Day 215: Bandana

Well isn't she just so cute in her bandana? (Psst, the answer is yes) She's a ridiculous dog who has to lick all of her food before she eats it, but she's adorable.

Most of my day was again spent applying for jobs; fun stuff, that.

Day 214: Feeding Time

Basically, any day that I'm around a horse, my picture of the day will almost certainly include a horse. They are so graceful and powerful, full of beauty. And I love them.

I fed the horsies one more time this morning on my way to church. I was planning to post a picture of me and in the barn, but none of the ones I took turned out well (the hazards of combining a self-timer with a stubborn animal). But as you can see, I'm in the barn all decked out in my church attire.

Day 213: Cloudy With No Chance of Rain

The clouds were nice today, plentiful and stretching out into the horizon. I'm not super-happy with the composition of this pic, but it will have to do. I do like the barbed wire in the foreground and the Texas sky in the background.

The tropical storm that was supposed to bring us rain today dissipated as soon as it made landfall last night. So, again, no rain for us. You know it's sad when you're praying for a hurricane to hit and bring it's rain.

Day 212: Hungry

This boy is hungry. Thank goodness I was there to feed him!

I'm feeding the horses for a couple of days and so, of course, my picture is of Soldier. This is as close I'll get anytime soon to owning my own horse - exercising someone else's. But that's okay, I suppose. At least I don't have to muck out any stalls!

Day 211: IATW

Most of my day, again, was spent trying to find a job and researching grad schools. In the morning, however, I helped out with an activity at church. Each week they've focused on one of the places where Highland members are going this sumer on mission trips. This year is an Into All the World (IATW) year. This just means that groups from the church went all around the world doing missions.

This week they traveled to New York. I was the spokesman from our team and I talked a bit about what we we did.

Day 210: Grasmere Gingerbread

Nestled amongst the lakes and dales of northeastern England lies the quaint village of Grasmere. William Wordsworth, the famous poet, lived here for many years and wrote oft of the area's beauty.

Grasmere (this is not the picture of the day - I took it several years ago)

Even more importantly, however, the best gingerbread in the world is made here, at the Grasmere Gingerbread shop (I'm a food traveler, so local foods are important). It's something in between the Christmas cookies we all think of and the cake-like bread that we often have in America.

And it's amazing.

The recipe is, of course, secret. My mom and I have tried to recreate it before and today, finally, we found a recipe that come pretty close. We still need to change a couple of things because the consistency isn't quite right. Nevertheless, this gingerbread is delicious!!

You can find the recipe we used on Jamie Oliver's website. Here's what we changed:

• We didn't use mixed peel - you can't get that in Abilene year-round
• Abilene stores also don't carry treacle or golden syrup (both British), so we substituted molasses for both ingredients
• We used oat flour instead of plain flour, but we might try it the other way next time.
• Half a pinch of baking powder, because in England they don't use double-acting
• We doubled the amount of candied ginger
• Finally, candied ginger is super, super expensive. So, we candied our own!

Got it? Great. Believe me, this stuff is worth it (if you like ginger, that is).

And that concludes my longest P365 post yet!

Day 209: Chicken Eggs

One of my friends is housesitting for a family that has chickens. Twenty-two of them. Well, twenty chickens and two roosters. The rooster attacked her this morning, but she still braved the coop again this evening to gather these eggs. As much as I would like having fresh eggs every morning, I'm not yet sure if I would want to deal with squawking chickens. But those eggs do look tasty!

Day 208: The Lord is My Light and My Salvation

I wasn't sure what to take a picture of today, so I snapped a pic of my ring. I should have done it earlier in the day with real light but, alas, I did not. My ring, which is in Hebrew, has the first line of Psalm 27 engraved on it. In my baby book, my parents wrote down this verse as my special verse.

Years later, when they chose the inscription for the ring, they didn't remember the baby book. It was only after I had the ring that, as I was looking through my baby pictures, we saw the verse and realized that they were the same. Pretty cool!

