EvCC Theater Department Presents "The School for Husbands"

In this video I made for my final in multimedial journalism, I give a look behind the production of EvCC's spring play "The School for Husbands" by Molière.

XOLily

A Very Pink and Sparkling Graduation Party

A graduation party is similar to a portfolio in the way that it is pages of people that you have met from different parts of your life, all gathered together, not only to honor what you have accomplished but also because they love you.

And I have never experienced anything quite like it.

I have to admit, I am a fan of parties. 

But my graduation party was one of the best parties I've been to because though it was big, with many people, it seemed intimate and relaxed and loving.

We were all Dancing Queens. (Photo by Ann Emery)

To quote The Great Gatsby (which is the ultimate party guide, in my opinion): 

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The sparklers were the highlight of the night. (Photo by Brian Haight.)

Sisters <3 (Photo by Ann Emery.)

So thank you to everyone who attended my party or sent a card or gift. I shudder at the thought of sounding cliché, but I feel very blessed at the moment. 

XOLily

Paris On My Mind...

1. dead week:

"At any major college or university, the week before finals are administered and most major projects and assignments are due for submission. The late night working and hardcore studying for finals gives the students a zombie like atmosphere, and causes an eerie silence and many blank, unseeing expressions."

–Urban Dictionary

Four days left of class.

Eleven until my graduation.

Why am I not stressed? How come I'm not furiously studying for finals? Most importantly, why am I not worried about getting my A- back up to an A in my Astrobiology class?

This is the reason:

Took this photo of the Tour d'Eiffel last summer
while at the top of the Arc de Triomphe.

Today is June 3rd. In exactly three months I will be in Paris, on September 3rd, to begin my Parisian adventure.

Needless to say, I'm not very focused on the here and now.

Instead, I've got Paris on my mind.

And having Paris on your mind is absolutely GLORIOUS.

Dead week can't bring me down.

XOLily

PS: I will be in Paris until May 17, and I will be staying in Paris for winter vacation and spring break. SO... if any of you feel like you will miss me incredibly then take a look at my school schedule and think about taking a petit vacance á Paris:)

Sunday Afternoon Rides

In a world full of senior projects, exams, Visa forms, watching too much TV, and tweeting instead of studying, I try to find peace.

And the best way for me to do that is on a motorcycle.

Granite Falls ice cream cone. 

Lake Stevens coffee.

Usually it's Sunday afternoons, when the sun peeks out and my dad and I hop on the bikes and head out for a joyride.

We take backroads, my dad knows the best ones for a beginner rider like me, and just ride. Everything is more beautiful when you're cruising down the road on a motorcycle.

We speed past green pastures and through overhanging trees on our way to Granite Falls, or circle around the sparkling Lake Stevens while admiring the large lakeside houses.


I remember in freshman and sophomore year, I used to daydream during class about speeding down a road on a motorcycle. Riding away from everything.

And that's exactly what I do.

While my helmet's on, I forget everything.

And when I take it off again, everything seems a little bit easier to handle.

So my advice to you: Ride motorcycles.







XOLily

Multimedia Madness

This quarter I am taking a multimedia journalism class, where I am learning how to expand my journalistic style by including multimedia such as photos, videos, and graphics.

For my first video project, I created a video highlighting my best friend Emily and her love for makeup artistry.

It was a really fun video to make, and I'm excited to keep working on making my video shooting and editing skills even better.

Want to keep up with my multimedia efforts? Subscribe to my YouTube channel!

XOLily

Haiku Wednesday

This week has lost me

I can't keep up with the world

and my Twitter feed.

My tunnel vision

only allows me to see

beautiful Paris.

XOLily

Haiku Wednesday

I look forward to
my afternoon cup of tea.
Sweet and steaming hot.

Is it possible
to be addicted to tea?
Because I might be...

My favorite mug.
(Even though it's a Valentine's Day mug)

XOLily

Miss Blog

Quite a bit of blogging happening lately...

This quarter, I have been named the blogger for The Clipper, Everett Community College's student run newspaper. The Clog, which could use a little tender love and care, has become my responsibility and I intend to post once a day, whether it's an article written by me or by another staff member.

Today's post is about a Humanities lecture
 I attended on enlightenment.

Not only have I become the Clipper blogger (the Clogger?) but I am also taking a Multimedia journalism class in which we have to create blogs using the Wordpress interface.

It's exciting to be doing all of this blogging, and learning a lot of new techniques.

I'm hoping to apply all of these new ideas for when I am studying in Paris next year, where I will be blogging about all of my adventures.

