Five things I love about birthdays

People seem to cringe at the word "birthday" as they get older. As a woman in my mid-twenties creeping up on thirty I cannot disagree more. I still love birthdays. Am I one of those girls who has a birthday week? Umm no. But I do enjoy the fact that I feel special for a day and people give me gifts adorned with sprinkles and bows. Here are 5 things I love about birthdays, not necessarily my own:

1. EATING
Why would this not make the list!? I love going out to eat, and specifically getting to chose where I go out to eat. What's that? You don't like sushi? Too bad! It's my birthday. Sashimi for everyone!

2. USING THE BIRTHDAY EXCUSE TO GET OUT OF TROUBLE
I've gotten out of a lot of trouble over the years by simply stating these words: "But it's my birthday." This includes two parking tickets, a speeding ticket and a long line for the bathroom at a sporting event. With a sad face added in this is a surefire way to get your way.

3. MORE THAN ONE COCKTAIL ON A SCHOOL NIGHT
What are the odds of your birthday being on a weekend? I'm horrible at math, but I'm pretty sure you only get a birthday on a weekend once every seven or eight years. This means that the chances your birthday dinner will be on a school night are pretty good. This also means that you will most likely have a designated driver and a reason for an extra glass of wine. You deserve it. Those last 365 days of breathing were such an accomplishment!

4. BIRTHDAY CARDS
I love birthday cards. They can be funny or serious, but the important thing is you can tell a lot about someone from what card they pick out. I save them every year, and love looking back at them every year. I just love to line them up for a couple weeks on my counter and let them be a decoration until the Christmas cards take over.

5. AND MOST OF ALL... FRIENDS AND FAMILY
I didn't get to be home this year for my birthday, but it was so nice to be around good friends. I think I saw this in a Lifetime Movie: "Friends are the family you choose yourself." It is so true. I can't wait to reciprocate on their birthdays :)

Cake or small fire?? You decide.

Let them eat cake

So I tried my hand at baking, and made this luscious four-layer pumpkin cake (no really that's what it was called). It is SO easy, but looks like it took forever. I actually think it looks like pancakes, but the cream cheese icing makes it AMAZING.

I was the popular kid at work for a day... well worth it. :)

what you need:
1 pkg. (2 layer size) yellow cake mix
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin, divided
1/2 cup of milk
1/3 cup oil
4 eggs
1- 1/2 tsp. Pumpkin pie spice, divided
1 pkg. (8 oz) PHILADELPHIA cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tub (8 oz) COOL WHIP Whipped topping, thawed
1/4 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/4 cup PLANTERS pecans

HEAT 350 degrees F

MIX cake mix, 1 cup pumpkin, milk, oil, eggs and 1 tsp. spice in large bowl. Divide into two greased and floured 9 inch pans.

BAKE 28 to 30 min. Cool 10 min in pans then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

BEAT cream cheese in medium bowl until creamy. Add sugar, remaining pumpkin and spice; mix well. Stir in Cool Whip. Cut each cake horizontally in half making four layers; stack on serving plate with the icing in between each layer. Do not frost top layer. Drizzle with caramel before serving and top with nuts...

Sweater vests for everyone!

A few weeks ago Airmen and Soldiers from the Ohio National Guard were invited to attend a practice at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. As a proud Buckeye and graduate of OSU, I was so excited to attend.

Coach Jim Tressel, head coach for the Buckeyes has been extremely supportive of troops all around the world. In 2009 Coach Tressel visited troops overseas with a handful of other college football coaches. As we toured the Woody Hayes facility, the troops attending were greeted by many military themed corridors and rooms in the facility. The workout room actually has "Combat Ready" scrolled across the entry and Army Core Values lining the room.

My personal favorite was seeing Woody Hayes last words scrolled on a chalk board he kept in his office. He was truly a supporter of our troops, and Coach Tressel has carried on this legacy.

The OSU players and coaches stayed after practice, and signed autographs and took photos with troops. What a nice bunch of young men (now I sound like my grandma...lol).

