mom had indeed vacuumed the living room just five minutes before I got the carpet linty again. Sorry? I hate vacuuming? 

I cleaned up with a lint roller. 

After fighting with the sewing machine to sew the ends of the headbands together — apparently normal needles SHOULD NOT be used to sew through an inch of thick braided fabric, who knew? — and breaking a couple of needles (whoops!), I thought the end product was pretty neat. 

Did I mention that I’ve never in my life been able to keep headbands on my head? They stay in place for about fifteen minutes before sliding backwards. My hair is too slippery or my head is too small and maybe it’s shaped weird. 

Oh well. They’re cute at least. I’ll wear them in fifteen minute increments. 

Some days you’re the bug, some days you’re the windshield.

I tried to watch this YouTube video to help me solve a recent car problem, and it could have been helpful, but I’m honestly not sure. On my iPhone it just seemed like gibberish. Also: the guy doesn’t look like a mechanic I can take seriously. He isn’t old enough. Or bearded enough. I think I should have paid more attention. 

What I do know is that since becoming the [VERY PROUD] owner of a VW Beetle this October, I’ve learned more about taking care of my own car than I ever actually wanted to. I’ve been sighted wearing neon converse, crazy sunglasses, and definitely even pajamas while replacing fluids, checking the oil, or just generally staring at the contents under the hood while hoping that poor Penelope (yes, the Beetle has a name) wasn’t about to blow up. 

That being said, usually my Dad shows me how to do something before I attempt it myself. And while I am attempting it myself, he’s supervising. Closely. Unfortunately he was away last weekend when I went to purchase brand-new windshield wipers. 

After realizing that in order to remove the old wipers I had to use my obviously huge arm muscles to rip them off, and then spending at least 30 minutes shoving the new ones on, here’s what I learned:

1. You can just replace the wiper blade and not the entire wiper unit. This HAS to be simpler. 

2. Don’t bother trying to read the directions, even if you can read both the English and Spanish versions. 

3. Boys don’t necessarily know more about cars than girls. In fact, they may be the opposite of helpful. 

4. YouTube can’t possibly help you solve all of your problems. 

While I didn’t accept the AutoZone Guys’ offers to put the wipers on for free (AutoZone Guys - 1; Jess - 0), I did refuse to buy the super expensive wipers they were trying to sell me (Does this make the score 1-1?). 

The new wipers work like magic.

I’m taking a few days off from crafting and baking - I need a moment to regain composure after the absolute fiasco that was the cupcake balls. 

I don’t especially like mice, I mean, who likes mice? They’re a bit gross. But this one is generally cute and he’s eating A CUPCAKE! Must be a pretty smart mouse. 

Side Note: I didn’t know that mice had such plush carpets. 

theanimalblog:

the cupcake is mine | by EliseEnchanted

You’ve heard of cake pops. And you think they’re heavenly. 

I once thought the same.

Per numerous blogosphere baking instructions, I made a white boxed cake (no Funfetti to be found here, guess I used it all). You’d think this would be the easiest part, right? Wrong. When I very patiently took the cake out of the oven my thumb decided to get too close to the oven rack. I didn’t find it prudent to include a photo here, because, well, we can’t all be nurses and most of you (aside from Emily D, RN, Wound Care Aficionado) would think a burn is disgusting. 

Once the cake was cool (well, mine was mostly cool, but who can really wait for hours when the end result is supposed to be SO TOTALLY AWESOME?!), I mixed it with an entire can of cream cheese frosting in order to make it into balls. I would show you a picture of that, but it looks like an unmentionable. Also, my hands were covered in goop. So I couldn’t touch a camera. Duh.

After rolling them into balls and freezing them (Mom helped, THANK GOD!), we put the sticks in the balls and “secured” them with melting chocolate. Alas! Problem! The freezer was too full to put them back in.

So we put the ice on the porch. When my Dad opened the door I tried to shield my melted chocolate with my body heat. Why does my brain work (or not work?) this way?

And then Mom rearranged the freezer…

This is the last time they’ll look perfect. Savor the moment. 

No picture of the melting chocolate because I had a fight with it,  and I don’t think it deserves to be here. But here’s the thing: DON’T use WHITE melting chocolate, it gets lumpy and it’s too thick and it WILL DESTROY your beautiful little [cake] balls. 

The ball dipping took what felt like DAYS. I didn’t have enough chocolate - I mean, in the 700 blogs/articles/recipes I read online NO ONE said how much you should have. And so my balls wouldn’t dip deep enough. 

I had a lot of casualties. 

It’s ok, my Dad will eat anything. 

After a long battle, I ended up with this little cake pop forest. They don’t look bad, but I won’t give you the casualty statistics. 

Next time I’m buying munchkins and dumping them into a literal VAT of chocolate and fishing them out with those little Easter egg hook devices. 

As many of you know, I’m pretty obsessed with baking cupcakes. That being said, until last night, I had NEVER attempted to bake any other sort of confection in my beloved cupcake pan. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to…it’s just that I might as well stick with something I already know how to do. Also, the pan is just SO shiny. And new.

Alas, I asked someone to make a request for a baked good (no, I won’t make you a special-order baked good unless it’s for your birthday) and they said that they wanted muffins. Blueberry ones. Welp, first of all, it’s January, and BLUEBERRIES ARE NOT IN SEASON! Fail numero uno. Second of all, you’re really risking your life here by asking me to make muffins, as they have absolutely nothing to do with cupcakes [or Funfetti].

Fortunately, my mother being the freezer squirrel that she is (I swear this was supposed to stop after my Grammy’s generation), we have gobs of frozen blueberries that we picked this summer. Truthfully, they could be from any summer, but who’s counting? I decided to start these muffins at 10 pm last night. The recipe said they’d take 10 minutes for prep and 20 to bake. 

At 10:45 I was putting them in the oven. 

I didn’t want the frozen blueberries to like, melt or something once inside the oven. So I decided to pour warm water into the Ziploc bag, shake it up, and pour them onto some paper towels to dry them off. Were you aware that ice sticks to paper towels? I wasn’t. I hope none of the little paper pieces ended up INSIDE the muffins.

WARNING: Don’t forget to put the cinnamon sugar on the muffins BEFORE you put them in the 400 degree oven. And then don’t forget to put on oven mitts before you frantically pull out the pans when you do remember to put it on. Really, don’t. 

And how does this happen?

I swear I used an ice cream scoop to measure each muffin out equally.

Side note: how did I get batter between my iPhone and it’s case? It was safely stowed on top of the microwave playing TSwift. Did the batter jump out of the mixing bowl?

Needless to say, I won’t be baking muffins again for a while.

At least they’re tasty. 

My Grammy taught me how to knit a few years ago, and needles(s) to say I continue to be quite terrible at it. If you know anything about knitting, you know that there are two EXCEPTIONALLY simple stitches that are used. There’s a normal knit stitch and then if you complete the same action backwards, that’s a purl stitch.

Well. Let’s just say that I can only really knit one way. And that’s forward. And it’s taken me four years to be decent at it. Also, were you aware that bulky, super-soft yarn can be pretty terrifying? This afternoon, approximately four minutes into my foray into knitting, there was lint stuck to my contact. I mean, really? How can ninety year old ladies survive the perils? Not only are there piles of lint, but those needles can be quite sharp (wield carefully, please) and the hand cramps set in fairly quickly.

I knit for almost two hours today, and this is what I have to show for it:

I know I have an abundance of time on my hands, but this is just ridiculous. This scarf just might be ready for Christmas … of 2013.