Yes, Please!

I'm very excited to read Amy Poehler's book, Yes Please, which came out Tuesday. I'm currently rereading Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood, one of my all time favorites, but Yes Please is next on my list.

I've read some excerpts here and in People magazine while in my dentist's waiting room, and I've loved everything so far, so I'm sure the rest won't disappoint.

My favorite excerpts so far:

"It's a wonderful day when your child gets old enough to be bribed. It's a whole new tool in your arsenal."

"Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier."

"Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself."

"You can create something and the world will be forever indebted to and dependent on you."
-Courtesy of The Huffington Post

"When your children arrive, your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, you start to see the world a little more. It can be hard, this life. Beautiful too. Mine is beautiful, mostly. Lucky me."
-Courtesy of People Magazine

Also, Amy recent did an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit - worth reading.

No, I will not donate ...

.. to your scholarship fund, NYU. Not now, probably not ever.

I've gotten several emails/calls lately under the guise of reminding me about my five year reunion, when really they just want to hit me up for donations. I'm starting to get a little annoyed.

Let me start off by making it clear that I paid for almost my entire tuition. I received next to no financial aid, although my parents made well under $100,000 a year when I applied. But apparently, the only way to get anything more than a couple thousand bucks is to be at poverty level. There was no way my parents could contribute a dime to my education either, but the powers that be determined that didn't matter. I made my choice to go to NYU knowing what kind of debt I'd be graduating with, though. That isn't my complaint. What I do resent is the badgering to donate to the scholarship fund.

First of all, they call it "Give BACK to NYU." What exactly am I giving back? I wasn't gifted my education. I paid for it. And will be paying for it for many years to come. Does this mean that my cable or cell phone company is going to start hitting me up for donations because they too provide a service that I pay for?

Second of all, WHO exactly is this money going to?? Like I said, my parents couldn't contribute a dime to my education, but I didn't get anything from this scholarship fund, so how do they determine who gets a free or greatly reduced ride and who gets saddled with hundreds of thousands in debt?

Third, I particularly scoffed at their second argument for donating (Their 6th most popular reason, 'I hear you, but I'm broke.') Seriously? If I have $18 and change to spare, and I'm going to donate it instead of, you know, putting it towards that $180k in debt I have, I can think of many, many more worthy causes. Homeless children. Animal shelters. Cancer research. NYU's scholarship fund falls very low on my list of causes I'd give what little money I have to.

If more people had donated, maybe I WOULD have gotten scholarship money, you say? Well, they didn't. If this campaign for donations means future kids who are more like me, who don't fall below the poverty line but would still have to take out massive loans to go to college, can have their load lightened, great. Good for them. But for the time being, let the people from my class who DID get the help, either from NYU or their parents, build up that fund, and let me worry about getting this massive student loan debt off my plate.

Bits of our ... Month

I hadn't done a weekend post in a while because, to be honest, the first few weekends of the month were rather uneventful. It rained a couple Saturdays in a row, so other than gymnastics, we stayed indoors. Most of our Sundays were spent at the park, running errands, etc. One Sunday we went to check out a party supply store in the Village to see what they had as far as Frozen party decorations (mostly a waste of time, same stuff that I found on orientaltrading.com, but twice as expensive - although it was fun to browse the costumes) and then hung out in Washington Square Park for a while. Another Sunday, man-friend and I went to see St. Vincent, which was very good, while Audrey was with her father.

Trying on ridiculous hats at the party store

 

 


One of our wonderful walks in the pouring rain to gymnastics

This past weekend was the first in a while we had more going on. On Friday, the practice group I work in had a Halloween party, and kids were invited. So at lunch, I went and picked Audrey up from preschool and brought her back down to my job. She changed into her Elsa costume there and then we went to the party. She loves my coworkers, and got a lot of attention at the party, as well as tons of sugar. My coworkers bought her a little Frozen purse to go with her costume, and she went home with it stuffed with candy.

 

She looks like she's rapping with this pose.

 

This was the reaction to "You've already had more sugar than you're usually allowed to have so no, you cannot have any more."

We went to the Halloween Harvest at Luna Park (Coney Island) this past Saturday. We lucked out with some gorgeous weather. The park was decorated for fall, and a lot of kids came in costume. They also had a bunch of activities going on, outside of the usual rides and games, such as pumpkin picking & painting, trick or treating for kids, free caricatures, among other things. One useful fact I learned: the park right next door, which you can literally see from Luna Park, is a whole separate thing. Any credits or wristbands you buy at Luna Park aren't valid there. I knew the Wonder Wheel was separate, but didn't realize all the other rides were as well, so I bought more credits than we actually needed, thinking there were tons more rides for Audrey than there actually were. Luna Park only had a handful of rides Audrey could actually ride, but at least the credits were good for games too. We played more games than I ordinarily would have, mostly because we had still a bunch of (nonrefundable) credits to use after Audrey was done with the rides.

