Last night and another meme

Last night I headed over to Va. Beach to attend the fabulous snb they have out there. I stopped and stocked up on yarn on my way there so I have lots of soft new yarn for some unnamed project. It was great to be back at my old snb and really nice to see everyone. I love meeting in a bookstore because it lets me get my magazine fix and look at all of the new books. I bought a copy of Knitorama in a moment of weakness, but how could I resist a book that has a pattern for an apple cozy and a knitted cake. I already have my next 5 projects planned out which is bad, I need to focus my energies on my top secret project and not new stuff. Speaking of the top secret project, I made a bit of progress on it last night although snb is not a good place to do intricate pattern work. I am really hoping that I will have a nice quiet plane ride home where I can concentrate on getting this sucker done.

Now for the Meme- I was tagged by the lovely jae with this meme.

Four Jobs You've Had In Your Life

1. In high school I did an internship at a photo lab which turned into a summer job as a lab tech. I loved this job because I had full access to the black and white darkroom and could use their supplies to print my stuff.
2. My first summer of college I worked at Michael's as a cashier. This was a great job, but my paychecks never made it home since I spent all of my money on the crafty goodness. I decided never to work in a craft store again, no matter how appealing.
3. I worked a few summers at my university as summer conference staff. The university rented out the dorms during the summer for camps and we sat at the desk and made sure no strangers came in through the locked doors. I would work the night shift because all of the kids were sleeping and I could craft and watch TV. I would crochet, sew and read during this time. It was probably the most productive time in my life.
4. For the last four years I have worked as a librarian for a non-profit. I really like my job, I get to read a lot and I learn something new every day.

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over

1. Delicatessen- This is my all-time favorite film. I love the way Jean Paul Jeunet can take such dismal subject matter and add a sense of whimsy. This movie always makes me smile.
2. Death Race 2000- I love 1970's David Carradine and I love this movie.
3. American Movie (do documentaries count?)
4. Kill Bill- More David Carradine with an excellent soundtrack

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch

1. Simpsons (though I am staring to become more of a Family Guy fan)
2. Gilmore Girls- I don't know what it is, but I love this show.
3. The Office (British and American)
4. Carnivale

Four favorite Books

1. Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
2. The Catcher in the Rye
3.
4. Knitorama (okay I just got it, but for today it is my favorite)

Four Albums You Can't Hear Too Often

1. Records Tokyo- technically this is a compilation, but I always listen to the entire thing, it makes me happy.
2. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea- Neutral Milk Hotel
3. Elliot Smith- Either/Or
4. Decembrists- Castaways and Cutouts

Four Places You Have Lived

I've only lived in four places so this is easy.
1. Lexington, Ky.- This is where I grew up and lived until college. I just moved back a few months ago and I am settling in to adult life in the city I grew up in.
2. Ashland, Wis.- I spent my freshman year at Northland College at the tip top of Wisconsin, right on Lake Superior. It was beautiful up there, but insanely cold so I had to get out.
3. Bowling Green, Ky.- I spent the rest of my college career in Bowling Green which is 45 minutes north of Nashville. Bowling Green had the best thrift store shopping I have ever experienced, mainly because there was no competition. I lived there for 3.5 years and never realized that it was also home to David Carradine's car from Death Race (see movies.)
4. Norfolk, Va.- I moved to Norfolk for work and really enjoyed living in the Ghent neighborhood. Norfolk is a Navy town and has a very transient population so there isn't an overwhelming sense of community. Eventually, this took it's toll on us and we moved back to Lexington.

Four Places You Have Been On Vacation

I don't really take formal vacations, just little trips.
1. Las Vegas- Philip and I made a special trip to Vegas to get married by Elvis and go tiki bar hopping. It was a lot of fun, but afterwards we had a been there done that attitude about it.
2. New York- I have made several short trips to NYC in the past few years, each time with a theme. New York is a huge city and there is just so much to see and do.
3. Santa Fe- This was another un-vaction. I had a friend who was getting married and Philip and I decided to make it a little trip. Our hotel was across from the Farmers' Market and up the street from the main shopping area. We had a lot of fun, but in the end we wished that we had more time to explore. We will probably make another trip there in the next few years.
4. New England- This was actually a series of road trips with friends during college. We would take 2-8 weeks during the summer for traveling.

