Six Weeks of Break

The Bane of my Existence

2010-02-02T19:41:00.004-06:00

This 365 day project is harder than I thought. I took today's picture pretty last minute. I'm taking a study break to post it. It's a book for my human origins class. I love the class, I just have to spend an insane amount of time taking notes on it from this book. It's been super interesting learning about our origins. I think I could tell you the name of every major fossil found as well as its age, where it was found, it's brain capacity, it's species, etc. I think that's a pretty hefty accomplishment. Okay back to studying for my quiz.

A New Beginning

2010-02-01T19:43:00.003-06:00

Here's the first picture for my 365 day project. This was taken in the library when my friend and I went in to take outfit shots. It was an accident but I thought it looked kinda artsy.

365

2010-01-31T23:35:00.005-06:00

Well hey, it's been awhile. Both of us have been super busy with college and stuffs. But, starting tomorrow we're going to be starting something pretty epic. We're doing the 365 day project! In a nutshell this project consists of taking one picture every day. Many have given up but we are determined to persevere. We'll be posting our pictures every couple of days right here on this blog. I'm more excited than I should be about this. Just think though, in a year you could look back to any day from the past year and know exactly what you did. I think that's so special!

I will leave you all with pretty pictures I've been accumulating over time.

(Sources: Sea of Shoes, Facehunter, Streethearts, Pepper and Chips)

We're Back!

2010-01-03T16:30:00.007-06:00

Look at us! We're in the same picture! That's because we're back at college! We've both finished unpacking and now we're just chilling in our suite watching Clue. Best movie ever by the way. I highly recommend it. I'm taking this brief downtime to blog and rest before classes tomorrow. May I just mention that Alicia baked nine dozen cookies and brought them here. They taste wonderful.

I still have a couple outfit pictures from back home, so I'm going to post those. This one is from yesterday. I went to hang out with some of my best friends and we watched Back to the Future 2 and 3. We are definitely nerds.

(Coat:Francescas, Dress:Anthropology, Leggings:Charlotte Russe, Shoes:H&M)

Yeah, so we just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we are together again! Yay!

2010-01-02T22:48:00.005-06:00

I decided to do a quick post before I headed to bed. I leave for college in the morning and I have to wake up at some ridiculously early time. It's horrible. Here's the dress I wore for new years. I'm especially excited about these tights. I'm pretty sure red is the best color for tights ever.

(Dress:Urban Outfitters, Tights:Target, Boots:Target)

As I said in my last post, I convinced all the girls to dress up for new years. We had so much fun squealing over each other's outfits. It was all very girly, but who really cares about that anyways?

Okay, so this blog was dedicated to just our six weeks of break (hence the name of the blog) but I think that it should continue. I don't know how my partner feels about this, but I for one enjoy blogging too much, so I'll keep trying to do some posts while at college. I might not post as much because I have to do homework and stuff, but I like doing this too much to stop. I must go to sleep now. I want to be all energetic tomorrow. My next post will be from college!

I resolve to...

2010-01-01T22:25:00.009-06:00

Happy New Year!

(Source: weheartit.com)

I hope everyone enjoyed whatever you did to celebrate the new decade. I've got an outfit from yesterday and a couple pictures of the party I went to.

(Cardigan:Delias, Shirt:Thakoon for Target, Jeans:Delias, Belt:Charlotte Russe)

This is a simple outfit I put together to go out to lunch with my grandma and sister. I'm trying to spend as much time with them as possible because I leave for college in two days! I'm excited to got back but sad because I know I'm going to miss my family.

The belt is new, I've been wanting a huge, thick belt for awhile and this one was cute and the right price. And yes, I'm wearing socks with my heels. When you live in the Wisconsin climate you have to go to ridiculous lengths to wear a cute pair of heels. I'm also in love with this headband. It pops but it's not obnoxious.

Here are some pictures of the New Years party I went to. I convinced all the girls to get dressed up. I must say that we all looked quite smashing. I'll post pictures of my new years outfit tomorrow.

Once again, Happy New Year! May this be the best year yet!

Another One!

2009-12-31T16:21:00.006-06:00

Look at me doing another outfit post. These tights have gotta be my favorite present from this Chanukkah. They're so bright and fun and happy making.

