13 Adventures: #12 Rainbow Bookcase

I’ve always wanted to rearrange my books by color. Especially when someone comes to the library and asks something along the lines of “I can’t remember the title or the author or what it’s about but the color is dark blue”. Unfortunately, I can’t rearrange the whole library by color (amazing April Fool’s Day prank idea, though), but I can do my bookshelves!

A lot of my books are still in boxes in a closet at home, but Steven brought most of his so we still have a lot here. Luckily Steven also brought some sizable bookshelves that he made, which is where most of our books live; the rest are in stacks in Steven’s office upstairs. Here is what the bookshelves looked like before:

Vaguely arranged by subject/author

So I took everything down and made stacks of colors, generally following good old ROY G BIV, except adding white on one side and brown, black, and gray on the other.

It doesn't really look like a rainbow because I was arranging by spine color, not cover color

Then, after giving everything a quick dust, Tra-la!:

Turns out, black is our most predominant book color

I noticed most of those were Steven’s science fiction books, and some Penguin Classics as well. Plus a lot of my composition books, natch.

The light in our living room is kind of weird, so you may have to trust me on how awesome it looks in person

At first I was really bothered about shades and spines with more than one color, but when you step back and look at it as the whole, that stuff doesn’t matter as much. I’m really happy with how it turned out!! You should totes try this is you have enough time/books.

13 Adventures: #11 Peanut Butter Blossoms

Peanut butter blossoms are, hands down, my favorite Christmas cookie, and have been for as long as I remember. Since I’m not going home for Christmas, I decided to make my own today! My favorite part, besides eating them, is taking all the Hershey’s Kisses out of their foil wrappings. It’s like unwrapping a bunch of tiny presents!

I put them in this box so I could pour them over Steven later and shout "It's snowing shininess!"

Putting the kisses on top after they’re right out of the oven is also really fun! They turned out great:

Beautiful!!

13 Adventures: #10 Bathrobe Hunt

Yesterday I decided my mission was to buy Steven an early Christmas present: the fluffiest, softest, best bathrobe ever. Since we are going to glorious H-Town for Christmas, I figured I might not have room in my suitcase for a glorious bathrobe, since I was planning on buying one made out of the soft wool of at least fifty lambs. So I feel no guilt for this early Christmas gift-giving.

Unfortunately, to do this, we had to go to the mall, which is basically the absolute worst place to be the Sunday before Christmas. Actually it’s a lot like Dawn of the Dead, but with more zombies.

The original with the helicopter, not the remake with the dog


Everyone was kind of scary and aggressive, and were it not for my Florida theme park-bred abilities to negotiate crowds effectively, Steven and I might still be trapped there amidst the badly echoing “live” Christmas music. Luckily I am awesome and after much questing, we got what we came for.

Steven told me I was way weird for taking pictures of him trying on bathrobes, but I told him I NEEDED photographic evidence of adventurousness

And everyone knows going to the mall the Sunday before Christmas takes bravery, fortitude, cunning, feats of strength, and noble bearing. Basically, we are knights now is what I’m saying.

Steven is also trying out a new hat, as you can see. Usually he only wears classy fedoras like some kind of private detective (picture pending) so it is a big step.

13 Adventures: #9 Southern Season

So this is kind of a lame adventure because I didn’t bring my camera, but it is the only thing remotely adventurous I did today, besides play Super Mario 64, which is even less visually appealing. So: Southern Season is this giant store that sells gourmet food plus lots of tableware, but I never go in that section. They also have cooking utensils, pots, and pans, all extremely overpriced, plus greeting cards, some North Carolina/UNC merchandise, and a fancy restaurant attached. Do not be fooled by any of these add-ons. It is really all about the food.

And, for me, even more specifically, all about the chocolate. They have a massive chocolate counter where you can get almost anything from Godiva to locally made truffles. Plus another whole aisle of chocolate bars with anything from mint to pink peppercorns to bacon to varying kinds of sea salt in them. Personally, I am a huge fan of salty chocolate so I always stop here, at least to look! There’s also a section with international candy/treats and kinds that are hard to find now, like Fruit Stripe gum. My other favorite thing to get here is from the locally-made/North Carolina section, Carolina Moonshine Crunch. It is basically chex mix covered in white chocolate. I used to get almost the same thing when I was younger at this macadamia farm–except there it also had macadamia nuts in it and was called “White Trash”. Today we were mostly getting Christmas presents, but since we were stuck behind these meandering old people right next to the Carolina Moonshine Crunch I assumed it was a sign that I should buy some for myself. Basically, it is like eating a dream.

Also available at Southern Season: a cutting board shaped like North Carolina (guaranteed to make your bread or cheese taste 30% more like lighthouses and the Daniel Boone). Lighthouses and Daniel Boone are what North Carolina is all about.

13 Adventures: #8 Raspberry Chocovine Challenge!

After the success of last year’s Chocovine Challenge it was only a matter of time before we tried the same with Chocovine’s new flavor: Raspberry Chocovine!