What's not so cool is the temperature - 105. Today was the 46th day that the mercury soared over 100 this year. That means we tied the record in Abilene for the most triple-digit heat days in a year. And it's not even August yet, which means the heat will continue.

Day 207: Cupcake Disaster

This is what can happen when you pull random recipes from the internet. Despite their dreadful appearance, these cupcakes are actually quite yummy (spice cake with salted caramel buttercream frosting). The frosting was not the right consistency and it melted almost immediately. We were left with cupcakes that don't look like they've been through a war, but that actually taste pretty good.

Day 206: Cuckoo

Our cuckoo clock, which has been at the clock shop, finally made it back to our house. My parent's bought it in Germany years ago and it has been a central fixture in our den ever since. It was sad to see the big blank space while it was being repaired and it feels right for it to be back.

I've missed the cuckoo bird popping out every hour and half-hour to announce the time.

Day 205: Nesting Night

Since we were very young, my family has done something that we call Nesting Night. Every Friday night we lay out sleeping bags on the floor of our den and we all sleep there. We may be a little old for it, but we still all love it.

We often spend the evening playing games or watching TV. Tonight we ordered pizza and then just hung out for a while. Now we're going to finish the second season of 24, which we've been watching through Netflix. Fun times!

Day 204: Wind Energy

After spending the night with some old friends in Lubbock, we drove back home this morning.

West Texas is flat.

But the landscape has changed a lot in the past ten years or so. Hundreds of huge windmills fill the plains between Abilene and Lubbock. And these things are so huge, much bigger than they look in the picture.

Day 203: Museum of Texas Tech University

Dad spoke at a church in Lubbock this evening, and Mom and I made the drive with him. I took the opportunity to visit the Museum of Texas Tech University and meet with people from Tech's graduate museum science program. I had a really great visit and learned a lot about the program.

Right now I'm thinking of going to grad school in the fall of 2012, probably in museum studies. Today was a great day to get a feel of what that might be like.

Day 202: Easter Candy

Yep, that's Easter candy. And yep, I got it at Easter. I'm a little embarrassed that I just pulled it out today and ate it. And yep, it was still good!

I have an odd tendency to save things. I want to get the maximum level of enjoyment out of life. Sometimes, unfortunately,  food goes bad because I save it for so long. Whoops. Not this chocolate, though; I caught it in time.

Day 201: Cinnamon Toast

I like cinnamon toast a lot. It's yummy and easy to make. But this morning I made it slightly differently.

I blended the butter with the cinnamon and sugar before I spread it on the bread (instead of buttering the bread and then putting the cinnamon-sugar on top of that). I also added a couple of drops of vanilla to the mixture. This recommendation was courtesy of the Pioneer Woman. And, true to her claim, it was the best cinnamon toast I had ever had. This may have been because I used real butter and not margarine. Or it may have been the vanilla. Or maybe it was just the combination.

Either way, you should try it.

Day 200: Bueno

Wow. It's been 200 days since I began this project. Over half of a year! I wish I had a better pic for today, but unfortunately this is neither good nor exciting. We went to Taco Bueno after church this afternoon. At the location of the very first Bueno. I had forgotten that the chain was started right in here in Abilene, by a guy that went to my church. Interesting, huh?

Day 199: Sleepover

My sister and I are having a little sleepover tonight. I'm staying at her house for some quality girl-time. We've popped the popcorn (not from a bag) and drizzled butter over it. Yum, yum. Time to put in a movie!

Day 198: Housesitting

I'm housesitting for a couple of nights, and this is one of the dogs I'm looking after. He's a funny guy - real nervous around you one moment and jumping up on you the next.

We did get a few drops of rain today, but unfortunately we need much, much more. It certainly smelled nice outside for a little while though!

Day 197: Hotter

This picture may look familiar to some of you. That's probably because just over a month ago I took a picture of the forecast as well. It was hot in June. And it's hot in July. At 9 this evening, it was still 100 degrees. It seems it will be 100 out for many days yet. In fact, Abilene is close to beating it's previous record of the most days in a year in the triple digits. Maybe I'll post another pic like this when that happens.

