Pharm life

How cute are these shelves/cabinets in the pharmacy building at UT? This beauty is just chillin' in the hallway between classrooms and offices. There are tons of old shelves and displays like these around the building, this is the biggest I've seen. They have all kinds of old apothecary jars and such all over them and are made out of the most beautiful wood. I love it! They started the pharmacy school in 1893, so neat! It is ranked as the 4th best pharmacy school in the nation by some important source, but I forgot who. Newsweek? I donno. Obviously I am living vicariously through Brendon and am pretending that I am also a student at UT. We went to a mixer thingy tonight and I got to meet some of his many friends he's already made. They are all so sweet! He knows everyone, he's such a charmer.

I am sleepy. I am tired. I am worn out. I've been having some (understatement) health issues. I'm not going to go into it (if you know me well enough you're aware of most of it) but I've been having stomach pain problems for the past few years. And today was the worst it's ever been. It's getting to the point where it is GREATLY effecting my quality of life so I guess it's time to see a doctor again. Hopefully this time it will be a bit more successful and less expensive. I seriously dislike doctors. Pharmacists are much better.

White coated!

 

My sweet husband is now officially in pharmacy school! He received his white coat yesterday. Our families and I went to a family orientation beforehand. It was incredibly informative, and all I can say is he has his work cut out for him! These next four years are not going to be easy, but I have no doubt he will be successful and I'll be here by his side for tons of support.

I love this man so much. After we got home last night after all the festivities he surprised me with a trip to the spa to get a mani-pedi. What?! Presents for me when he's the one working so hard and being a badass on the daily?? How did I land this fantastic man? I do not deserve him but I am so glad I've got him and I'm never letting go. LOVE LOVE LOVE him. We've been apart all day, for the longest time in a while, I worked at 5:30 this morning and he wont be done with school stuff until 10 tonight. So today I'm having a girls day. After I got off work I took a nice little nap, then went to get my nails did, stopped by sonic to get a yummy blue powerade, came home and made myself some pasta, and am now curled up on the couch watching the Sound of Music with a beer. Pretty good day if you ask me! Brendon is definitely missing out.

So while I was at the spa today the lady doing my nails saw my rings and says, "Oh! You married?! I thought you very young!" I laughed and told her I am pretty young and that I'm 23. She then says, "Oh I thought you like 17!". Say what girlfriend? I enjoy looking young and all but 17? Jeeze. I'm sure I'd love to hear that 10 years from now, but I'm a little sad that I give the impression of a high school aged girl.

Now, lets talk about the Sound of Music. This movie is so legit. One of my all time favorite (maybe THE favorite) movies. I know every song by heart and have watched it probably hundreds of times. When I was little I used to spin around in the little field below our house pretending I was Maria singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music". Sound of Music for life y'all. Those shots of Austria and Salzburg at the beginning? TAKE ME THERE NOW. Captain von Trapp? You can whistle at me anytime. And Julie Andrews is such a boss. That voice! You go girl. Also I may or may not have seriously thought of naming my children (if I were to have any) after the von Trapp kids. Brigitta, Liesl, Marta and Gretl, SO CUTE! Is that weird? Yes. It is.

The candle experiment

I made candles! It was an interesting experience for sure, and luckily for you guys I documented it all in case you're ever in the mood to make your own. I briefly googled making candles but for the most part I just guessed and hoped for the best. I think I was fairly successful!

 This is the stuff I used: white wax crystals, assorted jars that I had (you probably have great ones in your fridge! We have an awesome pickle jar I was eying, but it's currently occupied by pickles), crayons to dye the wax (I was going for a warmer color scheme), scented oil if you'd like (I used "gingerbread and maple syrup" yummy!), and wicks with the metal things on the bottom. I got the wax, oil, and wicks from Hobby Lobby.

 You'll also need a double boiler set up. This is my ghetto arrangement. Pot on top of pot and it was definitely not level but it worked... until it came to pouring the wax. At Hobby Lobby they have little canisters with a spout/pouring thing made for making candles. If I ever got serious I'd get one because the wax went everywhere when I tried to pour it out of the pan. But messy is a lifestyle, and I'm living it, so no biggie for me. Oh! DEFINITELY put some wax paper down to catch the drips, spills, etc. And then you can peel off the extra wax to use again later!

At this point I was like, "omg they lied, this is clear wax!" because it becomes literally colorless as it melts, but it definitely cools white. I would have rather used colorless wax because this it gave my candles as pastel-milky look which is fine, but I was going for something brighter.

Here's the wax after I added the crayons. It looks like tomato soup! I used half a red orange crayon, half a yellow, and half a violet red. Then I added the scent, I used about 60 drops of oil. Not sure how much you're supposed to add but I'm all about fragrance, so I loaded up.

Unfortunately there is no documentation of me pouring the wax because that was a hot mess, wax everywhere. These are the candles after pouring the wax in. They go through a few color changes; at first the wax is brighter when it's liquid, then white-ish, then it darkens a bit as it cools. I used straws to help hold the wicks in place. Originally I had the wicks in first before pouring the wax in but I found it was easier to just add them after the wax is in the candle. With one bag of the white crystals I got these two candles. It didn't go quite as far as I thought.

 This was my next round, I used the left over spilled wax from the first round, half a yellow crayon and a whole dandelion crayon. Don't you love crayon names! Remember robin's egg blue?? I love crayons.

