This week was packed with all kinds of fun activities, and as my dear mum so lovingly put it, "I never miss an opportunity" to have fun! Downtime is SO IMPORTANT as an adult, and when so many of our waking hours are spent on things that we HAVE to do, it's nice to be able to find time to do the things that we WANT to do. I would say that I am someone who can buckle down and HUSTLE when I need to, but am also equally capable of taking a step back and being able to say, "You know what? It's ME TIME now."
Thank God for great friends and colleagues in my life who have schedules that can mesh with mine for the sake of fun times! :)
On a small tangent, here's a real National Geographic video for you that happened right outside my window! Warning, there is a spider, which as much as I hate spiders, it was on the other side of the glass and I would not have to touch it or try to kill it 30 seconds later, so everything was fine.
-------------------------
Triple A Sleepover
I'd originally sent this invite out to many people, given the kind of spontaneous (yes, it was like...a week and a half in advance, but in my defense, it was a school night) nature of the sleepover. Only two people responded as being able to come (with some things that we had to intentionally plan in order to make it all work out), April and Aletheia.
See, one of the things about being an adult is to learn to be considerate of other peoples' time. I'm happy to say that I have yet to hear that I've ever lacked in that department, so I hope my friends are happy with me in the long run lol
It was an ordeal! I had class from 5pm - 7:40pm that evening (it sucks, amirite?), so we had to make sure everything went to plan or it just. wouldn't. work. I went to pick up Aletheia at 4pm, left her in charge of what I already had prepped in the fridge for dinner with directions for her and April to go ahead and eat at any point if they were hungry. April was going to get a ride over to my house on her own, so that was taken care of.
What a happy sight to walk into when I got home around 8pm! :) Ash had been wanting to catch up with them too, so she vid-chatted to us and we basically enjoyed seeing her adorable self for about an hour (no screen captures...hehe >_<)
Aletheia still had some homework left, so April and I watched Monsters Inc (which I had never watched, only seen snippets of) while we waited. When Aletheia was ready, I made a banana+avocado+honey+cocoa powder smoothie for us (sorry, no photos! yikes!) and we watched Miss Potter. Great movie, btw :)
fun with the girls :)
Aletheia had class the following morning at 11am, so I was up at 8:30am to begin prepping our breakfast...french toast rolls! Or as I'm now officially naming them, "French Trolls"!! :) We had three combinations: pumpkin spice spread (yes, this is a thing) with apples and walnuts, Nutella with bananas, and if you wanted to sub either of those out for peanut butter, we had that available as well.
first you roll out the bread...then you fill it with stuff!
Our coffee maker at home makes this high-pitched beeping noise, so I waited till about 9am before I had it start brewing so that when it went off around 9:10am - 9:15am, my sleeping friends were, at that point, awake. It was also totally worth it to have the coffee ready before they came down because the smile on April's face when I told her "yes" to her question of "is there coffee to be had?" was TOTALLY worth it :)
check out this deliciousness :)
each of us had 4 rolls each; I personally went with 2 pumpkin spice and 2 nutella
As mentioned earlier, Aletheia had class at 11am, but April was down to stay for lunch before I sent her home and prepared for my own class at 5pm. We decided to satisfy her Asian food craving and opted for a homemade lunch of dumplings and Chinese chicken noodle soup. We ran to International Groceries, Fresh Foods, and Aldi in search of ingredients and created the spread pictured below. Props to April for the dumpling folding! :)
For my Asian food savvy friends, it looks like the dumpling skin we used as actually a "sui jiao" skin instead of the actual "jiao zi" skin, but in our defense (and April reads more Chinese than me and I had her check!), the package SAID jiao zi skin.
-------------------------
Otou-sama's 55th Birthday
Dad (or as we sometimes call him, Otou-sama)'s 55th birthday was this past Monday and while he's still undecided on a gift (we're gonna combine it with his Christmas present so that I have a larger budget to work with, lol), he DID request to have nunpuffs for breakfast on his birthday.
So I hauled my non-early-bird butt out of bed and baked some.
kinda souffle-ish in nature, made with flour, eggs, milk, and butter :)
Isn't he just the happiest 55 year old you've ever seen? Oh well.
If he's happy, I'm happy, so there we go. Win win.
-------------------------
Office Bruncheon
Just gonna leave this here, but our office potluck (or bruncheon in this case, because eating began at 10:30am) was LIT. Check out this spread of amazingness! I dragged myself out of bed at 8am that morning to begin making MY dish, mee / mi goreng. I made 6 packets, stir-fried baby spinach and shaved carrots, scrambled eggs, and 2 cans of luncheon meat / spam.
Mayowa's spicy rice (didn't try it, unfortunately, because I REALLY can't take spicy these days)
fruit, meat, cheese, cracker, chips, and homemade chicken dip
white chicken chilli, my mee goreng + spam, Ghiradelli brownies, and scotcharoos (I'm probably spelling that wrong)
I DID give my officemates a disclaimer on the meat and put it seperate from everything else to save those who were squeamish about it from having to eat it and / or skip out on eating my dish altogether. I also made sure to cut and fry it presentably to make it look as appealing as possible :) I was actually quite pleased to hear that all of those who tried it, liked it, and even those who gasped in horror when I said "Spam" got the courage to try at least a bite and even decided that it is, in fact, delicious in mee goreng (even if they decided they don't like the taste of it by itself).
-------------------------
Do you and your officemates do anything fun?
Let me know! Maybe we can implement it in OUR office! lol
~ Ariel
I'd gone last year as Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy Advent Children, and after my love for yet another Japanese character was rekindled from watching Incredibles 2, I decided to go THIS YEAR as Edna Mode (1/2 German, 1/2 Japanese). I wasn't super thrilled about the idea of going to con in a glorified lounge robe though, so I went with her costume from the first movie. 
Quick plug before I go, my friend, Hailey W. from SIUC, created this game called "Good Gods" for a summer course that we took where we designed our own original board games. 
