Sweet 27

Exactly 1 year ago today, my handsome Mike asked me to marry him. Just a year before that, I had proclaimed I didn't want to get married again until at least 30...

27 is close enough, right? Wait a minute...

I don't like getting older.

I know I'm not old at all, but I feel like it today. My hope is that I can keep working out, eating healthy, and having fun so I can stay as "young" as possible for as long as possible.

I am enjoying my birthday, though! I had to fast for 12 hours for an insurance screening at work, which I handled better than I thought. (No food generally equals grumpy Carrie.) But my pretty Natalie brought me delicious cake pop company cupcakes to make me smile.

Then I embarrassed myself by burying my head in Mike's shoulder while the wellness people took my blood. For the record, getting blood dug out of your finger is way worse than getting a tattoo!

And then I got to go to Olive Garden. I love Olive Garden! And Mike talked me into getting this for dessert...



If you do a Google search for "Olive Garden Chocolate Strata Cake," the first thing that pops up is nutrition info. I didn't want to know how many calories were in that thing!

The sweetest part of my birthday? A 4 day weekend. I need it! These last 2 weeks have been pretty stressful.

I plan on watching evening TV I usually miss when I'm sleeping and getting some wedding stuff done. And yoga...lots of yoga.

Love and hugs!
Carrie

Regret

I know regret is a pretty useless feeling. We can't change the past.

The only thing I can do is make myself better now. But what to do when that just makes me feel worse?

The point? There are people who used to be a big part of my life, who I haven't seen or talked to in years, that didn't get the best me.

Am I the best me now? I certainly hope not. I wish I was calmer, more caring, less selfish, I wish I could learn to let go and live in the moment instead of worrying all the time. I never want to be done growing and changing.

But when I look back, I was...frankly...kind of a bitch all through college.

I had a really good friend in school. I thought we'd be old ladies together, but I haven't seen her for 4 years. I didn't agree with a lot of the decisions she made with her life, and she was hard to deal with sometimes...but who's perfect? Not me. I blew her off a few times when she needed me and just wasn't a very good friend.

And, of course, there's the big oops of my life. The reason I over analyze everything I do. I made a huge decision because parents, church, society...my dumb 21-year-old brain made me think getting married was a good idea.

It wasn't, but not because the guy was a bad guy. Quite the opposite.

Who did what and who's family took over our lives and who did or didn't treat our marriage like it mattered...doesn't matter.

Because no matter what happened, I didn't handle it right.

I was mean. SO mean. I stopped trying very early. No reasonable circumstance should have made me react like that. It wasn't the ideal situation, but I rebelled like a stubborn teenager.

And now I feel like I don't deserve to be where I am now. I wanted to leave him because his family told us I could never get a job anywhere else. Now I have a great job in Springfield and don't really want to leave. I didn't like feeling trapped in a marriage and now I'm 3 months away from walking down the aisle again.

I can't make anything right. But I want to...there's no way to. The only thing I can wish is that these things never happened, and Apple doesn't make time machines yet.

Is this normal? Is this life?

Springtime! Kinda...

WOW!

The weather is amazing! It's windy...but the sun is shining and it's in the 70's. It's like God giving us a present after 2 weeks of snow and cold and stressful newscasts.

I'm not sure I'm ready for that "spring feeling" yet. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of winter...this is the Ozarks, after all.

Since I just enjoyed the weather with a jog and I look more like a bum than usual, here's a picture of my favorite little bear:

Cash is so happy the snow is gone. He just wasn't sure what to think of it. Plus, it's nice to be able to take him on walks. (or "W's" as we call them when we don't actually want to take him on one)

Isn't his haircut hideous? If my poochie were a child, he'd be the kid with a chunk cut out of his bangs on school picture day.
Cocker Spaniels are so...very...hairy! So Mike and I have been cutting his hair ourselves with a pair of my dad's old hair clippers.

We try to tell Cash it's a spa day.

This last time, Spa Le Winchel didn't produce a happy customer and we all ended up getting irritated with each other.

The 3 of us have a very complicated family dynamic.

So it's probably off to the groomer's soon. I'm kind of embarrassed to take that hot mess in there. Yesterday I spent too much time telling Cash he's cuter than the Cocker Spaniel who won his group at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. That's not weird is it?

I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday! This weekend, we are headed to the Sertoma Chili Cookoff and to see Machine Gun Symphony. They're an 80's rock cover band. They literally sing 75% of my favorite songs at every concert.

I will try to take pictures! That's another reason I fell out of my blog habit. I'm so bad at remembering to take pictures.

Hope everyone has a chance to enjoy this awesome weather!

Nothing to Show But This Brand New Tattoo...

I high school, I would have probably been voted "Least Likely to be Covered in Tattoos."

Now look at me. My dad really doesn't understand them. I think my mom was on board until I got the leopard spots around the horseshoe. (That's a new one.) But I absolutely love them...