Lois, blogger for She Must Assemble (and also my sister) created a seperate blog for when she spent a quarter in London.

I'm thinking of using this blog for my adventures á Paris, but I haven't decided yet.

Any suggestions?

XOTheBloggingQueen

The Daughters of Cecil

A woman named Cecil had three daughters. Those daughters had daughters, who had daughters, who had daughters.

And now, there are four generations of Cecil, and occasionally the daughters and their daughters and their daughters and their daughters all gather in one place for a couple of days.

Daughters of a daughter's daughter.

Babies, toddlers, girls, teenagers, young ladies, old ladies, middle aged ladies. Twins, sisters, cousins, aunts, nieces, great-aunts, grammies, grand-daughters, great-nieces, and one gigi.

This weekend it was Cama Beach, on Camano Island. The Daughters of Cecil came, played, laughed, talked, cried, and ate delicious food.

Our lives are dynamic, just like the characters in books. They're messy, sometimes sad, occasionally angry, mostly chaotic, and sometimes absolutely perfect.

But we are Daughters of Cecil.
We keep going.

And we laugh as much as we can along the way.  So much that our jaws start to hurt and our ears ring.

(And we paint our nails.

With a party nail to show our wild side.)

 

A compilation of some footage I took over the weekend. 

Mostly ocean, some babies.

XOLily

Happy Easter

I love Easter because it's usually sunny and it marks the beginning of spring and the countdown until summer.

Tomorrow I go back to school for my very last quarter before graduation. Next year I will be celebrating Easter in Paris.

Lemon and strawberry macarons for the Easter family party.

My favorite colors. Skirt and sweater from J. Crew.

A manicure to match my outfit. 

Pink Easter eggs!

PEEPS.

Lois and me at the Easter Sunday service. 

Hope everyone has a lovely Easter!

XOLily

Five Things

1. Doing the Big Climb for the third year in a row with Em.

2. Going on motorcycle rides with my dad.

3. Home-made chocolate peanut butter cups. They were delicious!

4. My new motorcycle helmet: a reward for getting my motorcycle permit.

5. Doctor Who Season 7 Part 2!!! (I already love the Clara Oswin Oswald, she's FAB)

XOLily

Haiku Wednesday: Supernatural Edition

An ode to my newest favorite TV series:

Today was well spent
watching Supernatural,
eating macarons.

This show is so fab.
I'm only on Season Three.
There are eight seasons...

I cannot decide
which Winchester I like best:
sweet Sam or brave Dean?

They are both lovely
and you can probably see
that I am obsessed.

(Well, maybe not obsessed, more just fangirl status)

XOLily

PS: I still haven't finished Season 5 of Merlin, I have watched every episode except for the last two becuase I don't want Arthur to die! :(

Macaron Madness Day Two

My second try at making macarons was a huge improvement. Learning from the mistakes I made yesterday, I quickly perfected my technique and the macarons turned out lovely.

I changed the quantities I used on ingredients based on this recipe from Pop Sugar and I bought some plastic pastry bags from JoAnn's to help make the macarons into more perfect circles.

The crucial step: add the flour mixture a little bit at a time and fold to incorporate. 

The batter was a lot more smooth this time because I used less almond meal and I sifted it twice after putting it through the food processor. This helped to create the shiny texture of the batter.

Much better looking than yesterday!

I'm not very skilled at using pastry bags: next time I'll
remember that all of the batter does not fit into one bag!

Now that I've tried, I realized that making macarons really isn't that difficult, it just takes a little practise.

Maybe later this week I will try a different flavor. (The pistachio macarons I had in Paris were wonderful!)

The little ruffle around the bottom is called
the "pied" which is "foot" in French.

A little strawberry buttercream in the middle and voila!
The perfect macaron.

Not only did I make perfect macarons today, I also
made my own peanut butter cups! YUM.

 






















All in all, today's baking experience was a success. And now I have some delicious snacks for the Supernatural Marathon I am having tomorrow with my friend Liz!


XOLily

Macaron Madness

Well I haven't blogged in ages which goes to show that new year's resolutions are useless. BUT: It is now spring break which means I have all the time in the world and I have taken on a challenge.

At first, I was going to do a different craft each day and blog about it, but like usual I set my bar way too high and am now bringing it down.

Today's craft was to make French macarons...

What they're supposed to look like...

I first experienced these lovely little desserts last summer in Paris, when my friends and I went crazy over them in a little shop in Montmartre and ever since then I have been wanting to try to make some of my own.

After a little internet purusing, I found a pretty good recipe here and ignored all of the warnings about how incredibly difficult it is to make macarons.