 This big candle used up the whole batch. Hopefully it burns slowly. You can really see the color change here!

All finished! They did the weirdest thing as they cooled, they kind of sunk in around the wick. I'm guessing it's from air in the wax or something. I don't know how you'd avoid that problem, I'm sure candle making pros have a solution.

All in all I'd call it a learning experience, it was fun but messy. It cost me $12 for the supplies from Hobby Lobby, so I'm not sure if it was worth it cost-wise since I only got three candles out of it and two of them are small. I'm sure you can buy wax in bulk for a better deal though if you got super serious. We'll see how they burn, if they smell really amazing I might keep this up.

In other un-candle news, today is a pool day! When Brendon gets home from work we're blowing up some floaties and lounging in the pool. Hopefully we don't die of heat exhaustion!

Lets talk about the weather

IT'S EFFING HOT. I know I'm stating the over stated obvious but damn. I just got back from running an errand and the back of my shirt is wet with sweat. So sexy. I think we've broken some record of the most days over 100 degrees in a row, plus zero rain. It's ridiculous. I never remember summer being so terribly hot. Cooler weather, I need you. Supposedly it's supposed to rain on Wednesday, the first day of school, but I wont believe it until I see it.

Anywho, when I was on previously mentioned errand, I was going to Hobby Lobby and HEB to get supplies to make candles. This was actually Brendon's idea. For a while now I've collected glass jars, bottles, anything glass really until I started running out of things to do with/places to put them. Brendon had the genius idea to make candles in them! I love candles, I love glass jars, and I love making things. Perfect combo! So I went to HEB to get a tin of coffee, I really just needed the metal coffee tin to melt the wax in, double boiler style without ruining a pot. So I find one and head home. I open it up, pour the coffee into a baggie for later, rip of the label and lo and behold, it's cardboard painted silver! The bottom of the tin was metal but the sides were cardboard. I was so pissed I actually screamed. It's my fault for not being more thorough in my coffee tin selection, but still. JEEZE. I know this is extremely uninteresting but I am uber-frustrated and really want to get my candle making on, so I had to vent. I think I'll just use a pot and hope I can clean it out.

On another note, while at Hobby Lobby, somehow I ended up in (actually I think I just gravitated towards it) the holiday section. Dangerous games people. I am a holiday freak, especially when it comes to Christmas. My favorite time of the year is just around the corner! The holiday season basically begins for me in October, because it's time for Halloween, which leads to Thanksgiving, which leads to Christmas. I cannot state enough how much I love the holidays. I love the music, the decorations (!!!), the sounds, the food, the spirit, I love it all. Just a couple months and it's on like donkey kong. Bring it on.

So since I am in the holiday spirit, I'll leave you with this:

 

Our sweet Christmas tree from last year. It's a fake, and only decorated from the middle up due to a certain couple of cats who think ornaments are toys. This was our poor tree's last year, Sophie had completely ruined the bottom branches by being fat and trying to sit on them so we decided to trash it as it was looking a little like Charlie Brown's tree. So this year we are getting a real tree! I'm so excited!

Okay okay, I'll stop with the holiday stuff. Just preparing you for whats to come. Think of all the crafting opportunities! This blogs gonna get festive.

Champion muffins

These are the best blueberry muffins ever. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. And I made them. And I don't even like blueberries. The recipe is here, aptly called The Best Blueberry Muffins Recipe. The only thing I'd change would be the amount of blueberries. It calls for 2 and a half cups, I only used 2 cups because it was all I had, but it was also two cups of the biggest blueberries ever. But that's from someone who doesn't like blueberries, so you can disregard that statement. Oh and I only used a pinch of nutmeg in the topping, because I don't care too much for nutmeg. Disregard this also if you love nutmeg. Brendon is a fan.

 

My delish breakfast this morning. Check out those massive blueberries! HEB, your produce is impressive.

Also this morning Sophie has been insane. She has her crazy pants on for sure. She's been following me around the house, meowing, rolling around, and getting onto every surface she shouldn't be. She careened onto the bathroom counter this morning knocking down all my beauty supplies (aka deoderant and toothpaste), and she also was all over the kitchen counter investigating my breakfast photoshoot. Evidence:

What a freak! She's probably all riled up because this is the latest I've slept in ages. I got up at 10:27 y'all! That's a big accomplishment. Usually on my days off I get up at 8 something, and that's after a lot of tossing and turning. Today I forced myself to sleep in and thus, Sophie was bored.

Brendon starts pharmacy school in less than a week!!! Craziness. After all these years, it's finally happening! It seems like just yesterday we were researching schools that have pharmacy programs. And Brendon, the silly boy, put UT at the bottom of the list because he thought he couldn't get in. Obviously I convinced him otherwise, he applied and how wrong was he?! Can I brag for a second? Have I mentioned that he got into every school he applied to?! BAAAAHHH I'm so proud. And I am so excited for him to start school, but I think he's a little nervous. He has no reason to be, he's such a badass and a charmer and a genius. He's going to wreck shop and UT wont know what hit them. I am really super duper excited about him being close to me at work. Now we can hang out on breaks and after work/class on campus and I can pretend I'm a longhorn! Jk y'all. You know I'm a mean green eagle all the way. Speaking of which I want to check out that new stadium at UNT but I've heard the tickets are ridiculous. Guess they have to pay for it somehow. I think we're going to try to go to a longhorn game this fall. Hook 'em?