He has a beautiful wife.

And a pretty darn cute son.

He’s danced like no ones’ watching.

And sang like no one’s listening.

And rocked a lego costume like the best of them.

He has found his true passion: running.

And coaching running.

He has faced his fears.

And witnessed the Giants win the World Series. Twice.

But what I admire most is that even when life throws him a tantrum, he manages to keep going with a smile on his face.

Conor is going to run 30 miles to celebrate his 30th birthday. And probably drink some Bud Lights after. I’d say I have the coolest brother around.

Happy Birthday Conor! Love you lots. I only wish I could be there to celebrate with you.

It’s 4 days before Thanksgiving and I’ve already had 3 helpings of Thanksgiving fun. That being said, I’ve also tried a ton of new recipes to bring to each potluck. These Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes were my favorite discovery. The cake has a light pumpkin fall flavor, the cream cheese frosting brings it all together, and the crumbled graham crackers adds a bit of crunch. I even tried a new way of frosting the cupcakes – cut the tip off a ziplock baggie. Makes for a nice presentation without having to own any frosting gear! Coworkers all agreed they were DELICIOUS.

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

Whip up the batter and drop into your muffin tins.

Make the cream cheese frosting, put in a ziploc, cut off the tip, and swirl on the frosting for a professional look!

For the full recipe, check it out here. 

And to read more about Anna’s adventures in San Francisco, check out craving san francisco. Thanks Anna! 

Then, I met Salena. Though she didn’t have the same love of vodka as I did back in college, we did share our love of all things dessert. Chocolate in particular. Amazingly enough, the market on campus (where we could use our dining points) had Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. And just like that, we became fast friends.

Since then, our hang out activities usually involve making or eating something sweet. Sometimes we throw in a workout too. Sometimes. A few weeks ago, we got together, scoured our pinterest boards and made these ridiculous chocolate chip/cookies and cream cookie bars after. They were pretty darn delish, but definitely very sweet, so get your sweet tooth ready.

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cream Bars

Recipe ever so slightly adapted from Picky Palate

Yields 12-16 bars

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 12 Oreo Cookies, broken up
• 2 bars of Hershey’s Cookies and Cream

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease your 8×8 inch baking pan.

How good are these oreos gonna taste when combined with more chocolate? and butter? and sugar??

Combine the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside. Mix your butter and sugars together, for about 2 minutes.

Add the egg and then the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to your butter mixture and stir until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips and the oreos.

Spread 1/3 of the cookie dough in the pan.

Place the cookies and cream squares evenly across the dough. Spread the rest of the dough on top of the hershey’s pieces.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Let cool, cut into squares, and serve!

Today, my dessert-partner-in-crime is turning a quarter century old. She is having a dessert party to celebrate. Fitting, right?

(This is when we ditched the club in Vegas to have milk and red velvet cake). 

Happy 25th Birthday Salena!!

I have been wanting to donate my hair for a couple of years now. Why you ask? Well I have numerous reasons. First off, it’s for a great cause; Locks of Love turns donated hair into wigs for children suffering from hair loss and can’t afford a wig. Second of all, I don’t volunteer as much as I would like or have extra money lying around to give to charity, so it seems like a good deed I can do at this stage in my life. Lastly, and certainly not least, I experienced the emotions of losing your hair through my mom, and having a nice wig made the process much more bearable for her. That and some really cute hats. The silver lining to her hair loss was a head full of curly hair when it grew back. After years of stick straight hair, she was so happy to have curls.

When I first decided I wanted to donate my hair, I found out that you weren’t allowed to have bleach in your hair. I have been pretty blonde in various stages of my life, so that hair needed to grow out before I could even think about donating it. The past few years I have been abstaining from the bleach and have only colored my hair on occasion. I talked with my stylist about when she thought it would be long enough to cut ten whole inches off without having a pixie cut. She thought by November or December of 2011, my hair would be ready. I was all for it until I realized the middle of winter is not quite the time to chop off the long hair that is keeping your neck warm. I decided to wait until March, just in time for Spring. I curled my long locks all of December because I was getting a little nostalgic about losing my long hair. I got over that extra effort fast and by mid-February, I was mentally prepared for the 10 inch haircut.

I walked down to my salon, Renaissance, and told Jen that today was the day. She has cut off hair to donate before so she knew the routine. Here is what my hair looked like before:

She braided my hair in pigtails and then it was time for the big chop. I was a little worried I was going to scream or cry, but I managed to contain myself and only had a silent freak out. After, I just stared at my disconnected braids while she trimmed what was left of my hair.

I asked her for an a-line cut with some fun layers. She did exactly what I wanted!

And it takes a whole 4 minutes to blowdry in the morning. I just can’t get over how great that is.

My hair looked pretty weird just sitting on my counter in a plastic bag, so I decided it was time to mail it in.

The same week I chopped my hair off was the same week I started my new career in Real Estate. Let’s see where this fresh start takes me!

Soo is that supposed to be a good thing you might ask?

YES! I applied and was accepted. Maybe working for the company that owns the site helps? But maybe I’m just a really amazing food blogger. I’ll go with the really amazing food blogger.

And now you are thinking, “what the heck is foodbuzz?”

Well, let me tell you. Foodbuzz is an online foodie community that welcomes anyone to join. There are over 4000 featured publishers (which I am now one of!) that provide the majority of content and recipes for the site. One of my favorite features is the daily email that shows you the Top 9 recipes of the day. I always browse through them and get some ideas of what to make for dinner or dessert that week. Then you can save the recipes to your virtual “recipe box” and you have all your recipes in one place without the mess of magazine clippings or print-outs! I would suggest checking out all of the features if you enjoy finding new recipes to try or read restaurant reviews.

And what does it do to my site? Nothing, other than I have a really cool foodbuzz badge and an ad unit. Hopefully it will broaden my audience a little bit and hopefully on occasion I will get to participate in this program called “tastemaker outreach”. Sometimes companies want to get their product into the hands of food bloggers so the bloggers can make fun recipes and write about it. For example, Godiva just sent food bloggers their coffee and they made the coffee into special drinks or put it in baked goods. Sounds like a pretty fun opportunity to me so hopefully I will get a chance to be part of it.

That’s it for now, just thought I would fill you in on the good news