34 ere 34: a birthday goal list to apologize for missing 2 years

Here I am, It has been 2 birthdays since I last attempted one of these lists. Between moving cross-country, starting a new job, buying a house, being pregnant, and now having a baby, I am not surprised I feel off the wagon of resolutions and Bucket Lists. Now, though, I am ready to have an outlet of fun and excitement for the next year of my life. Though it is not complete currently I will update as the year goes. Thus I give you:


34 before 34!

Health

1) Run a 5k

2) Run a 10k

3) Complete 90 Day BBM Challenge

4) Get to Pre Baby Weight 135

               

Creativity

1) Recreate 1 thing from my “recreate” list

2) Knit or Crochet Gifts for Christmas

3) Learn to use my Sewing Machine

4)

Just Cuz

1) Throw a Dinner Party

2)

3)

4)

Cooking

1) Learn to Debone a Chicken

2) Learn to Decorate a Cake - Buttercream specifically

3) Do a week of meal planning/Meal prep for a Month

4)

Adventure

1) Go Ziplinging with MiL

2) Go on an unplanned Weekend Trip

3)

4)

Travel

1) Go to Michigan with Golomskis

2) Go Somewhere with Bocks

3)

4)

Quarters

1) 2 things TBD on my 1/4 birthday July 10th 

A)

B)

2) 2 things in any category TBD on my 1/2 birthday October 10^th

A)

B)

3) 2 things TBD on my 3/4 birthday January 10^th

A)

B)

Learning

1)

2)

3)

4) 34 Books To read: (4 Classics)

1. A Slow Regard of Silent Things - Patrick Rothfuss

2. Blood Rites - Jim Butcher

3. Dead Beat - Jim Butcher

4. Proven Guilty - Jim Butcher

5. White Night - Jim Butcher

6. Small Favor - Jim Butcher

7. Turn Coat - Jim Butcher

8. Changes - Jim Butcher

9. Ghost Story - Jim Butcher

10. Classic -  

11. Classic - Walden - Henry David Thoreau

12. Definitely Dead - Charlaine Harris

13. All Together Dead (Lucky) - Charlaine Harris

14. From Dead to Worse (Gift Wrap) – C. Harris

15. Dead and Gone (Two Blondes) - C. Harris

16. Dead in the Family (Small-Town Wedding) -Charlaine Harris

17. Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris

18. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

19. Classic -

20. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams

21. The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket

22. The Reptile Room - Lemony Snicket

23. The Wide Window - Lemony Snicket

24.  The Miserable Mill - Lemony Snicket

25. The Austere Academy - Lemony Snicket

26. The Ersatz Elevator - Lemony Snicket

27. The Vile Village - Lemony Snicket

28.  The Hostile Hospital - Lemony Snicket

29. The Carnivorous Carnival- Lemony Snicket

30. The Slippery Slope- Lemony Snicket

31. The Grim Grotto- Lemony Snicket

32. The Penultimate Peril- Lemony Snicket

33.  The End- Lemony Snicket

34. Classic - Dracula - Bram Stoker

An Updated Reading List in Preparation for my 34 by 34 List

A few years ago, I called upon my audience to help me come up with the "MUST be read in your Lifetime" Book List. I have recently updated that list to reflect what I have read thus far in my 32+ years. What else needs to be on this list in your opinion? I am not talking about books on the Best Sellers List or anything, I mean books that have impacted your life and that are works of art. Let me know what else I need to read. For my 4 classics for the 34th year of my life, I am planning on ready Walden, Dracula, Fahrenheit 451, and Watership Down. Little Cat's Little List of Books  1984 The Adventures of Augie March The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Age of Innocence Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass American Gods Are you There God? It’s Me Margaret The Art of War As I Lay Dying Atlas Shrugged Atonement The Awakening The Bell Jar Beloved Beowulf The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov The Blind Assassin The Book Thief Bossypants The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Brave New World Brideshead Revisited The Bridge of San Juis Rey Bridget Jones Diary A Brief History of Time The Brothers Karamazou The Call of the Wild Candide Canterbury Tales Catch 22 The Catcher in the Rye Charlotte's Web The Color Purple Common Sense The Confessions of Nat Turner The Constitution of the USA The Count of Monte Cristo Crime and Punishment Dangerous Liaison David Copperfield Deliverance The Divine Comedy Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde Doctor Zhivago Don Quixote Don't Sweat the Small Stuff Dracula Electra Ender's Game Everything is Illuminated Fahrenheit 451 For Whom the Bell Tolls The Fountainhead Frankenstein Franny and Zooey Gilead The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo The Giver (the subsequent sequels) The Glass Castle Gone with the Wind Grapes of Wrath Great Expectations The Great Gatsby Gulliver’s Travels The Handmaid’s Tale Harry Potter Series Heart of Darkness His Dark Materials Trilogy The Historian The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I, Robot The Iliad Inferno The Interpretation of Dream by Freud The Invisible Man Jane Eyre Janet Evanovich Mysteries The Joy Luck Club The Jungle The Killer Angels Kite Runner Lady Chatterley’s Lover The Last of the Mohicans Le Morte d’Arthur Legends of the Fall Les Miserable Life of Pi The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe Little Women Lolita Look Homeward, Angel Lord of the Flies The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit Madame Bovary Mathilda Medea Mein Kampf The Metamorphosis Middlemarch Moby Dick Mrs Dalloway The Murder on the Orient Express Naked Lunch Never Let Me Go The Odyssey Oedipus Rex Of Mice and Men The Old Man and The Sea On the Road One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Hundred Years of Silence One Thousand and One Arabian Nights Paradise Lost  Peter Pan Phaedra The Picture of Dorian Grey The Poisonwood Bible The Portrait of the Lady The Postman Always Rings Twice The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie The Princess Bride Ragtime The Red Badge of Courage The Red Tent Robinson Crusoe Saint Joan The Scarlet Letter Siddhartha Sirens of Titan Six Characters in Search of an Author Slaughterhouse-Five Sophie’s Choice Stranger in a Strange Land Starship Troopers The Sun Also Rises A Tale of Two Cities Things Fall Apart The Three Musketeers The Time Machine To Kill a Mocking Bird Tom Jones Treasure Island Ulysses The Unbearable Lightness of Being Uncle Tom’s Cabin Vanity Fair Wuthering Heights Watership Down War of the Worlds War and Peace Walden Waiting for Godot The Wanderer’s Necklace The Wind and the Willows The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Series Collected Works of Austen Collect Works of Chekhov Collected Works of Ibsen Collected Works of Moliere Collected Works and Sonnets of Shakespeare Collect Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe

