Bakebakebake

I love to bake.

My last house had a cramped kitchen, which made baking quite difficult.  My new home as a big, wonderful kitchen with a huge island.

Which means I've been baking :)

So far, I'm most proud of my peach cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting I made to welcome my roommate Brianna back from her mission trip to India. I subbed 1/2 of the oil in the cupcakes with applesauce, and you couldn't tell at all.  And the frosting was from my Martha baking book, so of course that was a winner.

Yes, that is "welcome home" in some sloppy Hindi. :)

The smells of soil and mildew

My new house has been an adventure thus far.

It can't be more than a few decades old, but after years of college-aged guys living in it, it has the wear of a much older home.  Broken electrical sockets, spit on the walls (about 15 or 20 feet off the ground... kind of impressive, actually - and the reason we haven't been able to clean it off yet), mildewy old carpets, broken blinds, dented doors (I think the guys who lived ere used to kick in the door instead of turning the knob to enter the house...).  And the list goes on.

At least we have a nice landlord who is fixing a lot of it.

And the house does have its perks.  Mostly, my beautiful little garden that is doing quite nicely.

LOVE this basil plant.  It grows back like crazy.

My adorable little chives.

 Cucumbers!  I think they might have gotten a disease though... we'll see how they pan out.

Peppers, but I think they're growing too slowly to get any peppers before it gets too cold for them.

Lettuce!  I had my first little harvest today, so they can grow me some more :)

<3 my Marigolds

And Zinnias!

Corn!

The house also come with some nice yard bonuses, like these lovely little flowers, and a huge plum tree:

Also we live about a 5 minute walk from some delicious wild blackberry bushes.

Also I've been able to decorate a bit.

Also we have nice friends who take care of us and fix things :)

Ah, this house.  Both terrifyingly janky and wonderfully awesome.

Updating, finally!

Hey there lovelies :)

It's been a while!  Whoops.  I now keep up a blog for work, and so I forget that I have my own blog to update.

So, so much has changed in the last two months.  I moved into a wonderful new home with some friends from church, I started leading a Life Group (Bible study) at my church, I started an organic garden, almost all of the other members at my organization have ended their terms, and I'm gearing up for a position change at my organization in a little over a month.

I'll have to update more soon.  But basically, life is good.

Oh, other than my general frustration about how things tend to work out in this country.  I love America, but nonsense like this drives me crazy: the Supreme Court passing up a case basically because too many female employees were mistreated by WalMart.  Nonsense.