I finally got an Instagram!

Okay, I've finally done it - I've succumbed to the pressure of getting an instagram.  To be honest, I have no idea why I've been so reluctant to get one.  It's pretty fun!  And it's really easy to snap a picture of something that's going on without having to bring my SLR everywhere I go.  For little things, my iPhone's camera can do wonders.  

If you have one and would like to follow me at dylan_leah to check out daily updates on what I'm wearing, who I'm with, or what type of coffee I'm drinking (expect lots of coffee photos!)  At the moment I'm down south in North Carolina vising my dad, step-mom, and three little siblings.  Not a lot of chances for outfit photos but I do have a lot of free time that I've been spending by working on homework (ew) and becoming well-acquainted with the local coffee shop here in the city.  Oh, and taking lots of candids of my little sibs.  So, I'll leave this post short and end it with some of my favorite photos from my trip so far!

Winter ball!

Hey everyone!  Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but today I'm posting about my school's winter ball.  It was my last winter ball in highschool, so my friends and I obviously had to go all out and we were all looking gorgeous in our dresses.  I wore a dress I ordered off of Topshop online, and it worked out fabulously!  I also tried out a sock bun for the first time and have determined that I really need to grow my hair out more because my bun was quite small and thin (my hair is super thin.)  Live and let learn!  Otherwise, I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed myself.

What I wore:

 What Aubrey wore:

 And some photos of friends and I:

New York State of Mind

Hey everyone!  I'm back from New York!  This past weekend I spent a few days in the city with my cousins and family and I was able to do some really great things.  We went to the Museum of Modern Art and also shopping in SOHO which is one of my favorite things to do.  There were Van Gogh Paintings at MOMA and I spent a lot of money in Topshop so I would call this past weekend a major win.  I also got a chance to view the Hobbit and I loved it!  Martin Freeman was great and adorable as always, and I'd definitely see it again sometime soon.  

Here's a few photos that I managed to take during my time there:

 First time at Shake Shack!  Their milkshakes were super yummy :)

 My adorable cousin Maggie in front of some of Andy Warhol's Soup Artwork

 I blinked, but either way I have proof that I saw Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night!

 My new jacket courtesy of Romwe, I'll feature it in an outfit post pretty soon.

More amazing artwork I had the honor of viewing while in NYC.

Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies

Hey everyone!  Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, I sure did.  Today I'm blogging from a Burger King (can you believe it? there's nothing for me to eat here so i'm sipping a bottle of water) because I'm spending the holiday with grandparents in North Carolina and this is the closest wifi place.  So today I'm blogging about some cookies that I made for thanksgiving that have quickly become one of my favorite cookies to bake.  They look a lot like sugar cookies but then when you bite into them it's an explosion of maple syrup, butter, and nutmeg.  Delicious!  I got this recipe from the Smitten Kitchen, where I've discovered a lot of great baking recipes in the past.  So read on and give them a try perhaps for a holiday party (tis the season!)

Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies:

Makes around 40, total time to prepare/cook is about 30 minutes (with at least 2 hours to chill the dough)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of butter (two  sticks) at room temperature
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup of maple syrup (I used grade A but if you can find grade B it's even better)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of fresh grated nutmeg of 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of salt 

My two little helpers

Instructions:

• In a large bowl using an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together
• Keeping the mixer going, slowly add the maple syrup and the egg yolk
• In a separate bowl, combine flour, nutmeg, and salt.  Mix up using a whisk

• Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix well using the electric mixer
• The dough will be pretty clumpy so gather it all together and wrap in some cling rap and put in the freezer.  You can keep it in the freezer anywhere from two hours to two days.  Before taking it out to bake, put it in the fridge for about five to ten minutes so the dough thaws a bit.
• Preheat oven to 350°
• Flour a surface to roll out the dough.  What I did was cut the dough ball into fourths and roll out one fourth at a time, putting the rest of the dough back in the freezer until I was ready for it)
• Cut into your favorite shapes (mine were bats this time because for some reason we couldn't figure out what happened to all our cookie cutters.  All that were left were the Halloween ones)
• Arrange on baking sheets and bake for 8-11 minutes each, or until the cookies are golden brown on the edges
• Once cooked, let them cool and enjoy! 

