Mother's Day Flowers

For the past couple years, I've taken an early morning trip the day before Mother's day to Norfolk Wholesale Florist for Mother's Day flower arrangement inspiration and supplies. I buy several bunches of flowers to put them all together in special arrangements for the sweet ladies in our lives. I made an extra bouqet for one of Robert's grandmas, "Grandnini." Grandnini was in the hospital during Mother's Day weekend and we went to visit and brought her these flowers to cheer her up. :) This year I found pretty pink roses, daisies, irises, carnations, and some baby's breath and purple filler-type flowers--very bright and very springy--just the way I like it!

Plasmodium falciparum

What you see here in these pictures are Malaria and mosquitoes on sugar cookies. Yes, I said MALARIA and, yes, I said SUGAR COOKIES. Malaria... as in the terrible, deadly disease one can contract after being bitten by a mosquito (Anopheles spp.) infected with the parasite Plasmodium falciparum...

Last week, I made these cookies and brought them into my Molecular Genetics class last Wednesday for our lunch-buffet. My professor, Dr. Cooper, for this class was my Parasitology professor last fall and just so happens to be a Malaria expert. Also, we had a guest speaker from Notre Dame, who's a friend/colleague of Dr. Cooper and, again, just so happens to be a Malaria expert. He's one of the leading researchers of Plasmodium falciparum, its genetics and specifically how its genetics affects its drug resistance (Dr. Mike Ferdig). Kind of a big deal being that the primary drug used for malaria decades ago has become resistant and there hasn't been a drug as cheap and effective.

While these gentlemen are very familiar with malaria, mosquitoes, and the havoc they can wreak...they were certainly not prepared to see malaria, mosquites, and cookies and experience wreaking havoc on those cookies! It was a great surprise, a fun addition to our Malaria discussion, as well as a perfect way to start winding down the semester! I'm hoping that if my brain didn't cut it for a good grade this semester...that these cookies will help me out.

You'll notice my rendition of the Anopheles species mosquito and an assortment of parasite red blood cell stages: ring stages, both young and mature trophozoites, and schizonts.

As always, I most certainly had amazing assistance and am quite pleased with this project that has brought together my love for cookies and biology. <3

Catsup, Ketchup, CATCH-UP!!!

It's been a long time since I've blogged last and I figured I should just fast forward us all to the approximate present. My last post was early in the year...during the ginormous snow storm of 2010 and I have had very little time to sit down and organize pictures and think and write and update you....all 2 of you (who probably know what's happened and what's going on in our lives, anyways). ;)

Well, since the snow storm, not TOO much has happened, but here are a few things/highlights of the past 3 months. (Click on the headings to see the pictures that coincide with the subject. There are too many to just post a few on the blog.) :)


25th Birthdays
Holy moly. This year's age was a little hard to swallow. I remember giving James, my oldest brother, the hardest time about how old he was when he turned 25...well...now I realize this age is not that old and it's not such a terrible place to be in life. :) It's also nice that I'm not the only one in my house that's soooo old. While I may be an "older" woman, I'm only 3 weeks older than Robert - it's ncie to know he's deteriorating at about the same rate I am. :)

I spent my birthday day with my mom and our friend Donna at a fancy tea room in Chesapeake. It's a place we'd never been to for tea (something we like to do every once in a while) and it turned out to be one of the nicest, higher quality tea rooms we've been to. It was called With Flair Tea Room and was so nice!

My birthday evening, Robert surprised me with a fancy dinner at Vintage Kitchen which is a really nice restaurant at the bottom of Dominion Tower in Downtown. We love supporting local, smaller restaurants and especially those that try to serve locally grown produce and such--Vintage Kitchen was one of those. It was a great birthday date and everything we had was so delicious.

The day after my birthday, my mom & Donna threw a tea for the childrens music workers at church.... after we all enjoyed their tasty tea sandwiches and goodies, those crazy ladies surprised me with an amazing Chocolate Almond Cake. After the tea (and yummmmy cake), Robert & I went to an ODU basketball game with a bunch of friends from school and a few friends from church. Aftewards we headed to one of our favorite pizza places (Cogan's Pizza) to continue my birthday celebration. It was a great time scarfing down some good pizza (we LOVE their Margherita pizza!) and enjoying the evening with friends.


Baby Showers & Girly Fun
I attended 3 baby showers in 3 weeks in the month of March! One was for a friend from church (Mary), another in honor of my bestest bud (Amy), and another one for a friend of mine (Mandy) who I went to elementary and middle school with!

After Mary's shower, all of us girls (several who attended the shower) piled into my car and headed to church for a ladies dinner. We all shared a table and were were responsible for decorating it according to whatever theme we wanted. All of us girls are in the "Young Married" Sunday School class and so we decided to go with a Wedding theme! We decorated the table with a white table cloth, my china, pictures of all of us girls with our husbands on our wedding days, bows on the backs of our chairs, and a REAL wedding cake! I had quite a bit of help from my mom and our dear friend Donna making, designing and decorating the cake--it was a lot of fun and quite a challenge, but so worth it to try it out and experiment! All of us girls enjoyed the time to chat and enjoy each others company...all while our husbands hung out together and did manly things like eat steak and watch sports. :)

Catherine & I worked together to throw Amy her baby shower in March and had so much fun doing so! It was just great to help someone so special to us celebrate and prepare for her first baby, Carter. :) My mom & I baked and decorated a cake that matched the cups, plates, and napkins Catherine chose for the shower--I think it turned out too cute, if I do say so myself. Also, Catherine thought of a really neat idea for a decoration; we chose a bible verse to go with each of the letters of the Carter's name and hung each letter up, with its corresponding verse, on a clothes line. It turned out the craft project didn't only serve as a decoration for the shower, but Amy & Dave were able to use it as a decoration over Carter's crib--that made the work well-worth it and that much more special.


