Devils Food Cupcakes with Raspberry Buttercream Icing

I am incredibly stressed. Actually, stressed does not even begin to describe how I feel, but I can't think of any other words for it. Today I found myself so overwhelmed that I was literally in a trance staring at the wall because I didn't even know where to begin with the millions of things I have to do. So, to try and keep myself from freaking out (didn't work, just held the total meltdown at bay for a few hours) I decided to do some baking.

Today's treat? Devils food cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting, topped with a raspberry filled with chocolate ganache. Um, can I just say YUM! I need to bake more often, because each cupcake I make seems to be far better than the last. These are quite delicious! Chocolate and raspberry were made for each other, I swear!

So, without further ado, here is today's final product:

Now that school has started back up I can do a lot more baking! It's wonderful having a place to take all the extra cupcakes. I want to bake them because I enjoy the actual baking part; I only really want to eat one or two cupcakes. Drop these off in the lounge tomorrow morning though, and I bet they'll be gone by 9am haha.

In completely unrelated news, today during Sunday school I was holding the elevator door open waiting for all the kids to get in, and one little girl looked up at me and asked if I was an Aggie. I said yes, and asked her how she knew (thinking maybe I had said it). She pointed to my ring and told me her dad is an Aggie and so is she. LOVE that a 5 year old can already pick out an aggie ring haha! Those parents sure are raising her right ;-)

Walking Advertisement

When I was in college I had this friend who was a walking advertisement for a certain place on campus. No need to go into details, but the two of us used to joke that they should literally pay her because she was such a strong advocate of their service and pushed others to go there too. She would talk about it all the time, and rave about how great it had been for her. Like I said, walking advertisement.

I have decided that Jillian Michaels should pay me for being her walking advertisement. Seriously, my new job could be to promote her 30 day shred workout video. I'm obsessed with it! I feel like I have been talking about it all week at work. Every day someone else asks me what I have been doing to lose weight and I go into my spiel about this video. I have it down pat. Every time I include key points about what makes the video great, easy to do, and effective. I am a total nerd! haha If you click in the comments of the post before this you can see I even gave my little spiel there. I'm weird, I know.

30 Day Shred

Some of you know that I have been doing the 30 day shred workout this summer. I started to try it at the beginning of the summer, but when I went out of town I missed a few days, and when I came back I never did it again. Well, about a month ago when I got back from Vegas, I decided to try it again. I figured I had 26 days until school started so it was the perfect time as I would be just about done by the time I was back to work. This time around I PROMISED myself that I was going to do it for 30 straight days. I told myself that if I didn't do it every day for 30 days then I was going to have to start over at day 1. I am happy to report that today was day 30, and I did not miss one single day! I am super proud of myself for sticking with it!

I hadn't weighed myself pretty much all summer. When I gain weight I am extremely hesitant to step on the scale, because it sort of really freaks me out (and weight gain seems to have been the trend for the past 2 years since leaving college ... not good). I knew what I weighed at the beginning of the summer, and I didn't want to weigh myself again until I was pretty sure I had lost a good amount of weight, like 10 pounds or so. After starting back to work this week, I had a number of people comment that I looked great, like I had lost a good amount of weight. I don't really see it; but I guess I see myself every day. (although, if you follow me on twitter you know that a week or so ago I tried on some old clothes that haven't fit in a year or so and they all fit, so I guess I had at least toned up a little bit). Today, at the end of my 30 day shred workout, I weighed myself.

GUESS WHO LOST 16 POUNDS?!?

YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY!

Guess who has a whole closet of clothes that fit her again, and thus does not need to buy new clothes for the fall? Double YAY!

Today is a marvelous day! :)

Is my leg broken?!?

I don't have a clue who actually reads this blog, so you may or may not already have heard the story about me falling down the stairs. If you have, skip the next paragraph and move on to the third. If you haven't, keep reading.

3 1/2 weeks ago I was running late for church on Sunday. I put on a new pair of shoes, headed out the door, and down the stairs to my car. Since these shoes were new, they were quite slick on the bottom. Can you see where this is headed? I most definitely fell down the concrete stairs at my apartment, and it sure did hurt! I sort of laid on the steps for a minute trying to decide if my leg was broken or not ... I decided not. My leg was in some severe pain, and was completely cut and bruised up, but like I said, I was running late for church, so I just had to suck it up and deal.

