something cute!!!

Okay, that last post still has me kind of retching, and I just had to post something adorable to counter-balance the absolute disgustingness of my ant encounter.

I love Etsy so much because everything is homemade and unique, and you can seriously find anything you could imagine wanting on there. Well, I've been Etsy-stalking Cakespy for a while. I absolutely adore all of her little cupcake paintings and I was toying with the idea of having a custom Cuppy Cake watercolor done for Twin since she's the most devoted cupcake fan I know. I don't know what took me so long to build up the courage to ask Cakespy artist Jessie about doing a custom order, but finally I did and she got back to me right away, was super enthusiastic about my idea (me = "I'm thinking of a similar background to "Le Shopping" with one cupcake holding a latte, a cell phone, and wearing big sun glasses." her = "Cute!! I love the idea!") AND she had it completed in only a couple of days! The woman is amazing.

This is the original Cakespy she painted for me, it is seriously my Twin in cupcake form, I love it:



I'm totally the mint chip Frenchie ice cream cone!

fyi my closet is not a picnic table

This is not a familiar subject for me (i.e. it is not cute or delicious), however, I need to share. I'm housesitting for my parents tonight and decided while I'm home I should prep my room for my post-graduation arrival with all of my college apartment stuff. And, well, the picture some what explains it all.

The past few weeks I have been majorly purging stuff from my room at home. I saw a very inspiring Oprah on obsessive hoarding featuring a woman that had 15 dumpters worth of trash in her home. Gross. Well, my room is definitely not that bad since it is physically much smaller than even ONE dumpster, but one of the guest psychologists on the show explained that everyone has hoarding tendencies, even if they aren't as extreme as the crazy lady with 7 tons worth of junk in her 3,000 square foot house. You know that junk drawer in your kitchen? That antique chest you can't even open in fear of random stuff falling on you? The cupboard filled with crafting supplies you haven't touched in two years? That's all a form of hoarding in its own way, and the more clutter that physically fills up your life, the more clutter you allow to emotionally fill your life.

Admittedly we are a nation of people who love to have stuff, but when you have a hard time finding things you actually want or need because of all the useless material items filling up every nook and cranny in your home, you're not the one having the stuff, the stuff is having you. I encourage everyone to release the control all of your stuff has on you, clean out your closet, sell the things you can, give the rest to friends or charity, and throw all that stupid junk you don't need away. Trust me, you will feel so relieved after doing so. I had no idea how stressed my overflowing closet was making me until I cleaned it out and suddenly I felt so calm and relaxed. It was wonderful.

As you can imagine, purging 23+ years worth of material posessions is not an easy task and it takes time to go through all of the things you own, and even more time to convince yourself you don't need it. So I've been doing my spring cleaning in stages, and I'm down to the nitty gritty at this point as I've been really productive in the past few weeks. I decided to give a little storage area I have in the corner of my room another look to see if I could get rid of anything else. I found a few old notebooks I didn't need and when I grabbed them I saw a few ants. Ew, right? It didn't really bother me though because this house has always had a few ants in it, so I moved some more stuff around searching for anything I had missed in my previous cleaning sessions and saw some more ants. And more ants. AND MORE ANTS.

I thought they were just eating some vitamins I had left sitting out, but then I moved a plastic bin to reach the vitamins and saw they had made a little home for themselves under it and were having all kinds of tiny larva babies. It was so sick. The "nest" was about the size of my fist. I promptly freaked out, ran downstairs, grabbed some Raid, came back to my room, and sprayed the suckers good. Right next to the nest was a painting I made a few years ago of Tater Tot and I didn't want to ruin it so before I could finish spraying the pests to death I had to pick it up (covered in ants fleeing for their lives) and move it to a safe area. Okay, this is where the story gets really gross. I picked it up and the ants had literally made a giant larva nest the size of the 8 1/2 by 11 frame which was holding the painting. Thank goodness I hadn't eaten in a few hours or surely I would have barfed, and then I would have had two nasty messes to clean.

The worst part about all of this (you mean besides thousands of ants and maggot-like ant babies?) was that it was impossible to spray all of the ants right away because I had so many books and binders that had to be removed first. So they were scurrying around like crazy and crawling up my hands while I desperately removed photo albums and yearbooks as quickly as possible, before thoroughly soaking the cupboard in Raid and then wiping up all the ant carcasses with toilet paper and flushing them down the toilet. Nicolle: 1, Ants: 0. They put up a good fight, though.

"everything ends up okay..."