At 19 I got my first tattoo in Columbia when I was a freshman in college. The Kanji symbol for "eternity" on my hip. It's slightly lame. I wanted a tattoo because I was an angsty kid who had just broken up with her first boyfriend, and I wanted to be a badass.
So I got $60 of my parents money from an ATM on campus and walked downtown with my friend Robert.
I picked eternity because in Bible study, someone had said something like, "live your life in the light of eternity." Perspective and such. Aaand the lame-o-meter climbed from "slightly" to "very" after I typed that.

Then came the rest....a creeping addiction. Tats are not cheap. (good ones, anyway)

With my first few, I thought they all had to have some deep meaning. Now, not so much. It's basically permanent jewelry!
I like the way my tattoos make me look, I like the vibe it gives me, I like the experience, (yes it hurts!)

I do have some rules for myself: I don't spend "bill money" on tattoos; and I make myself think about it...for awhile before I get one. I don't have one certain "guy" I go to. I think I probably miss out on discounts by not staying loyal, but this way every piece has a different story.

I prefer not to debate religious do's and don't's when it comes to this. I'm not a Bible scholar...and I know where my heart is with God.

I'm eventually going to have a half-sleeve on my left arm. I'm going for a country/rock 'n roll/vintage theme:

Roses, guns, leopard, favorite-song-inspired, cameos, paisley print...

I want to get at least one more piece done before the wedding. Lucky for me, I'm marrying a guy who thinks my tats are pretty hot! (and I think the same about his!)

Speaking of wedding..3 months?!?!?

It's been such a long time...

Since I've done a blog post.

When it's been a long time since I've done something, I like to announce it in song...to the tune of "Long Time" by Boston.

I notice my last post correlates with the start of my current job. Which can be quite draining. So I'm just going to say I've taken a break from blogging.

I also think I haven't been on here because...I don't know...I guess I assume my life is kinda boring. I would like to write about stuff other than myself too!

So...on to writing about myself (HA!)

I am absolutely loving my new job! I have adjusted to working overnights (11 p.m. to 7 a.m.) pretty well. Though my life is a routine-fest now. In bed by 2:30 p.m! And passed out by 7 p.m. on Friday.
I love writing and putting together a show...I really want to keep learning and making our show better.
2 weeks of blizzard-ing is wearing on me, though. I will be so ready for a vacation in May...which brings me to...

Wedding! Or: "effin' wedding." I should probably be getting my tail in gear. We have the place, food, and invitations. We still need someone to marry us, decoration plans, dancing plans, someone to operate our music playlist, and (maybe) a photographer.
Honeymoon plans haven't been decided yet...either road trip, or going to the beach somewhere on the East Coast. Depending on how much debt we want to get into!

Oh! and my family got us our wedding present early for Christmas! A red Kitchenaid stand mixer with a pasta attachment! And, yes... I have used it! And it's fantastic.

In fact, for Valentine's day I'm planning on making homemade ravioli and a red velvet cake.

I also signed up for twitter this morning. And I am evidently not savvy enough to figure it out. I mainly want to use it to follow local news so I can be as in the know as possible. Apparently all the hip, cool, rad kids are doing it. My ID is tatgalqueencity. I now realize it would have made more sense the other way around. Oh well.

AAaaand my dog is still adorable.

Spooky Halloween Cake

I'm not the biggest fan of Halloween...it has nothing to do with my beliefs...I think any "evil" meaning the holiday may have once had isn't what people have in mind when they dress their kids up to get candy. (That's just my opinion, and I'm not interested in debating/arguing it, by the way!)

I actually really like scary movies and I love fall. I'm mainly just cheap and think dressing up (or more specifically, spending money on a costume) is a waste.

Anyway...Halloween is like Mike's Christmas, so I didn't want to be a Hallow-scrooge. So I decided to get into the spooky spirit my own way. By baking a spooky chocolate graveyard cake...ooooo...ooooo...

There's a new show on the food network called Dessert First. Imagine my excitement! The host, Ann Thornton is adorable...and the show is all about...dessert! Last week on her first episode, she made a "Spooky Graveyard Cake." Since I knew I was going to my friend Jasmine's to watch scary movies this weekend, I said, "I want to make that cake!" It's basically all I've talked about all week. So after spending too much money on supplies, making a few of my own tweaks/adjustments to the recipe, 2 days in the kitchen, and only 1 crying episode...I am on my way to becoming a culinary diva! Here's how I did it:

Ann's recipe is here.
I didn't make the cake from scratch, though. I used Betty Crocker Milk Chocolate cake mix...with a few changes:
I used 1/3 cup of unsweetened apple sauce in place of the 1/3 cup of oil. This makes the cake super-moist, and I'm going to tell myself it's also a bit healthier.
The recipe on the box calls for 1 1/4 cups water. I used coffee for about half that amount. A trick I saw on Barefoot Contessa, another Food Network show.
And a box of chocolate pudding.
The cake goes into 2 9" rounds...350 for 25-ish minutes. I rotated them in the oven halfway through.
Tip: Flour is your BFF if you're making cakes that will need to come out of the pan!
I put the cakes in the fridge to cool overnight.

