Bloggers Bake for Hope

Bloggers Bake for Hope is an annual campaign that raises money for breast cancer research. This year, the funds are being donated to the Avon Foundation. Bloggers donate baked goods, people bid on them, and the highest bidder gets the delicious goods delivered to their door. Pretty fantastic, right?

This year, I’m supporting Bloggers Bake for Hope by donating a baked good. You can go here to bid on a batch of Peanut Butter Oatmeal Snack Cake, made by me.

Bidding starts at $15 and is live now through midnight ET on May 2nd.

There are also tons of other yummy treats up for auction too – you can check them all out here.

Parsley, foiled.

Our winter was quite mild. So mild, in fact, that my parsley survived (thrived, even) through it. That’s pretty unheard for NJ winters.

I was planning to just keep the plant going for this year and not re-plant parsley. Until today.

Rocky decided to lay right down in the middle of it and trample it all down. I guess I may be replanting parsley after all.

It feels like a breakup.

At work today, the IT guys called me to let me know my laptop was officially old and they’d be replacing it this week.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know this day was coming. They’ve been switching people over to a new laptop brand for years, but I figured as long as mine was working and I didn’t complain, I’d get to keep it.

And, I’ll admit it: I’m attached to the damn thing.

I’ve had the same laptop since I started nearly five years ago. It essentially has all the work I’ve done in my professional life on it. I loved it so much I even bought myself essentially the same computer for personal use.

Tomorrow afternoon, I hand her in for something shiny and new. I’m sure it’ll be followed up by hours of file transferring and re-downloading tools I need.

After five good years, I’m not ready to start over. I can only hope that the new laptop will last just as long. I don’t think my heart can take having to do this again too soon!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone! After church this morning, we went up to my parents’ house for Easter dinner.

In addition to my family, Mark’s Mom, brother and Ceil came. Grandma and Ceil like to sit and chat, so it was fun for them to get together.

Aunt Barbie, Uncle Joe, Joe Jr, Uncle Peter, Max and Laura’s boyfriend, Nick, rounded out the crowd.

Everyone brought dishes. I did dessert, including this pretzel-crusted cheesecake with chocolate ganache. So amazing.

My parents adopted kittens right before Christmas so they were quite the stars of the day.

Especially Felix.

Who was pretty much just passed from person to person all day. He’s such a little love.

It was a beautiful day.

I hope you all got a chance to spend time with loved ones today too.

February and March Reads

March was a slow blogging month – apparently I didn’t even do a reading recap! Oops!

I started off February with the Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010. I actually started it in January, on the plane ride back from Texas. I love short story collections for travel reads. Like all of them, some stories were better than others.

Firelight was a YA story about a dragons that take human form to hide. It was just okay for me – I found the narrator a little annoying.

Flawless is the second in the Pretty Little Liars series. The show is a guilty pleasure of mine and I ate up the book too.

I re-read Of Mice and Men and while I appreciated more than I did in high school, I really didn’t enjoy it any more.

I picked up A Million Suns, the sequel to Across the Universe. I’d been a little on the fence about the first book, but I really didn’t like this one. I found both main characters unlikable.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan has been on my to-read list for a while and I’m glad I finally got around to it. It was a great read.

When You Reach Me reminded me a lot of The Messenger and I thought it was equally as good.

Seriously… I’m Kidding made me seriously question why on Earth a publisher would pay for it. It was awful.

The Benefactor was a Christmas gift from my Mom – and written by one of my high school teachers. It really wasn’t as good as I was hoping. My inner editor was screaming through most of it.

Many Bloody Returns was a collection of short stories revolving around vampires and birthdays. I’ve read several of the collections edited by Charlaine Harris and this was the best so far.

The Story of Jumping Mouse was my most recent In2Books assignment – very cute with a great lesson.

I also re-read Baby-sitters’ Island Adventure and was surprised how much I still enjoyed it as an adult.

My first March read was The Cupcake Queen. I’d picked it up at the latest book sale and didn’t realize it was YA. It was really entertaining.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter was for book club and really got me fired up. I didn’t agree with most of what the author said, and I’ll happily raise any future daughters with pink toys, Barbie and Disney.

Pandemonium is the follow-up to Delirium and it’s fantastic. It’s probably my favorite from this whole list.

The Julius House is the fourth in the Aurora Teagarden series. This one wasn’t my favorite, but it was still enjoyable.

What have you been reading lately?

Tara’s Bridal Shower

We have four weddings this summer, which means we’ve been doing lots of prep. Our “wedding season” officially kicked off this weekend with my friend Tara’s bridal shower.

Tara and Doug are college friends of ours and we’re so excited to see them finally tie the knot!

The cake was totally the centerpiece of the shower. It was stunning! I didn’t actually realize it was a cake when I walked in… I thought it was just a decoration. And, it was yellow cake with chocolate icing – Tara’s favorite!

Tara whipped through gifts like a pro while her friend Megan put together the ribbon hat. I sat with Megan’s Mom and Tara’s coworkers through the shower, so fun!

Tara and Doug are having a beach wedding in June. It’s totally their style and I really can’t wait for their big day. The shower was such a fun time, it’s made me doubly excited.

Happy bridal shower, Tara! I hope you had as much fun as I did!

April Fools!

A few weeks ago, my Mom was telling me about a dream she had in which Mark and I moved to New York state. The dream had upset her because it was “too far”. I knew then that I’d have to use that for April Fool’s Day.

I called her this evening and told her that Mark had been offered a fabulous job with a substantial pay hike this week so we decided to take it. The catch being that we had to move to Japan for the next two years for said job.

She took it much better than I was expecting. She had questions but said she thought it was great as many times as she said she was going to miss us. And then I repeated the charade for my Dad. He was more obviously rattled than my Mom about it.

I had them both going for a while before I said April Fools. As supportive as they were both trying to be, you could hear the sigh of relief when they realized we were not going anywhere. Mission, accomplished!

Sorry, Mom and Dad. I love you!