Cake Decorating

Melissa from Apartment B — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:38:47 +0000

any months ago I took up a new hobby and I promised to share it with you guys upon completion and guess what, I suck and I never told you guys. I took up cake decorating! I just went to Michael’s and signed up for the Wilton cake classes, actually the first class was offered in April so that is what Patrick gave me for my birthday present (isn’t he just the sweetest?) I don’t want to bore you with all the details so I am just going to show you the pictures of my final cake

In case you didn’t guess, it was Alice in Wonderland themed, I was going for “Painting the Roses Red” I think it turned out quite lovely considering this was the first time I ever used fondant to decorate a cake. Here are some pics of the cakes the other students in my class made

Not to toot our horns or anything, but I think we were a pretty talented bunch of student cake decorators, don’t you?

So, have you taken up any new hobbies recently? Have you taken the Wilton classes? How did you like them? Do tell…

Guess Who’s Back!

Melissa from Apartment B — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 02:27:24 +0000

early two months have passed since I last blogged…I am so embarassed, ashamed, sorry. I thought that I would start blogging once I found a new apartment but once that happened I thought, I will start blogging when it looks good. Well, it still looks like crap here in the new place after a month and so I figure what the hell, I will blog anyways. I am not going to chit chat to much right now because I have much to say and I am going to save it all for future posts.

P.S. it is so nice to see you guys again, I missed you!

Walk Score

Melissa from Apartment B — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:48:54 +0000

ave you guys heard of Walk Score? I hadn’t until about two hours ago so don’t feel out of the loop if you don’t know what I am talking about. I noticed that a few apartment listings were writing “walk score=95!” or whatever and I was left dumbfounded until one listing had a link to the walk score website. IT IS SO COOL! What you do is type in your address and it gives you a score for how walkable things are to that place. The more things around, the higher the score. Cool, huh? I have been using it to check the walkability of ever apartment listing that I am interested in. The site is especially helpful for me since I am not very familiar with the area and this gives a quick visual of all the stores and other conveniences (such as restaurants, libraries, and gyms) that are easily in walking distance.

Ah, thank you Mr. or Mrs. Genius who came up with this site, and for all of you who want to know how walkable your place of residence is head on over and type in your address.

House Hunting

Melissa from Apartment B — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:41:02 +0000

or the past week I have been in the bay area house hunting with Patrick. It sucks. Ok, not really, I really like getting to see so many different apartments and exploring new neighborhoods but it is so tough to find a place to live. We were originally thinking of moving to Walnut Creek. Why? Well, because we thought it would be more affordable to be out of the city but still be convenient to be near the BART. We have changed our minds. We are looking almost entirely in the Oakland area, I am particularly fond of the Adam’s Point neighborhood. I sure hope we find some place soon, it would be nice to have something crossed of the list but then again it would also be nice if I could find a job and be able to contribute to rent before we get an apartment….ugh, moving sucks. I will let you know when we find a place or when I find a job, whichever happens first.

My Favorite Punctuation Mark

Melissa from Apartment B — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:59:02 +0000

unctuation remarks are usually seen as rather unremarkable. Most people couldn’t give two hoots about those marks which are so imperative to our written language let alone have a favorite one. Then again there is always the exception, my favorite punctuation mark is the interrobang. The mark looks a little something like this…‽ It is actually a mark which is not even used anymore, much to my dismay, but still lives on in my heart. You know how sometimes you have a question to ask but you aren’t really asking you are just saying it, or rather exclaiming it? Well, that is when the interrobang comes in. For example, imagine your best friend just tells you that she is going on a date with her ex boyfriend, the one who got away and you knew they should be together, well then you would be excited and would say, “You’re going out with whom‽” It is very common for us to type out ??!!?!?! when we want to show that we are both trying to ask a question and express excitement but imagine a world where we could do that with one little symbol…aahhhh….that would be nice. So here’s to you Mr. Interrobang….

p.s. want to know about another blogger’s favorite punctuation mark? Check out Kathleen’s blog (if you haven’t already) it is one of my favorite reads and I recommend checking it out.

p.p.s. in other punctuation mark relatedness here is Vampire Weekend’s video for Oxford Comma. And, in case you were wondering the oxford comma is the last comma as in red, white, and blue. The oxford comma was the one before the and. ok that is all, enjoy the video.

Have a Seat-Upholstered Chairs

Melissa from Apartment B — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:21:28 +0000

nline shopping is my not-so-secret vice. I spend a great deal of time doing it on a normal basis and I have been finding myself doing it a whole lot more not that I know I will have a new place to furnish in about a month. Perhaps you remember me showing you some of my favorite couches I have found in this post? Well if you have a couch you also need a chair or two, right? Well I probably will not be making any of these purchases anytime soon, especially since I already have a cute slipper chair

There is the slipper chair in the old apartment. Here is 5 of my favorites:

That is the Corrigan Chair from Anthropologie. It’s priced at a modest (yeah right!) $1998 and I think it would look great surrounded by books and under a pharmacy lamp.

Here we have another one of my favorites from Anthropologie, it is the Astrid Chair. This chair makes me scratch my head an wonder why all of my favorite things happen to be way, way out of my price range? I also wonder who can afford a chair for $1298?

The Petrie chair from Crate & Barrel has had me smitten for quite awhile now. I love it’s clean simple lines combined with that tufting, aahhh tufting, it makes everything better. Also this chair is much cheaper at $899, too bad that is still about $700 more than I would spend on a chair.

This is the Chloe chair from Crate & Barrel. I love, love, love those sloped arms. It looks clean and modern and traditional all at the same time. I am not, however, too keen on those legs and the cross bar but hey, nothing’s perfect right? This little seat comes in at $899.