(Shirt:Ralph Lauren, Shorts:Forever 21, Tights:Betsey Johnson, Shoes:??)

I got a bunch of funny looks when I was prancing around in the middle of downtown taking these pictures. Everyone's face clearly said, "what is that girl doing in freezing weather without a coat on?" It was kind of funny.

I spent the day with my mother running errands. She's been getting all sad because I leave to go back to college soon. We made a pit stop at urban outfitters because we were in the area and I got a lovely new romper. I've been wanting one since this summer! I plan on finding some way to wear it in winter. It's too pretty to have to wait until summer to wear. Then we went an got some boring things that I need for school. Not even worth mentioning.

My shorts are so short that my coat covered them so I kept getting weird looks like people thought I wasn't wearing pants. :) I mean come on!

On another note, has anyone seen Nine yet? I went to see it the other day with my sister and it's gotta be in my top ten favorites. But then again I'm a sucker for a good musical.

Happy New Years to whoever reads this! I hope you stick to your new years resolutions, I never manage to :)

The First One!

2009-12-29T22:06:00.005-06:00

It's my first outfit post. I'll admit I was a bit nervous about posting one because sometimes I worry that what I think is fashionable is actually dead ugly. I like to think that I'm wrong though. That's why I'm posting this. It's a pretty safe outfit, but hey, it will hopefully be the first of many.

(Sweater:Target, Jeans:T J Maxx, Boots:T J Maxx)

We got a lot of snow a couple days ago and it's still beautiful outside. It's really cold though. Taking outfit pictures took about five minutes and that was long enough.

I got these lovely boots for Christmas. They're really warm and they go with about everything. I love that they have a little lift in the heel, but it's not so drastic that my feet will start hurting when I have to walk from class to class.

I leave for college in five days. I'm going to miss home a lot but I'm so excited to be going back. I've missed my friends and the frisbee team. I miss having eleven other people to live with. I never get lonely or bored. It also means I have way to many reasons to procrastinate. My roommate and I are planning on getting a fish when we get back. Just by that, I can tell that this coming trimester is going to be fantastic!

Peekaboo!

2009-12-22T15:35:00.004-06:00

Don't worry, I didn't fall into my oven. But these did fall out...

These gorgeous little nuggets, Vanilla Bean Muffins, were so incredibly and unbelievably moist. A few weeks ago, I employed my very first vanilla bean in this recipe (found in my copy A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman). It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, getting the seeds out. Did you know there are over 25,000 itty bitty little seeds in one vanilla pod? I sure didn't.

I ended up with a full dozen of regular-sized muffins (I'd already eaten one in the picture above), so I decided to use the rest of the batter to make three ginormous muffins. I didn't exactly have any of those adorable little paper things to fit the jumbo muffin tin, so I thought a dose of Pam would do the trick.

I was wrong. Despite their sad, piece-y appearance, however, THESE ARE AMAZING MUFFINS. Gone in a less than a week. Even the big ones that lacked proper muffin aethestics.

Today, I ventured into another new recipe. After the success I had with her Mexican Chocolate Chip Cookies, I decided to try out the recipe for Blue Dory Chocolate Chip Cookies that I found on Kate Jackson's blog, Framed.

The recipe is so sinfully simple, with just four basic ingredients: butter, flour, chocolate chips, and maple syrup.

Yeah, you read that right: maple syrup. God's gift to cookie-baking. The recipe called for self-rising flour, which I don't have, but the addition of so much baking powder and salt for every cup of all-purpose flour quickly took care of that problem.

The epicly-long baking time (a whopping 15 minutes) was a bit of a hassle until I figured out that the batter had almost no spread. From there on out, it was 16 cookies to a sheet. I got at least 7 dozen cookies, if not 8 dozen, out of this recipe. I will definitely be freezing a bunch to bring back to Sellew 2.

Heart

2009-12-14T22:47:00.004-06:00

Okay, so this is a pretty old picture from my visit to New York but I'm obsessed with Polaroid. It makes all your pictures into polaroid form. I think it's amazing! I've been doing it to lots of my pictures.

See? Isn't it awesome???!!!

