My style these days.

Once upon a time, this little site used to masquerade as a style blog. It's a little hard for me to go back and look at it during those days, simply because I feel like my "look" and taste has changed so much in such a relatively short period of time. But, everyone must be allowed time to find their own personal style and refine it, so we'll call it that.

So in the interest of catching you up to speed, I've chosen some of the looks, styles and elements that have inspired me lately in my personal style journey. I finally feel like the clothes I have in my closet and on my body reflect who I am instead of define who I am. The last time I bought anything new was with my birthday money, and I took a great deal of time to spend that small amount on a few, choice items that I've already thoroughly worn in. I'm feeling good about who I am, what I look like and I spend much less time coveting others' clothes, crunching numbers because I've overspent my clothing budget and feeling unsure about a new outfit/piece of clothing.

I may be putting on the same pieces day after day, week after week, but their pieces that I love, feel good in and remind me of all the great times I've had in them. And the simplicity of it all feels pretty darn good.

Puffy vests | Gray Sweatshirts | Simple tees | Slouchy sweaters | Favorite jeans | Nerd glasses | Natural makeup | Wavy hair | Wooly socks | Heavy boots | Braids. Images via Pinterest.

Week 8: Zuckerman's famous pig.

This was the song I had stuck in my head all week as we fabricated cut after cut of pork. Poor Wilbur. Or Wilbur's cousin, I suppose. For whatever reason, pork seemed a lot simpler than chicken. Or more straightforward or something. Here's a few highlights from the week:

1. My plate finally got more than 3 votes in the nightly "popularity contest." 15 in fact! :) I've had a harder time with plating than I was expecting, so this was particularly exciting (pictured).

2. I got to help with a catering project the school was doing. I went in early to class two days last week to chop a half gallon of celery, bread 185 chicken breasts and brew up a huge vat of delicious tomato sauce. It was so fun working with the chef that I'll have next term (next week!) and getting to produce such a large quantity of food.

3. Doing decently well on the final T1 Knife Skills test (91%). I didn't do as well as the last time (95%), but we couldn't use our size cards and we had one less potato to work with this time. I felt pretty good about it overall.

4. Finishing my proficiencies. We had a list of some 35-40 odd "proficiencies" to finish before the end of the term and I wanted to get them all done before this upcoming week (finals). I was able to finish them off Friday evening in class.

5. We spent a couple days last week preparing for our final menu project. It was so fun thinking through what to put on a menu, getting a whole day to myself to decide what to cook and being able to design and organize our group's menu. I tried to restrain my Monica Gellar nature and not boss everyone around, but I'm pretty sure by the end of the week, they were real tired of hearing me talk. Oh well, hopefully it will pay off. We'll spend four nights cooking each of our four meal selections this week and I'm already feeling a little nervous.

Four more days left in my first term. I'm almost a quarter of the way done with school. Crazy!!!! But I am looking forward to moving on and learning even more in T2.

Week 7: This is the bird that never ends.

I'm getting a little tired of trying to write in story form what I've been up to in the kitchen, so here's a little list action to keep you updated on my progress.

Awesome.
Staying with Kerrianne for a week.
Vampire Diaries marathons.
Rhiannon's baby shower.
Completing the chicken unit.
Making a huge batch of delicious soup, recipe free, that Kerri and I subsisted off all week.
Snuggling with Iggy (Kerri's spazzy, yet loveable pug).
Being around a friend who is awesome, inspiring and totally amazing.
Being halfway through my second class of my first term. T2 is coming fast!
Working as a team to make an awesome dish to end the week.
Making some rockin' lemon-y, hazelnutty brussel sprouts.
Having a curry mashing competition with the chef.
Finally being able to relax and laugh in the kitchen for the first time in a while.
Getting re-motivated.
Celebrating three years of hard work...I mean marriage! :)
Good, hard conversations with friends and family.
Feeling God's hand of grace on my life.

Not so awesome.
Having a few more "down" days in class, feeling like I wasn't doing well.
Not getting all of my proficiencies done by the end of the week, which was my goal.
Taylor being out of town for 8 days.
Having hard conversations with people I love (yet awesome at the same time).
Spending our third wedding anniversary without my other half.
Shedding a few tears.
Not getting nearly enough sleep.