Thanksgiving Anticipation

First of all, I'd like to start out apologizing for the lack of posts lately.  As I'm sure all of you know, life can easily get in the way of blogging and even using the internet.  Although, if you found this blog through my tumblr you might have realized that yes, I have been posting on that lately.  The thing is, there's an incredible difference between mindlessly hitting the "r" button when I see a photo I enjoy and actually writing, reviewing, taking pictures, etc. that are involved in the upkeep of this blog.  Apologies aside, onto today's short post.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the fall/winter holidays.  Traditionally, Halloween has been my favorite holiday by far.  I loved trick or treating, dressing up, and gorging myself on way too much candy.  I will say that Halloween this year was fairly fun, even if it came at a time when a hurricane had just decimated the north east.  For some reason though, this year I'm much more excited to partake in festivities like Christmas and Thanksgiving.   In my family, Thanksgiving has never been a huge ordeal.  Being a vegetarian for the past two years, I've grown accustomed to inquiring into the preparation of every single thing, making sure such and such wasn't cooked with meat or that the stuffing didn't use chicken broth.  I used to watch the parade every year or so, and then spend a meal with either my mother and step-dad or my dad, step-mom and multitudes of family from that side.  This year, things are going to be fairly different.  I'm going down to visit my dad, who recently moved to North Carolina and am spending the holiday with my step-mom's side of the family.  I've never really been to a southern Thanksgiving, although I think I have a bit of idea what to expect.    I'll make sure to update on how that goes.

What I'm also really excited about is being able to bake and cook lots of things for the meal.  One of my favorite places to look for recipes is Smitten Kitchen.  She has so many recipes that I have yet to try, and the ones that I have made before have all turned out to be incredibly delicious!  Tonight I plan on making her nutmeg maple butter cookies, and will post the recipe as well as photos of how they turned out.  Before I head off to NC next week I plan on scouring the web for more lovely food blogs in order to find some things to make for the family.

I suppose this post has been mainly a life-update kind of post.  Anyways, I'll be sure to be posting more this weekend for I have two shows to go to and am going thrifting.  Also, I have some photos from my trip to Boston the other day to put up.  So, until next time!

This is my last hurricane post - I promise!

I promise this is my last post about Hurricane Sandy.  Anyways, last night I lost power and just got it back on about an hour ago.  This morning I went out around where I live and took some photos of what happened in my town - here's some of the best ones I snapped.

One of the streetsigns near my house - right next to it was a broken powerline

The water level was about five feet higher than usual

A branch that attached itself to a string of dingies near the coast 

A piece of the boardwalk that washed up into the sidewalk - a block away from the water

Anyways, that's all that happened here, thank goodness it was not as bad as what happened in places like New York and New Jersey.  How has the hurricane effected you?  Or, has it effected you at all?  Let me know! 

Hey Hey Hurricane!

Well, as expected I ended up spending my entire day huddled up on my couch, cup of tea in hand, computer on lap, and The Goonies playing on my television.  It was just what I needed.  The latest news says that about 50,000 are without power right now, and I'm one of the lucky ones who has maintained power the entire day!  So I was able to stay inside my house (which started shaking due to the force of the winds and the fact that my house is only a few hundred feet from the water) and hang around in a cardigan and some sweatpants that are about two sizes too big.

I also have no shame to say that I re-watched Starkid's A Very Potter Musical on Youtube.  If you are a Harry Potter fan (and I hope you are) then you should definitely check this out.  It is a bit of a commitment since it's at least two hours long (more likely it's three or so) but it's completely worth the time.  It's a fan-written musical that basically sums up a lot of what occurred during the Harry Potter series while also making jokes that can make even a non-Potterhead laugh.  So, you can check that out here.

Otherwise, nothing much has been going on in my world.  School's canceled of course, so tomorrow I'm going to finally post my Halloween costume.  I'm sure you're all dying of anticipation! (That was sarcasm - I thought to point that out due to the fact that sarcasm does not translate well over the internet.)  And that's about it!  I wish I could post some photos of what it looks like near where I live, but it's slightly dangerous to go outside since there's a lot of wires that have gone down and trees that are in the middle of the road.  So that's all, talk to you all tomorrow!

Did you hear there's a hurricane on the way?

Well, here's my poor attempt at an outfit post for today.  Hopefully you've heard by now that there's a storm coming towards the east coast (I believe I even mentioned it in my last post.)  So, with it about to hit shore, the rain started coming - just as I went down the street to take some outfit photos!  Doubt that I'll be able to post much in the next few days, especially if there will be power outages in the area.

So this is all I've got for ya now!  A little outfit I wore today to a rehearsal.  Sorry for lack of pictures, these were the only two where the camera lens wasn't blurry due to rain.

The last photo I took on the way home from rehearsal.  If you can't see, this guy has hung up some signs that say "Honk for Sandy" and "Bring it on, Sandy!"  I thought it was so great, I had to take a picture.