#BookWorm: Saint Anything

Hello fellow readers,

Recently I finished up Sarah Dessen's latest YA novel Saint Anything. I have always been a Sarah Dessen fan, and now that I live in NC I dream about running into her at the store. That would be way too cool. Anyhow, this latest book is not one to miss. I finished it quickly, what else is new right?, and LOVED it. Every page. Every character. Love, love, love. The plot is about Sydney, a high school girl who has always had one thing keeping her from the spotlight: her brother Peyton. Peyton is a trouble maker through and through. He goes to rehab to work on himself, and comes out better but not 100% convincing. Soon after he causes an accident that winds up throwing him into prison. Sydney has to learn how to live her life in the shadow of her brother and decides to transfer schools to get away from the rumors. She meets a new friend Layla who shows her a new side of the world and friendship.

This book is great. I can't say enough good things about it. I love Sydney's character, and feel like I can really relate to her being the child who didn't cause trouble. Layla's character is hilarious and her personality shines throughout the pages. If you have never read Sarah Dessen, this is a great place to start. If you have read her books and love her, you will love this one more! 9/10 easy rating. My favorite book by her will always be The Truth About Forever, but this is up on the top of her books for sure. She has been tweeting about writing and such so I hope another book is in the works! I always look forward to her new books!

Now I am going to dig into the stack of books my mom brought from Florida, even though it is tempting for me to read Lovely Bones which was a whim purchase at a used bookstore. I've heard great things about the book, not so much about the movie. We will see what comes off the stack first! If you read Saint Anything let me know your thoughts! I want to hear!

Thanks for reading with me,
- Olivia :)

DIY: Cinnamon Rolls

Hello everyone!

This weekend I tried my best to make-up for my last baking mishap and Pinterest fail by making some homemade cinnamon rolls for the first time! I spent a good majority of Sunday afternoon two weeks ago making what was supposed to be a delicious crumble cake and instead was a disgusting burnt piece of floury dough. This week I spent my time making cinnamon rolls and they came out delicious! I have never made anything homemade with yeast until today, so I was happy that they actually turned out! They were a lot of work due to the yeast and waiting for dough to rise, etc. But they were well worth it! My recipe makes about eighteen big cinnamon rolls or thirty six miniature rolls.
Here's what you need:

Randoms:
- 9x13" pan and 8x8" pan
- cooking spray or butter
- olive oil
- measuring cups
- knife
- two big bowls
- dough hook

Roll recipe:
- 4 1/4 cups of flour (and 1/2 cup on standby)
- 3/4 cup of granulated sugar
- 1 tsp of salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 packet of dry active yeast
- 1 cup of warm milk
- 1/3 cup of softened unsalted butter

Cinnamon Middle recipe:
- 1/2 cup of softened unsalted butter
- 5 Tbsp of cinnamon
- 1 1/2 cups of packed brown sugar

Cream Cheese Frosting recipe:
6 Tbsp of softened unsalted butter
1/4 cup of cream cheese
1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
1/8 tsp of salt
2 Tbsp of milk

How to make it:
Step One: Mix warm milk and packet of active yeast together in a bowl until it dissolves

Step Two: Mix all the other ingredients for the rolls together in a mixing bowl and mix on medium speed. Slowly add in the warm milk and yeast combination. Mix until thoroughly blended.

Step Three: Use olive oil to grease one of the big mixing bowls. Place tin foil over the mixing bowl. Place in oven and place on 170 degrees. Once it heats up, turn the oven off. This will help your dough rise in a warm environment. It should almost double in size. This takes about an hour, maybe 45 mins. While this is happening, you can clean up your bowls to re-use and make the cinnamon middle.

Step Four: Lightly place flour on a large surface that you will use to roll out your dough. Roll dough onto the surface. It should be about 16 by 12" and about 1/4" thick
TIP: If your dough is sticky, add the extra 1/4 cup of flour at a time as needed to it to make it less sticky, up to 1/2 a cup

Step Five: Place the cinnamon middle on top of your dough, spreading it out evenly. Cut away any edges of the dough that aren't even. You can use these later to make some extra rolls if you want.

Step Six: Place in oven to rise again, preheating the oven to 170 and turning it off once it heats up. Let them sit with a damp hand towel over the top of them in the oven for 20 minutes.

Step Seven: Take rolls out of the oven, they should have grown noticeably. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake rolls for 18-20 minutes. *This may take longer depending on your oven

Step Eight: Make the frosting by adding all the ingredients together and using a beater to mix. It should have the consistency of canned frosting, it's not a glaze!

Step Nine: Let them cool for 5-10 minutes then lather the frosting on top of the rolls generously.

Step Ten: Enjoy! They're delicious!

I was superrrrr happy with how these turned out considering last time I wasted so much energy, time, and resources on a crappy Pinterest recipe and nothing worked out. I couldn't even save it sadly. Lesson learned, read the comments on people's baking posts! Let me know if you try them out, I'd love to hear your feedback :)

Until the next delicious recipe,
- Olivia :)

#BookWorm: See Me

Hello fellow readers!