As you can see, and as usual, the good outweighs the bad. What's new with you guys? Is there anyone still reading out there? Bueller?

Week 6: Don't be a Chicken.

I'm not going to lie to you, after an intense first month and finals week, I had a bit of a let down. Last week, our first week with chicken and with new groups, was less than smooth and I found myself feeling more easily frustrated and discouraged. I also had my first day when I did not want to go to class and my first case of not being completely (and overly) prepared. I am happy to say that now, halfway into week 7, I'm feeling re-motivated and reengaged. And I still have a perfect attendance, despite my class skipping inclination.

But overall, the first week of chicken went well. I learned two ways to butcher a chicken, was amazed how much cheaper it is to buy whole chickens and even managed to make a decent consomme.

In my first class, in my first group, I felt like more assertive for some reason, often getting to produce the project or item that I wanted. In my new group, which I like just as much, I'm finding myself taking a backseat and filling in where needed. I'm not sure what to think about this as I definitely want to make sure I am learning all I need to learn. But maybe recognizing and filling needs is good at times, too? Trying to find a good balance on that.

The last thing that last week brought was a bunch (not enough in my case) of studying for our ServeSafe test (National Restaurant Association food safety test). We took it this week actually (Tuesday) and due to my super busy weekend and general procrastination, I didn't quite finish reading the book. Our pretests were based mostly on the chapters I had read, so I thought I'd be fine, but after taking the exam last night, I'm feeling a little worried. You only need a 70 to pass, and I'm going to be totally embarrassed if I don't.

It wasn't a perfect week, I guess you could say my "worst" yet, but I'm not going to let myself think that way. I'm back on track, re-motivated and still, weekly if not daily, realizing how incredibly blessed I am to be on this adventure.

Ten Favorite Moments from the last 3 years.

Today is Taylor and I's THIRD wedding anniversary. It simultaneously seems like it was just yesterday and forever ago. To commemorate the event, especially since my darling is gone for this entire week, I thought it would be fun to reminisce about some of my very favorite, random moments in our marriage. So here they are, in no particular order.

1. Visiting OCI (my school) for the first time, sitting in the school restaurant and deciding that we were taking the plunge and starting this adventure. I kept asking him over and over, "Are you sure?" And he just smiled and took my hand and said, "Let's do it."

2. Standing in line at Space Mountain (Disney Land) at 1 a.m. on our honeymoon, with a high fever and wicked cold, realizing that we had a 3 hour drive back to Palm Springs yet to go. In which my darling husband decided he was too tired to drive the last hour and left me, in my sickly state, to finish the journey. I was not happy about it at the time, but it's pretty funny now.

3. Being played the ridiculously pitiful message I left on my love's voicemail during his first long recruiting trip in Colorado. I had a really bad flu and I hadn't slept or eaten in a few days. It's the saddest thing ever and he still listens to it and laughs.

4. Driving up to our church, Mosaic, for the first time and just knowing that it was the place for us. Taylor is not as "instinctual" as me, but talking about it on the way home and knowing that we had found a place we could get connected to and grow together, was a great feeling.

5. One morning, a couple of years ago, I was driving to work and drove right by a pair of shoes in the road. I remember thinking to myself, "Taylor has shoes just like those!" and I continued on, minding my own business. Later on in the day, I get a call from my darling who is telling me how he had to wear his tennis shoes for a recruiting visit because he couldn't find his dress shoes. He figured he had left them at home, but as soon as he said that, I knew exactly where they were. I could not stop laughing.

6. The few days we spent stuck in our tiny little apartment, due to a freak snowstorm, just a few months after we were married. We kind of drove each other crazy, but I also remember walking to get groceries and coffee, taking photos in the snow and snuggling up on the couch, watching MadMen.

7. Watching my love and his three brothers play in and win Hoopla (a local 3-on-3 basketball tournament) the last four years in a row. I've always loved watching Taylor play bball, it's why I first fell for him, but it's always catches me off guard how totally foxy he is on that court. :)

8. Working through a lot of conflict related to dreams, doing a lot of communicating and being super intentional about listening to each other. We both have talents and interests that we've been exploring the last couple of years and at times it has seemed that those conflicted, or the other didn't share them or even that we couldn't reach those goals while being tied to the other. Through a couple years of work and God's grace, I feel like we've been able to fine tune those dreams to fit into our life together and understand enough about the other's to stand behind and support them. It's truly freeing and has been a huge step in our relationship. We're not tying each other down, we're taking turns lifting each other up, closer to the things we want to achieve.

