My Bucket List

My Bucket List of International Travel

 

 

 

     I will probably have many bucket lists over the course of my life, I know most people have one but lets face it. I am definitely not like most people! So here are some of the locations I would like to see and what I would like to do! I will cross them off as I come to do them.

 

 

 

 

• Go to Russia; See Moscow and St. Petersburg
• Backpack across Europe (June 2016)
• Go to Africa; Do a safari (June 2016)
• Backpack across South America (Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, 2017?)
• Climb Machu Picchu, Pet an alpaca (2017?)
• Go to Chichen Itza; Climb the Mayan Pyramids (Oct-Dec 2016?)
• Touch land on all 7 Continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, Antarctica, South America, North America, Australia/Oceania
• Scuba dive off of the Gulf of somewhere
• Swim with the sharks
• Explore Chernobyl
• Visit all of the Disneyland's in the World (Paris, California, Tokyo, Thailand)
• Get my international drivers permit
• See all the Nordic Countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, etc)
• Try a new Pastry in every country I travel too
• See North Korea, South Korea, China
• Go to Japan with a friend with mine

To be continued...

This Girl Is Back In Town




One of my photos of St. Basils

       After a three year hiatus I am back and ready to blog! The past three years have I have accomplished quite a few things. I achieved my dream of going to Moscow, Russia, where I spent two of the best weeks of my life and I will be making a blog post about this in the days to come. I found out I am petrified of planes and got a terrific job as a receptionist. You will be seeing these posts within the next few days, mostly about Russia not about being a receptionist though ;) I must say my typing skills are vastly improving though.

          I will be posting on cute things I do from day to day such as yesterday was Muffin Monday and everyone enjoyed my homemade blueberry muffins and homemade chocolate scones! Tomorrow I will be getting ready for Easter which is already this Sunday, can you believe that because I for one sure cannot! I will be making vanilla cake inside of an egg, a real egg. From the chicken and all! Talk about walking on eggshells. Trying to empty these darn eggs without breaking the shell has to be the most difficult thing I have every tried to achieve, it roughly takes me about three minutes per egg to empty them out and I can't just waste egg you know? I happened upon an 18pk carton of eggs at my local Kroger for $1.99 which I went crazy and just had to buy a few cartons and now I have so many eggs that I don't know what to do with so I'm coming up with all sorts of ways to use these eggs, mainly with the baking of sinful sweets of course!

       So what I'm doing currently is using a nail and very gently poking a hold in each end of the egg and placing paper towel over one end and blowing into it to get the egg to blow out into a bowl. I do this with however many eggs I need to bake whatever I'm baking and then I lay the empty eggs onto a paper and place them in a hot soapy bowl of water and let them soak about and hour, dry and repeat. After this has been done you can use vinegar and food coloring and just paint the eggs very gently whatever color you choose and then let it dry for roughly 6 hours. After drying, place the eggs in a cupcake pan with parchment paper in the bottom of each cup to the hold the egg upright while baking, I used small cupcake holders. Make either a box or I prefer homemade vanilla, chocolate, strawberry etc. cake mix and pour very gently into one of the holes on the egg (For a fun surprise try to add Easter oriented sprinkles or dye your cake mix!). Fill up to whatever your directions say (I.E. 1/2 full, 2/3 full, the cake will rise) and after baking let cool and TA-DA sweet sweet cake inside of its own little holder! I would make a remark about the egg making it harder for me to eat a million of them, but lets face it. Nothing can keep me away from cake. Personally I will be filling my cake with lemon custard but you can fill yours with a bit of frosting, custard or whatever you like!

I'm proud and very excited to announce that my travel buddy and I will be backpacking across Europe throughout June and July of 2016!