 

 

This stuffed slice of pizza was one of the prizes we won. Probably one of the best carnival game prizes ever.

Next weekend is Halloween. We're both very excited. One of the perks of having a child is the new approach to the holidays - remembering what it was like as a kid, getting to see your own kid enjoy it, the preparations leading up to the holiday (picking out a costume, decorating, Christmas shopping). I'd stopped caring about holidays in my twenties pre-Audrey, so its fun to be excited about them again.

Little Black Dress

I'm in love with this Ann Taylor dress. I originally saw it on an episode of The Mindy Project and thanks to Google, was able to track it down online. Marked down to $129 with an extra 40% off sale items ... trying to talk myself out of it.

Loooove

Fruits & Veggies

I've had this link in my bookmarks for a while and randomly clicked on it this morning. I forgot how surprising this was. Each of these pictures is a representation of your daily recommend fruit & vegetable intake:



From "Here Are 10 Pictures of Your Daily Recommended Servings of Fruits & Vegetables"

 
Doesn't seem like much, does it? Most days I get at least this much into my day, although this weekend was lacking ...
 
Related: Jack LaLanne ate at least ten raw, fresh vegetables daily. Although some of his other habits were probably a little more strict than I could ever tolerate, I'm inspired to make sure I get at least the minimum fruits & vegetables daily.

Links & Pictures

Mash-up of pics and links ...

Excuse my dirty floor. I swear I vacuumed shortly after I took this pic. Anyway, I caught little miss Maddie under the table like this. I walked around to the other side to see what she was doing ...

Sure enough, something naughty. She's obsessed with trying to steal the cat's food. She prefers it to her own, apparently. We've had to feed the cat on paper plates lately because whenever she managed to get to his food, she'd eat it then promptly to destroy the plastic bowl. She went through three of them. I ordered him a new one, and this time went with metal.

One of the kids in Audrey's preschool class brought in a lawn gnome for show & tell. I don't know why I found this so funny, but I did.



Currently reading one of Stephen King's recent books, Mr. Mercedes. Love that he referenced It, the movie that was based on one of his own books. Being able to use your own work as a cultural reference is pretty bad ass.



I probably used many of these as AIM away statuses back in the day :)

Love this article about hyper-parenting

And this similar article about parenting. To sum up both: Calm the hell down.

Emma Watson's awesome HeForShe speech (this links to the text, with a link to the video at the bottom)

Mmmm, ice cream.

Will definitely have to watch this

Love seeing how quickly this map is changing

Party Planning

Third birthday.

If I ever suffer a bout of temporary insanity and decide to have another child, I will plan for a late spring/summer baby. My sole reason for this? Birthday parties. I can’t just set up a piñata and a clown in my backyard and let the kids run off their birthday cake sugar high. I don’t have a backyard, and there’s no way I’m squeezing 10-15 kids and their various escorts into my apartment. Some people are lucky enough to live in apartment complexes with party/play rooms. For the rest of us, your options are a) no party, b) set up in a public park or c) rent a venue. So far, I’ve always gone with option a. We obviously did a dinner/cake/presents celebration with family, but never an actual party with her friends. Option b is really only an option if your kid’s birthday falls during the warmer months (hence my statement about any highly unlikely future children).

Which brings us to option c for Audrey’s 4^th birthday this year. With a mid-November birthday, outdoors isn’t an option, so I knew if I wanted to do a party for her this year it wasn’t going to be cheap. I looked into various venues (there are several options in our neighborhood or nearby) but ended up booking a party at Chelsea Piers. Price-wise, it was in line with most of the other places, and they had various packages. I chose the ‘Ultimate Tykes Challenge’ party in which the kids do various races, games etc. and get to play in a bouncy castle.