So as you can see from the photo above, Coach Tressel and I are BFFs... Sweater vests for EVERYONE!

Girls' night in

Tonight I made homemade pizza! Ok maybe not homemade. More like semi-homemade. I just can't say no to DiGiorno frozen four cheese pizza. Yum. To spice it up I added onion, fresh basil and tomato. I told my roommate it was homemade though so... don't tell!

The roomie made sangria to go along with it! You should try it.

Kayla's sangria

1 bottle red wine (Kayla uses Jam Jar)
2 cups brandy
1 tbsp grenadine
a dash of cinnamon in each glass
1 granny smith chopped
1 orange cut in wheels
1 lemon cut in wheels

Combine all. Best when it sits overnight, but who can wait that long?! Enjoy!

Pay Homage

I'm not really big on giving praise to companies here on my blog, but this week I found a really great one, and I just have to share! Homage is a vintage t-shirt shop selling t's made in the U.S.A. Apparently they just opened shop in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, and a few of my friends are big fans. So I went online to check them out, and I was very impressed. They have a wide variety of t-shirts promoting music, sports teams and different cities in the US of A. You can also find some pretty quirky old school stuff for sale including Big League Chew and Rubik's Cubes. I placed my order, and a few days later I received an extremely small box. Did I order a book?
Talk about efficient packing! I don't know about you, but when I receive an online order, and there is all of this unnecessary extra packing I get so annoyed. Uhh, do you hate our environment? So on top of being an American shop they are also environmentally friendly. LOVE! So the t-shirts are totally dreamy. The kind of cotton t's that you love to wear. Believe me. Also included in my order were a discount card for next time, a "Homage" sticker and a pack of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectors cards. I am not kidding. These people really are vintage! For a moment I had a flashback to 1990 when I was 8-years-old, and loved the TMNT!! So you should check out Homage. But only if you support vintage, capitalism, America and the environment. Oh, and I found this cool hat on their website. I'm ordering it immediately!

Noisy high heels.. Are you guilty?

Click-clack. Click-clack. We've all heard the sound. Strolling through the hallways at work it's the sound that I hear often, and also the sound that I make. No, I don't wear taps, and I'm not donning horse shoes.

One particularly noisy heeled morning I walked into the office, and my co-worker was laughing at me. "I knew that was you walking in," she said. "I could tell because of the clicking." So this brought me to wonder, is there a way to make heels less noisy? Is this a problem that other women have? So after some google research, I came upon a post by a man calling himself "Jack 'I'm a model' H." Here is an excerpt from his rant.

"I'm talking about women who seem to buy the LOUDEST SHOES possible, so you can hear them coming from 300 yards away! It's like a cow bell or something.

And here they come "CLIP CLIP Clickety - Clack Clickety - Clack CLIP CLIP CLIP."
Then you or some guys are scared and want to make sure a stampede or something isn't coming, so you look up at them for a second, and they give a look like "Oh wow are you checking me out? Why doth thou starest so? Am I hot? Oh I know it!"

Ok JACK. I get it. They are loud, and you hate them, but last time I checked a "Sound check" usually isn't part of the shoe trying-on process. So get over yourself...

After checking another site and finding that women really are having this problem, we began to brain storm in the office. My one co-worker suggested felt bottoms on heels. WHAT? Grace is not in my nature. I would most definitely take a nose dive in the Pentagon in front of some four-star and disgrace the D-ring forever. Bad option!

I did however find a great article on how to walk silently. Basically, you can go to a shoe repair place, and they can add a layer of rubber to the bottoms of your heels... or you can wear flats. The choice is yours...

If I were Ohio's PR agent...