Four Websites You Visit Daily

1. Bloglines- This is the fastest way for me to keep up with the blogs I like to read.
2. Google News- They let you customize your news page and see all of the new stories on topics that interest you. I love this feature and use it daily.
3. Washington Post- I read the Post every morning through an electronic subscription.
4. MySpace- It's fun to see what is up with old friends.

Four Of Your Favorite Foods

1. Enchiladas- Philip and I make these at least twice a month
2. Grilled portabella sandwiches with roasted vegetables
3. Singapore Street Noodles- Vegetarian style of course
4. Somosas- Okay, now I'm hungry.

Four Places You Would Rather be Right Now

1. Back home in Lexington- I have been in Virginia for a little over a week and I am already homesick. I really want to see Philip and Astrid.
2. Somewhere sunny- it is really dreary here and I just want some sunshine.
3. On a zero gravity flight- This is my new obsession, I really want to experience weightlessness.
4. In bed.

Four People You'll Tag
1. Michelle
2. Sarabeth
3. Vania
4. Punchy Jarbo

Our little film festival

Yesterday's movie and knitfest (or trashy movie fest) was fabulous. We didn't watch as many movies as we had originally planned, but we gave it a good shot. The final line-up was Death Race 2000, Pink Flamingos, Grey Gardens, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living all accompanied by copious amounts of soda, Fritos, and Chinese take-out. It will probably take my digestive system a few days and a few gallons of water to get back to normal, but the experience was well worth it.

I promised a quick pick of my project so here it is, slightly out of focus. Since I am in the coffeeshop and it is dark I had to use the flash which washes out all of the details of the lace. Let me just tell you that the texture of the lace combined with the elasticity of the yarn makes an incredible fabric.

My Little Cabbage?

It looks like my top secret knitting project is going to take a little longer to finish than I first thought. I knitted the first 6 rows in just over two hours last night with no mistakes or frogging. Luckily, I am done with the seem which was by far the most time consuming row. It is all downhill from here, at least until I reach the middle or the other seam. Since I can't come out and say what I am knitting I thought I would drop a little hint for the knitters out there, my secret project translates to "my little thing" and was featured in a popular knitting zine almost two years ago.

Today I am going to pig out on some mighty fine Ethiopian cuisine and rest up for a long night of dancing. I am not planning on knitting much, but since I never know where I will have little breaks I am carrying my project with me. Tomorrow, Christy and I are having an all day knitathon (okay it is actually a movie marathon and I will be the only one knitting, but it will be the biggest block of knitting time I will have on this trip so I took some liberties.) I should finish a nice chunk of my little thing during the 12 hours of movies we have planned. I might post pictures on Monday if they aren't too revealing, we'll see.

Sweet badges of success

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day at work. It was one of the editor‚’s birthday and we had a little party for her which also ended up being for my birthday last week. Normally, I am not into this sort of thing, but I consider this year special so I am all about celebrating it. There was singing and cake which was fun, but the best part is that they got me a present‚…

Sarabeth told me about this book when we were thrift store shopping and I fell in love with the concept. I added it to my Amazon wishlist sight unseen which is something I never do. Anyway, I have it now and I can tell you that it is fabulous. The downside to the present was that I got it right in the middle of the workday so I spent the entire afternoon counting down to quitting time when I would finally be able to go back to the staff house and bust into my new book.

For those of you who do not know, You Can Do It is like a Girl Scout program for adults. The badges are based on practical and creative skills and accomplishments. There is a system set up for earning each badge. In the back of the book there are 60 badge stickers. I am not sure what you are supposed to do with them since they are paper stickers, but I was thinking of sewing a garment or sash with little clear vinyl pockets to hold them.

I spent a couple of hours reading this books last night and I realized that I have already earned a bunch of badges and I am currently working toward a few more. I think that I am going to change a couple of the badges that I've earned to make them more challenging. For example, I am going to change the take a really good picture challenge to include a show in the final step. I never showed my work, I kept it buried in my portfolio which I regret so I am going to change that. Is anyone else doing the badge system?

Crafty challenges on the road

I am staying in Norfolk for two week so before I left Lexington I came up with some projects to work on during my trip that would take up relatively little room in my suitcase. I settled on three projects and a bunch of reading.

