Lofthouse Sugar Cookies

AKA The Best Cookies You Will Ever Make

For the cookies:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 cups sour cream
• 5 1/2 cups flour

Cream sugar and butter. Mix in the eggs, sour cream, and vanilla until smooth. Mix in the dry ingredients. Let refrigerate overnight.

After refrigerated, roll out dough to 1/4-3/8 inch thickness on a heavily floured surface. Put the cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet and cook for eight minutes at 435˚. This makes five dozen cookies if you use the canning ring for a narrow-mouth jar to cut the dough.

For the frosting:

Ingredients:

• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 5 Tbs milk
• 1 tsp vanilla

Cream together the butter and sugar. After that's thoroughly mixed, gradually add the milk and vanilla. Add food coloring as desired.

Frost the cookies and enjoy!

A Silent Nighttime Moment

Last night I stayed late at the library working on my essay (I did get it finished, by the way). As a result, I was walking home after dark with no one else around. I had been talking to a friend for about half of the walk home, but I let him go to bed when I was just five minutes away from my apartment. As soon as I hung up the phone, I was hit by the profound quiet that was the world at that moment.

The thick layer of snow had muffled everything to the point of near-silence and the only noise I could hear was the sharp sound of a shovel against ice. After I turned a corner, even that became muted and distant. Oddly enough, when that happened, my thoughts cleared to the silence and I had to stop in the middle of the deserted sidewalk to catch my breath. There was something about the silence that was so beautiful and spiritual. . . It was awesome, in the original sense of the word.

As I was paused on that snow-covered sidewalk, the lyrics to "Silent Night" came into my mind. I thought about how, although there was no snow when and where Christ was born,  the feeling of that snow-covered eleven o'clock world must have been the same as the one that miraculous night. I believe that there was a profound calm. A profound quiet. Peace. The world knew that Christ's birth was something worth its reverence.

Our world today is never silent. There are constantly the sound of cars, heating and air systems, conversations, music. . . We are always surrounded by white noise and other distractions. I feel like it's becoming more and more rare for us to be able to connect to the idea of a silent night. But then the snow comes, blanketing the world in clean. It purifies, it protects, it creates an entirely different world where we can finally feel peace and quiet and realize for ourselves how special a silent night can be.

Writer's Block

I have this big essay for my English class due tomorrow at midnight. My roughdraft was hardly helpful because my research premise was faulty and I didn't realize it until I'd already started writing and I had to have a roughdraft due by midnight that night so. . . I just wrote. And now it's kind of kicking me in the rear end. I met with a Writing Fellow and was given a better direction for the essay, and I now have enough research to fill the required four pages, I just need to formulate the research into a cohesive, arguable, interesting essay. And it's due tomorrow at midnight. And I have major writer's block.

On one hand, I want to have another roughdraft finished by tonight so I'll at least be able to turn in a semi-polished copy tomorrow. On the other hand, it's not due until midnight tomorrow so I don't feel the pressure I need to whip this sucker out. And this conflict in my head is distracting me from more important things (i.e. my essay).

So that's the backstory. Now I'm going to type whatever comes into my mind so I can hopefully take down this wall that's in my head and get an essay written tonight.

It snowed today. I like the snow today. Don't know how I'll feel about it tomorrow. I don't usually like snow. Christmas music. I should be writing this on Word so all my typos (most of them, anyway) will get autocorrected. I hate autocorrect on my phone sometimes. It makes me say weird things that don't make any sense. One time Brittney was trying to tell someone she'd be there in a sec and her phone corrected it to sex. She was embarrassed. I would be too.

I miss Brittney. She'll be back in a little over a year and I can't wait. I miss my missonaries. They're wonderful and I miss them. I was going to serve a mission, now I'm not.

I want to be a librarian for an elementary school when I grow up. I think that would be the best job aside from mother that I could ever imagine. It would be wonderful. I'll talk to people to see how I'll be able to reach that goal. I don't like being checked out. Please stop undressing me with your eyes. It's not doing either of us any good. Look back at your computer screen, your homework, and I'll go back to my research.

I need to be better at researching. Wish I'd payed more attention back when we had all those guided lessons about it. Life was easier back in high school. I wouldn't go back. High school is over and I'm glad.

I saw my old roommate today. She's engaged. She's happy. I'm happy for her. May. Spring wedding. It's going to be beautiful.

Sometimes I feel like I fall for the wrong people. Why? Why do I do that? I should be more careful where I let my heart go. But it's easy for me to love people. People provide companionship.

Sometimes I don't want companionship with certain people, though. I need resolution to problems. I'm having a hard time because we haven't talked about the explosion. I feel like the explosion is still going on and I know it's just in my head but the lack of resolution is making me paranoid and I hate it. How to let go?

Browning and Dickinson were both Victorian poets. They had similar enough subject matter and I think my writing fellow is sitting across the library from me. I don't know why that's distracting. Anything and everything has become more appealing than writing this essay. Especially sleep. Snow makes me sleepy. I like the snow today. Dickinson writes about a fly. Browning writes about a slimeball of a monk. Can't you see the link between the two? Do I really have to explain it to you? Also, I feel the pressure to do really well on this because this is my biggest class and it will heavily affect my GPA. Right now I have a B+ and I'd like to do better. So every essay gives me a lot of stress because I feel pressure to do extremely well. I need to let that go. I need to write because I'm discovering something new and exciting. Not because I need a good grade. If I enjoy what I'm learning through my research and writing, the rest will come. Everything will work out.

