I Think It Worked

So maybe there is some truth to the lemon cupcake thing because this little one made her debut:



Madison Riley Hinton
Born April 23rd, 8 lbs, 19.75"

Cutest niece in the world!

When life gives you lemons, try to make a pregnant person go into labor!

Today because I'm on spring break, had some time on my hands, and since I love my sister, I made these labor-inducing lemon cupcakes to try to encourage my little niece/nephew to make her/his arrival ASAP!



I figured since Beth is about to go through labor (which I hear is a painful adventure), I would at least give her one more treat. Apparently in Detroit, 19 women who were past-due ate lemon drop cupcakes from a shop in town and went into labor. You can read that story here. My sis is technically not past-due since the real date is April 25th, but wouldn't it be great to have an Easter baby!? I'm working on it! (And if this works, I'm really going to call the local news station and tell them to put me on TV. Maybe.)

I figured out my own lemon cupcake recipe using a couple of different cupcake books, and this is what I came up with.

Bring-on-the-Labor Lemon Cupcakes

1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbs lemon zest
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract

Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with milk. Start and finish with the dry ingredients. Add zest, juice, and extracts. Bake 'em!

Bake at 325 for 20-22 minutes; makes a dozen regular cupcakes and 6 mini cupcakes.

Lemony Icing (Okay, I confess. I didn't actually measure anything when I made this icing, but this is my best guess. Just do this and then add more sugar if it's not thick enough.)

4 cups confectioners sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 1/2 Tbs lemon zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract (You can add more of this if you want it super lemony!)

Mix sugar and butter until smooth. Mix in everything else. (Complicated, huh?)

After you ice them, you should probably put some type of berry (I used blueberries) or SPRINKLES on top. Can't see it in my photo, but I did break out the yellow sprinkles. You could also put yellow food coloring in the icing.


And finally, new (to me) cupcake baking info that most people have probably thought of before, but just in case you haven't, I'll share:

1. Use a mini muffin tin to do something with extra batter. The little cakes are the best when you really don't want need to eat a whole cupcake.

2. You can freeze cake batter and icing. Never knew this, but really, duh! Why hadn't I thought of that? Most times recipes make a dozen or more cupcakes. I usually only need a dozen because I'm usually taking them somewhere, and it can actually overwhelm people when you show up with two boxes of cupcakes. I've seen it happen. So make the batter, bake half, and put the other half in the freezer.

3. If you freeze batter or icing, put the batter/icing in a big ziploc to freeze. After you thaw it, snip the corner and just squeeze the goodness into the cupcake tin or directly onto cupcakes. Yep, that's easy!

Movie Weekend

Since sometime last fall and into January, we've been watching the Showtime series, The Tudors. We watched King Henry marry and get rid of all of those wives, and we liked it. But somewhere in season 4, we got stuck. I really thought that if I had to watch one more episode, I'd lose it. So, three DVDs of the series sat in the drawer of our entertainment center for over a month. Instead of continuing until the end, we watched nothing. Why we didn't just package those DVDs up and mail them back, I don't really know. Last week though, I finally got around to it. So this weekend was a movie weekend, just like old times!

I already mentioned It's Kind of a Funny Story. We also watched The Social Network, which everyone else in the universe has already seen. It was decent, I noticed myself having emotional reactions like thinking Zuckerburg was brilliant and geeky in a good way, then brilliant and geeky in a bad way, and back and forth and back and forth. Then the movie ended, and I convinced myself that I should come up with the next billion dollar idea. I'm planning on working on that later this week.

Last night, we watched Get Low. Apparently this movie came out in 2009. Where was I to have missed it two years ago? It was good! (I've got to work on my list of adjectives. I have a hard time summing up a movie with a word other than good or not-so-good.) Will looked over at me at one point while we were watching and said, "Why are you making that face!?" Then I realized I was making a face because I was having a reaction to the movie! Because it was "good" I guess. When I went to governor's school way back in high school, I remember one of our teachers telling us that if we could "upset the reader's expectations" then we'd written a decent piece. Her name was Cathy Smith Bowers, and I loved her. She was named poet laureate of NC in 2010. I never forgot that piece of writing advice, and now every time I read/view/hear something that is creative, if I catch myself having a reaction (even making crazy faces), I think about how the writer/screenwriter/artist/musician was successful because of that. Something else I remember about Bowers is that on the Friday of the week she was our writing teacher, we all wore our pajamas to class as a way of celebrating. I don't remember what we were celebrating. Maybe Bowers? I'm sure she felt honored that we showed up to her class with the pajamas we hadn't washed since we'd arrived 5 weeks earlier. Maybe we were celebrating that it was the last Friday of being locked (kind of literally since we didn't have cars)in the Furman University campus, which might seem lovely to some, but when I was 17, it was confusing.

