Wednesday, February 15, 2012

"Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown"- Words on Wednesdays

I decided to start a new theme for Wednesdays- instead of them being WordLESS, they're going to be articles that I find to be particularly well-written that week while browsing about the web (I tried to fit as many "W's" as I could in that sentence!) This one comes after this Sunday's Grammy awards and Chris Brown's performance. Please read this article and share with everyone you know, and then click on the link afterwards to see the actual tweets.  It is well worth your time, I promise.

Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown So Much They Would Let Him Beat Them

25 Horrifying Reactions to Chris Brown's Performance at the Grammy's


xoxo, Kate

Monday, February 13, 2012

Not my love story, but a good one, at that.

Today's post is lurve themed because of the big pink and red holiday tomorrow. I'm not a huge fan of Valentines Day, which is probably why Shmeegs and I are going to the Museum of Science tomorrow. 
Have you guys seen Love Actually? It's one of my faves, and even though its Holiday themed, I think it's perfect to watch at Valentines too. For those of you that don't know, the movie follows eight different British couples, conveniently made out of many of my favorite actors! My favorite love story out of all of them is "Jamie and Aurelia," i.e. Colin Firth and Lucia Moniz. P.S. if you haven't seen it and don't want to know the ending to their love story, watch it and then come back to this post, ok?
At the beginning of the story, Jamie finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother. Awkward. So, naturally, he goes to his rustic, gorgeous house in France to recover and work on a book he's writing. His housekeeper hires Aurelia to clean and cook for him while he's there. There is a small issue of the language barrier between Portuguese Aurelia and English Jamie, as shown here:

Jamie: Er... Would you like the last, uh…(cookie) ? 
Aurelia: [in Portuguese] Thank you very much, but no. 
Jamie: No? 
Aurelia: [in Portuguese] If you saw my sister, you'd understand why. 
Jamie: That's all right, more for me. 
Aurelia: [in Portuguese] Just don't go eating it all yourself, you're getting chubbier every day. 
Jamie: I'm very lucky, I've got one of those constitutions where I never put on weight.   



Every time they talk, they actually are answering each other, but they don't realize it. *Sigh* When       
Jamie finally leaves to go back to London, they say one of my mostest favoritest lines in a movie EVER. 
Jamie: [in English] It's my favorite time of day, driving you. 
Aurelia: [in Portuguese] It's the saddest part of my day, leaving you.
And then there are scenes of him going to a language school and learning Portuguese…and then it's Christmas Eve, and as soon as he gets to his relatives house, he says he has to go, and runs off to the airport. Do yourself a favor and watch the link below. It'll get you all warm and fuzzy on the inside. 
Jamie's Proposal to Aurelia 

Look at his face!


[in Portuguese]
Jamie: Beautiful Aurelia, I've come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know I seems an insane person - because I hardly knows you - but sometimes things are so transparency, they don't need evidential proof. And I will inhabit here, or you can inhabit with me in England. Of course I don't expecting you to be as foolish as me, and of course I prediction you say 'no', but's it's Christmas and I just wanted to…check"
Aurelia
: Thank you. That will be nice. Yes is being my answer. Easy question.

Jamie
: You learned English? 
Aurelia
: Just in cases. 

Makes me tear up every time. Do you have a favorite movie love story? 
xoxo (and Happy Valentine's Day!), Kate 

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Are you sick of looking at my hands? Let's have some cake instead.









I am. That's for sure. So let's sit down and have some yummy lemon cake and some tea. What's that? You don't you have any lemon cake? I have a fantastic recipe that you can have. 
      Shmeegs requested it for his birthday in December. By the way, Shmeegs is my boyfriend. He also goes by Handsome, Sweetie, Smelly, and Miguel. When he started working for a pool company a couple years ago, I came up with "Miguel my Little Pool Boy." My vision of a hot exotic man in a Speedo fanning me with palm fronds and fetching me fruity drinks has not come to fruition, but I live in hope. Anyway, Miguel degenerated to Shmeegs, with I suppose is a Jewish/Mexican mixture of Shlomo and Miguel. And Shmeegs requested a real lemon, tart lemon, birthday cake. 
     I used The Barefoot Contessa's yogurt lemon cake recipe, but made a few changes. I used organic vanilla whole-milk yogurt instead of plain, and I think that was for the better. The finished cake was pleasantly yogurty but I think using plain would've been too much. I also subbed ½ cup of the plain flour for whole wheat flour, and instead of vegetable oil I used high-quality olive oil. You bake the cake and then make a lemon syrup to brush over the cake, and then make a lemon glaze to pour over that. YUM! I served vanilla ice cream and a simple crushed raspberry sauce on the side (just frozen raspberries defrosted in the microwave with some sugar and then crushed with the back of a spoon). 
Preheat your oven to 350- this bad boy is gone- TODAY we're getting double ovens!
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
Lemon zest, sugar, yogurt, vanilla, and eggs.
Whisk whisk whisk!
Add dry ingredients to the wet
I wanted to eat it all.
Before baking.
My lemons!
Finished! 
With some Brigham's Ice Cream and crushed raspberries on the side
That's all that was left!