 

 

Last year's cake and presents celebration with family

But the details. Ugh. The party is at 3:30. I don’t need to serve lunch. Or do I? I either ruin their dinner appetites by serving pizza, or look cheap by opting to just do snacks and cake (well, I AM cheap but …). Are chips, pretzels and a fruit tray classy enough for these little Chelsea kids? Or should I serve organic hummus on whole wheat pita bread? Goody bags are dumb, it’s a bag of cheap toys the kids will lose within a couple days. I can skip them right? No, kids look forward to them? Great. Let me order $75 worth of crap from Oriental Trading. Can I pad the bag with cheap candy or am I a jerk for sending your kid home with sugar? The base price for the party includes 15 kids. Is it rude to politely imply on the invitation that your kids’ siblings aren’t invited because I’m paying $30/head for each additional kid? I personally LOVE the invitations that say “No presents please” but I know my kid would be disappointed so I’ll leave it off ours.

In the grand scheme of things, these are obviously not truly grave matters. No matter what I do, Audrey will be happy as long as she has kids to play with, cake to eat and people to sing Happy Birthday to her. With that said, I’m still looking forward to the age where a birthday celebration involves a few friends joining her for a movie and a sleepover …  

Grumpy Cat Cake!

I'm going to make Audrey's birthday cake myself for two reasons: to make sure I get exactly what I (she) want and because I can't fathom paying hundreds of dollars for something I can do myself.

However, the cake we want for her birthday will involve fondant, something I had never really worked with before. It's going to be something along the lines of this:

Source

The cake itself is decorated with fondant and frosting, and the figurines are store bought (I'm not going to kid myself and even attempt to make the characters out of fondant). The '3' is probably a decorated sugar cookie.

Anyway, I wanted to practice first, being a fondant virgin. We were doing a little celebration at work for a coworker's birthday. I had come across this Nerdy Nummies video a few weeks ago and wanted to try it. A grumpy cat cake was perfect, since we refer to my boss as grumpy cat. My final product didn't come out *quite* like Rosanna's, but for my first attempt at really decorating a cake/working with fondant, I'll take it.

I used this recipe for the cake, this one for the sugar cookie ears, this one for the vanilla buttercream and this one for the chocolate buttercream (on the ears).

Work in progress

 

Just another angle - after successfully transporting it to work

Because I've never worked with it before, I used store bought fondant. I didn't think trying to make my own without having an idea of the consistency and what it's like to work with was a good idea. The Fondarific brand had pretty good reviews and seemed to be the best tasting of store bought fondants. To color the vanilla buttercream and fondant, I used AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring. The fur was done with Wilton Disposable Decorating Bags and Wilton Tip #233.

Some things I learned/need to remember for next time:

• I broke this up into stages (frostings and sugar cookie dough one day, cake and baking the sugar cookies the next, and frosting/decorating/making the face the last). This was definitely the way to go. I spent hours working on it each day - there's no way I could have done it in one day.
• I cut circles out of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan, so the cake wouldn't stick, but forgot to grease the sides. This isn't a new concept to me, I've made probably hundreds of cakes by now, I'm just bad at remembering this part. I ran a knife along the side of the pan to get the cake out, but there was some sticking, so I had to cover up some flaws with extra frosting.
• I've also insulated the sides of the pan by wrapping the pan in aluminum foil in the past, which is supposed to help prevent doming. I didn't do that this time. My cakes didn't inflate too much, but I'll remember to wrap the pans next time anyway.
• The gel food coloring is INTENSE. I put a few drops of brown into my 3-4 cups of vanilla buttercream thinking I'd get the light tan color - nope, it was light brown. I had to correct it by throwing it back in the mixer and adding more butter, sugar and cream. It was still a little too dark but I had run out of butter and didn't want to go overboard with the sugar and cream. Next time I'll start with a teeny tiny amount of food coloring and work from there.
• This is specific to this cake, but in the video, it didn't look like she did a crumb layer before frosting the sides of the cake. When I tried just piping the 'fur' right on the cake, it didn't stick to the sides very well. Adding a thin layer of frosting first made it much easier.
• I was a little prissy with working the gel into the fondant at first. I was afraid it would stain my hands and I'd have rainbow colored fingers for days. So I put the fondant into a Ziploc bag, added the food coloring and tried kneading it through the bag. Didn't work too well, so I had to just dive in. It really didn't stain though, the color all came off my hands after a couple washings.

I had extra everything, so I made little Grumpy Cat cupcakes. By this point it was like 11 pm on my last night of baking/assembling and my enthusiasm was waning so these were done quickly.

I'm glad I made this. Everyone loved it and I'm definitely feeling much more confident about making Audrey's cake now.

Roman Numeral Date Ring

I LOVE this ring, found on Etsy:

 

I would get it in white gold, with Audrey's birthday. Unfortunately it'll probably be on my wish list for a while because I can't imagine having $400 to spare any time soon ... sigh.