The first project is making cards. I have a ton of card blanks from a Christmas card making project a few years ago so I thought this would be a good time to use some of them. The cards are going to have a background made with decoupaged newspaper (I have regular newsprint and pink newsprint) and have a block printed image on top. I had to buy two new rubber blocks, but other than that I already had all of the supplies.

The second project is a top secret knitting project. I wanted to use this week to start working on a top secret knitting project so that a certain boy I live with won't see it until it is done. This is a rather complicated projects so I wanted to spend the majority of my free time working on it.

The third project is an apron for this month's tie one on challenge. If I get to it, it will be a gardening apron made from an old pair of cargo pants that developed a huge hole right before I left town. I brought along some funky edging and some embroidery floss for accents.

When I arrived at the staff house, I put all of my crafty supplies in one of the dresser drawers for easy access.




I looked at my new little crafty corner and I realized something was missing. After going over my supply list in my head I realized that my dpns were the missing party. I can't even start my knitting project without my dpns so I called Philip and he found my needles right next to the bed where I was packing my bag. He is going to mail them to me, but this whole ordeal is going to cut a week off of my secret project knitting time! If I get them by the weekend I should still be able to finish most of the project before returning to Lexington, but if not I will just have to hope Philip has weekend shifts for the two weekends after I return.

While I am going through my knitting drama here, Philip is in Lexington sculpting some pirates for our pirate shadowbox project. When I return, we will finally paint, assemble, and hang the shadowbox.

Wish me luck

I've decided to participate in the Knitting Olympics next month. The basic idea is to make something that is a challenge during the Olympics. This means you can't cast-on before the opening ceremonies and you have to bind-off before the closing ceremonies. Since I have been pushing off the sock making, I am going to make two pairs of socks, both on circs using the 2 sock method, during this event.

The first pair will be the cable twist socks from Hello Yarn. These are worsted weight socks so I should finish them fairly quickly. The second pair will be the easy socks by Oz Yarn which have a short rowed heal and are made with sock weight yarn. I have all of the yarns and needles ready to go and I will check the gauge before the opening ceremony.

On another note, I just found out that Amy Singer of Knitty is working on a knitting book called No Wool for You. She announced this back in November, but somehow I missed it. I just joined the designers' list because I really want to submit something, but since the announcement was made in November I might have missed the deadline.

Hurray for sewing machines

Today was a weird day. I woke up early this morning to look at sewing machines since a few months after my last sewing machine repair, the tension is screwed up again. I really love my machine, but repairs are expensive and are becoming more frequent. I have been thinking about trading my machine in, I just have a little separation anxiety. This week I finally hit my breaking point and I decided to get another machine. Meet my new baby.



Originally, my plan was to get the most basic machine I could find, but after doing some consumer research (note: I am extremely anal about purchasing anything and I always do a lot of research to make sure that I get the best possible product for my needs) I decided not to get another mechanical machine, instead I decided to get an electronic model. There were a few reasons for this decision, but the main one was the tension factor; I can't deal with anymore tension problems. After trying several machines and asking tons of questions, I decided on a Singer that is very similar in operation to the one I traded in. I didn't have enough birthday money to buy the machine today so I put it on layaway (it seemed more exciting than putting it on the credit card.) About three hours later Philip and I went out for lunch and my car suddenly stopped shifting into second gear which I am scared means a major repair. C'est la vie!

Pimpin' my ride

I finished the bike seat cover this morning and I am really happy with the way it came out.

Details-
Pattern- The Bicycle Saddle Cover by Brenna from Take Back the Knit issue 2
Yarn- Red Heart Soft Yarn, way less than one skein
Needles- size 7 straight and dpns

I changed the pattern a bit to fit my bike seat and I ended up putting it on inside out because I prefer the bottom side to the top. I am going to make a green one for Philip's bike.



Following the bicycle theme, the Vogue Knitting from Winter 2004/2005 contained a pattern for a bicycle bag that I want to make from an old sweater I found in my dad's attic. The sweater is knitted in fair isle with 4-5 colors so it will be a bit of a chore to frog, but the yarn is the perfect gauge and more than I need. I am about to leave town for two weeks and I want to use my time to work on another project so hopefully I will start on this when I get back.

