WIP Wednesday and Museum Day!

So I don't know if I've every mentioned it but my BA is in Pre-Museum Studies. I usually just say Art History when people ask because technically that's all it was because it's basically to prepare you for whichever path you choose to follow when working in a museum and typically you'd be refining your expertise with further education in your chosen specialty.

Anyway, Joanne was kind enough to post about Smithsonian's Museum Day. I'm fortunate enough to live near DC and most of the Smithsonian's are free but in this case it's one day you can get admission to other museums for free as well. Here's the link if you'd like to explore whats available in your area. 

Oh and I just checked- for people in MD with children: Port Discovery is on the list! It's an amazing place for a pretty large age range of children (not to mention an awesome place to work and technically the only actual museum job I've had.)

At this point you're like whoa whoa whoa, What happened to the WIP of the trees you promised last week? Yeah, My WIP for last week was actually a little different and I still didn't post it- so here's a double WIP for you.

First off my excuse for last week is that my WIP shifted to me actually. There is a gym near us that was recently bought out by another company and re-opened under the name Spunk Fitness. If you've ever wanted to join a gym and just use the treadmill/elliptical/bikes, or been to a gym before where you go to use them and all the machines are taken, or want to go to a gym and not be surrounded by the skinny girls working off that 1 pound they gained from that Popsicle they looked at  and muscle men.  This gym is awesome and there are all types of people there. There are TONS of machines so I'm never waiting. There are 10 different T.V.s with all different channels and they play my favorite radio station.  They also have the areas arranged really well to do circuits. Spunk offers classes on each area with a max of 4 people in each class so you don't have to be intimidated or overwhelmed. It's only about 2 miles from my house, on my way home from both jobs and best of all for me - they are open 24 hours (well they will be soon when construction is finished.)



I've also been trying to make healthier food choices. While Swedish Meatballs are delicious and I could eat them everyday that's probably not a great idea. Lucky for me there are alternatives at my sweet blue and yellow haven.


On to the other WIP- The trees. These trees were just so intimidating to me but I finally got over it and got them done Monday night. I've also moved on to the next set of houses (not shown) since I was on a roll and didn't want them to become daunting as the tiny trees had been.

Surprise!

oh wait... maybe not... I'm a whole week behind but I present LAST weeks WIP photo I took.



Although, since nothings changed I could just be considered early for this weeks WWIP. That border was pretty tough but the little trees are somewhat daunting. I will finish them though! I'm determined to have trees for you on this Wednesday!

Adventures in Cooking: Bluberry Sorbet

More photos

In my previous post I told you all about my love of my mixer and that I recently purchased the Ice Cream attachment.

I really decided I had to get it after enjoying some Raspberry Sherbert and remembering it's pretty easy to make and I could make all my favorite flavors even easier if I finally got the attachment.

Hubby mentioned how much he'd like to try blueberry and I happened to have a large bag of frozen blueberries already. I took them out and let them thaw in the fridge for a day. Since I don't really have a food processor either I used my blender to liquify as much as I could.


I also don't quite have a fine mesh strainer so I used my "fine" colander which seemed to work out pretty well. From 6 cups of blueberries I ended up with roughly a cup and a half of pulp-


And about 5 cups of liquid actually



Finally the next day I made the simple syrup the recipe calls for and had everything chill. A little while later I combined everything and poured it into the fresh-out-of-the-freezer bowl and got to mixing.


It also happened to land all down the side of the bowl and on the floor spattering on almost every cabinet in the kitchen. It's ok, I needed to clean the whole place anyway...


It just kept mixing and mixing.


I think I either had too much liquid, didn't cook the simple syrup down enough or just didn't let it mix enough because when I checked on my mix it wasn't quite frozen. I'll try to snap a photo of what I've got so far.

I washed the bowl and stuck it back in the freezer so I had it available to try again soon. Last night I was able to try banana ice cream from a recipe I found online which so far has turned out better but it's still closer to soft serve after a night of freezing than ice cream as of this morning.


Do you have any recipes to share for the ice cream attachment? Or even no attachment just an ice cream recipe in general!

Mixin' it up

 WARNING: This post is photo heavy! It started out as an Adventures in Cooking but took off about just my mixer. Another post to follow about Blueberry Sorbet...


Growing up my mom had this marvelous white stand mixer she used for everything.

Maybe you own one of these and if not I HIGHLY recommend getting one. You'll notice the one above has arms to lift the bowl rather than the head tilt that comes down to the bowl. That was critical for me. I wanted one just like my moms. Specifically too because I know myself, the head tilt one has a little cup part in the bottom the bowl locks into and I know I'd be a neat freak and hate if food got in there and I had trouble cleaning it. This one, I know is easy to clean. 

Christmas 2007 when we moved into our new house my mom found an amazing deal and got me a red one which I've at least spoken about once already.   This year she got me the pasta and grinder attachments so I kind of started this whole cooking kick because of them. 

I also found these pieces of flair recently and thought about either making some from my own vinyl or buying something neat but I definitely had to share these:

I also found these while I was looking for photos of the decals above.

(Of course some of my fav stitchers, beefranck and kunderwood,  would have already commented on this one.)

A cozy-

Of course I love that all the Kitchenaid items co-ordinate with my red- check this out-There's a whole Flickr contact for Kitchenaid and here's all their red!

Now this is hard core- not to mention AMAZING! Look at that "shine" on the bowl!!


Anyway... the whole reason I started this post was to tell you about my new part- the Ice Cream Maker!!! A friend has one and loves it. I've gone back and fourth about getting one. I finally found a site that had it for $55 including the shipping and so I ordered it last Wednesday, got it Friday and made sorbet Sunday and Banana Chocolate Chip Ice cream last night. I still have some things to learn but all in all it's not coming out too bad! There's no salt to buy or anything too crazy other than lots of forethought so you have time to freeze everything. Can't wait to make all the flavors I've been dreaming of!


Do you have any recipes using any of the Kitchenaid attachments you could share?  OR tips?

Possible Side Effects by Augusten Burroughs

Possible Side Effects

Wrapping up what became "book week" with something totally unlike all the other ones I've written about and way more what most people might expect from me. I'll start by saying I love David (and Amy) Sedaris. I just love people who can retell comical stories from their own experiences that may relate to my own or enhance my own situation. I'm sure they've been compared before and it's obviously no secret Augusten is like David on laughing gas.

David is certainly hilarious but Augusten add the cherry on top with cursing. Ok, so I know that's not everyone's cup of tea and many people feel that you can certainly tell a humorous story without curse (or as we've been calling them "Bless") words but Augusten's use of them is just an adjective to me, an enhancement.


This collection of (mostly) true stories is hilarious but honestly, gets darker the further into the book you go. There are still silly parts but they take on some of the more depressing parts of his families disorders and disfunction.


It's read by the author himself so I believe he's reading it at least with the tones he intended but occasionally some parts sound somewhat forced or like he's waiting for someone else to add the punchline.

I do plan on reading more of his books and of course also running with the "movie" theme this week, I now really want to re-watch Running With Scissors (after reading it of course) and learn more about Mr. Burrough's interesting and unique (ok, that's an understatement and probably very polite) family.