"...if it isn't okay, it isn't the end." - Dave Matthews

That quote has always really resonated with me. Partly (mostly) because it's Dave Matthews (aka the love of my life, sorry BF and Tater Tot), but also because it's so true. In the past year I have experienced a lot of ups and downs and then some more downs, but everything ended up okay for the most part. Things that happened last summer will definitely have a lasting affect on me, but I survived. I used to go to bed every night wishing I wouldn't wake up in the morning, that I could just sleep forever and never have to face the world again. Did things get better overnight? Not by any stretch of the imagination. It took a lot of time to get over what happened, and even now I still get upset if I think about it. The difference is I want to wake up in the morning and I want to get out of bed, and even though it still gets hard sometimes, it's not hard all the time like it was a few months ago. Moral of the story: even if it seems like your life is going to end, it's not; with some time and a lot of friends, you can get through pretty much anything life throws at you.

That being said, my mini-breakdown regarding graduation and all that seems to have subsided. My twin sister had a huge graduation party last year and so my family wanted to make sure that my "big day" was just as special. The thing is, I don't want to make a big deal out of my graduation. I'm definitely proud of all my academic achievements, but I want to have a very small celebration, with only a few family members and maybe a couple of friends. Well, everyone seemed to think I only wanted a small party to make it easier to plan, so what started out as a casual tea party turned into a monster of an event with my mom calling me on a daily basis to discuss floral arrangements and menu options. Not surprisingly, I decided to nix that whole idea, opting for a girl friend only tea party with my besties on the day following my graduation and having a super laid back family pizza party the night of my graduation ceremony. I don't know why, but instead of just planning it I ran the idea by my grandma and mom who both tried to talk me into having it at someone's house instead of the pizza parlor. Then came the discussion of salad and dessert options, and the whole turning-the-small-party-into-a-huge-event was repeating itself.

Decision? I'm going to do what I want to do and stop letting everyone's suggestions muddle with my head. After all, it's MY party, so if I want to have it at a pizza parlor, then I'm going to have it at a pizza parlor. Just thinking about it makes me happy. Seriously, it is such a relief to finally be celebrating my college graduation the way I want to. It's going to be awesome. I'm buying the cutest invitations ever, and my decorations are going to be equally as cute. I'd tell you all about them, but you'll just have to wait for the post-party pictures, I don't want to ruin the surprise!

collegiate words of wisdom

On I have no idea what topic: "The pervert is a gentle creature."

the solution to any crisis

I still don't know what motivated me to break down into tears yesterday/be on the brink of tears for the last week. However, I have found a solution! Chocolate covered strawberries. It's that easy. Eat two or three (or twelve) and all your problems instantly fade away. Who knew it was that simple? Screw therapy!

I went to my Grammy's house yesterday and she was raving about some chocolate covered strawberries my cousin recently made for a birthday party, so of course I called my cousin immediately and got the recipe. In my opinion, it is nearly impossible to screw up chocolate and strawberries, but there are definite degrees of tastiness and these seriously are some of the BEST chocolate covered strawberries your mouth will ever have the privilege to taste. Most important to successful dipping is to get ripe and flavorful strawberries, but a close second is the type of chocolate you use. Ever seen those containers of "dipping chocolate" in the grocery store? Yeah, avoid those. I have never had luck with those things. Instead, and this is very important, use Guittard brand milk chocolate. Not every store carries this brand, but trust me, it's worth a bit of a search. Per bag of Guittard milk chocolate use one tablespoon of shortening (Crisco). Melt in a glass bowl in the microwave, stirring in 30 second intervals. One bag will yield enough chocolate for at least 40 medium-small strawberries. Yum!

nervous breakdowns and such

Today I started crying for no reason at all and continued to do so for about an hour. Not sixty minutes straight, there were a few sniffles to break up the tears, but it was still pretty intense. Why was I crying? Really, I have no idea. I had reasons at the time, but I don't think any of them are actually why I was crying.

I was upset because I came home to give hometown chillaxin' a second try only to find the house completely destroyed by my little sister and her lame friends. I don't know why I expected them to have more respect for someone's house than to dump Taco Bell bags and wrappers in the front yard and throw plastic cups everywhere. Silly me. But still, that's nothing to cry about.

Then I called my mom and started stressing out about my graduation tea party. Really, Nicolle, really? You're going to freak out about something that's still three weeks away? And I'm only inviting nine people. That wasn't it, either.

Next I started stressing out about my post-graduation plans, which up to this point I have been nothing less than psyched about. I thought a lot about graduate school and put a lot of time into my application, and I was ecstatic when I found out I was accepted. So, that couldn't be the explanation for the waterworks, either.

