A little birthday celebration

It's really nice to be able to spend the day out with friends, tiring but really nice for my head! Last weekend it was Lindsey's birthday and we all went and got our makeup done before dinner.  It was nice to get made up!

Glittery Polish

I've been really experimenting with glittery nail polish lately, where I actually buy it and paint it myself.  I was recenetly introductedt to Deborah Lippman nail polish and seriously BALKED at the 18 dollar price tag.  Really? But one day somehow, well I know how, I was suckered into buying two colors.  One is a really light bluish with subdued pink and blue circular glitter.  I had to have it.  I finally tried it out over the weekend and I fell in love.  Not only did it come out so lovely, but it went on so smoothly and hasn't even come close to chipping.  It just painted on so easily, I now totally fully support the high price tag!

A check up week...

This week I had a check up in nyc.  I had a check up with my surgeon from my abscess drainage and all things are a-okay there! And my usual pulmonary function tests, x ray, blood work, chat with my transplant doc...My lung function is holding stable at 22%, which is good news, but also bad news since it keeps me hanging at the same place on the list (aka, I'm not getting sicker fast enough to move up) but it's also good I'm not sicker.  My weight is at 83 lbs which is super! But the visit was a discouraging to me, because well the two people that are my size and my blood type are still ahead of me, and they have been there for months and months and months, so that likely means lungs aren't coming this summer, and that really crushed me.  They will more likely come in the fall or even winter (unless something miraculous happens and those two girls get lungs or more donors come -- my doctor says there has been a donor drought, sadly.)  I'm just so tired of being tired and sleeping half the day away and missing out on things, and I have a time line in my head -- lungs in summer means vacation in fall (I need one more than you know) singing up for that metal smith class in the fall, buying fall clothes in normal adult sizes, etc etc.  So my time line keeps getting moved further and further out.  Wednesday I had a little pity party for myself, but got a very nice email from my friend Judy (who went with my Tuesday) that lungs will come when they are meant to come.  And I got really good advice from my friend Jess who said: let yourself be sad, you can! And it's true I'm allowed to be discouraged and sad, so I cried a lot on Wednesday and then by Thursday I was over it.  I didn't confide in many people that I was sad, Laura was in Vegas and I didn't want to bother her, and Lindsey is coming off a great birthday week and I didn't want to be a downer, well at least not until we went to the movies next week and then I could cry to her in person, hahaha.  But I know lungs will come when they are supposed to, and I know that plans will happen when they are meant to, vacations aren't going anywhere, metal smith classes will come again in January, clothes will always be there waiting for me to buy them, and my friends I know will wait for me to be the healthy Natasha again, I know they aren't going anywhere and hopefully they aren't tired of me yet being 112 years old when I hang out with them...

I needed some retail therapy after Tuesday and I found the perfect thing, this weekend it will be two years that Michael Jackson has passed and a huge auction of his stuff is happening -- I am eying a pair of sunglasses of his that I can wear!  

Making Whoopie Pies

Remember I told you guys the story about how my acupuncturist's husband cleaned out the orange juice explosion that happened in my trunk? Well I heard he liked chocolate, so I decided to make him whoopie pies as thank you.  I have a special pan for whoopie pies that I got from Williams Sonoma and it's great (Laura also pointed out you could make muffin tops with it)

The recipe I use is what came with the pan:

 

Whoopie Pies William Sonoma Style

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup dutch process cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

6 TBS unsalted butter, room temp

34 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg, room tep

1 cup buttermilk, room temp

Filling

2 1/4 cups confectioners sugar

5 TBS unsalted butter, room temp

3 TBS milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp salt

 

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Grease the pan. 

 

I'm just going to be really honest here and say I basically put all the ingredients together in my mixer and let it go.  I'm not a baker so it's hard for me to do it step by step - and well it came out totally great so....You can do however you choose!

The filling is super easy.  But it's SUPER SUPER SUPER sweet, so cut back on the sugar or something if you don't like stuff that is really sweet!

Here they are all packed up to go to their new home.

A kitchen trick for buttermilk

Have you ever been in the middle of making a recipe that calls for buttermilk and you don't have any? ell there is an easy kitchen trick where you can make your own substitute really easily!

Take 1 cup of milk and either one tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice
Place the vinegar or lemon juice in the bottle of a measuring cup and add the milk up to the one cup line and let stand for five minutes.  And there you go -- you have a perfect buttermilk substitute and it really works!

There is also another way to actually make buttermilk if you have heavy cream.  Fill a jar halfway with heavy cream (like a canning jar)  Start shaking back and forth until the cream thickens and eventually turn into whipped cream.  Keep shaking untilthe whipped cream turns into a yellow glob (butter) and seperate liiquid (butter milk)

Pour the butter milk out of the jar and use it anytime you need buttermilk!

Tea

Laura got me these really awesome blooming teas.  Have you guys ever heard of them? I know some of you are into tea too! They are little balls of tea to brew.

Weekend Cuteness