The Oscars

I think this is the first Academy Awards where I have not seen any film nominated for a major award. My daughter has not even seen Brave. After looking through all the categories I realized that the only film I had seen was Mirror Mirror. It was an okay film, but I didn't want to put the trailer up on the blog for some reason. I feel somewhat pathetic that is the only film I have seen. Interestingly, a song from the film Chasing Ice is nominated and my professor from undergrad is one of the producers of the film! So let's all cheer for it.

In all honesty, I am not really that interested in seeing the majority of the films nominated. Nothing really screamed out to me that I should go see it. So that is my excuse. Of course I will watch all of the award show and if we weren't in the middle of the move I might even have had some people over. Oh well. Hopefully next year.

Bluebird Variation

In my pointe class we are learning the Bluebird Variation from Sleeping Beauty. It's really hard. When I was fifteen or so I loved hopping on pointe. It always got a good "ohh ahh" reaction out of people and I never really thought of it as hard. I was pretty fearless when it came to my pointe class. I have always felt more comfortable in my pointe shoes than my soft shoes. I don't know why. Now that I am older and returning to pointe there are things where that I can't believe I used to do. Right now I don't believe I really will be able to accomplish this - our teacher is really confident in us. So we'll see; anything is possible right?

Sunny Day

As the days start to count down to our moving day I start thinking about what I will miss the most at our fancy apartment. I am sure I have said it before that I love the view from our wall of windows. I just keep taking lot's of pictures of it so I will remember. Yesterday was a beautiful bright blue day with fluffy white clouds and this is the reflection of my view on my wardrobe. I may miss my view a lot, but I know I will miss my built-in dishwasher the most. Our new house has a portable dishwasher that I am a little worried about. We'll see how that goes.

Dino and the Angels

We have been struck by awful colds this week and I have not accomplished anything at all - much less posted on here. Tonight I am trying to catch up on as much as possible and am simultaneously watching this amazing episode of Charlie's Angels with not only Dean Martin (one of the greats), but also Stan Zbornak from The Golden Girls and one of the Darren's from Bewitched (I have never seen them in anything other than the above listed shows). Nearly any person that has a speaking role seems familiar. It's pretty fun and really distracting me from work!

(picture source)

The Lumineers

Have you seen this lovely new video from The Lumineers? I was teary eyed through the whole thing! So beautiful. For all Denver viewers take note the view count seems to be stuck on 303 (even thought it has 600+ likes, hmmmm). I am hoping they win an award this weekend at the Grammy's. Cross your fingers.

Billie Burke

Did you know that Billie Burke (who played Glenda the Good Witch) was 54 when filming The Wizard of Oz? When I was younger I thought she was the most beautiful, amazing woman in the whole world (I am sure that the pink, sparkly dress had something to do with that as well). I always wanted to be Glenda over Dorothy.

We watched the film yesterday and when I have some thoughts about the film. For now check out Billie with Clark Gable. Ooh La La.


(picture sources: Top In The Wizard of Oz, Bottom with Gable)

The Last Snow

 In these last few weeks living in Denver I am getting sad about losing my wonderful view. I want to take as many pictures as possible of it. A few weeks ago we had a nice late afternoon snow and that night before going to sleep I snapped a few shots looking down on the sidewalk. I think this snow was gone by the next morning. It has gotten grey today like it did the last time it snowed, but I am not sure the temperature is dropping so we will see if there is snow. I still have not gotten in the habit of watching the weather and I kind of like snowstorms to be a surprise.

Mexican Chocolate Cake

 Last week I made a Mexican chocolate cake for my dad's birthday. I took from many recipes to make it and had a little meltdown because the filling would not thicken. After adding some cornstarch and putting it in the freezer it finally became usable; though it still was like a thick pudding and soaked a little into the cake. It was really good and even better a couple days later when we came to visit.

For the cake I used this recipe, the filling (though it was super runny so be cautious), and for the frosting I used the chocolate butter cream from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and added cinnamon to it. I then made a dulce de leche by cooking sweetened condensed milk on a double boiler (if I couldn't get the filling to thicken I was planning on using it as the filling, so I had two options). I also sprinkled gold sugar on top of it as well.