I've got a bike
You can ride it if you like
It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things that make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it

-Pink Floyd

Yesterday was absolutely fabulous. I had to work which was not so fabulous, but after work Philip made me dinner. We had linguine with a tomato pesto sauce, garlic bread, and blackberry cobbler for dessert. There is so much food leftover that we will be eating parts of this meal for the next few days. We ate by candlelight in our clean dining room (the dining room has been used as a junk room for the last two months.) We spent hours last weekend working on the lighting for the kitchen, living room and dining room which made everything nice and cozy. For the first time since we moved, I feel like our apartment is really coming together.



I also started a new project from TBTK, a knitted bicycle seat cover. It is bright orange and with the exception of a little trouble in the beginning, it is a really easy and interesting pattern. I should finish it today so I will post pictures tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Normally, I would never admit it's my birthday, but today is different. Today I turn 28 which is some kind of weird milestone in my life. I can't really explain it, but I have been looking forward to my 28th birthday for a few years now; it just seems like a magical number. I think in numbers a lot so I tried breaking 28 down to figure out why I find it so magical, but the only thing I could come up with is that it is half of 56 which is my all-time favorite number. Maybe I see this as the halfway point or maybe it's a beginning. Either way, this is going to be a great year.

These gloves aren't made for warmin'

After Sunday'’s entry about the lack of knitting content I picked up my needles and made the fingerless gloves from the Summer issue of Take Back the Knit. (For those of you who don'’t know, Jae is selling the first and second issues of TBTK along with some cookzines to raise enough money to print the next issue of TBTK so please check out her blog for more information) The pattern called for Cascade Fixation which I happened to have in my stash so I grabbed the needles and whipped out these babies in under two hours.



I originally bought a bunch of Fixation on clearance to make some striped socks, but after knitting a swatch I decided that I don't like the way it looks for socks. As a result, I have several balls of this yarn waiting to be used so if anyone has seen anything fun made with this stuff, please send me the links.

In other news, I have been working from home for the last three months so I haven't been listening to the iPod much and thus have fallen out of the Podcast loop. Since I started going to the gym again I need some new quality listening material. I have been listening to Knitcast since the beginning, but it seems that a ton of other crafty/knitty podcasts have popped up. Today I downloaded some episodes of Cast-on to listen to while I was working. Cast-On is a fairly new knitting Podcast that was posted to the Lexington snb list and is available as a free subscription thru iTunes. The nine episodes so far include a Halloween special, Q&A's, interviews with other knitting podcasts, lots of music, and tons of silly knitting content. It is definitely worth a listen. After downloading a few episodes I checked out the other Podcasts listed below.

Other Knitting/Crafty podcasts
Secret Kniting
FiberCast
Knitting News Cast
Knitcast
CraftyPod
Crafty Chica
How to Do Stuff

Batgirl Knits

Last week Philip emailed me this image of batgirl knitting. This proves my point that no super hero is really super unless they can knit a scarf. It also makes me want to become a full-fledged super hero.

This image was created by Shing Khor as part of of a batgirl meme.

I have a confession to make

I really haven't done much knitting since I moved Lexington and it might be awhile before this blog goes back to hardcore knitting content. I apologies to all of my knitting friends, but I am going through a DIY decorating phase and it is important for me to follow my impulses.

For the last two weeks Philip and I have taken on 1-2 decorating projects per day. It is crazy, but it seems like the more work we do on the apartment, the more things we want to do. Friday, Philip and I ran to a thrift store during my lunch break looking for some furniture that we can revamp for the bedroom. Instead of furniture we ended up finding a mod chandelier for the dining room. It will replace a brass chandelier currently hanging in the room. I have never replaced a light fixture, but if those idiots on trading spaces can do it, I can. Of course, with a new light fixture in that room we now want to add a few more mod touches to really pull the room together. It's neverending.

As far as the tiki/livingroom goes, we moved 14 of the tiki mugs and the 2 bamboo plants to the small windows. We also matted and framed a picture of Philip's grandmother as a hula girl in the 1940's which went above the fireplace. We really love this picture and the story that goes with it.

I have also been doing a little ebaying to fill in the thrift store gaps. Last week I won two auctions, one for curtains and one for a ceramic lamp. We are buying almost everything for our apartment used and revamping a lot of our stuff to make it work with the overall look of things. It's all a lot of fun, but also a lot of work.

Below are the pictures of everything, enjoy!