Puppy!!!
My parents decided to get a puppy early in the year--that has been a major highlight of the past few months! :) (i love puppies) I was able to go with mom & dad out to Chesapeake to pick out their puppy with them in February. I absolutely LOVE puppies (have i mentioned that i love puppies?) and just adore little Labrador puppies. I couldn't have been more excited the day we met all 14 puppies that we had to choose from! We found a swee,t little, light-colored, energetic, female puppy that day. Mom & dad picked her up in the middle of March when she was about 7-8 weeks old. It has been so much fun for Robert & I to go and play with little Josie and watch her grow in this past month. :) She is definitely wild and puppy-like, but she's so smart at such a young age and such a good doggie, too. :) i. love. puppies.


ODU CAA Champs
So, the first day of my spring break was the day the ODU men's basketball team was playing William & Mary for the CAA Championships title. One of Robert's cousin's, Emily, absolutely LOVES ODU bball. Another one of his cousins, Evie, and I drove up with Emily to get free student tickets and watch ODU take their first CAA title since 2005! I'm not normally a fanatic about sports, much less basketball, but it was definitely a fun time to hang out and see a major game like that. (I still can't believe we got our faces painted for the game...) ;)


College Girlfriends
At the conclusion of my spring break, I drove up to meet some of my best friends (Robyn & Julia) in Fredericksburg where we went to college. It was so sweet just to be able to pick up where we left off, visit our favorite restaurant (Sammy T's), coffee shop (Hyperion), icecream shop (Lee's), and college campus. This was my first visit to Mary Washington since I graduated in May of 2007!!! I still can't believe I hadn't been up to visit the campus or walk around before then. Mary Washington's campus is still as lovely as I remember. I never realized before how much I missed the open green fields, the shady trees on the main campus walk, the coordinating brick buildings and their massive white columns, and the overall refined feel that there is on that campus. It was a great feeling to be back to that place with some of my best friends with whom I had some of my best memories with!


Carter David
Amy & Dave's little Carter David Watson was born on March 31, 2010. One of the sweetest moments yet was Easter weekend when Robert & I were able to meet Carter. It was such a neat moment to see my bestest friend hold her own baby! For as long as we've known each other, shared so many memories together, talked about the future (boys, husbands, and family) and about growing up as old ladies together, this moment was priceless. Robert & I took some Easter cookies over to the Watsons and gave Carter his very first sugar cookie. ;)


Well, I think that basically catches you all up to life at the moment. Perhaps I'll be more on top of things now that the semester's about to end and (hopefully) life will slow down a bit. :)

Homemade Christmas ornaments! (yeah, it's February)

I had this idea to make ODU ornaments for a few of my close friends at school this Christmas long before Christmas rolled around. I already had the ornaments and the plan of attack, I just failed to attack this project til....January. :P I finished them sooner than I thought I would...but still, it took me a while to put the finishing touches on them and get them wrapped up. Once I had them all boxed up for delivery, I kept forgetting to take the gifts to them. I'm proud to say, as of Super Bowl Sunday, my friends finally had their Christmas presents. :)

Christmas Eve with the Walpoles

After the Christmas Eve service, Robert & I headed over to Mom & Dad's for Christmas Even Beef Stew. (so delicious) As a Walpole tradition, taking a picture next to the tree and "putting an ornament on the tree" is a must.








During the day on Christmas Eve, I had made some pumpkin bread in snowflake bundt pans and began decorating sugar cookies. I didn't end up finishing up some decorating or putting together the baskets of goodies we were giving to several family members the following day. After dinner, both Robert and I rolled up our sleeves and got to completing my projects. Robert was such a huge help and while he probably wouldn't admit it, I think he enjoyed being creative with the cookie decorating; he was quite good at it, too! Robert in his creative peak made me an avant guarde cookie (picture below). :) With all of the cookie decorating and creative juices flowing, I got the idea of using decorated sugar cookies as gift tags-- I think this may become a tradition of mine. :)

Snowflakes & the Joy of the Season

One of my goals for this year was to make Christmas cards again! Last year, they were technically "New Year's cards" and I really wanted to get these sent by Christmas Day. While they were sent and delivered within a week after Christmas, I'm still impressed! :) Better luck next year, right?

Anyways, I saw these snowflakes stamps on a friend's webpage and just had to order them! (My mother and I have somewhat of an obsession with snowflakes.) And nothing would make these snowflakes more exciting than glitter! I really loved how these cards turned out--I feel like Joy is the one word that accentuates this Season more than anything. Without the real reason of Christmas, we certainly wouldn't know what true joy is and where it is derived.