Random governor's school memory aside: One night someone (I seriously can't remember if it was my boyfriend at the time or really some random friend) brought me Taco Bell. This was SO against the rules! If you are furrowing your brow and wondering why, I totally understand. I did the same thing back then when I wasn't allowed to have Taco Bell for 5 weeks. Anyway, I got busted with the Taco Bell and had to go in my room 30 minutes before curfew, which would have been 9:30 I guess, due to the fact that I'd taken the contraband Taco Bell and was caught happily eating it. I remember telling my hall counselor (don't you think she felt important being a governor's school counselor!?), "Okay, seriously. If your boyfriend brought you Taco Bell right now, you'd tell him to take it back? Eat it himself? I don't think so!" She agreed. Told me to eat the TB and go to my room, which I did. Being 17 is weird and filled with stupid ideas.

In addition to movie weekend, I also downloaded Tina Fey's new book, Bossypants. Add it to your list. It's a good one!

Things to Consider

1. How much technology is too much? I'm currently sitting in my bed watching Tuesday's episode of Parenthood on my laptop while texting on my iPhone and blogging on my iPad. I might actually be addicted to being plugged in. So how much is too much? Currently I'm not being productive in terms of things I actually need to check off of my perpetual to do list, but I am being a super multi-tasker and that is definitely something to use as an excuse when I try to justify all of this. (there will be another iPad post coming with my thoughts in case any of the three people who read my blog are considering purchasing one)

2. You should watch the movie, It's Kind of a Funny Story. We watched it tonight, and it was good, like really really good. After it was over, Will said, "That was a really good movie." I told him I'd heard about it a couple of times but added it to the netflix queue right after Adam Durtiz recommended it on his Twitter. I guess technically, he tweeted it. Will's response: "blink, blink." Translation: he blinked at me. You have to know us to understand why this is funny.

3. Living in a bubble. I've realized in the last few weeks that some people live in a bubble. For example in Vegas two weeks ago, I lived in a bubble, the Aria bubble, but really I think it was just because the one time we went outdoors other than to the pool in the daytime, I was cranky from the late night before. But, I realized that since I was in that Aria bubble, other people live in bubbles too, most of them made up in their imaginations of what is really surrounding them rather than what is actually surrounding them. Enough about that for now. In the mean time, I'm going to get to work right away on creating my bubble world.

4. We got a new rabbit. I named her Sally.

5. Making life decisions, like whether or not to apply for certain jobs, while thinking about 2 more years of working on a doctorate (or God help me, 3 more years), and obsessing about other things that I can't write on my blog, while other people don't seem to be worrying about these things but just doing them or not doing them while still being carefree, overwhelms me. Those other people, they live in a bubble.

The Bees, They Are A-Buzzin'

My life with Will is more adventurous than it would be without him. Take today, for example...we got in the car and drove to Bamberg, SC to pick up a nucleus of bees and an additional queen. To get to Bamberg, you have to get off of 26 around Orangeburg and drive through Bowman and Branchville until you end up at a road that I can't remember the name of. Then you turn off on a dirt road and end up on some land that is filled with blueberry fields and bee hives. I guess this trip wasn't exactly an adventure, but as I played with my phone that had no service and bumped along the dirt roads to meet some guy who we were buying bees from, it did cross my mind that if I never returned no one would even know where to begin looking, mainly because I hadn't talked to my mom and even at now 30 years old, she usually has some idea about my general location on Earth.

Luckily we weren't kidnapped or anything, and the whole thing turned out to be pretty cool. Here are some snaps of Will and the owner of Porter Farm Bees, Dwight. Will's the one in the bee suit since he's super allergic and Dwight is the one handling the bees with BARE hands. He actually got stung, but there's no crying in beekeeping, kind of like baseball. Unless I'd gotten stung. Then, there would've been some crying, wailing to be more exact.







Notice the color of the bee hives. Dwight explained that the hives are just these colors because these are the cheap colors of paint. Makes sense. Good to know there's no other strategy there.



Starting last year with just 6 hives on this land, there are now over 100 hives. Dwight also has hives in Little Mountain and in Easley. It's a full-time, impressive job. He was super smart, and I think if I hadn't been there giving Will the Let's-Go!! look, he would probably still be out there asking questions.

The queen that wasn't in the nucleus will go in one of the hives Will already has. I carried the queen home in my pocket, and we made it safe and sound. She's currently on the kitchen table, just hanging out like queens do.



Here's the bee hive pup, Sadie. She was super sweet.



And just for good measure, and not related to bees in anyway, here's a shot of the ducks.



They've grown. Will left them out in the backyard when we headed to pick up the bees earlier this afternoon. When we got home, they were huddled by the garage door waiting to be let in since they still have a nest box in there with a toasty heat lamp. Silly ducks might actually have brains.

Birthday Fun

Dinner at Motor Supply with fam. Here's me and my sis. Really bad picture quality, but a really good time.



Vegas with a best pal.







I've decided...30 is going to be way-okay!