Here is our old dining room chandelier.



Here is our new dining room chandelier.



Here is the hula girl print above the mantel with the coconut monkeys.



Here are the orb candle holders that are hanging in the dining room window.



And finally, here is the lamp I got off of ebay. The base has a light so you can either turn on the lamp, the base, or both.

One more little thing...

This makes me very happy!

A treat to go with your Friday the 13th movie fest

Philip and I are no longer buying microwave popcorn. While we both love popcorn, the microwave stuff has way too many chemicals for us to ingest. We bought some organic popcorn kernels at the co-op and started making popcorn on the stove top. After a little trial and error we have mastered the art of popping corn in a saucepan.

Perfect Popcorn

2 Tbsp. canola oil
3/4 cup organic popcorn kernels

In a 5-quart saucepan with lid, heat the oil over medium high heat. After about 3 minutes, add popcorn to the oil and cover the pan. When you hear the first pop, start shaking the pan occasionally to prevent burning. When the pops stop, remove from heat, transfer to a large bowl and add whatever popcorn toppings you like (margarine, nutritional yeast, salt, sugar, etc.)

Makes a whole lot of popcorn

Many recipes will tell you to start off with the kernels and the oil together in the pan, but we found that always burned our popcorn. After several attempts I tried heating the oil first and like magic I had fluffy popcorn that was perfectly done. We made several batches this way to make sure that it wasn't a fluke and we got the same result every time. From start to finish this recipe takes about 8 minutes, only slightly longer than microwave popcorn and much tastier.

Art and Free Food

Today we took a short road trip to Cincinnati with Philip's parents to see the Borrowed Time exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibit was interesting, but honestly I expected more. There was another exhibit by Cat Chow on the first floor of the museum which featured clothing made from band-aids, money, zippers, washers, and other non-traditional items. My favorite pieces were entirely made from zippers; I just imagined how fun it would be to unzip the spirals of zippers that made up the garments.

After the museum, we went looking for a store (I think it was this one), but we never found it. Instead we went to lunch at PF Chang's where they made my dish with the wrong tofu and instead of asking me if I would eat it (which I would have) they remade it and gave me the messed up batch to take home, score!

I am going to head out to the Saturday night snb at Third Street Stuff in a bit since I haven't done any knitting this week.

Mission: Movie Organization

Continuing on the organization path, today I decided to organize our DVD's. When I was in high school my dad built this little shelf to hold all of my CD's. I outgrew the shelf in college and it has been in the attic at Philip's parent's house for the past few years. The other night it dawned on me that the shelf would be perfect for our DVD's, so out of storage it came. Amazingly enough it is exactly the right size for our DVD collection. There is only room on the shelf for one or two more movies, but I think we will probably start a row on top once we run out of room. We almost never buy DVD's, most of them come to use as gifts so we should be set until next Christmas.

I have stayed consistently busy this week, taking on a few projects every day.
Tuesday
*Repotted 2 plants in pots from Philip's dad
*Made a double batch of Indian Cauliflower and Kidney Bean Stew with Coconut Milk from Robin Robertson's Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook
*Put up a kitchen towel rack since there is no place in the kitchen to hang a towel
*Put up hooks to hold pot holders by the oven since the ones by the sink weren't cutting it

Wednesday
*Drove to Stone's Throw Artisans in Georgetown to spend my gift certificate
*Took a tour of the North Side YMCA
*Hooked up my mom's DVD player

Thursday
*Joined the YMCA
*Worked out
*Organized the Christmas stuff
*Put all kitchen appliances with their parts on top of the overhead cabinets to keep them out of the way. This frees up some cabinet space for the pots and pans and makes everything easier to get to.
*Replanted the aloe plant, removing some of the babies and separating the others. It didn't seem to handle the move very well so I am hoping that this will save it.

Tomorrow I only need to get my Kentucky driver's license and a library card.

Mission: Music Organization

When Philip and I moved we decided to leave behind our CD shelf since we reached its maximum capacity a few years ago and it was about to collapse due to the weight. We have been looking for a new shelving system for a few years now, but nothing is large enough to fit our needs. About a month ago, we decide to build our own shelf in one of the spare closets. We have been putting this task off since building a shelf that large seems a little overwhelming and expensive. All of this changed on Saturday when I noticed a bunch of cinder blocks under the stairs in the basement.