Being the resident Buckeye here in my office at the Pentagon, I frequently come under a lot of scrutiny about my state and a few of the WHACK jobs that live there. It seems that my co-workers love to send me lovely and insightful articles about the seemingly endless idiots in the news that reign from the great state of Ohio. And it's not just the people! I recently was forwarded a column that was written in TIME magazine featuring Ohio. It wasn't about some scientist that had cured some horrible disease. It was about bedbugs, and how the state is seemingly riddled with the sleepy little pests. Just today I saw an article about a pot-smuggling grandpa delivering drugs to his imprisoned grandson, and we all have heard of the serial killer recently detained in Ohio and extradited back to Michigan.

Who does your PR Ohio? Is there a spin doctor in the house? If I were Ohio's PR agent, and here I practically am, I would do a few things to get things back on track.

1. Highlight stories that don't make national headlines but really should like the increase in solar fields across the great state of Ohio. Who knew they were making such great strides in clean energy efforts?

2. The everyday heroes of Ohio making news, like the 65-year-old Vermilion, OH woman who scared off a would-be robber from a convenient store.

3. If these initiatives fail, I could just revert every bad news story back to The Ohio State Buckeyes, and the hopeful season that lies ahead of them. The art of distraction is never below me...

No matter what, I will continue to defend my home state and the people that live there. No matter how many stories I see about Ohioans being pulled over on their motorized bar stools or Ohio families who call police after being trapped in their home by squirrels, I will still stand tall and just be glad that I don't come from somewhere awful, like Michigan.

cattitude

So my roommate's cat Hopper is 1. Adorable, and 2. a complete brat. I give him a hard time ALL of the time. "Hopper don't eat that." "Stop scratching the company." "Don't bite my toes when I'm trying to sleep." I'm such a nag right? My roommate's parents call it "cattitude".

I've just recently realized that we have WAY more in common that I first realized! Recently I have been a complete brat and unfortunately to those I am closest with. I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but do you ever find yourself acting out? Do you ever develop your own case of "cattitude" and take out the wrath on those you just assume will understand?

It's extremely unfortunate that a little stress at work, or a fight with a friend can create such a funk that rubs off on the innocent unsuspecting bystander. Well for all of my innocent, unsuspecting bystanders that may have been a victim to my recent bad attitude I just want to say sorry. And for some that is SO hard to say. It's amazing how two little words can change a whole situation. An apology can change so much, and it's unfortunate when people overlook that fact. If Hopper could speak I'm sure he'd say the same.

I forgot about #1! So yes, Hopper and I are both kind of adorable too... when we aren't biting and scratching of course. :D

Cake, I'm in Love...

Thanks to a great deal from Groupon, I was able to slip into a cake induced comatose with this little beauty. This my friends is a CakeLove creation called "Susie's a Pink Lady. Fresh raspberry butter cream floats between layers of vanilla butter cake. And did I mention it has FRESH raspberries and is baked from scratch that day...yum!

It was DELICIOUS! So if you aren't afraid to spend $40 on a cake (or get a great 50% deal from Groupon) then I highly suggest one of these little beauties. My only complaint was this: If I am spending an insane amount of money on a cake, could you please not let a 5 year-old write the birthday message?

My post-it note organization system

Today I learned a VERY valuable lesson. A colleague called me and asked me for a phone number that I had written down last week. Now what did I do with that? I knew the number was scribbled somewhere on a piece of paper the size of a post-it note. Because why wouldn't it be? Everyone knows that's the most effective way of logging calls. On a 6-inch square of paper with no name or reference to be found. Just a number. Right next to 5 others with the same area code...ahh! As I scrambled through my filing system, and by filing system I mean roughly 34 pieces of scrap paper, post-it notes and two notebooks, I realized something. Although my perception is that I have my organization system completely in check, the aftermath of me searching for this phone number would prove that I am, dare I say, a HOT MESS.

While I mean well writing down endless phone numbers and to-do lists (I'm obsessed) on these bitty pieces of paper, I'm really not doing myself any good keeping all of these scraps piled on my desk. God forbid the fan trend comes back to the office culture. I would be screwed!

So from now on, I will refrain from scribbling on scraps as my main source of call documentation. I hear they have this thing called "e-mail".... Ya, that might be a good start.