Frozen Cake

I don't know how I did it.

But I did it. 

Here is my take on the ice castle. I would be happy to answer any questions about what I used and how I assembled it. 

For now, here is a few pictures. Happy birthday my sweet Gemma Bleu. 

Pumpkins on candlesticks.

My grandmother was going to throw away these candlesticks a few falls ago. I must have seen on Pinterest or something someone putting pumpkins on candlesticks, so I took them home and I've been doing it every fall since!

Gemma painted the purple one with a face and did the jewels on the white pumpkin. (Got a little set of jewels specifically for pumpkin decorating at Target!) The chevron one is mine. It's always a fun little project that we enjoy all fall! Gems wants to make some for her family and friends, too. :)

Greek yogurt, pumpkin, oatmeal, low fat, chocolate chip mini muffins!

Hot damn. It's been awhile! I decided to finally log back in to share this awesome mini muffin recipe that I've been using for Gemma's snacks at school. She only goes for 3 hours a day but since it's in the afternoon (her hungriest time) she needed a tasty snack with some protein to really get her through.

It's really bothering me how off center the muffins are in this picture, btw. 

I've combined various recipes to come up with this one. It's everything I ever wanted in a muffin! Enjoy!

Ingredients
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup plain oats (I use old fashioned)
1/3 cup sugar (I find this to be enough with the honey and chocolate chips)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons of wheat germ just for kicks (optional)
1 6 oz container nonfat Greek yogurt
1/2 can (roughly: see instructions) plain pumpkin.
2 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Instructions
1. Preheat at 350. Combine flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

2. Put 6 oz container of greek yogurt in a Pyrex type measuring cup. Fill up to the 1 1/2 cup line with pumpkin. (I am way too lazy to figure out how much pumpkin that is. Sorry.) You can either transfer this to a bowl to add the rest of the ingredients or just keep adding to the Pyrex (what I do.) Add honey, eggs, butter, and vanilla to pumpkin/yogurt mixture. Mix all wet ingredients.

3. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients until well mixed. Fold in chocolate chips.

4. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes in greased muffin tin.

***Obligatory photos of cute child with muffins***




I told her to sniff them like they were delicious. Apparently this is what that looks like.

Mostly adapted from See Aimee Cook

self portrait

<3

More drawing...

I'm kind of addicted to this now!

I drew a ship tonight and I'm so proud. The proportions and shading could use work, but I'm happy with it!

Wanted to draw a little..

I am super inspired by traditional tattoo art. Specifically naked mermaids. So I took a crack at it and was pleasantly surprised! I used Pastels and very fine tip Sharpies :)

PTSD?

So I finally went to therapy. It's something I needed to do, and I'm glad I finally did. I have talked before about the possibility that I have misophonia, a disorder classified as a hatred of sound. While I think that this is a real disorder for some people, I believe that it is a symptom for me of something else.

My therapist specializes in dealing with victims of trauma. I called about 20 psychologists explaining my situation and she was the only one who said, "It sounds like you have trauma. I help people who have triggers." Ding ding!

Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm having this reaction to noise all over again in my new apartment. Yep. Wonderful. It gets especially worse around 3, although I can mostly distract myself for the afternoon. It's nighttime that kills me. I have a fan running right next to my bed, but every 5 seconds, I get up and turn it off because I think I hear something. Be it a kid screaming, music, a tv, people walking in from the parking lot...I hate it all. I FEAR it all. The vulnerability is maddening. What if someone decides to start playing music right now? It will invade my space! This is what goes through my head every day starting at 3.

3 is not my lucky number. 3 pm is when the kids came over to play basketball next to Gemma's room and didn't leave until 9 everyday. 3 is what time I started feeling invaded and unsafe. 3.

Right off the bat, my therapist said, "Well it sounds to me like you have PTSD." What? Me? I haven't been raped. I haven't been in a war. I wasn't abused. Me? Turns out trauma wears many hats. Living in that house for so long, everyday being so overwhelmed with anxiety and feeling that my safety was compromised may have put me over the edge. I know I've said before how traumatic that was for me. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse. What I'm saying is that I don't think that experience made me become inflicted with misophonia. I think that it caused me to have ptsd, of which mispohonia is a lovely symptom for me. The sounds are my triggers.

So there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that I have a lot of work ahead of me to kick this thing. The good news is that people have had documented success doing it, unlike with misophonia.

So here's hoping.

<3