Carrot Soup & Some Insight

I don't know where I've heard this but what I've heard is Baseball is 90% negativity. I'm starting to think my life is about the same. Maybe not that drastic but Life in general has a lot of negativity.

Let's start with I am a recent college graduate. I lived on a wonderfully close knit downtown campus. You know just about everyone and enjoy all your friends down the hall, a few floors away or a block away in a very close building. The hardest thing to get together with your friends would be seeing who would be the one to truck it through the snow to get to the others place. Now I live in an apartment I rent in the outer suburbs of Pittsburgh. I do enjoy the location but friends (the ones I talk to), aren't always willing to truck it all the way out here. I live far.

Let's go to the other new basis of my schedule. I am used to taking 6 classes, usually 1 or 2 online, 2 or 3 at night and 2 or 3 during the day. My weekends consisted of Thursday night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I never had a class that started earlier than 9:40 AM and my most common class met from 6-10 PM. Now my schedule is get up at 6:30 AM and be in the office until about 4 or 4:30 PM. Let's just say I'm not used to being a morning person in just 2 months. I think it takes longer. I love seeing the daylight, I love enjoying breakfast, these things take time and when I get up at 6:30 AM and hit the snooze, it just doesn't feel like I'm enjoying it. I must stop hitting snooze. It's bad for you to hit snooze anyway. I have heard or read that as well.

The next part of my life what brought me to think of this quote. My job title is a Financial Adviser. I want to help people that are awful with money, don't know what to do with their money, or someone that truly wants help from a financial professional. I studied Business Economics and Finance in school and although it was heavily economically weighted, it is really what I want to do. The company I work for isn't like most Financial Advisers and I enjoy that aspect even more. Yet again, I am still in sales. This is the negativity part of the job. People realize that it is an important topic. People realize that it is a necessity to discuss or prioritize. But somehow people are not wanting to take action. Everyone has a different situation, but there are 2 guarantees in life; Death & Taxes. What I do can help prepare for both and help you save on losing less! I know that sounds crazy but talk to a financial professional and see if they say any different. It's true.

What I'm trying to let you see is that being a post grad is not a walk in the park. You are still figuring out who you are. If you have a job, that is great! I'm so proud of you =). I'm really proud of myself and I deserve to be! You deserve to be proud of yourself too! You did it! WE did it. It doesn't mean we're all fine and dandy though. There is still so much more life to live. We haven't figured it all out and we don't know it all. The only thing I do know is I am the only me out there and I am going to be the best me I possibly can. It may sound silly, but it's not. It's who I am =).

So when I get like this and don't immediately type it all out, I watch this. I'm not being funny, but you can make fun of me for it, I don't care, but it helps me.

Now this Carrot Soup I was really looking forward to. I peeled my carrots, got the pot ready with the broth and other goodies.

I let them all simmer and get warm for 20 minutes just as the recipe says. Then I realized the stove barely got the soup warm and the carrots were still very much uncooked. Just look how many carrots there are! They were cut up by the way, didn't simmer them whole. Maybe I should have? Anyway, I turned the heat up because I have an electric stove so maybe that was effecting how it wasn't getting warm, and let another 20 minutes pass. The carrots seemed to be warmer and I just went ahead and put it all in the blender. Well, the blender didn't puree the carrots as expected. So I put everything back into the pot, covered it for a bit longer, put it back in the blender, and then it actually looked like the blender was working! Then I poured it back into the pot and I don't think it worked so well. I added the rest of the ingredients anyway and then poured half of the soup into the blender again. This was a process of back and forth and I either have too cheap of a blender, wasn't patient enough with the blender or really really just need an immersion blender. Hey everyone, Christmas is right around the corner, put it on my list! Haha, along with a rolling pin, a better blender and a bigger kitchen... Hahaha, I like space to move and If I could cook on more than the tiny little bit of counter I have, that would be kind of cool too. For my next place I will be looking for more space in the kitchen.

Now this picture doesn't look like the soup turned out chunky, but if you look at the side, you can see the chunks I'm talking about... It's ok I still ate it but I should have tried blending it one or three more times... Haha

Now you're all probably wondering how I am blogging 3 days in a row and the answer is I am not able to really work in the office. As I said before, we are moving offices and it wasn't really realized how hard it would be to work without computers and cubicles at once place, but no internet at the other. So I get to study at home and craft in between.

