Cake

I didn't used to like to bake, but in recent months I have discovered it can be fun and creative :) Thanks to a great family recipe that goes back I'm sure for MANY generations (Good 'ol Duncan Hines), it is very easy. Ok, so maybe it isn't my family recipe for sure, but their mixes make delicious treats!

So here is a cake I made for Perfusionist week at work. Our Perfusionists are the people that run the heart/lung bypass machine during open heart surgery. It has a bag of AB+ Red Blood Cells that are hanging on an IV pole, ready to be infused. However, I took a little heat for using that as decoration on their cake, because they pride themselves in not having to transfuse units of blood to patients during surgery. Well, my excuse was it was easier than trying to pump icing onto a cake that would look like their machines. So here is my cake and a picture of the machine I determined was too difficult for my artistic skills.



















The next cake attempt was a birthday cake for Steve for his birthday. He likes airplanes so I made him an airplane cake! It has a bi-plane flying in the air on it:)




So another thing that will make this post interesting is the fact that I don't know how to rotate the picture so you can look at it like a normal person. But it's there nonetheless!

Ok, that is it for now.

Trip to California!

I can't believe I actually DID take a mini vacation this summer, but it slipped my mind. Maybe because I didn't actually take any time off work, instead I squeezed in the trip on one of my 4 day weekends I get occasionally at work. Anyhow, it was a really fun time FULL of talking and laughing and girl time.
It was a trip my sister and I went on to celebrate her birthday in June and act like big kids during a very long day at Disneyland. Sadly, we decided to only bring one camera with us around Disney, and it wasn't mine, so I don't have any pictures of us in the park, but I'll work on getting them from my sister soon.

We left on a Thursday night after a full day of work and arrived in LA around 11pm. Brooke picked us up in the airport and we didn't stop talking until 2am and I forced everyone to go to bed, because A) I had been up since 5am Thursday and B) We were getting up at 7am Friday to go to Disneyland!

Like I said, I'll work on getting pictures from the park from Lisa and get them posted. We spent all day in Disney and used the long lines to continue the non-stop gab fest. I have to say it was my best Disney experience to date. Going with someone that lives 20min away from the park, let me tell ya, they know how to work the system of those fast-pass thingys and when to go on which rides. AND if you go to the park anytime soon, it is SO worth paying for a locker to keep your junk in and only carry the minimal amount of belongings with you. Ok, enough about something I have no pictures of.

When we weren't at Disney, we were relaxing in the sun, getting SO burned (we all peeled for weeks afterwards... hello skin cancer) and yes, continued to talk.

Here is a lovely photo of Brooke all dressed up to walk the, oh 20-30 feet or so it takes to get to the beach outside her cute little house. She lives in Long Beach right across from the Naples area in CA... I hope that information is correct.









Brooke's family room. So wonderfully patriotic with red, white, and blue color scheme. It's very fitting.











Here are Lisa and Brooke bathing in the wonderful rays of California sun. This is where we all got burned to a crisp. Aloe and Advil were our best friends for the rest of the trip and several days after as well. We were all so mad at ourselves for being so stupid. It is obvious we were pasty white... my excuse is I just wanted some color so I didn't look so sickly and ghostly white. I don't get much sun exposure from inside the OR.




If you look really closely, you can see the lifeguards that are in the background. Totally reminded me of Baywatch, but funny thing, they didn't go running across the beach in slow motion with their orange floating devices while we were there. Oh well.






So we also had a day full of shopping and food adventures. Brooke took us out to Indian food for dinner one night and Greek food, where Sammy joined us, the next night. All in all, it was a fantastic trip and it all went by way to quickly. We were exhausted by the end of it all, and at risk of Brooke hating me for years to come, I have to post this pic to show just how tired we all were...

Old Happenings, New Post

Hello Friends! Aren't you SO proud of me?! I have a blog :)

So life is pretty uneventful right now. I'm busy working in the CVOR at St. Vincent's and mostly loving it. There is rumor about me getting to learn how to scrub in on cases soon, but in the mean time I'm working to learn as much as I can from the Circulating role. I am also having fun finding cute material and making my own scrub caps for work.
I was going to be brave and model one for you as well... but I look like a cancer patient with them on. So this is a picture of them on the floor. I made the green, pink, turquoise/brown, and purple ones... the other two are store bought and I have plenty more in my locker at work.



This seems a bit strange to be blogging about myself!

Well since I'm low man on the seniority list at work, I haven't really taken any recent vacations which would give me the opportunity to take new pictures... so I'm going to post some old ones of fun times!
This is a picture from Summer of 2007 when I went camping with various members of my family at Big Lake... SO pretty!

Here is one of Mom and Dad and Me and Steve at the end of the week... looking fantastic in my opinion!


Steve and I on a canoe ride.

The grownups in the "kitchen" working on some breakfast. (Aunt Judy, Mom, Dad, Uncle Rick). Obviously cooking breakfast becomes an event to watch when enjoying the wilderness:)

I am pretty sure this is Aunt Judy (although it could possibly be Joan, Judy's twin sister) with my 2nd cousin? (is that what the daughter of my cousin becomes?) Stella... enjoying some s'mores around the campfire.

This is me "fishing" with Stella's fishing pole. You catch a fish EVERY time and EVERY time it looks like the same fish on the end of your pole! I'm not very successful when I try real fishing, so this was pretty exciting!

Pretty exciting stuff, huh? Well in the process of creating this post, I have come across more pictures for more posts and vacations I took more recently that slipped my mind! Stay tuned :)