Then was the fun part...decorations! I did all this Friday night.
Decorations included:
Milano sandwich cookies...with scary messages written with melted chocolate and a toothpick,

Pretzel sticks with mini marshmallows...to cover with white chocolate so they look like bones. (More on the White chocolate later. Ugh.)
A chocolate tree that I made by melting a cup of milk chocolate chips and squeezing it out onto foil in the shape of a tree. I made a few sticks also.
I know...they look like poo.
I made a "pastry bag" out of a Ziplock bag with a tip cut in the corner. This is where my lack of patience hurt me...the first time I didn't wait for the chocolate to cool and it melted the plastic bag!

I also used little candy corn pumpkins and chocolate sandwich cookies ground in the food processor.
Side note: white chocolate is a b*tch! I used a double boiler method to melt my milk chocolate and it worked fine. White chocolate is different. (Technically it's not even really chocolate)
If you add anything to it, it seizes up and gets all clumpy and crystallized.
And it doesn't melt as well.

After 3 tries on Friday night (and some tears..."that was my FAVORITE PART of the cake...I can't do anything right!") I did some research and decided to try the microwave. 50% power, 15-20 seconds at a time, stirring in between each heating.

My handsome Mike actually ended up taking care of this for me Saturday afternoon! I love a man who can bake.

I used the microwave method to melt the rest of the chocolate I used for the recipe.

I was super-stoked to make my own buttercream frosting...this was my "wow" factor...and it went great! I think I strained my hand mixer quite a bit, though. I must have a deluxe Kitchen Aid stand mixer...must! Now that I am a morning news producer, getting one of these babies is my next goal in life.

Here's Ann's chocolate buttercream recipe:

• 5 sticks (2 1/2 cups) butter, cut into tablespoon pieces and softened
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 5 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/2 cups milk chocolate, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a standing mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, (OR a hand mixer...beware of flying sugar!) combine the butter, salt, and 2 cups of the confectioners' sugar until light and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate, vanilla, and remaining sugar. Whisk on medium-high until smooth and fluffy.

Spread about a cup of the frosting on the bottom layer of cake. Then add a layer of cookie crumbs.

Add the next layer of cake and ice all the way around. When I decorated, I wished I'd put more frosting on the sides, for the bones to stick in...
Doesn't that look sexy?

I covered the top of the cake with more "dirt." I tried to put in on the side, but just ended up making a mess!

It's helpful to cut slits where you want the gravestones and tree to stick in the cake.

I put the chocolate tree near the back, and stuck the Milano cookies halfway in.

Then I added the candy corn pumpkins. This brought some much-needed color to the cake!

And then the ever-contrary white chocolate pretzel bones.

You place one diagonal into the frosting on the side of the cake, then break one in half...placing the halves so it looks like the bones are crossed.
And...here's the finished product...

Mike was my "photographer" and he helped a ton!

By the way...the cake was de-friggin-licious!

Happy Halloween...however you decide to celebrate it!

Love, Carrie

Growing Up is Hard to Do

Yikes. That's 22 year old me right there.
4 years seems like centuries. Really. No one that I regularly see now, except my family and my friend Allison, knew me when this picture was taken.

Sometimes I think about my past and say, "Ugh. I was such a mess...I'm totally together now. I have it all figured out."

I've stopped fooling myself.

I was talking to one of my dearest gal pals last week about growing up. About looking around at laundry and cooking and groceries and bills and jobs and...reality...

Sometimes reality smacks you in the face. Sometimes it sneaks in slowly...

It's a hard place in life that not everyone gets to. Some people always know they're going to be domestic, 9 to 5ers who go to PTA meetings and never live too far away from mom and dad.

Some people move off to New York City, or L.A. to see their dreams come true.

And then there's those of us who thought we'd be rock stars, or at least work for them.
We come to a crossroads: bitterness or settling.

OR...we can chill out and appreciate what's good in our lives. We can find someone to go on the journey with us. We can find our place.
Maybe that place is closer to home than we thought it would be.

I don't have to give up who I am, or the person I thought I'd be, just because my life didn't take the direction I thought it would.
Growing up, getting "domestic" as I say, doesn't mean giving up everything that's good for a bunch of bad, lame, boring stuff.
But that's a hard realization to come to...it's a rough patch a lot of people go through.

Here are some things that make me happy about being here in Missouri:

My new job that I really like and I know will challenge me for a LONG time
Saturday bike rides with my dad
Karaoke
Mexican Villa
Cardinals games in the summer
Jasmine, Shannon, Sabra, and Hannah

My TV family

Cheap rent
My little brother
Lunches with my mom...


Lots of Love,
Carrie Anne