I quickly planned out a super easy shelving system. All we had to do is buy the boards for the shelves and we could place them in the holes of the blocks, no tools required. We bought the wood for six shelves for just under $12 and had the whole thing assembled in under 10 minutes. The piece of wood on the bottom that keeps the blocks from scraping the floor and distributes the weight more evenly was found in the garage. Each shelf holds over 90 CD's and there is enough room to add two more shelves which we will have to add soon since everything doesn't quite fit.

After we put the shelf together we alphabetized the CD's and did a major CD purge. It still wasn't enough to make everything fit, but we came pretty close. Here is Philip sorting the albums.

DIYing in the New Year

Today was a great start to the new year. My goal for the day was to fix my car since it has been sitting in the driveway for over a month waiting for a new starter to be installed. Today's high was around 58 degrees so for January this was the perfect day for car repair. While I was waiting for my dad to arrive I cleaned the kitchen, fixed the wobbly stove, and labeled the magnetic spice holders that we got for a housewarming gift. Then my dad showed up and we worked on the car for a few hours and after a few mishaps she started and ran like normal.

I was very excited when my car started running, but it was minor compared to my biggest accomplishment of the day which involved my refrigerator. I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but my new kitchen is tiny. It is so small that you have to move the refrigerator to fully open the backdoor. We have had to make a lot of adjustments in order to work in this kitchen, but overall we have been pretty successful. The one thing that I can't stand about our kitchen is that the refrigerator opens to the backdoor so you have to walk around it to get to the rest of the kitchen and if there is more than one person in the kitchen the door always knocks into someone. All of that changed today, when I reversed the doors so that they now open up to the kitchen. Now you can open the door from the stove and you don't have to worry about hitting anyone. Now I am ready for a great baking experiment, maybe I'll bake some muffins!

Happy New Year!

As I trade in the Shag tiki calendar for a Hula Honeys calendar, thus begins a new year. I hope that 2006 will be a very big year for me full of life changing events. This is the year that I am going to try to open my own business (actually, there will be two of us opening a store.) I am taking this week off work to try and get an online Etsy store running, visit the local Small Business Association, design a logo, and buy the url for our future site. I am also going to be working on several projects around the apartment so I will be very busy this week and I will chart my progress as the week goes by.


Resolutions for 2006

1. Consume less- I make this resolution almost every year and I always get a strong start, but as the year goes by I get lazy. This year I specifically want to work on my consumption of packing materials. I started thinking about this at Christmas when Philip and I had to go out and buy wrapping paper to wrap the gifts we made and bought. The paper made me a little sad since it was so beautiful and it was just going to be ripped to shreds. Since I no longer get a newspaper delivered to my house (I now have a digital subscription which saves a ton of paper) I don't have regular access to wrapping material. My solution is to designate a bag to store all of the good wrapping materials I come across so that next year I will have all kinds of unique materials to wrap presents with. So far the bag contains plastic packing materials from some of this year's presents, some small boxes, and some yarn scraps for making pom poms and bows.

2. Buy locally- The farmer's market is less than a 5 minute bike ride from my apartment and the produce is cheaper than the grocery store so there is no reason I can't buy most of my produce locally. I am also walking distance from several small businesses and I want to give them more support with my everyday purchases. Cheaper isn't better. When you factor in the impact of big box stores and dollar stores on the health and well being of our society the cost is much greater than the small savings. I will also be buying a share in my local co-op since they finally ordered some Follow Your Heart cheese.

3. Fix my bike- My bike isn't broken, but it will need new tires before the spring and I want to install them myself as well as learn to do a tune up on it so that it will be in great shape for a summer of riding.

4. Learn to bake- Philip and I cook all of the time, but neither of us can really bake. Our reasoning is that a curry dinner is a lot more satisfying than a tin of muffins so why bother. Of course, there are still those times when we want muffins and neither of us is willing to make them. This is going to change, I am going to figure out the secrets of baking and I will bake us biscuits, muffins, bread, cookies, and cakes- not all at once.

5. Start my own business- This will be a lot of hard work (goodbye nights and weekends), but in the end it will be worth it, even if it doesn't work out. This is something I have wanted to do since I was 16 and the only real dream I've ever had so it will be great to try.