Dinner for Two

It's usually just Audrey and I for dinner, so I've never been in the habit of making elaborate dinners. I do like to cook (most of the time), but it seems silly to make a 20 ingredient, mess of a big dinner for just the two of us. Often, I will make something on the weekends that will either leave us a couple days of leftovers or a big pot of soup. When I don't already have something in the fridge, I keep it pretty simple: pasta, some chicken and veggies, etc. Audrey is a pretty good eater. There aren't a lot of things that I eat that she won't, so dinner is usually easy.

Audrey at approx. 2 years old. Even then she was big on veggies

But she's always loved the sweets too :)

I did notice that I tend to involve her in deciding what we are having for dinner if I don't have something planned. I made a comment about it to my brother and he said he had wondered why I did that. I think this habit has added to getting her to eat most things. If I give her the option of say, broccoli or green beans, even though she likes both, she's much more likely to eat what she chooses. Teaching healthy eating habits is hard enough as it is, thanks to her persistent sweet tooth. I don't necessarily want her to think she always has to finish her plate, nor do I want to instill in her the idea that its wasteful to not eat food you don't want just because its in front of you. However, I do want her to understand that some foods have benefits - they're good for you, they keep you healthy, they help you grow - and it's important to eat those foods first rather than saving room for candy.

 

I also let her help me cook when it makes sense. Obviously, things that involve the stove or oven I do myself, but if its something she can stir or add ingredients, she's eager to help. If I can get her excited about cooking, show her what goes into her food and teach her about good healthy foods, its worth slowing down the process a bit sometimes.

I'm always looking for new recipes to add to our rotation, so I browse Pinterest and Foodgawker on my phone pretty often. Some dinner ideas to try soon: Chicken Parmesan Meatballs, Risotto Cakes, Great Greens Pasta.

Why are rugs so expensive?

I want to do a mini-makeover of my apartment soon. My brother, who has been staying with us for awhile, will move out after this semester, and I'll have more space again. So in addition to reorganizing, I was hoping to spruce the place up a bit. There's hideous carpet in the living room and my bedroom that I can't do anything about, so I was looking at area rugs. Holy expensive, batman. Even at Ikea and Wayfair the nicer, large area rugs are hundreds of dollars.

I love this one, but its almost $400 for a 5x8. Sigh. I think I'll have to deal with the hideous carpet for a bit longer. Maybe a coat of paint on the walls will help?

Hello, Fall: Halloween Events in NYC

Since we had the Florida trip scheduled at the end of September, it didn't really feel like summer was over till we returned. But we spent a couple hours in the Poconos Monday before going home, (we had landed in Allentown) and the leaves had started to change colors. So even though it was 80 degrees out, it still felt like Fall had arrived.

We have some things to look forward to in the upcoming months. Audrey's gymnastics continue every Saturday through the end of the year. Audrey's birthday is mid-November, and we have a birthday party planned for her. This will be her first birthday party with friends, opposed to the just family celebrations we've done in years past, so she is very excited. There are of course all the holidays to look forward to: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. We will probably spend all three in the Poconos. The weekends in between will be spent hanging out in the city. Although I didn't plan out the whole season, I did find some upcoming free/cheap Halloween activities:

Hansel & Gretel's Halloween Adventure at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. Audrey has never been to a Marionette Show before, but I think she'd like it, so I'd like to try this one. It is showing several days/times a week for the rest of the month, and it isn't expensive.

Halloween Harvest at Luna Park (Coney Island) in Brooklyn. We've been to Coney Island before, but only in the Summer. The rides are still running, but they also decorate for Fall and add magicians, pumpkin picking, trick or treating, etc. Audrey would love this. The rides can get a little pricey, but it looks like an otherwise cheap activity. This one is on weekends through the end of October.

Tricks and Treats at Le Carrousel in Bryant Park. This looks like another fun Halloween/Fall version of an activity we've done over the summer. There's a magician, face painting, trick or treating, etc., and of course, the carousel. The activities are all free, and rides on the carousel are only $2-3. This one is on Saturday the 25th, at 1pm.

The Haunted Pumpkin Garden at New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. A huge display of intricately carved pumpkins, plus activities for kids. This one is a little pricey, $25 for adults and $10 for kids, plus its a bit of a trek for us, so I'm not sure if we'll make it to this one this year, but I wanted to keep it in mind.

Pasta

YES:

 

 

I think we'll have spaghetti for dinner tonight ;)