As per normal Servery Challenge rules: contestants have ten minutes to make a drink that utilizes at least one shot of Raspberry Chocovine and anything else found in the kitchen. Drinks will be judged based on Tastiness, Presentation, and Creativity. Since there are no celebrity guest judges easily accessible in my apartment, a winner is decided through popular vote.

As per normal Patricia Servery Challenge strategy, I decided not to taste Raspberry Chocovine or indeed the drink I made until the actual judging. I figured it would just dash my spirits. GOTTA BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

The Entries:

Sprinkles!!!!! The only good part about this drink.

Contestant: Patricia
Drink Name: Cozy Winter Dream
Ingredients: Raspberry chocovine, milk, hot chocolate mix, raspberry vodka, whipped cream, sprinkles

Because it is so cold outside, I decided to go with a hot drink. This was a monumentally stupid idea. At first, all I could taste was whipped cream. Then, all I could taste was metal mixed with sugar. But at least it’s colorful!
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13 Adventures: #7 Puzzle!

Today I woke up feeling sick; it’s weird how colds can descend on you so quickly. Of course, it might have something to do with the heinous “wintery mix” that’s been going on all night–the worst kind of combination of snow/rain/sleet/ice.

There's no way I'm going outside to get a better picture

It might be hard to tell from the picture, but everything not covered in ice is covered in slush.

So even if I were feeling great, I would probably not be into going outside. As it is, the only thing I feel like doing is lying in bed and demanding soup. But I knew that wasn’t much of an adventure, so I decided to do a puzzle! Okay, that’s not much of an adventure either, but at least I was lying on the dining room floor instead of bed. Plus, it’s not Christmas without a puzzle!

It was only 550 pieces

Yay!

Now for some tea and a restorative nap.

13 Adventures: #6 Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

It seems like red velvet has been a big deal lately; more people I know are baking it in different iterations so I was pretty pleased about a month ago when I found this recipe for Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies. Finally I would jump on this bandwagon! I made them, and they turned out awesome. They were exactly the right consistency–cakey, but not gooey–and the frosting tasted great. I was in love, and vowed to make them again around Christmas time, maybe dyeing the frosting green to be festive.

So, because the YA Book Club Holiday party is today at my house (I always volunteer so that I can stay in pajamas till the last possible moment) I thought it was the perfect time to try!

Unfortunately, I was wrong. This recipe seemed so easy the first time I made it! I have no idea why this time was filled with mistakes. Probably I should have made them a day ahead so that I would not also be trying to vacuum/dust/sweep at the same time. But I haven’t given up on this recipe yet! It produced some passable cookies that I will still be putting out tonight. Okay, so some of them are a little bit crispy… okay, maybe a little bit blackened on the bottoms, and yeah I ran out of powdered sugar so the frosting isn’t as sweet and is a weirder consistency. But I bet no one will notice the difference.
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13 Adventures: #5 Homemade Christmas Tree

So Steven buys so much Coke that we have more Coke points than those polar bears. If only we could pay rent in Coke points. If only Coke points gave you anything I actually want. Alas.

In the category of things I don’t actually need, but now have because of Coke points, is a subscription to Cosmo. I have something of a sick fascination with Cosmo because I can’t believe they’re getting away with pretending to be “fun and fearless” while the underlying message of every single thing in their magazine is “Change yourself to be like everyone else.” Change yourself because you’ll never be happy with that haircut/makeup/boyfriend. Change yourself, because your irrational and underlying fears about your life are TRUE. Change yourself, because it’s your job as the woman to “decode” the men in your life, who, by the way, are always strange 1950s/Cave Men archetypes. I’m always surprised at the new angles they find to make women feel bad about themselves.

For instance, my personal favorite part of the January 2011 issue is a chart titled “What Your Ex’s Next Girlfriend Reveals About You”, which lists categories of women he might choose, and then explains what that reveals about you and, most importantly, what about yourself and your dating style it shows you need to improve. From this chart I also realized that Cosmo would categorize me “The Plain Jane” which is defined as someone who wears jeans and a t-shirt and “her idea of a beauty routine is a quick shampoo”. What does that say about the people who choose to date me after Cosmo’s apparent target audience? “His bland choice means that your beauty (and brains) intimidated the hell out of him.” I love how they worked that parenthetical implication that not wearing make up is for stupid girls in there. Anything to sell more sparkely eyeliner.

Anyway, since I am the bland choice, I do not actually want to keep these copies of Cosmo around to cherish for all time so lately I’ve been coming up with ways to recycle them in an artistic manner. I’m used pictures/words from them for collages and things before, but I wanted to do something that would knock a good chunk out of the stack. Unfortunately, a lot of the ideas I want to try involve a glue gun, but then I found this tutorial on how to make a tabletop Christmas tree by folding pages. Yay! Easy enough to accomplish while watching Arrested Development!

Okay, so it's more like a Christmas cone, whatever

This did require folding every page, so it took awhile, but other than that it was super easy.

The covers were a little harder, that's why there's a slight gap in the back

Just in time for my book club’s holiday party tomorrow!

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