Day 196: Larry's

After church this evening we stopped by Larry's, a burger joint in town. They have good ice cream shakes, which we enjoyed on this hot evening.

Day 195: Fresh Grapes

I love grapes. They're so juicy and sweet and delicious. These bunches are especially yummy and extremely sweet. My grandparents have grape vines, so these come straight from them. They are small, but bursting with flavor.

I also learned an interesting fact about grapes from my granddad. Raisins are made from green grapes, not red ones like I always thought. And, golden raisins are made from the same grape, but are dried through a different process. Thompson seedless, the green grapes in my photo, are the grapes most commonly used to make raisins. Anyway, I just thought that was interesting.

Day 194: Sandals

I really love these sandals. I got them to comfortably walk around NYC and DC. I never once got a blister and they were super comfy. Sadly, the top of the footbed on one of the shoes began splitting after less than a week of wear. So, today, I exchanged them for another pair. Hopefully they won't break, because I really like these shoes!

Day 193: Changes

Our church bulletin is slowly changing, which I have to admit I'm not just a huge fan of.

It was also our new worship minister's first Sunday. I've always loved listening to the Zoe Group, an a capella group. Brandon Scott Thomas, the lead singer of the group, is not at Highland, leading worship each Sunday.

I'm also currently trying to makes some decisions about the rest of my life. I'm never a big fan of change, and change is in my future. Right now I'm trying to decide if I want to stay in Texas or take a job in Minnesota. Crazy!

Day 192: My Puppy

I love my puppy. She's getting old (she isn't really a puppy anymore) and walks around like an old woman. Poor girl.

You may have noticed that I tend to take pictures of our dogs when I can't think of anything else to photograph. But they're awfully cute!

Day 191: Sidewalk Flower

I found this flower growing from a crack in our back patio today. Honestly, I'm not sure how it's survived in the heat (104 degrees today) and dry weather. We certainly haven't been watering the concrete!

Day 180: Cupcake

Amara made these delicious lemon-raspberry cupcakes for us today.

We went to DC Cupcakes last week in Washington DC, where we stood in line for 30 minutes to get a cupcake. I had a salted caramel cupcake, and it was one of the best cupcakes I had ever had! Definitely worth the wait. But Amara's cupcakes this evening were pretty fantastic too.

Day 179: Gecko

This little guy surprised me when I went to get a drink of water this evening. He's just chilling on the other side of the glass. I've the little lizards on the side of the house before, but I'd never seen one splayed across the glass window pane.

Day 178: College Roommates

I met up with these lovely ladies for lunch today. It feels strange to say that they were my college roommates. It makes me feel so old! We had a grand time, though it was unfortunately very short.

Day 177: Singing a Song of Freedom

Well, I'm back. And I'll be posting a pic of the day from each day I was gone. I know everyone is looking forward to that! Maybe I'll even post more than one, because I took a ton.

I got these cute earrings from the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Of course, I had to pull them out and where them today!

I've had a Bing Crosby song from Holiday Inn stuck in my head today.

I'm bringing a song of freedom
To all people wherever they may be

Free to speak and free to hear
Free from want and free from fear
Sons of freedom far and near who agree
Sing with me
That all God's children shall be free

Day 176: Watergate

The hotel we stayed in the last couple of nights was just down the road from the Watergate Complex, known because of the scandal that centered here.

We also headed back home after a fun, albeit exhausting, two weeks in the northeast.

Day 175: Tian Tian

Tian Tian is the male giant panda at the National Zoo. I really enjoyed seeing him, though we missed seeing the female. Only four zoos in America have giant pandas and all of these pandas are actually owned by China.

We grabbed some delicious cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcakes (known as D.C. Cupcakes on the television show) and ate Ethiopian food for dinner. In between we visited  the Arlington Cemetery, which was sobering. I understand that there are still twenty to thirty funerals there each day.

Day 174: The City at Night

After another day of museums (yay!), we took the opportunity to see the city lit up at night. The monuments look incredible, with the white marble glowing against the night sky.