There are those sexy slope arms again. This chair hails from Urban Outfitters and while it is good looking I have to question it’s quality just because UO tends to sell cheaply made furniture. Also, this one is much cheaper than the others at $348. I like the legs of this chair and of course those arms but I have to say that I am not sure if I am crazy about that print, does it look a little busy to anybody else?

So there you have it, a round up of some super swanky upholstered chairs. All of them look comfy enough to curl up and read a book or sit and have a quality conversation.

Getting My Sexy Back pt. 3

Melissa from Apartment B — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:35:40 +0000

eight loss is a very tough thing to achieve. I have tried different diets and just eating in moderation, I’ve tried killing myself at the gym, nothing works. My body apparently does not respond to working out. I have decided to go back to my eating habits as they were when I was at my lowest weight. That is, I am eating a vegan diet. I have only been doing this for a couple of days and I have already noticed a difference on the scale, perhaps I was eating more cheese and crap than I realized? I am definitely not starving myself and I am getting all the stuff my body needs and yet still, I am seeing results, very minimal thus far, but results are amazing!

Keep in mind that I have tried giving up Dr. Pepper…nothing. I was working out for 2 hours at least 5 days a week at the gym plus working at a very physically demanding job…nothing. I tried eating healthy vegetarian meals and doing both Tae Bo and the 30 Day Shred…nothing. Now, I am on vacation and living the live of leisure and doing nothing more than avoiding all animal products and my body is saying, “Thank God! We can finally get down to a normal weight!” Maybe this is too soon to be tooting the horn for veganism but right now I so happy to see the number on the scale go down, even if it is just barely.

Motivating me on my journey to a smaller version of me have been a couple of other bloggers who are brave enough to share their journey with the entire blogosphere. I would never have the courage to share soo much information about such a personal struggle but I am sure glad that they do because their stories have been very motivating to me. So thank you Ms. Bitchcakes and Jennifer.

And in related weight loss news I really want one of these

It is a calorie counter watch by Polar. I think that it would be very helpful in monitoring how many calories I burn during workouts, hikes, bike rides, etc. Too bad it isn’t closer to Christmas so I could ask Santa, I think I am going to have to wait on this purchase. Anyways, you can read all about it here and if you need my address because you would like to send me one well you can email me (ha! you like my wishful thinking?)

Ok, enough blabbing about this. I hope you all are having a great humpday!

Long Beach

Melissa from Apartment B — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:00:50 +0000

an you believe that it is the middle of summer already? The 4th of July was a blast and I hope you all had fun too. Fortunately I got to spend the holiday with my family and got to eat soe delicious bbq.

Last Friday I packed up and embarked on a twelve hour drive south to my hometown of Long Beach, CA. I had been planning on coming down but the actual date was not set and so leaving was rather last minute. Luckily I had some company for the long drive as my brother had gone up a week prior for an unexpected visit. Since I am here it I thought that I would share with you some of the fun times I have had in this city as party of my travel posts.

While walking on the pier, Patrick and I spotted this gentleman taking a nap under the sun. Classy.

We stopped by the Queen Mary but didn’t actually take a tour aboard the ship because it was way out of our budget. We hung out in front of the big boat and pretended we had a fun trip.

Well that is a little glimpse of some of the fun stuff Patrick and I did in Long Beach, I am realizing that it wasn’t very exciting. I promise there is some fun stuff to do here, I just didn’t do a good job of documenting it. Sorry for wasting your time if you bothered to read this post, perhaps I am too caught up with the warmth and sunshine that I have been enjoying. There really is nothing more enjoyable than being able to sit outside at night in a t-shirt and sill be warm….ahhh simple pleasures. I don’t think I will ever go back to frigid, cold Arcata again!

The Lost Coast

Melissa from Apartment B — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 22:17:34 +0000

ack to my travels! A couple months back Patrick, Ian, and I went camped at the Lost Coast. It was about an hour and a half drive of windy roads south from here. We only stayed one night but the trip was awesome. We stayed at a campground on the beach just outside of a small town called Petrolia and then we trugged through the sandy beaches to get to the Lighthouse. You see, when you go to the Lost Coast the goal is to at least make it to the abandoned lighthouse. The first day we made it far enough to see the Lighthouse but it was getting dark and before we could get to it there was a rather large stream between us and our target so we decided to head back and then try again in the morning. The next day, however, the tide was so high that we couldn’t make it very far down the beach so we decided to climb up some pretty scary cliffs that were right on the shore. I nearly shat myself several times (too much info? sorry, I am just being honest.) Anyways here are some of the pics from one of my favorite trips

Here is Ian with some seal bones he found. He was demonstrating what bones they were

There’s me & the sponge I found

Me & Ian at the top of the cliff (it was much scarier than it looks I promise) I was holding on to him because it was VERY windy and I was scared of being blown away.

One of the few photos I have of Patrick, sorry it’s blurry but he is usually behind the camera.
Ian & I walking along the beach

M.I.A.

Melissa from Apartment B — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:50:50 +0000

ou may have noticed that I have been a bit of an absentee blogger for the past couple of weeks and I would like to explain…THE INTERNET SUCKS! Ok, that was a little harsh, especially considering how addicted to the internet I am. What I should have said is the lack of internet sucks! For some reason or another the internet here was not working at all, first it started with some flickering between working and not and then NOTHING. It went kaput and I was left here so ever frustrated. I mean, didn’t the internet know that I was in the middle of blogging about my travels? Anyways, things are better now… sort of…it has gone out once today. On a positive note for the past two days I have been redesigning my online portfolio. It is still a work in progress but now it is functioning as a dual portfolio site for both Patrick and me.