So I was watching the movie The Company this evening and was reminded of how much I love dance movies. My best friend and I used to watch them all time. It didn't matter how bad the story line was, we loved the finale with the awesome dance moves that made us feel clumsy. It was one of our goals to be able to dance like the people in those movies. Obviously that never happened. But it's good to dream.

(Source: Weheartit.com)

No Memory

2009-12-11T17:05:00.007-06:00

I'm confined to my bed for at least the next two days because I got my wisdom teeth out this morning. Surgery is one of my biggest fears, so I'm pretty proud of myself for handling it the way I did. My mother was telling me that after I woke up I was very thankful to anyone I could thank. The people said that I was one of their most polite patients. I don't remember any of that. The only time I remember thanking anyone is when I thanked the nurse for half carrying me to the recovery room. So because I have nothing to do except watch my pile of movies and surf the web for pretty things, I've accumulated a lot of pictures I would love to share.

Here are a couple things I found that I would love to receive for the holidays (too bad that Burberry sweater is over $100):

(Sources: Modcloth, Burberry)

I'm a huge fan of Gossip Girl fashion. So over my web surfing excursions I've accumulated many pictures of the gang. Right now I'm just going to show my favorite looks from Taylor Momsen. She's the complete picture of edgy. I don't think I could pull off that look, but I could see using a couple of her pieces here and there in my wardrobe.

(Source: Taylor-Momsen.net)

Let's Play Make Believe

2009-12-10T20:07:00.005-06:00

It's about 0 degrees here in WI. Yesterday the power was out for about 24 hours. The house got very cold. Not fun in the least. Here are a couple pictures from my visit to Chicago. It was tons of fun. We played some frisbee, saw some touristy sights and ate lots of good food. The best part was seeing my friends though. It's weird to go to college for 2 months and then get 6 weeks off. It almost feels like I went to camp. Except I get to go back!

I'll end with some pretty pictures.

(Sources: TFS, The Cobra Snake, Iheartit.com)

Nostalgia

2009-12-03T18:25:00.005-06:00

(Sources: The Cobra Snake, Style.com)

Oh the beauty that is music festival fashion. It's so effortlessly cool. I love the cut off shorts and colored sunglasses. It started snowing here in Wisconsin and I was feeling a bit nostalgic for the summer. Hence the out of season fashion post. I hope everyone has fun plans for this weekend. I'm visiting some college friends in Chicago. The temperature is supposed to be in the thirties. So you can understand my wish for summer weather.

She Beat Me To It!

2009-11-30T21:42:00.004-06:00

Hi, I'm Maddie. I'm the other half of Six Weeks of Break. I'm in charge of all the fashion. I plan on posting outfit pictures tomorrow. For now I will leave you with a resounding HELLO! And some pretty pictures of tights that I wish I owned and cool people looking cool.

(Pictures: The Cobra Snake and Taylor Swift Web)

Lookit, It's the First Post!

2009-11-30T18:41:00.000-06:00

Well, here's a champagne bottle-hitting-the-side-of-the-internet initiation for Six Weeks of Break:

Bam. I scoured two Barnes & Noble branches looking for this little nugget of awesome, only to be denied in both locations. I reserved a copy at Borders, and then I didn't make it in there to pick it up. I'm still planning to buy my own copy, but in the meantime, I managed to stumble across it at my local library. Thank goodness for good old-fashioned browsing.

This book, published a bit before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, contains a crazy number of self-designed, Harry Potter-inspired knitting projects. The projects range from three difficulty levels: First-Year (beginner), Ordinary Wizarding Level (O.W.L., intermediate), and Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test (N.E.W.T., advanced). I'm really only a beginning knitter, but I'm hoping to get into hats and socks over break, which requires the intermediate skill of knitting "in the round." Brace yourself for pictures.

Also found at the library was a book I'd gotten my hands on the week before I left for Knox:

As a chocolate lover and bake-centric foodie, I died a little (in the Shakespearian sense) when I started reading this book. I am going to attempt at least one recipe from it, given that I can pull it off without investing in specialty equipment, and that I can afford to buy a bunch of chocolate to fail with on my first few tries.

Now, who do I have to call to pick up all the glass from that champagne bottle?