Don't be fooled, I took a picture of the most mess-free area of the kitchen.
The rest looked like a war-zone. 

It was going pretty well until I added the almond flour/ powdered sugar mixture which made the batter incredibly lumpy because I hadn't put the dry ingredients through the food processor.

It got worse when I realized that one needs a pastry bag to put the macarons on the baking sheet. Using a spoon worked, but it was not nearly as neat.


After they came out of the oven, I had some hope that they might have turned out alright. I made strawberry buttercream (they didn't have any rose syrup at the store so I went with strawbery flavoring instead).

Until I bit into one with a loud crunch. (For those of you who have not had macarons before, they are NOT supposed to be cruchy!)

I had overbaked them.

Final product: Not so good. 

Not only had I overbaked them but they looked absolutely ridiculous because of my lack of pastry bags.

They didn't have the little ruffle on the bottom and many of the tops had cracks, as well as the lumps from my lumpy flour mixture.

I think I can only improve from here.


After today's macaron disaster I have decided to spend all of my time this week perfecting my macarons making skills. Starting tomorrow I will:

1. Figure out how to work the food processor.
2. Buy pastry bags with the right type of nozzle. (Maybe they have them at a craft supply store like JoAnn's?)
3. Sift the flower properly.
4. Watch the baking time!

Will keep you updated

XXXX Lily

A Poem...

How many calories in a peanut butter cup
Carol Kaye
Pink apps
Pink hearts
Be nice
Community Transit
Tiffany
Beyonce
47th Superbowl Beyonce
Dowager Countess Grantham
It's not about the money
Fortune 500
Kuwaii
Trumpet wake up song
Dictionary


(Okay maybe my Lit professor wouldn't call this a poem but I thought it would be cute to turn all of my recent google searches into a poem)

XOLily

Five Reasons Beyonce is Fabulous

 Today was the 47th Super Bowl, but Beyonce stole the show with her fantastic halftime performance.

So...

A Tribute To Beyonce  

And my favorite things about her:

 1. Her hair. She gives curly haired girls like me some serious hairspiration.

2. Her lyrics. "Who run the world? Girls!" None ring truer than this.

3. Her baby, Blue Ivy. And the fact that she's not strewn all over the tabloids as much as other celebrity children.

4. Her curves.

5. Her perfect mixture of class and sass. (She makes such an easy transition from a classy black gown to a leather and lace leotard with knee high boots.)

XOLily

Five Things

1. Rose gold nails. (OPI for Sephora: Chestnuts About You)

2. My style of note taking for my Intro to Literature class.

3. New music and strings for my cello.

4. Making birthday party invitations. 

5. Marc by Marc Jacobs Spring/Summer 2013.

XOLily

Haiku Wednesday

Waiting for the bus
in the morning my hair froze.
Better than hair spray.

XOLily

2013: What's IN and what's OUT...

 My theory is that trends are short lived and silly. There is no way I'm going to start my wardrobe afresh every January, so instead I like to come up with some of my own trends that directly apply to my life. It's much easier than trying to follow Glamour or Cosmo's guidelines to 2013 or whatever.

So here are the 2013 trends... according to me.

1.

IN: Body positive.
OUT: Weight loss resolutions.

Maybe you've noticed that the YMCA hasn't had it's usual January crush of people trying to keep their New Year's resolution.  That's because the New Year's Resolution to lose weight has gone out the window and instead, people are trying to be Body Positive. Which I think is way more fun anyway. (Although this doesn't mean I'm going to stop going to Zumba!)

2.

IN: Boots.
OUT: Moccasins.

A must have if you live in the Seattle area.

Clunky boots with knit, wool socks. There is nothing better. To be honest, I never liked the moccasin trend. They are very impractical if you live in an area where it rains a lot.

3.

IN: Jewels and sequins.
OUT: Glitter.

Bejeweled purse from Urban Outfitters.

For a while there glitter was my favorite thing EVER, but now I'm more into chunky jewels on purses and jewelry. Also, if you ever want to feel like a rock star, wear something with sequins!

4.

IN: Instagram.
OUT: Facebook.

I love Instagram-ing my cats.

I'm going to be blunt: Facebook has been taken over by middle aged people connecting with their old high school friends. And it is no longer fun.
Instagram, however, allows me to edit and post pictures of my cats in an instant.

5.

IN: The iPhone 5.
OUT: The iPod Nano.

Does the  iPod Nano even exist anymore? (I still have my old one, which I use to listen to music while running, but I have fallen in love with my new iPhone)

6.

IN: Sparkling rose.
OUT: White wine.

Bubbly is always in. 


XOLily