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The holiday weekend is so close I can almost taste it! One of my favourite things about having an extra day off is whipping up something special for breakfast after a late sleep-in. And these muffins are just the ticket! They’re so light and fluffy, not dense like many muffin recipes I’ve come across. Yet they really satsify–just one is enough to keep you going strong ’til that picnic lunch in the park. But go ahead and have two just for the heck of it. I won’t tell!

Conceivably you could use this recipe as the basis for any combination of mix-in’s. Peaches and pecans would be nice, and chocolate chips would be divine! I could even see playing around with a blend of 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup cornmeal. You have complete freedom–and isn’t that what a long weekend is all about?

Long Weekend Blueberry Muffins
1 c. all purpose flour
1/3 c. sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil (I used melted butter instead)
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c. plain lowfat yogurt or sour cream
1/4 c. milk
1 c. fresh or frozen blueberries
cinnamon sugar for dusting (just mix one part cinnamon with one part white sugar)

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line or grease 6 muffin cups.
-In medium bowl, combine flour sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and whisk to combine thoroughly.
-Toss blueberries in dry ingredients, coating completely to keep them from bleeding juice into the batter.
-In large bowl, combine egg, oil, vanilla, yogurt, milk and whisk to combine thoroughly.
-Fold dry ingredients into wet and stir until just combined (will be lumpy and thick.)
-Using ice cream scoop to spoon, divide batter evenly amongst muffin cups.
-Generously sprinkle tops of muffins with cinnamon sugar.
-Place in oven and bake until toothpick inserted in center of muffin is removed clean, about 12-15 minutes.
-Remove from oven and let cool in tins for 2 minutes.
-Let cool completely on wire rack or devour immediately!

For those of you that read my personal blog, Make Mine a Mojito, I have stated several times before that Mr. Mojito and I only plan on having furbabies in our family.

Wellllllllllll, the time for our first puppy to arrive is quickly approaching (as in, late August to be exact).

These cute little Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppies were born over Memorial Day Weekend this past May. These are the most recent pictures I have of them. We are still not sure if we are getting a boy or a girl. If we get a girl we plan on naming her Ginger. If we get a boy his name will be Oliver, but we will call him Oli for short.

How cute are these puppies?!?

So, on to my question dear readers and advice givers, for those of you with puppies running around your house, what types of things do you do to prevent your house from getting completely demolished and dirty?

Do you prevent your puppy from going in certain areas of the house? Do you clean your floors daily?

Help!

First came Part 1: attire, then came Part 2: timing and tunes, and now for the final installation of this newbie runner’s toolbox. Nutrition and training programs. Ugh-the not-so-fun stuff.

My other posts would be helpful for newbie runners tackling any distance [the 5k, 10k, half and full marathons] since everyone can use fun new clothes/shoes, tunes, and a timing system. But this one is going to be more for the longer distances: 13.1 and 26.2 milers require focused nutrition before, during and after your runs. And you better believe it takes a butt load of training to complete these races–never trust anyone who says they ran a half or a full without ANY training. They might be aliens. And I bet they are flirting with a major injury in their near future, too.

If anyone is even remotely considering a marathon I would highly recommend it. You can read about my journey towards my first full marathon here, here, and here. If that doesn’t inspire you in the slightest then I’ve got nothin:) Both the half and the full will leave you with a tremendous sense of accomplishment and the training programs provide for a solid structured work out routine that requires little to no thinking. It’s not like you can just say, “Hmmm, I really don’t feel like running today. I don’t know how far I can make it anyway. Maybe tomorrow,” because your program tells you exactly how far to run and when. Plus training for a long race will kick your fitness into high gear, burning obscene amounts of calories and therefore allowing you to pig out guilt-free. Yes, I am one of those who runs to eat because I love food way too much to limit my desserts/second helpings/large portion sizes. I’m hope I’m not alone on this one?

A. Nutrition

It might seem like a no-brainer, but when you are training for a marathon your body needs healthy, nutritious foods for fuel and recovery. Never is it more important to eat well than the night before a long run–I found this out the hard way when I popped fried cheese curds and Diet Coke the night before a 15 miler, naively chuckling, “These will be my little balls of energy!” I definitely learned my lesson after that and cut out the fried foods, cheese and dairy products, soda, alcohol, and meats for my ‘final meal’ before a long run. Instead, I usually eat whole wheat pasta with plain marinara sauce plus plenty of water to fuel my system before a run. It works for me but everyone is different with this aspect and I encourage you to try out different combinations of carbohydrates with proteins to see what works. But either way, you’ll need to chug water all day long for the 2-3 days before a long run so that you are well hydrated. Yep, lots of potty breaks throughout the day, but it’s worth it.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I am off to the Riviera Maya for my sister’s wedding and although am excited for her wedding, I am really looking forward to sitting by the beach and relaxing in the sun. I love this photo spread, it makes me that much more excited that it is the summer and I get to go on vacation!