 

 

Frosty the Sandman

Hello blog followers! Ya'll probably forgot about little ole' Ashley. But she's back and ready to fill your screen with knowledge! Now onto the topic. Winter has arrived, at last? I'm not to sure about that as you all know Christmas is over (to me it was a literal x-mas! I was so tired of wrapping). Christmas came and went in one foul swoop, only if I could have shopped that way! I'm a cheap shopaholic. As other places awoke on Christmas morning to possibly snow and the fun filled day of presents and snow, and snow. My city awoke to a good 70 degree day with no frozen water in sight nor snowflakes, just sand. Everywhere! I should have made a frosty the sandman!

                                                                                                                                               Now I gotta say we may not have had a tree, but we had a treadmill. So instead of the presents under the tree, we had presents under the treadmill. Which is better because it doesn't have to be watered! I even managed to hang the stockings from it. I think everyone got some pretty cool presents (not just from my thrifty shopping either). One of my favorites was this awesome 15 piece nail manicure kit I got. It's pretty great!

 

Not to crawl to another topic but right after chirstmas is my little brothers birthday (Woo! The big 11)! I took him to Chuck E Cheese's, you know, where a kid can be a kid? Well an adult cannot be a kid sadly! I tried crawlin through the the tubes only to be sore as everything today! Also the very loud noises that some of the rides made, now make me think differently about saying it is a place where an adult can be a kid. More like where an adult can pay a hefty fine!

Proper Procrastionation?

Is there such a thing as 'proper procrastination', I'm not sure. I've never thought of myself as a procrastinator. I've always had this theory 'when presented with the work, get it done' but lately I've been dreading all this work! I mean, it's not like I'm swamped with work, or papers to type, or any pre-calculus (That just reminded me of my homework, due Tuesday) Ugh! Just the things are seeming like a huge task. I'm pretty sure that I'm procrastinating writing this and my English paper (I chose this over the latter). Why have I sunk into this never ending paper void. Hmm. I hope I'm not getting a case of senioritis! Well regardless I think I need to kick myself back into gear and get this work done! 
      I know everyone procrastinates, isn't it easier than working anyway? People procrastinate from everything, grocery shopping, errands, homework, cleaning, cleaning out all the mess in your car that has accumulated, and shopping at the mall, or online (The lady's know I'm lying here). Maybe it's my new adulthood (I turned the big legal number 18!) or maybe it's just me being lazy. I guess there's no telling what happened for me to turn from overly efficient to procrastinator with efficiency. Well regardless it's driving me crazy! I wish I could nag myself as much as I do my boyfriend (That'll be in another post coming up)! I need to pry myself from this situation (much like I do with my Halloween candy)! The easiest place to procrastinate is the internet! Stop procrastinating and get to work (I wish I would follow that advice)! Well guys and gals, stay tuned for more non-procrastinated posts!

Stupendous Senior Year?

The Book says 'Russian Language'

      School has begun here in Arizona as of August 1, 2013! Early compared to other states! The beginning of my Senior year. So much to do and so little time. Junior year came and went as quick as a rabbit when he see's my grandfather with a BB gun (He's the protector of the garden). This is the end of one part of my life, a very long four year part that is! Everyone has questions for me. Where am I going after this, What do I plan on doing, Do I have any unusual possibly unstable plans or dreams? As a child I always wrote down that I wanted to be a Defense lawyer for animals. That was my plan from Kindergarten to my Freshman year. Now I have no idea. Over the past four years I have learned more about myself than I thought I would. I discovered my love of languages, love of teaching and my love of baking as well as talent. I've entered baking competitions and read poems to the head of the near by College's Slavic Languages Department. What am I to do.

     Wouldn't it be great if I could combine them? A Russian bakery. A pastry chef while being a translator on the side. A Russian bakery in the U.S.? A teacher of languages while baking on the side? There is so much I can and could do it blows my mind. Now I must apply for scholarships and answer a million and one questions still with the same ole' answer. It splits me in two to choose one, the other or the other. All I can say is that I know I have a good future ahead of me and we'll wait and see. I get tons of college questions. Where, When, Why, Major and Minor. Same answer! I'll be sure to let EVERYONE know when I decide! 