Well, it's been 3 1/2 weeks since this falling down the stairs incident. My leg STILL hurts like heck to even touch, and you can still see a large bruise on it (or it might just be a scar from where it was scraped, I can't really tell). Well, since it has been so long since it happened I started to really inspect it to see what the heck is wrong since it's not getting better. I've asked a few people and the consensus is that I have a lump on my leg. Either one part is inflamed into a bump, or one part is dented in. Either way, My shin is not flat anymore. I know people can get bumps on their head if they fall, but can you also get bumps on your leg?!? Or is this something I may need to worry about? Thoughts?

Before I leave you, I thought I would share a random story from my day. This morning I was reading a story to my class and they were sitting on the carpet in front of me. This one little girl kept inching closer and closer to my feet. Before I knew it, she was tapping her finger on my big toenail. I sort of moved my foot and ignored it, but that didn't stop her. She tapped/rubbed my big toenail throughout the entire story! Kids can be so strange sometimes! haha

hugs

Today my kids were sitting at their desks working silently (shocking compared to last year's chatty class lol!) and I was sitting at my guided reading table grading the math pretests they had taken earlier in the day. One little boy stood up and walked over to stand next to me. I turned to him, about to ask him what he needed and why he was out of his seat, and before I could say anything he blurted out, "Ms. McCormack, you were the nicest teacher in first grade and I am SO lucky to have you in second grade!" Before I could say a single word he wrapped his arms around my neck tightly and is gave me the biggest hug ever. That made my whole day! :)

first day of school

As far as first days go, today was surprisingly wonderful! (shockingly enough haha)

The first day is never fun. For one, the kids can come in the room at 7:30. That means you have to have something to keep them occupied independently from 7:30 until about 8:15 when announcements are over. That extra 20 minutes of kid time in the classroom is killer! Secondly, outclass is only 30 minutes long, not 45. That's another 15 minutes with kids that you don't normally have.  I like my breaks, they are necessary, the first day is hard haha.

Anyway, I had a bunch of very excited kids this morning.  One nice thing about teaching kids you already know is that there isn't much of a teacher-student learning curve.  They came in, we went quickly over rules, and we got working. We actually did real work today, not just busy work! It's not often you teach much of anything other than rules the first day, so I would call this a definite success.

And, I have to admit, it does make me feel pretty good to be stopped by MANY of these second graders so they can tell me, "It's not fair, I wish I could be in your class this year!" There is no shortage of love for me from these kids. I even got a first day gift from a student who is not in my class this year haha.

I'll update more later, but for now I have got to figure out what the heck we are going to do all day tomorrow! I have wasted 4 hours just sitting around this evening haha. Just wanted to let you know that I survived day one.  1 day down, 179 to go.

*edit*

I forgot to add that I got a great gift from another student that is in my class this year. Her mom is a teacher (on my team actually) so she knows what it's like. Anyway, she brought me some chocolate kisses, a scented oil diffuser to make my room smell nice, and a bottle of ibuprofen. I laughed out loud when I pulled that bottle of ibuprofen out of the gift bag. What an appropriate gift for the first day! haha

Quilt Retreat 2009

This past weekend was been a nice relaxing break from the reality of my life.  I probably didn't have time to take a break from my life (actually, I KNOW I didn't have time to take a break), but oh well.  

Just like last summer, I drove up to Milford, Texas (North of Waco about half way to Dallas/Ft Worth) with a bunch of ladies for a quilting retreat. We stayed at this bed and breakfast that is made for groups of quilters or scrapbookers.  It's really nice, because apart from the rooms where you stay, they have this large craft room set up so that each person staying has their own large workstation. They have cutting tables set up, ironing boards, and craft walls, so it's very convenient for you to work.  Plus, they fix these amazing meals so you pretty much get to just stuff yourself silly and quilt for a whole weekend.

I wasn't really on my game this year (perhaps that's because I feel so lethargic about life in general) but I did manage to get one project completely pieced together (no picture because it may end up being a gift), 

help with a baby quilt for Molly, 

and make some very good progress on my scrap quilt I started working on last summer.

 But mostly, it was nice to just sit around and chat.

Year two of our quilt retreat was a success ... and year three is already booked for next summer.

Unfortunately, now it's back to real life; and real life is not so good right now ...