{photography by Harri Peccinotti via GoSee}

I will have to say that I will look slightly less glamorous. On our last vacation to Mexico, I fell asleep so much in the sun that my husband nicknamed me the “bikini napper”. I’m just glad he was nice enough not to take any pictures.

I love my house. My husband and I have lived here since Novemeber 2008, and it just feels like home. We repainted nearly every room and bought new furniture to suit our style. Best of all, in our house we follow our rules, which means that dogs are allowed If we were still living in our apartment, we wouldn’t have been able to adopt Briscoe from the Humane Society or have his friends over for playdates.

(flickr photo by Jeffrey)

However, sometimes I miss living in an apartment building, especially when something goes wrong in the house. There is no landlord or building manager to call when the shower door falls off the track, the sewage drain backs up or the lawn needs to be mowed. Now we have to pay people to remove the snow from our driveway and walkway, to mow our nearly half-acre of yard and to fix (major) problems that pop up inside the house.

Also, more rooms and bigger spaces mean longer cleaning sessions, and vacuuming, dusting and bleaching porcelain fixtures are the bane of my existence. Plus, in our last apartment, our washing machine and dryer were in our unit (which I recognize is not the norm), so we didn’t have to climb up and down two flights of stairs to the basement to do laundry. In my dream house, my laundry room will be upstairs next to the bedroom.

My last apartment building complex also had its own pool, which I definitely miss now that it’s H-O-T outside. It’s not the worst thing in the world to drive 10 minutes to the local Jewish Community Center to use its Olympic-sized pool, but it’s no walk across the parking lot. It’s not that I’m lazy; I just appreciate having luxuries at my finger tips! OK, maybe that makes me a little spoiled… but that’s not what this post is about!

What do you love the most about where you live, whether it be a house, apartment or condo?

We all have our “security blankets”….even as adults.  Sometimes they’re as psychological as a friend of mine who counts the light fixtures in every new place she goes.  Somehow, that makes her feel better.  (Weird, I know. )  When my sister in law was little, she used to have to lean down and touch the ground every few steps.   I guess just to make sure it was still there????   For me, my security is my watch.  My good ol’ classic Timex.  I could have had it for 20 years, or 2 months, you would never know.  That’s why I depend on it so much.

I have no idea how you or I would classify my style.  I guess my “signature look” would be that you never know what my look will be.  Make any sense?  I could be bohemian one day, and English rock n’ roll then next.   It all depends on my mood.  But, the one constant in my fashion experimentation is my watch.  Somehow, that one ever-present piece adds just the right amount of credibility to any outfit.  I can wear the trendiest, craziest thing in my closet and somehow I feel like people will still take me seriously if I have on that tiny little ticker.  Here is the one I have and a few others that will add that sophistication even to your 1980’s neon pink leggings.  (I love steel and gold watches.  They go with everything.)

My watch; Dress Watch with Stainless Steel; $65, Timex

Chronograph Champagne Dial, $135, Fossil

For the high rollers; Link Quartz with Diamonds, $3,250 (crap!), Tag Heuer

T Series Women’s Chronograph, $120, Timex

What’s your choice of timepiece?

Meet our wedding cake:

(photo by Joe Milton)

You probably can’t tell from the photo, but the cake was the one thing that went wrong at our wedding. It really didn’t even come close to bothering me (in fact I didn’t fully process it until after the event was over). But our caterer did a little switcheroo on us, and the baker we hired to make the cake didn’t make the cake. As a result, it was sloppy-looking and the filling was the wrong flavor! Everyone still loved it, and the caterer handled the situation well, but there’s no changing the fact that a cake injustice occurred that day.

This is us laughing about it:

(photo by Joe Milton)

When I started thinking about what I wanted to make food-wise for our first anniversary last week, I had the crazy idea to recreate the top tier of our wedding cake…but with the right flavors this time. I tried to surprise Andy, but he knows me too well and guessed what I was scheming, his only clue being that I was making something. He’s good.

Allow me to introduce you to my first anniversary present to my husband: Yellow Cake with Lemon Curd and Raspberry Jam v 2.0.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I’m really excited about this post because adjusting white balance is something that all but the most ancient digital cameras can do. Adjusting white balance is kind of like doing in-camera editing. By changing the settings you can make drastic improvements to your photos without needing expensive or complicated programs like Photoshop.

Since you were all good little readers who got your manuals out after this post, you should be able to open up to page ___ and read how to change the white balance settings on your own cameras. Then, once you are done reading, pick up your camera and take a few pictures in different locations with different white balance settings (one outside, one in your bathroom, one at night). The key to mastering the concepts I teach this week is experimenting with different settings on your own camera until you understand how they work in different situations.

