Peppermint Pleasure

Ahh....the perfect thing to have after a long Friday at school, before a three and a half hour marching band practice in the cold.

Peppermint tea.

= love.

4th Festivities

Ahhh....it sure is good to be home! I'm going to try and really enjoy this week here before I leave on Saturday...for the rest of the month. 

Our family had a great time up in Bar Harbor for the weekend. As I mentioned in my previous post, my mom, dad, brother, aunt and her boyfriend, and I went for a hike up Acadia Mountain. We did Flying Mountain last year which is pretty much just a big hill, so this was more strenuous, but more fun too! X kept being crazy and jumping off of rocks and scaring people and pretending to be a monkey while caw-ing like a crow. Don't ask me what was going through that boy's mind, because I don't know. On both the way down and up there were some nice rock ledges to scramble up and down which was quite fun, although that was the time that I was glad that I had left my camera at home, else it probably would have been smushed onto the rocks. It was very nice and windy at the top which was a relief, so we stayed and rested up there for a bit. It was very cool to look all around and see all the other mountains in the area. It's crazy how many mountains fit onto Mount Desert Island...

We went out to dinner that night which was nice, and then for the 4th we started out the day by going into town for the big 4th of July parade. Who knew that Bar Harbor put on such a long and awesome parade? There were all sorts of mini racecars and floats and firetrucks and clowns and such. plus they all throw candy and because I have been marching in parades with the band for so long a had forgotten how much fun it is to dive for the candy thrown into the streets. Bwahaha. One of life's greatest pleasures. 

After the parade, there were festivities in the park so I had some french fries, a cherry and blue raspberry snowcone and I also got a wicked cool wallet before we left for the campground again.  The afternoon was pretty chill, we went swimming, read books and lounged around and ended the day with a meal of chicken salad sandwiches (or fake chicken in the case of my mom and I), potato salad, and corn on the cob with homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert. YUM!

We headed home after that and so now I'm just chilling here this week before band camp starts, doing laundry and a whole lot of practicing. Somebody around here is shooting to get first chair, if you know what I mean... ;)

Of Trampolines and Friendly Toes

Hello everyone! Yesterday, well, last night actually, I spent the night at my dear friend Lucy's house. As always we had lots of fun bouncing on her trampoline and naming a photograph 'friendly toes' among other things. She was feeling a little left out that she was going away and not going to be around during the whole guest post fest this summer, so we thought we would do a little conversation post for today because we haven't had one of those in a while. I will type in black and Lucy will type in purple. Why don't you say hello, Lucy?

Hello, Lucy.

Lucy, I'm pretty sure that I am Sally, not Lucy, YOU are Lucy, although we do get mixed up sometimes....

Pshhh, ladeeda. I'm hungry. GIMME A STRAWBERRY.

They're out in the kitchen and for the taking......

Your brother is a very boring person to text, Sally. Have you ever noticed that?

LOL, no, but I can imagine. So Lucy, what are your plans for the day after we eat strawberries, finish this post and do some trampolining?

I'll morph into a potato and sit on the couch doing something completely unproductive. Ya know, the usual.

Oh Lucy...I think I will do lots of trumpet playing (the usual), I need to practice a piece that I'm playing in church on Sunday, an audition and solo piece I need for band camp, and also Bring Him Home for next week at camp. Oh and I'm getting this reiki attunement thing which is like opening up a channel in you for energy to flow and I can like send good energy to people through my hands. It's pretty cool.

So you could send good happy energy to say, our dear friend Ttam? 

Who is Ttam? Wait, I don't wanna know.....SUBJECT CHANGE!

He's in your section, silly goose. But how about we change the subject to cheesecake?

I am pretty sure that on every conversation post we've ever had you have changed the subject to cheesecake. Now how many times do I need to tell you that I HATE CHEESECAKE! Although I do find Louie Armstrong's song 'Cheesecake' quite entertaining.

Ttam likes cheesecake. 

Lucy, you are not prolonging the lifespan of this conversation. Besides, I am getting very hungry for strawberries.

Let's show them the Friendly Toes and wrap this up.

Okey dokey. By the way, I took this picture last summer and the toes belong to my friends Hannah, Molly, Molly, and me. 

FRIENDLY TOES!!!!

Bye guys!

¡Adios, mi amigos penguinos!

Oh Lucy...what am I ever going to do with you?

Whoopie for Whoopie Pies!

Pardon my absence from posting....I have been very busy. Friday I photographed a middle school jazz festival at my high school, which was fun because I got to hang with my old band, and yesterday was our spring dance and I also went to see the world's largest whoopie pie being put together at our local mall. IT. WAS. EPIC. I listen to the morning show of a local radio station every morning on the the car ride to school and recently all the buzz has been about Maine trying to make the whoopie pie the official state treat. However, problems arose when Pennsylvania claimed the whoopie pie as theirs and only theirs. They were quite rude about it actually, calling us 'misguided moose lovers' and the scandal a 'lip-smacking larceny'. Well, we Mainer's know that the whoopie pie is ours, so we decided to break Pennsylvania's record for the largest whoopie pie. Theirs was 225lbs. Ours? Well.....

Yum :)

Also some TV people interviewed me so if you saw this on the news last night....you also saw me :)

Birthday Part One

Tomorrow is my 15th birthday!!!! 

I'm really excited despite the annoying fact that it's the first day back to school after our lovely vacation. Anyway. Yesterday, four friends, Anna, Lucy, Isabella and Hannah, came over to celebrate a bit. We had a very good, but extremely LOUD (*cough* lucy *cough* anna *cough*) time. 

Here are some pictures:

First, my mom made me a very very yummy chocolate and mint chocolate glazed cake, upon my request...er...demand. Of course, once the cake was all baked and cooled, I just had to do some decorating...in treble clef fashion.

After dinner we played a great game of Apples to Apples, and wonders of wonders....look what won THIS round:

Isabella ended up winning overall with Hannah coming in second. We had fun :)

Today i'm going to go and see the movie True Grit with Olivia, and tomorrow it's back to school.

Yuck.

Cookies Galore!

Do you not just LOVE the smell of freshly baked cookies? What if you get to smell that all day, all different kinds, once a year? Well, from experience, I know that it's awesome. Every year, my dad's side of the family gets together and everyone makes one or two kinds of cookies. Very very fun, and I was with my camera the whole time capturing the moments!

First of all we all had to put on our aprons, but it seemed as if XanFan had done some growing over the past year, as his was rather short. LOL.

Besides aprons, another must for the day is ribbon candy. Oh how I love ribbon candy...

I haven't had much luck with my cookies for the past few years, so I made sure to start them early! (In the past they've melted, lost their shape and burned. Yuck.) I was making blue swirl spritz cookies, so first I got the colorful, decorative stuff out.

First step was to cream the butter and sugar.

Next was egg and some vanilla extract.

While that mixed, I sifted my dry ingredients. They looked just like the fluffy snow that coated the ground this morning!

That got mixed in and I added the neon food coloring.

The dough got squeezed out, decorated, and baked. They were very yummy!

Many other great cookies were also baked, such as these heath bar ones.

And almond twists...

Our fruitcake cookies,

Spritz,

Including chocolate camels,

Green trees,

And my blue swirls.

Peppermint filled brownies were a happy addition to the table,

And you can't go wrong with the traditional nutmeg logs! Elrania and Bella have been begging for me to bring some to lunch, so their wishes will finally be fulfilled. :)

My mom made some really great cookies and she had to coat them in powdered sugar before baking which she seemed to have a fun time with...

The finished product was great too!

And of course, cutouts!