I know enough from my ol' pal Frued to understand that I'm clearly projecting some kind of real anxiety onto these things that don't bother me at all. I just wish I knew what was really bothering me. YOU MAKE BUNNY CRY.

i'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby

Oh wait, no I'm not. I'm 23, which is why spending an evening with several dozen 16 year olds does not sound appealing to me in the very least. I like to go home on weekends, especially this year since I no longer have sleepovers with BF (our beds are too small, boo hoo). So, I drive 30 or so minutes home and spend the weekend chillin' with the Tot. Sounds wonderful, right? It is.

Except tonight when I got home I noticed several large bowls of candy, two large Costco sized bags of chips, a popcorn machine, a few cases of bottled water, and, well, the list goes on. I knew immediately that my little sister was having a party. And not just any party, mind you, an after-prom party. Oh gawd. I grabbed my things, took a look to see if I had received any mail (I did, more on that later), and hopped right back in my Jeep and drove back to school. Yeah, I could have stayed there and spent the entire evening in my room, but just knowing that an entire herd of high schoolers would be invading my house at midnight would totally suck any joy out of the "being home" experience.

Also, since when did it become appropriate to look like a total skank at prom? I haven't been out of high school THAT long, but no one would ever dare to wear a short dress while I was in school. It was all about formal evening gowns, the fancier the better. Now it seems the motto is: "the less cloth, the better." Just thinking about my little sister and her little friends in their little dresses makes me gag, I'm sooo glad I came back to school.

shopping advice needed

Okay, two months ago I bought this super cute Vera Wang night gown from Macy's online using a gift card I received for my birthday. A few days later, UPS tracking showed that the package had been delivered, but my school mail room never received it. I called Macy's and they were super nice about it, and sent me a gift card for the same amount of the purchase price.

Today, two months after the package was supposedly delivered (according to UPS tracking), I received it! So what do I do? Do I keep it? Do I "return to sender"? I don't want to have to PAY for it, but since I already did and was refunded...I don't know how they could make me pay for it again.

collegiate words of wisdom

First, I got a few e-mails asking if my walrus story from yesterday is true. Yes, it is true. But I promise I didn't mean to steal the darn thing! And I gave it back!

Second, I was going through my filing cabinets and getting rid of stuff I don't need (like old biology notes, no thanks!) and it made me think about all the lectures I've sat through and all the funny things professors say during lectures. Usually, I just sit there and laugh, but occasionally I'll write down their little nuggets of wisdom if I find them particularly amusing. I like to call these lecture tangents "collegiate words of wisdom". Hopefully I'll be able to collect a few more before graduation.

Advice on phobias: "People with a fear of flying are often told to take a flying lesson to get over it. I do it different; I take a valium and have a glass of wine."

i've been living a lie

I stole your walrus. I didn't mean to steal it. I saw him, sitting there outside on a bench for almost an hour, and thought to myself, "Oh, no, someone's walrus, it's going to get taken." So I took it. I meant to put "FOUND: Walrus" posters up, but it slipped my mind once I got him back to my room. He fit in so nicely with Chipmunk and Tiger that I convinced myself he belonged sitting on my bed.

Then, a few days later, I saw your signs posted around campus. I felt guilty and ashamed, I was the one who had stolen your walrus, wasn't I? I wanted to call you, tell you I had him...but what would I say? Hi, my name is Nicolle, I'm a complete weirdo obsessed with walruses and just decided to snag yours when I saw him on a bench the other day. I'm sorry, I'll give him back. No, I couldn't call you. I tried to talk BF into calling for me, or dropping the walrus off in the same spot where I found him, but I had gotten myself into this mess, and he insisted I get myself out.

I had to give the walrus back to you, but I couldn't find the courage to meet you in person or reveal my identity. I was too embarrassed. Who steals a walrus? I mean, really. So I went to the library to scope out potenial walrus hiding spots, a place for him to be safe from thievery. I chose a random study room upstairs and put him in the chair. Making a temporary screenname savethewalrus2007, I sent a text message to your phone, telling you where to find your beloved stuffed animal. I didn't stick around to see if you ever rescued him, but I hope you did.

rest in peace paw paw

I'm such a sap. I found out that Martha Stewart's beloved Chow Chow Paw Paw died this past week from her blog, and the entry describing his final days made me cry so much. For anyone who has ever lost a beloved pet, it is a very heart-wrenching experience to go through and since my dearest Scooby went to puppy heaven a few weeks ago, I could completely relate with Martha's sorrowful story. You can read all about Paw Paw in her blog, but be warned, the images are very saddening, especially the one with Martha and Paw Paw right before he died. You can tell from her eyes that she's been crying. There is also a photo of Paw Paw right before he was buried, bundled up in a favorite blanket with his two puppy friends giving him a final goodbye.