What is white balance?

White balance is almost exactly what it sounds like. It’s your camera attempting to make colors appear as they actually are, so that whites look white and greens look green. If you’ve ever taken a photo in a high school gymnasium you’ve probably ended up with incredibly yellow photos. In this situation, your camera didn’t gauge the color temperature of your setting correctly.

Most digital cameras now have the ability to change the white balance setting according to the situation, allowing the user to increase the chances of getting a great image right out of the camera. It’s incredibly easy to do, just try it!

What do the different white balance settings actually look like?

Below are some photo examples of different white balance settings. Because of the kind of images I take with my dslr (RAW), I’m able to have greater versatility with editing, which allows me to apply many different white balance settings to the same image. That way, instead of taking 6 different pictures with 6 different white balance settings, I was able to just take one picture change the settings on my computer using an editing program. Remember you don’t need any computer programs to make these changes yourself, you can do this in your camera before you take the picture. I just thought some of you might like to know how I made these examples!

My Canon 50D has several different white balance options, including auto, daylight, cloudy, shade, flash, fluorescent, and tungsten. Your camera should have at least two or more of these options. As you will see below, each of these settings affect the color temperature of my images in a different way.

A big thank you goes to my friend the dwarf for being such a darling model for this series.

AWB

Here is my original image, shot on automatic white balance, straight out of the camera.

Daylight

I really like this one, it’s not only a little bit brighter, but has a slightly warmer tone as well.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

{Amanda Pratt}

You don’t have to be a desert dweller to feel the effects of summer on your beauty routine! When the mercury rises, it takes all my strength not to crank up the A/C, collapse on the couch, and stay there ’til Labor Day. But I’ve found a few products that make me feel less like an extremely wilted flower and more like…well…a partially wilted flower.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I’m talking about BRAS.  Specifically, I want you to wear the right size bra.  Most women aren’t.  There are varying claims, from 70-99%, but it’s undisputed that most women really aren’t wearing the right size bra.  I didn’t really find my correct size until I was about 25, and I still have a terrible time finding bras that actually fit .  It turned out that I was wearing a band size that was several inches too big and cups that were several sizes too small.  This is apparently pretty common.  Here are my tips to making sure you look your best by beginning with your most important foundation garment:

1. Get thee to a fitter.  Please don’t go to Victoria’s Secret for you fitting.  If you’re lucky enough to fit into their bras (I’m not), then you may certainly buy bras there.  But don’t rely on them to properly size you - many of the associates aren’t properly trained in bra fitting, and they seem more than willing to tell you the wrong size to get you to buy from them.  Go to an independent place that carries odd sizes if at all possible.  For example, check out Bravissimo in London, Pennyrich Bra Patch in Raleigh, NC, and Pink Corsets in Hendersonville, NC; there are several places in NYC.  Let us know in the comments if you know of other good places like these.  These stores are the best because they have the widest range of sizes, so you are much more likely to be able to find bras in your correct size to try on.  If you don’t have access to something like that, go to a high end department store, like Needless Markup, Nordstrom, or Harrods.  They don’t care much if they don’t have your size, and they do tend to carry a wider range than Vickie’s.
2. Get thee to a fitter regularly.   Women change bra sizes many times during their life, and I’m not just talking about during and shortly after puberty.  You’ll change sizes as you gain or lose weight from various things or even just randomly as you age.
3. Once you’ve been fitted, try on a ton of bras that are about your size.  You’ll find that some give you an odd shape, some run small or large, and some just feel awful.  When you find your first bra that really fits, its… well, it’s better than really good chocolate.  You’ll experience good support without pinching from the band or straps.  Ideally, you should get a band size that fits when you’re using the largest hooks so that, as the bra stretches from wear, you can lengthen its use by tightening it up.
4. If you are, like me, a ridiculously odd size, hit up the major online retailers: Figleaves, Bare Necessities, Bravissimo, HerRoom, etc.  I’ve ordered from the first 3 and have had very good luck with them.  They have great return policies, so I don’t hesitate to order 20 bras while fully intending to only keep 3 or 4 (assuming I can find 3 I like from the 20).  Fantasie is my favorite brand.
5. If you are, like me, somewhat well-endowed, you should also consider bra-sized swimsuits.  Several of those online retailers I mentioned have these.  I have to give a little plug for my favorite brand here, Freya.  They have some great choices (including this one, which I have and love) that are cute and very supportive.

Trust me - if you’ve been wearing the wrong size for years (or maybe all your life), you will feel so much more attractive in a bra that fits properly.  Happy shopping!