Happy Halloween!

Why hello there holiday cookie!

Happy Halloween everyone! In celebration of this holiday, I decided to dedicate a blog post to this ghoulish day.

First of all, I would like to announce that even though I am a bustling college student, I still was able to find time to participate in some holiday festivities.

One of the things I did to celebrate this frightful day was volunteered at a Halloween carnival a few weekends this October at a local amusement park. Since I live in an apartment with no trick-or-treaters, this was as close to it as I was going to get. My roommate and I got all dressed up, got into the amusement park for free, and passed out candy to little kids! Although not all of them were dressed up like they would be on actual Halloween, it was still a lot of fun!

Next, the weekend of Halloween, I carved a pumpkin! I was so excited and I think it turned out quite well! The only negative to my carving was the giant gash I got on my finger. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I did somehow give myself a massive blister while carving that amazing pumpkin. Oh well, all in the spirit of the holidays.

My ghost pumpkin!

Along with our festive pumpkins, my roommate and I were able to decorate our apartment a little bit for Halloween. My mom donated to the decoration efforts and gave me adorable light up ghosts and a light up pumpkin. I must say, they’re my favorite decorations. J My roommate had some fall decorations as well so we had them up in the apartment as well. We also have a lovely bowl of candy corn on the coffee table which may or may not be the healthiest of ideas.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t do anything too holiday oriented on actual Halloween. Partly of it was because it was a school night and partly because I had three papers and two exams to study for. Hooray for being a student! My roommate did go out and treat ourselves to desserts at a local restaurant though. What could be sweeter?

Now that Halloween is gone, the countdown begins to my favorite holiday of the year… CHRISTMAS! I’m sorry to rush by you, Halloween, but you do not compare to that joyous holiday.

Until next time!

The More the Merrier? Not quite...

This past weekend, my roommate’s family was in town and they wanted to stay in our apartment to avoid the cost of hotel fees. I had accommodated to guests before but never to the amount of people that would soon be living in our apartment from Friday to Sunday.

My roommate’s family members who were coming down were her mother, aunt, grandmother, and 11-year-old cousin. So there it was, six females in an apartment built for two… I knew this would prove to be an interesting weekend.

They arrived 1:30 that Friday afternoon and were very gracious about staying in our apartment. My roommate cautioned me that they were early to bed and early to rise, something I was not accustomed to but acknowledged none the less.

I had to work that night and would not get in until about 11:30. I quietly crept in and was welcomed to an air mattress that covered the entire living room floor. Her aunt and grandmother were on the air mattress, her cousin on the couch.

I walked back to my roommate’s room and another air mattress was on the ground covering half of the floor in her room. I mimed to my roommate, trying not to disturb her sleeping mother. She came into my room, we talked, and then she decided to get back to bed before waking up her mom.  Did I mention her family is full of light sleepers? Yes. The family members in the living room had to take our clock off the wall because it made too much noise. I don’t blame them, it is kind of annoying.

I stayed up doing various things and didn’t go to bed until I realized it was 2:00 in the morning and I then remembered that the family woke up early. I went to bed, hoping I could sleep through their morning rustling.

I didn’t. Blow driers rang through the halls at 8:00 in the morning. After the first round of hair dryers died down, I tried to go back to sleep, only to be awoken by a second round. After that, I pulled my pillows over my head and tried to go back to sleep.

Then the fire alarms went off. Remember how I wrote about our deranged fire alarms? Well they went off when the family was making breakfast. Any hopes of sleep were out the window. I figured the next morning would be similar.

Luckily, her family woke up at a relatively late 9:30 in the morning, I suppose stocking up on sleep before their car ride home. I did hear them talking throughout the apartment but with five people wandering through the halls, it was bound to happen.

The weekend was fun and her family was all very nice. I enjoyed meeting my roommate's family and I would love to see them all again... maybe just not all at the same time while sleeping in our apartment. They say three is a crowd, well, six is an even bigger crowd.

Not So Handy

My dad is an airline mechanic, so one would think that some of that handy skill would be passed down to his daughter. Well, it definitely wasn’t and I realized this as I tried to hang my curtains up for the tenth time.

Nothing hanging on my walls in the entire apartment was done conventionally. My roommate duck taped our clock to our wall. The curtains in our living room were secured on the wall with the pieces of hooks command stripped to the wall. Luckily when my family came to visit one weekend, my dad secured it properly while he proceeded to laugh at our sad attempt of handy work.

So when hanging up my curtains in my bedroom, I knew I would be in for a challenge. My curtain rod is a $4 extendable rod I picked up at Wal-Mart so I cannot be the only reason for my curtains constantly falling down.

I had no hooks, no nails, and no hammer for this job. So, I grabbed my only available mechanical instrument: packing tape. Some may laugh but strong enough tape has never failed me in the past.