After I took a test at work (and got a 90%!!!), I came home to my little Luna and worked on fusing the quilt together. The adhesive has a warning on the can that says it may cause dizziness so I opened all my windows and made sure to not have any candles burning. The adhesive is also extremely flammable. After all the safety measures, I think it turned out pretty nice. My living room is back to normal and I am awaiting to finish the other side. I'm going to The Strip District tomorrow to have lunch with a friend and I think I'll grab a Steelers shirt or something PGH to put on the college side. Stay tuned! This quilt IS happening.

<3 Carly =)

Crafting Day Off

With the long Labor Day Weekend, I forgot to mention my office is moving. Not far, just a block away from it is now, but the cubicles are being moved today, so I wouldn't have had anywhere to sit if I went in. So I am taking advantage of the time and crafting my little heart out.

I started off with more hearts for my bedroom. I have this wire thing I got from IKEA. It's pretty sweet. Anyway, I cut hearts out of paint samples and had them hanging in my dorm at school. I decided to make it a much bigger kind of project and expand it to my bedroom wall. I cut a lot of hearts and you have to make sure there is a heart on both sides so that you don't just see the back of the paint sample. You'd be surprised how often that is when you don't have another heart on the back, haha.

Luna thought she was helping out. I have found out she likes to craft too.

Now yesterday/last night I decided to really commit to the T-shirt Blanket and I am. I am working only on the "high school" side right now because I don't have the college side just the way I want it yet. I have some connections still at PPU and want to have more PPU throughout the "college" side. I only have 6 PPU shirts for the college side. That sounds like a good deal, but I counted 15 Lebo shirts for the high school side... So clearly I got more free shirts in high school/middle school, haha.

Here are the pieces I had done last night.

And here is where I am now. I must figure out how I want to attach the batting... I'm not a quilter by any means and this is all new to me. I think it'll work out just fine, but it is quite a process I must say. I need to go get some more fabric for the edging of the blanket. I completely didn't think of that. Also, I can't decide if I'm going to get just a little bit of fabric for the edging and just keep cutting it into pieces or get enough to cover an entire side. That just might be 2 yards of fabric though! That's a lot of fabric just to edge a blanket... This thing is massive, if you can't already tell in the photo.

I have also been knitting in between all these projects! Haha, I told you it was a completely crafting day.

Here is my sock I have been working on. The pattern is called Monkey =). Everyone is always in love with the color of the yarn. It is quite lovely and I'm not sure the camera caught it as well as it should. The pattern is from this book that I have an electric copy of. I really want to print it though. It has gorgeous patterns throughout it. Truly will be making tons of the socks from this book.

There is another knitting project I want to work on today because that would mean one knitted Christmas gift would be done. That would be fantastic if I could get that out of the way.

Then there is cooking. I think I want to make some carrot cream soup for dinner and take for lunch tomorrow. I have a bunch of carrots, all I need is some cream though from the store. I need to get some milk and eggs anyway so I'll double check to see if I need anything else for that dish.

Until next time, ;)

<3 Carly & Luna

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

I'm not in school anymore and I must admit it was bittersweet not moving into the dorms or apartments and getting ready for classes. Just 2 weeks ago during my drive into work on the parkway there were the traffic signs tell good old Point Park students to get off at the Grant Street exit to go move in. I'm not necessarily saying I miss school, but it was definitely odd not to be packing up and moving in myself.

Now I have been meaning to blog, just as I always do, but much like how I always said while I was in school, I have really watch the time slip away. I have been at my job for 2 months now! That's crazy to think about. I'm thoroughly enjoying it though and very excited to be doing what I do.

With all the time slipping away though, I haven't been able to knit nearly as often as I wish I could. I am still working on my purple monkey socks, some xmas gifts and I'm really wanting to swatch/gauge for my swirl sweater. Remember when I bought all that madelinetosh? Still haven't started that yet. I am a yarn/knitting addict through and through.

I have been cooking still. Baking too =). Made some delicious chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips and walnuts. They're very good and I've had too many, haha. I will forever to love baking for a crowd.

Luna is getting bigger, though whenever people meet her they say she's so small, haha. I say, you should of seen her when I got her! This is double what she was!

My apartment continues to get decorated with me and my crafting. I am thinking of going back to my t-shirt blanket and really beginning to work on that. That would be time consuming, but I want to get it down so that I can use it! It'll be a great big blanket.

My man is wonderful as always too. I keep thinking of more and more things I want to knit him but the time just slips on by and sprints passed me. I know how bad he wants those beer cozies. I'm thinking those will be good traveling projects. I will be starting them soon. I swear. I mean it is already September.

I promise the next post will have some photos. Of beautiful knit items and probably a picture or two of my Little Luna =).

Until next time,

<3 Carly