Easter Center Piece

How to make a simple, yet cheerful, Easter Center Piece!

Materials Needed:

Large Vase

Smaller vase or bottle (can fit within the larger with breathing room)

Easter Basket "Grass"

Easter Eggs (I used the smaller kind ones which fit better in the vase) 

Real or Fake Daffodils

I used a small bottle filled partially with water to hold up the live daffodils in the large vase. I surrounded said bottle with green Easter basket "grass" and topped with mini plastic Easter Eggs. Candy within said Easter Eggs is optional.

Viola!

Irish Apple Cake with Custard Sauce

This cake as delicious. I will probably make this for many St Patrick's Days to come it was SO yummy.


Irish Apple Cake with Custard Sauce

Ingredients

Cake
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp of each ground ginger, nutmeg & allspice
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cold, diced into small pieces
1 cup + 2 Tbsp granulated sugar, divided
1 1/2 lbs granny smith apples (about 5 medium)
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Custard Sauce
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 pinch salt
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
For the cake:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan, set aside.
In a very large mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, ginger, nutmeg and allspice for 20 seconds. Add butter pieces and rub into mixture using fingertips until it resembles fine crumbs. Stir in 1 cup sugar.
Peel apples, slice in half, core and stem, then laying apples on flat side, slice downward into pieces slightly less than 1/4-inch thick, then dice those pieces into smaller chunks (about 2 or 3 chunks depending on size of apples). Add apples to flour mixture and toss well to evenly coat, while working to separate any apples that may be stuck together.
In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together milk, eggs and vanilla until well combined. Pour milk mixture over apple/flour mixture and using clean hands, toss just until combined (batter will be slightly lumpy but that's fine, just don't over-mix).
Pour batter into prepared baking dish and spread into an even layer. In a small bowl stir together remaining 2 Tbsp sugar plus 1/2 tsp cinnamon, sprinkle evenly over cake. Bake in preheated oven 45 - 50 minutes until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool about 5 minutes on a wire rack then remove ring from springform pan and allow cake to cool to desired temperature. Serve warm drizzled with warm custard sauce (or cool with cold custard sauce, however you prefer).
For the custard sauce:
Heat milk with a pinch of salt over medium heat, and bring just to a light boil (keep an eye on it and remove from burner if needed before letting it rapidly boil). Meanwhile, add egg yolks and sugar to a medium mixing bowl and whisk vigorously until pale and fluffy, about 2 - 3 minutes (alternately you can do this with an electric hand mixer on high speed for about 30 seconds if you don't want to mix that long by hand). Reduce burner to medium-low heat, then while whisking egg yolk mixture, slowly pour in 1/2 cup hot milk mixture. Then, while whisking milk in saucepan slowly pour egg yolk mixture into saucepan. Cook mixture, whisking constantly, until thickened and mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon, about 3 - 4 minutes (be careful not to over-heat it, if you cook it too long or don't whisk well the eggs will curdle). Immediately pour into a glass container, stir in vanilla and whisk about 20 seconds to cool slightly, then cover with plastic wrap pressing against surface to prevent a skin from forming. Serve warm over cake (or cold). Store in refrigerator in an airtight container.

I ran out of regular sugar so I used Brown and Powdered on top for dusting.

With Custard (or without), this was a win!