      So far it seems that my Senior Year will be filled with questions, comments and concerns. I think I'll be looking into a comment box this year! In the mean time stay tuned in for more information on this gal's stupendous Senior year!
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Fantabulous Fair?

     I'm sure we all know that well, fried foods and the fair go together! They go together better than cake and me! Mmmm! Well yesterday I took a trip on down to our yearly fair with my friend! This was the first year that I had gone without my parents! After a more than needed amount of planning my friend and I drove off to the fair grounds! I love the road to the fair grounds! It's wavy and just amazing, now the one thing I don't like, is, CONSTRUCTION! The signs say go 40 mph through it, no. I'm afraid that whoever is behind me will be going slower today. 
     
     Thankfully my lovely culinary arts teacher let her and I leave 15 minutes early, which gave us time to find some foods to sneak in! Needless to say, 20 minutes later we were on our way to the fair with food and packed ready to go. My plan was correct when we arrived because there was NO ONE in line for the fair yet! I despise the long line of cars to get in! We parked in the first row and after spending $33 we had our admission tickets and wristbands! Woo!

      After arriving we discovered that the rides didn't open til 3pm! We were there at 1:15pm. So we had just enough time to tour all the halls, buy a few things, scope out the good rides. Then sit in line for 20 minutes and complain about the never ending heat and dust of the Arizona Fair! You think with a line they would open maybe five minutes early. Nope. They opened the rides at EXACTLY 3pm. We had til 8pm to have fun and arrive home. We went crazy on all the rides for about 3 1/2 hours til my friend (Who had eaten bad food the day earlier) could no longer stand it. Then we spent the next hour being lazy and watching some odd acrobatic show and getting ice cream! Woo! We played a few games, won some toys and in the end had a great time!

     As we were leaving I bought some wood roses ($1 a piece, but the guy let me buy 3 for $2.50!), I picked up some kettle corn for my grandfather (great present), and continued homeward. My family has always given away our wristbands afterwards, so I continued onwards with the tradition. I ended up offering a lady my wristband and she looked at me like I was trying to sell her drugs! BAM free $30! Why not take it. Blah! So I gave it to another girl who just about worshiped me afterwards and onwards we were! 

     So in the end! Go to the fair! All of you! It's fantabulous! Look for the cheapest day (wristbands, discounted admission) and enjoy! I brought 80$ and left with no money, but some great pictures and an amazing time (also covered in dirt)! So stay tuned for more terrific tales brought to by this glamorous gal!

    

As the Cake Flour Settles...

      As the cake flour settles and the floors are mopped, it has come to this...The end! It is over! The catering event has now passed. It took a week to prepare the lovely cakes, and it was all over in two nights! Everything was gone in two nights! I had been looking forward to the catering event for three weeks for it to come and go as fast as my cakes (My cakes disappeared pretty fast)! We made lists of who was where and who was doing what. The tables were decorated and made beauteous. Tea was prepared, Uniforms were inspected, Hair was tied up and ingredients counted.

      Before the catering event I mixed up two different types of cake. I created a chocolate cake and a yellow cake (from scratch) then my friend and I mixed a vanilla butter cream with a hint of orange icing for the yellow cake and a chocolate butter cream for the chocolate cake both had an apricot glaze (magnificent)! We then created some amazing thought up question mark cookies to celebrate the murder mystery production out of shortbread with a hint of lemon! Then we coated them with either cocoa powder or powdered sugar!

      We had around 11 people catering both nights! The second night was easier to go through and I wasn't nearly as sore. When I got home the first night and sat on my bed, Immediately I thought 'Where'd my legs go?'. We had a staff of four as the waiters! My three fantabulous and friends and I! It was pretty great! The food was said to be amazing and one lady remarked that her baby loved my chocolate cake! Well all in all, It was fantastic! Everyone worked great and take this tip! When working with chocolate watch your sleeves!