Tonight I finished up Nicholas Sparks' most recent book See Me. I got it as a Christmas gift from my mom and just now got around to reading it due to my stack of library books I had prior to this! So let's just jump right in. Ah, Nicholas Sparks. The typical modern day romance novel author and movie maker. Let me just tell you, I can already see this one being a movie. And a hit. So let me start off by saying, this was not your typical Nicholas Sparks book. This was more of a mystery book mixed in with romance. The first half of the book focused on the romance between Maria and Colin. Bad boy meets incredibly smart hard working girl, and tries to convince her he's a changed man. Now that part sounds like typical Nicholas Sparks. However the book takes a quick turn as Maria discovers she has a stalker and some visitors from the past. The plot of this book was great. Kept me interested throughout all 480+ pages. I never felt like "okay get to the point already" which can easily happen with such a long book.

As per usual, I did have a good inkling of who the stalker and criminal was from close to the beginning, but keep in mind mystery is my favorite genre. Overall ranking, 9/10. Pretty good. Not anything that could never happen, not anything that was too focused on sexual interactions between the main characters (especially for Sparks). Just right! Similar to Safe Haven without the weird ghost ex-wife. I still find it hilarious that every time someone has sex in his books its always the woman taking the man by the hand into the bedroom hah.

I do have to say that I saw The Choice this weekend and thought it was interesting. I liked it overall. I did tear up (what else is new right?). But I did think it could have been longer and gone into more detail about the characters' life together. The plot was great, ending great, true to the book (which I LOVED). Before I saw the movie,  I wasn't happy with who they cast for the main roles, but watching it I actually liked them! I also liked that Tom Welling was in the movie even if he looked ginormous. He's been a kid crush of mine since Cheaper by the Dozen.

Anyhow, I really liked the book and enjoyed the other movie. Did you read See Me or see The Choice? I want to hear thoughts people! I am cracking open Sarah Dessen's most recent book Saint Anything tomorrow and can't WAIT because she is one of my favorites and it has been a while since she came out with a book! And she lives in Chapel Hill! I would DIE if I ran into her :)

Thanks for reading with me,
- Olivia :)

Wifey Wednesday: DIY Invitations

Hello future brides!

A lot of people have asked me where we got our wedding invitations. I was flattered, because we made them! We spent about $250 for 135 invitations. Here are steps and items we used (unfortunately I don't have a lot of pictures of the process, it was a stressful night and the one below was what I kept because it wasn't "perfect" - AKA the lace is crooked and not centered):

Items Used:

- 12/12 sheets of paper ordered online from JoAnn's (175 count) $65

- 8.5x11 sheets of heavy cardstock from Michaels (200 count) $40

- two black ink cartridges $35

- lace (eight spools of 2" lace, not sure how many yards) $40

- hot glue gun and sticks (already had, but about $15 )

- scissors (already had, about $5)

- straight edge paper cutter $20

- 6.5x6.5 white envelopes (150 count) $60

TIP: Looking for coupons for Michaels, Joann's, or online deals really helps save! Make multiple trips to craft stores, or bring multiple people! with Michaels 40% off coupons I saved a lot!

Step One: Design your invitation on Word and pick out your paper. You have to decide what font, what your color scheme is, wording, etc. Look online for free fonts. We used Great Vibes for the majority of our invitations. Look at Pinterest to determine what style of invitations you like. 90% of the time it is worth it to do it yourself!

TIP: You can't print in bright colors like aqua, bright yellow, etc. Even kinkos can't unless it's a picture or you want to spend $$$$ ! I tried just about everything!

Step Two: Print out and cut your invitation to size. If you are adding ribbon or lace, cut one of that too. Also decide how big you want your background cardstock to be.

Step Three: Assemble your sample invitation. Doesn't have to be perfect and you can use regular computer paper if you don't want to waste a sheet of cardstock. If you like how it looks, gather a team of helpers!

Step Four: Print all of the wording on your white cardstock a few days before your big invitation making day, that way if you run out of ink or change your mind, you have time to fix it!

Step Five: Give each person a different job. For us, one person cut the blue cardstock off the sample piece, one person cut the cardstock, one person cut ribbon, one glued and folded. It was a big job.

Step Six: Assemble the invitation, you can kind of see from pictures how you would put it together. The blue cardstock was one big piece folded twice, lace was one long piece glued from behind where the words started and around the front part, white cardstock with writing glued to that, finishing touch: fold them! 

So for all 135 invitations it took about 8 hours with four people 100% dedicated to work on them. It was a long night, but I think worth it. I LOVED my invitations, and they would have been triple the price in the store with the folding and lace. The price I included above was not including postage, which was a tad more for the square shape, but if you don't care about the shape you can figure out how to do it with a regular shaped envelope that wouldn't be extra! Watch the weight though, that is where they can get you! So what do you think? Need help planning out the details? Let me know!

Thanks for crafting with me,

- Olivia