So, I put down a bit of tape on each piece of wall where the curtain rod would be secured from. This did not hold it at first, so I simply moved the curtain rod above the pieces of tape and used the tape as a makeshift shelf. Yes, I do hope to redo this later but at the time, it was my only option.

My beautiful makeshift curtain rod holder made out of scrunched up tape.

Next, I extended the rod as far as it would go before hitting both sides of the wall. I held it and proceeded to secure the middle extendable part with masking tape. Although very wobbly at first, the tape solution seemed to suffice.

Taped securely to make sure that the curtain rod doesn't detract, of course.

I do not recommend this to anyone looking to put up their own curtains but for someone who didn’t know the difference between a nail and a screw, it serves to be a good temporary solution.

OU/Texas Weekend!

Being a student of the University of Oklahoma, I travelled down to Dallas, Texas this weekend with my roommate for the notorious OU/Texas football game. Although we did not have any kitchen adventures, we had plenty of other adventures together in the city.

David Boren, the president of the university, always cancels Friday classes so it is highly encouraged for students to head down and support our beloved football team. Unfortunately my roommate and I did not attend the game, but we did take this opportunity to travel down to Texas on Thursday evening.

 On Friday, the fun began. We visited Ripley’s Believe it or Not! and the Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum. The exhibits were incredibly entertaining and we posed with numerous celebrities, public figures, and gawked at unbelievable objects.

Part of Ripley's Believe It or Not! Popcorn art.. how neat!

  

Abraham Lincoln's log cabin, constructed with pennies!

The wax museum! Hundreds of celebrities, famous figures, scenes from movies, and so much more!

Saturday was the day of the big game and even though we did not have tickets to the game, we went off to the Texas State Fair. There was a smorgasbord of fried foods that I don’t think could ever be found anywhere else. 

Fletcher’s famous corndogs were there and traditional fair food, but there were many foods unique to the fair. Fried cheesecake, fried alligator, fried salsa, fried bubble gum, fried butter, fried frozen margarita, fried chicken skin, the list is literally endless. During my time at the fair, I partook in eating deep fried snickers and fried brownies and had a little bit of a corndog. I would have loved to have had more but food was not the only thing to look at during the fair.

Hello, fried Snickers!

 There was a car show and many exhibits where retailers came to sell their things. We checked out one of these buildings and saw the 2011 State Fair Butter Statue - a woman and a bull! There was more to the scene but I couldn't get it all in my camera, but there was also a sign and a little girl on the other side.

2011 Butter Statue!

Of course it's not a fair without the rides and the games, but since we're in Texas, of course there was a petting zoo! Now this was not just any ordinary petting zoo, it had a bunch of exotic animals as well! Zebras, ostriches, emus, camels, kangaroos, camels, llamas, alpacas, and more! Along with these of course were the traditional cows, goats, horses and pigs as well. There were so many baby animals there too, and we could pet them all! It was really great!

Zebras at the petting zoo!

The shows they had at the fair were a lot of fun as well. We went to a dog show and I had been to the BMX biking show before, but my favorite was the pig racing. The little pigs were so adorable and they would all race around the track to get the ultimate reward for a pig: an oreo cookie.



The fair was a lot of fun, but unfortunately we soon had to leave. My visit to Texas was a success, as was the game. I'm sure you all know that we demolished Texas, that's definitely a plus!



Fire Alarm Gone Haywire

I have always been grateful for fire alarms. I am sure they have prevented many house fires and saved many lives. However, what I am not grateful for are unruly fire alarms that go off for no apparent reason. This is the experience I had this weekend while preparing a rather simple meal.

I have never started a fire in the kitchen before (yet) so fire is not always my biggest worry in the kitchen. I was cooking a delicious Asian meal of lo mien and fried rice so I had two of the stove tops going with two pots of boiling water.

Yes there was a bit of steam, but it was just steam. So while I was waiting for my noodles and rice to cook, I decided to make a quick phone call.

I was just chatting on the phone when all of a sudden, the fire alarm started blaring. I jumped and nearly dropped the phone and ran into the kitchen to find… nothing. Nothing was on fire; in fact, there was no smoke, only steam simmered out of my pots.

“What is going on?!” I yelled as I frantically ran through the apartment, trying to find a way to stop the fire alarms. There are fire alarms in every room, and of course they have flashing lights, so the entire apartment was flooded with lights and sounds.

I ran into every room, trying to turn on fants to get rid of whatever would have triggered the fire alarms. Problem was, there was no smoke anywhere and nothing should have triggered the alarms. They were just going haywire.

So, for four minutes I ran around trying to fan away non-existent smoke. I don’t know what is worse, the fact that my fire alarms are so sensitive and my cooking sets them off or the fact that the firemen never showed up and if there were a real fire, I would be toast. Literally.