Cupcake Wars!

This is the audition video my friend Marion and I made for Cupcake Wars. Well, Mark actually gets all of the video making credit, and we get credit for creative costumes and talking mostly toward the camera.

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Thanks!

Weddings, funerals, cookies and an emotional readjustment

Last week I traveled to South Carolina to spend time with my amazing family and attend an amazing wedding with them in North Carolina. While I was there I made a wedding cake for 100 people, had the opportunity to drive through a beautiful mountain range in the Nantahala National Forest, and ate a few too many of my Uncle David's pecan chocolate chip cookies.

Life has been showing up in extremes the past few weeks (a wedding, a death, a pregnancy, an illness, and lots of transition) and after the wedding last weekend my extended family traveled back to Ithaca with my mother and I to spend some unexpectedly extended time together. Friday afternoon when the last of my family left I was feeling sad and lonely.

I decided this morning to try my hand at some pecan chocolate chip cookies. Partly because baking relaxes me and partly because thinking about these cookies is a fond reminder of how much I enjoy my family and am grateful for them no matter what the circumstance. My cookies were good but not nearly as good as my Uncle David's. What can I say, I think I'm at a pecan disadvantage up here in NY, plus he's had a lot more practice.

Good Bye Cupcakes

My friend Meg left for Ohio last weekend. At various moments during the day I find myself wondering where she is and what she's doing. Did she leave NY yet? Stop at a Flying J for fuel? Settle into her new apartment? Go grocery shopping for the first time at a new store that's hard to navigate now but will be old hat within a few weeks?

Before she left we traded sweets for a hair cut. I requested bangs and she requested vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. I love trades and I miss Meg.