9. The morning that our couches were being delivered to our new house (anytime between 6-11), we got up early, packed up all our blankets and snuck into our bare, newly finished home. We turned on the fireplace, spread the blankets over the floor and snuggled in to snooze and wait for our new furniture. Despite the fact that this house has been a huge source of stress, conflict and is now quite inconvenient for where I work and go to school, I still realize how incredibly blessed we are to have been able to have it.

10. The one moment at our wedding that I was truly able to feel and experience the immense blessing I was receiving in Taylor. To be quite honest, despite the fact that it was super fun, we were so blessed to have so much love and support and everything we planned turned out great, most of our wedding is a blur. And, if we had to do it over again (thank God we don't!) I would have gone MUCH simpler. But that one moment I got, in our first few minutes of marriage, while we were up on the stage doing our communion and saying a prayer, that moment of realizing that I could relax, I had found my love and I had a partner to live my life with, that moment was absolutely perfect.

Happy THREE YEARS, love! You are my best friend, an incredible husband, a perfect TV watching buddy, an excellent sous chef and one sexy basketball player. :) I love you.

Week 5: Finals.

Well, I made it through my first set of final exams. Finished my first class of culinary school, CUL 111, and have now- since this update is a bit late- commenced into the second half of my first term and second class, CUL 121.

Going into finals week I was feeling a little stressed. Despite the fact that I've done pretty well on the quizzes, haven't missed a day and had my notebook complete and put together, with my current schedule, I was facing four big tests and absolutely no time to study. Kind of a dilemma, eh? Anyway, onto the tests. Wednesday was the Practical Exam, Thursday brought 4 Identification Tests, a 30-minute Knife Skills Test and a Written Final Exam.

The Practical Exam....well, it wasn't perfect. I may have overcooked the potatoes a bit, which according to my chef, gave my soup the consistency of Elmer's. Glue. Yeah. The rest of the group did pretty well, and we managed to scrape out an 85%. I felt kind of stupid,  but everyone was super nice and encouraging and our grade turned out, so I got over it...eventually. :)

My work was super flexible and I got to come in a few hours late on Thursday so I could study up for my finals. I was super glad because though I remembered a lot of the stuff I went through, it really paid off when it came to the written test.

We started Thursday out with the Knife Skills Test. We'd done two previous "mock" tests to get a feel for where we're at, and I'd done decently on both of those, so I wasn't too nervous. It's one of those things that you just have to practice and then be able to perform under the pressure. For the test, you must make different amounts (1 cup, 1/2 cup, etc.) of 7 cuts (Batonnet, Julienne, Brunoise, etc.) out of 4 potatoes in the 30 minute time limit. I got done a little early, made all my cuts and even had time to pick through and eliminate some of the not-so-pretty ones. The chef graded the cuts while we took our ID tests and then announced that I was the winner, 95%, best in the class! It was a much needed victory after my glue soup.

The ID tests went decently as well. I had done pretty well on both the equipment, herbs and vegetable quizzes previously, so I felt good about those, but I was quite nervous about the miscellaneous quiz that the chef had prepared with items from around the kitchen. There were at least 12 that looked and tasted almost exactly the same and there were definitely a few tricky items thrown in. I ended up missing quite a few on that quiz, which brought my grade down a bit, but with an 85% overall, I was feeling pretty good about heading in to take my very last final.

The Final Written exam was a lot of things that I had studied, thankfully, and I was thwarted only a few times by second-guessing myself. Typical. The one thing that was evident from that test was that I needed to work on memorizing my measurement conversions. No surprise there. I ended up with a 94% and felt pretty great about that. Going home Thursday was super satisfying and could have only been made better by the day being Friday instead.

I found out yesterday that I got an A- overall for CUL 111. For being an inexperienced, out of school for the last 3 years, rookie culinary student, I am feeling pretty good about that.

This week we're tackling our first meat- chicken. I'll let you know how that goes, especially after I get done butchering a couple tonight. Ciao!