FAIL: sunny side cupcakes

I found the CUTEST recipe for faux sunny side up cupcakes in one of the several cupcake recipe books I got for Easter this year. I was so inspired by the book's picture that I decided I just had to re-create this recipe on my own, giving it a personal touch by merely using the book's recipe as a rough outline. I dubbed my creation "sunny side cupcakes", much cuter than the recipe's title of "eggy cakes", and decided to make peach cupcake batter rather than simple vanilla. Total fail.

The cupcakes tasted like peach cobbler. Nasty peach cobbler. Also, the recipe claimed that the cupcakes were to be topped with canned peaches, but I'm sorry, there is no such thing as a peach that small. I decided to replace the peach topper with an apricot topper, and even that was too large. And disgusting. Seriously, there was nothing even remotely redeeming about this cupcake invention.

After tasting a slice of one cupcake, I immediately turned the entire pan over into the trash. One rogue sunny side cupcake managed to escape the garbage bag, though, and Tater Tot promptly snatched it up despite my shouts to put it down. I tried to grab it from his mouth, but the little guy is so fast and small that he averted my grasp. He ate the entire disgusting thing in less than a minute, paper wrapper and all.



Later that night, I woke up in my mom's bed to the sound of Tater Tot not-so dry heaving. The cupcake looked even nastier the second time around, let me tell you. I tried to cover my tracks of 1. sleeping with my dog in my mom's bed and 2. making a vomit-inducing baked good, but only managed to ruin my mom's 100% silk bed spread in the process. Who knew you couldn't wash silk? I guess I sort of knew, but at 3 AM it wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind. I mean, the post-washing machine version of her bedspread isn't that bad. It's just very stiff. And black instead of moss green.

cutest cupcake contest winners!!

Martha Stewart announced the winners to her first annual cutest cupcake contest on her show Tuesday afternoon! Each of the ten winners received a cupcake stand from the domestic diva, and two of my top fifteen made it into Martha's favorites! Dang. I'm so good at spotting cute cupcakes. I went through every single one of the entries...but somehow I managed to miss some since the Tartan cupcakes that Martha liked so much did not look familiar to me at all. Neither did the blue ones with sea shells. Oh, well. Out of over 2,000 entries, I feel pretty good for guessing two of the top ten. Click the link above to see Martha announce the winners.

My selections that won the contest were the sushi cupcakes and the cherry pie cupcakes:

i'm a junkie

Caffeine junkie, of course. So WHY OH WHY does my university not sell sugar free Red Bull anymore? And don't preach to me about how horrible it is for my body, because my school has no qualms selling corn dogs, French fries, and brownies the size of your head. Not to mention the fact that my school still carries Monster, which is a disgusting, larger version of Red Bull. I want an energy boost fast, I don't want to have to drink a gallon of carbonated sludge to get my buzz, kthxbye.

I'm leaving for Maryland tomorrow to present my paper on Scorsese, which of course I have yet to finish. I really just need an introduction and a conclusion, and a little more detail in one section. Part of me wants to add a few paragraphs devoted to Scorsese's aesthetic style, but given that I'm already super pressed for time, that probably won't happen. I also need to take my finished product of 17 pages and trim it down to 6 pages for my panel presentation. Blargh. Where's the sugar free Red Bull fairy when you need her?

things i miss about high school: #1

The #1 thing I miss most about high school is...(drum roll, please)

Napping during class. Okay, to be fair, I think almost EVERYONE has napped during class. However, I'm not talking about that normal dozing off during a lecture kind of napping (which I actually have never done), I'm talking about full on whipping out a yoga mat, sleeping bag, and pillow and napping in class. In fairness, this "class" was a TA class so I wasn't missing any kind of important information. I guess when I think about it I probably should have been grading papers or something, but my sleeping bag always seemed more inviting than doing any kind of real work. More than once the students in the class (standard level English class of freshmen) would whine about how they had to do work while I got to sleep. The instructor used it as motivation: "Well, if you do really good in school and get As you'll be able to be a TA and take naps during class, too."

coconut the opossum

My family has a pet opossum. Sort of. For the past month or so a opossum (by the way, I hate the way that word is spelled) has been coming to my house every night to feast on the cat food in the front yard.

When I was house sitting for ten days straight, Tater Tot would start barking like crazy every night at around midnight. Tater is always barking so I never really thought much of it. Notice the scratch marks all over the door frame? Yeah, Tater was just a LITTLE upset by Coconut. Finally, I decided to actually check out what was causing the Tot so much anguish instead of just yelling at him to stop (and occasionally throwing a stuffed animal chew toy in his general direction). This is how Coconut and I met:
Oh, be warned, the volume is kind of loud because I was VERY excited and could hardly contain myself as I was videotaping. And I have a lisp from my retainers (yes, I wear retainers).