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used ½ cup of whole wheat)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 cup plain whole-milk yogurt (I used organic vanilla)
  • 1 1/3 cups sugar, divided
  • 3 extra-large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
  • 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
  • 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

For the glaze:

  • 1 cup confectioners' sugar
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8 1/2 by 4 1/4 by 2 1/2-inch loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper. Grease and flour the pan.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into 1 bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, 1 cup sugar, the eggs, lemon zest, and vanilla. Slowly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. With a rubber spatula, fold the vegetable oil into the batter, making sure it's all incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 50 minutes, or until a cake tester placed in the center of the loaf comes out clean.
Meanwhile, cook the 1/3 cup lemon juice and remaining 1/3 cup sugar in a small pan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear. Set aside.
When the cake is done, allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Carefully place on a baking rack over a sheet pan. While the cake is still warm, pour the lemon-sugar mixture over the cake and allow it to soak in. Cool.
For the glaze, combine the confectioners' sugar and lemon juice and pour over the cake.


xoxo, Kate

Friday, February 3, 2012

Hands (Seriously?! Why hands?)

I have to admit, my hands are my least favorite part of my body. I cannot change the length or width of my fingers with polish or hand lotion, and therein lies the problem. My fingers stopped growing but my palms are a normal size. *Sigh* But they are functional, if not a little crackly and crampy in the winter. So here it is, the prompt for February Photo-A-Day.





I also tried taking some profile pictures to use in the about me portion of my blog, and inspired by My Suitcase Full of Tricks and her FABulous office pictures, I decided to take some where I do a lot of my work. The result was unfortunate.
I'm blonde now?

Real hair color but double chins

Slightly annoyed, one eyebrow up…okay I'm done face.

What's your least favorite body part? xoxo, Kate

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Words

Today's February Photo-A-Day prompt was "Words." Being the over-achiever I am, I headed down to the beach to write my three different quotes in the sand. I did not, however, factor in the wind coming off of the water and my fingers went numb on the second word. And the first quote I started to write ended up being too long to write…So i went with this one. Don't judge- my hands were numb and by the time I finished I couldn't even feel the shutter button on my camera.
"It is our choices that show who we are, far more than our abilities"- J.K. Rowling

I also wanted to do these two:
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are"- Marcus Aurelius

"And in the end…the love you take…is equal to the love you make." -The Beatles

Coincidentally, these are also the quotes I used in my senior yearbook. Tomorrow's prompt is "Hands". I guess I'll be giving myself a manicure tonight. Darn.
xoxo, Kate

February Photo-A- Day

I am so slacking already on my February resolution- I found this on Pinterest and decided to join in, but inside of just tweeting them I thought I would include them in my posts or just make them a post by themselves (I know, I need to post more. I'm trying! Do me a favor? If you're reading this and it's been more than 48 hours since my last post, email/comment/tweet/facebook/text/send smoke signals/or even carrier pigeons and tell me to stop reading other blogs or pinning things and to POST something, okay?)
P.S. that might just be the longest parenthetical sentence I have ever written.

Here is the challenge- please tweet me or comment if you decide to do it too- I'd love to see yours!

 And here is my picture for today (we're pretending that it's still February 1st even though my clock says 12:37 A.M.- I'll post this evening and it'll all even out I think.) Full disclosure-I did not take this picture, but this was the most exciting thing I did today. Shmeegs and I went to our first personal training session at Planet Fitness! Woohoo! Yay for getting in shape and proving the Mii on WiiFit that I will get to my recommended BMI. I'll keep you posted…but not in that obnoxious "Today I burned 1583 calories" way.
Aren't you supposed to be sleeping? Get some rest! 
xoxo, Kate