Dickinson was scared of abandonment. Aren't we all. She was obsessed with death. I learned that in high school. High school again. Our school was remodeled and the old one was torn down. I missed it for a really long time. Lots of memories. But there were good memories in the new school too. I was there for two years. I confuse Yeats and Keats even though they are different as can be. It's their names, I think. They aren't pronounced the same, but the spellings are similar. My shoulders hurt. Both poets write about life not being perfect and the perfect image being marred by something else. Already wrote about that. Tie into thesis. Victorian writers were honest and accessible. That's why I see a syntactical similarity between the two poems. Write about that. Fix it. I'm not proofreading this. Too much thought involved. I can write four pages. I think I've got it now.


The end. You're welcome.

Kitchen Performance

So apparently I dance in the kitchen even if there are people around. I didn't realize this until tonight when my roommate Alisha told me that she thinks I'd be good at the American Foxtrot (and for those of you who are ignorant to what that is like I was, click here) based on the way I dance in the kitchen. I suppose I'm flattered. The people in that video seem to be having a lot of fun! Now I just have to learn. . .

"I Love You"

I was thinking the other day about that phrase at the top of this post. What does it mean when you hear it? When you say it?

Because to me it means, "Hey. I'll be there for you. I want to spend time getting to know you even better than I know you now. I will sacrifice for you. You are worth it to me."

I feel like, a lot of the time, those words are a scary thing in our culture. We're afraid of them. And understandably so sometimes--those words mean a lot. A lot of commitment and a lot of trust. And sometimes those are hard to give up to people.

But we don't always say it when we need to, I think. I think a lot more people in our lives could hear those words more often than we say them: family, teachers, neighbors, roommates. Those people in your life that do so much for you and don't realize how much you appreciate it. You know the ones.

I don't think "I love you" always means a romantic promise. I think it's beautiful when a couple feels safe enough to say those words because "I love you" means a lot. It's a phrase that reaches deep into our hearts and touches the strings that make us want to say it back. And that's when this life is worth it.

Tall Art

So you remember that Tall Club activity I had last night? Well. It was a lot of fun. I think these are my kind of people (all six of them that were at the activity last night). I'm excited to make new friends and get to know people on campus. I think it'll be really good for me. PLUS, they helped bring out my artistic side!!! We did finger painting and I had a lot of fun creating this little masterpiece with another one of the girls:

I then threw it in the garbage as soon as the activity was over. . . I figured a picture was good enough, especially because I wasn't sure the paint was ever going to dry. Which would've been irritating.

But anyways, people are awesome. Friends are worth it.

On My Mind

This year I've been chomping at the bit so to speak about the Christmas season. I'm not usually like this, but this year. . . well I've probably been excited for Christmas since before Halloween. I didn't do anything about it back then, though. But it's almost Thanksgiving and I haven't been able to wait any longer. So I'm listening to one of my favorite Christmas CDs. And I'm allowed to do that right now because my roommate who FREAKS out every time Christmas is even mentioned before Thanksgiving is over is asleep. So this is a bit of a guilty pleasure. And I am RELISHING it!

I'm also super excited to decorate this apartment. Two of my roommates are determined to get a live Christmas tree so I'm excited about that. It's going to smell delightful in here always. I have all sorts of visions of what we're going to do to this place :)

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We had a cleaning check this past Saturday. None of us passed, some of the fails were ridiculous and I'm annoyed that I have to pay five dollars for a few fingerprints that showed up on the mirror between when I cleaned it and when they checked it, but whatever. I passed the re-check today.

Cleaning checks are kind of the bane of my existence. They cause so much stress in this apartment. But I'm also extremely grateful for them. If it weren't for cleaning checks I doubt much of anyone would do any cleaning besides me, and I wonder if I'd even be able to make it to my bed in my bedroom (I think my small path leading to it would be overcome with my roommates clothes and books and shoes. . . It already happens often enough for me to be concerned.

Karena and Amy's bedroom was a disaster when they came to check the apartment on Saturday, Elizabeth's side of the room was as well. They were in the same condition last cleaning check as well. Because of that, I'm pretty sure our landlords are going to start springing surprise cleaning checks on us. Because of this, I came to the realization that my cleaning the apartment solo between cleaning checks wasn't going to cut it anymore. So I'm creating a weekly chore chart. I really hope this improves things in this apartment.

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Amy is moving out in December. I am going to miss her so much! I've had the opportunity to get to know her a lot better lately and I love her to death! There will definitely be a gap in the apartment without her. I wonder if we'll be getting a new roommate. . . If we are I really hope I grow to love her as well. Good roommates make all the difference.

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I joined the tall club here at BYU a few weeks ago and I'll be attending my first activity tomorrow night. We'll be taking pictures for tall club posters and finger painting. This is right up my alley and I am so incredibly excited for it! It's going to be great for me to get out there and become social again. I think I've kind of allowed myself to get caught up in the scholastics of school and have needed a push to meet--really meet--people. I think this whole club business is going to be my saving grace this year.

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Elizabeth and Karena both have wonderful boyfriends and Alisha goes on dates frequently. And I haven't been and it was really tough on me for a while. But I came to the realization just barely (sitting in the room as adorable couple #2 [Karena and Morgan]) that I am completely okay with being single. Sure it would be nice to have someone, but I'm happy where I am right now. And that makes me even happier because I'm choosing to be happy. And I'm not allowing my happiness to be dependent on the interest of others. I have divine worth and that doesn't change based on what other people think or feel. That is a liberating thought.

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Have I mentioned already that I love Christmas and Christmas music and the feeling of this season and everything about it? Because I do. Life truly is wonderful.