I was talking on the phone to Noelle at the time, and we decided that "Coconut" was a fitting name. I'm not sure why we chose "Coconut", but given that we love to name pets after items of food (Muffin, Latte, Fajita, Tater Tot, Cheese Puff), it just seemed to work.

Since our first encounter, I discovered that Coconut has a temporary hide-out in the front yard. I say temporary because I researched opossums and found out that they are nomadic creatures, but I'm hoping Coconut stays for a while. On the side of our house we have a large banquet table leaning up against a wall along with several cushions from our lawn furniture. Coconut is using the make-shift tent as a home for the time being, here are some pictures of me sneaking up on him paparazzi style:





Coconut, don't ever leave me. 'Cause I'd find you! (name that movie quote)

things i miss about high school: #2

The #2 thing I miss most about high school is...

Chicken rings and spicy fries. My 16 year old metabolism made it possible for me to eat these EVERY day of high school (with two sides of nacho cheese, please) and not become a total fatty. Sigh. Those were the days. Sadly, my school stopped serving chicken rings and started carrying regular chicken nuggets instead. They just weren't the same, y'know? Also, in doing research into "chicken rings" I found out that White Castle sells them! I. cannot. believe. it. Seriously, I now completely understand the motivation behind the characters in Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Goal before I die: go to White Castle and order some delicious circular fried processed meat. Mhhhh.

sex and the city countdown!

It's April and you know what THAT means...only a few more weeks until the Sex and the City movie comes out (May 30th)!! I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to this more than my college graduation set for May 17th.

Okay, that is a complete and utter lie, my graduation is going to be the BOMB (and so is my celebratory tea party, I might add), but I am really looking forward to seeing Carrie on the big screen. However, as the movie gets closer I know more and more people are going to start talking about it and how "it's TOTALLY their life!" and they're "such a Carrie but sometimes I'm Samantha". Like, duh. S&TC is every woman's life, that's why the show made gazillions of dollars.

I don't know, it just annoys me when people get all preachy about how they ARE Carrie or whatever. Because they're not. Yeah, maybe your life has aspects of some of the situations shown on the show, but really, you're going to try to tell me that you lead the SAME life as Carrie? You rarely work, live in an awesome New York apartment, wear crazy clothes (and get praised for it), shop every day, and party every night? Yeah. Sure you do. Just because you have dating problems doesn't mean you lead the same life as a character from S&TC. It means you're like every other woman in America.

Geez, someone is a Debbie Downer today. Wah, wah, wah.

Oh, and can I just add that if I were Kim Cattrall I would be SO pissed about this promotion picture, she looks like a totally fatty compared to the other girls. Most unflattering angle ever.

more from the cutest cupcake contest

Martha's first annual Cutest Cupcake Contest is now over, but she has yet to announce the winners! The suspense is killing me! I really hope one of my ten favorites wins. Since I made that post there were another 900 entries, and yes, I went through them all. There were a few repeats of concepts (more S'mores cupcakes, some other "popcorn" cupcakes, etc), but these next few cupcakes really stood out to me, so I'm amending my Top Ten list to a Top Fifteen list.


*chirp chirp chirp* chicken and chick cupcakes


Chocolate chip cookie cupcakes! I LOVE this so much!


Hello Kitty cupcakes. These totally reminded me of Twin.


Vegetable garden cupcakes.


MY FAVORITE CUPCAKE OF THE CONTEST!! I absolutely love this idea, and I think it's so simple but SO inventive! Also, I just watched Interview with the Vampire and I know Louis and Lestat would love these.

pontification at its best

I'm not going to bore you with the very nerdy details of the National Undergraduate Literature Conference, but it was an amazingly dorky and wonderful experience. It was so fun to be around hundreds of people just like me (read: get pure joy out of analyzing novels and films). I mentioned earlier that I was going to be presenting a paper on William Faulkner (pictured to the right looking studly and very Hugh Hefneresque), and my talk went extremely well. There were two other people on my panel who were discussing different texts from Faulkner, so it made for a very interesting session and we all got a chance to ask each other questions at the end. Several people told me they really enjoyed my presentation, which made me feel good because I had been extremely nervous and also worked very hard on editing my paper for time constraints and semi-memorizing it. I was very, very tempted to start my presentation asking, "Is everyone ready to get Faulked up?" but my better judgment told me not to.

Oh, side note, my school DID end up funding the bulk of my trip. I knew they'd give in. No one can resist the persuasive princess that is Nicolle.