monster on the horizon

It's winter break! After four months of slaving away in school, we finally made it! Ella and I are always determined to make the most of our breaks by doing "something fun" every day, whatever that means. Our many activities during school breaks and weekends include (but are definitely not limited to) bowling, ice skating, mini-golfing, rock climbing, swimming, pottery painting, and, much to our parents' dismay, shopping.

On Saturday, we decided to do some art! I painted a cup, and Ella made a fused glass plate and painted an ornament. Because of my meticulous painting style, pottery painting is always a big time commitment, but this was an extreme case. This was probably the longest I have ever spent something... It took about six hours over the course of two days!

I think I may have been too ambitious with my design: a sky background, clouds, an airplane with a "BEATRIZ" banner, extremely detailed buildings, and an adorable monster! The most time consuming part was definitely the buildings. I first painted three coats of light purple and three coats of light gray, waiting for each coat to dry in between. Then, it took me forever to scratch out the windows and doors on each building. Here are pictures of my piece from all angles before it was fired in the kiln. You might notice an advertisement for The Trizzle on one of the buildings!

Ella did a fused art project. She glued a bunch of small pieces of colored glass onto a large glass square to make a checkered rainbow pattern. When they fired the piece, they made it into a plate by folding the sides up! Time passed so quickly. Before I knew it, Ella had finished her fused art project, my parents were getting really bored, and the store was closing. We had to come in the next day so I could finish, and my sister painted a cute penguin ornament!

turning teen

i can tell that my mom is really scared of me now, because... the subtitle of my blog was recently changed from "my (almost) teenage life" to "my teenage life"! how does it feel to officially be a teenager, you ask? the thought is awesome, but actually being a teenager is not as awesome as i had imagined when i was younger. every time a website told me i had to be 13, i thought about how turning 13 would be the most revolutionary turning point of my life. but now, i can't even recall those sites and there is nothing exclusively for 13-year-olds that i look to do. now, i'm looking forward to the big 16, when the driving lessons start! my mom will be even more scared then.


here is my all-time favorite cake from stella's! mmm... vanilla cake, vanilla mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, and the best part, the frosting! just writing about it is making my mouth water. when we were getting the cake, we were joking about asking them to write on the cake: happy thirteenth birthday beatriz shue-yi atsavapranee. is that even possible? maybe on a really large cake... anyway, as you look as this cake, are you wondering what that last candle is doing there? well, we seem to have been short on candles. 12 matching candles and 1 non-matching candle is better than just 12 matching candles, right?

an early gift for my birthday was a pair of crochet ugg boots. i'm sure you've seen them because they seem to be the current "in" thing. but, the color completely ups their already high cool factor. they are jacaranda! like the tree (i only know that from google). i love how they can sort of transform by folding it down and up.

we also got mario galaxy for the wii. my heart still belongs to mario kart, but mario galaxy is really fun too. it's a bit complicated to explain, but the main gist is that you go to different galaxies to collect stars. it is more like the original mario game than mario kart, as you may have guessed. what's cool is that it's almost like it's 3D when you go around the planets.

my friend, emma, got me "just dance" for the wii! it is so much fun. we love dancing (and singing) to wanna be, girls just wanna have fun, and womanizer. ella has a signature move in womanizer. plus, we had a blast watching my dad dance the most girly dances of all. what's scary is that he might actually be able to beat us sooner or later...

even though my birthday was on saturday, my friends still decorated my locker for friday! it was amazing. i opened my locker, and there was striped and waxy wallpaper across my locker door, streamers hanging down with the letters BEA taped on them, bows taped onto my magnets, a cute origami lizard called trizzy the lizzy, an adorable japanese keychain which is now on my backpack, the cutest folder (IT HAD POOH ON IT!) and some presents from my friends. they are awesome friends, i must say.

i also logged onto facebook to happily find that 26 people wished me happy birthday! i have barely ever talked to 14 of these people, but that's just part of facebook's charm, right?

from the teenage me

it's a pizza... it's a cake... no, it's supercookie!

goodbye 2009, hello 2010
happy early new year! 2010 is just hours away! as always, i'll have a hard time remembering to write "2010" instead of "2009" on my school papers. i mean, i've been writing "2009" for a whole year now. anyway, most people like to end the year with a big BANG, right? well, i'm not that type... but i did bake something awesome.

mental light bulb! 
have you ever seen one of those giant chocolate chip cookie cakes? today, when i asked my mom to bake some cookies, i thought, why not (attempt to) make one of those big things? i thought of using a regular cookie recipe, but then thought i would search up a very specific giant chocolate chip cookie cake recipe on google, just to be safe.

my mom and ella were busy speeding down a race track, jumping on giant mushrooms and sometimes falling off cliffs (on mario kart wii, that is). we just got it for christmas, and it has shown just how competitive we atsavapranees are (not that anyone had doubted it before).

i proceeded to create the most colossal cookie i've ever baked! well, i've never baked a cookie bigger than the regular size, so i guess that's not saying much. it's a really simple recipe. the only problem: i preheated the top oven, and when the time came to put the cookie in... it didn't fit! i started to preheat the bottom oven at that moment. all was good from then on.

before:

after:the frosting makes the cookie
but, what would a gigantic cookie be without some nice frosting to go with it? we dug out some frosting from ages ago, but when i tried to get some out, a bunch of oil leaked out from the top. gross.

so we made our very own sour cream frosting. since we had just put away our big mixer after making the big cookie, dad said he would mix it by hand. he ended up being just like an electric mixer! literally. ella enjoyed his nice sound effects and "pressing" his arm to make him mix even faster.

it was pretty coincidental that we baked a cake/cookie, and today is new year's eve. i actually hadn't thought about it. i thought i might as well decorate it as a new year's cake!

i added some food coloring to parts of the frosting. we now have many bowls of frosting in different colors on our dining room table. i had to use a bunch of ziploc bags as icing bags since they kept on ripping, and yes, it was messy.

it took me about an hour to perfect my masterpiece. to everyone who thinks i'm a perfectionist... i guess you are right! i don't really mind though, because it turned out great! at the end, i realized that we had only used about 1/20 of the frosting we made. my mom's idea was to make cupcakes and put the frosting on them! yum.


my next post will be in 2010!

dress it up

the weather guy doesn't lie
just like the weather report said, it is snowing like crazy! every time it snows, i look at this small round table on the porch. it's a nice reference to show how much it snowed. this has to be a record! it only started snowing last night, and that's least a foot!

12:52 pm:
10:25 pm (update):

and look at our driveway! can you even tell it's our driveway?? well, i guess the cars give it away. dad's going to have loads of fun shoveling this thing...


thingamajigs on the christmas tree
this morning, ella kept nagging us to get the christmas decorations from the basement. "you guys are so selfish!" so eventually, mom got tired of listening to ella complain, went down into the basement, and took up 2 dusty boxes of christmas decorations. here's our tree's before and after shot. :)

before:
after:
ta-da! here's a secret: our christmas tree is only decorated on the front! shh... no one has to know... do you see those crochet decorations? our old babysitter, guo ying, made them! aren't they awesome? don't ask where we got all of those thingamajigs, because i have no clue.

a cat's joy
it's not only us humans who like christmas... violet loves it too! her favorite part: the ornaments. she loves to bat at the ornaments on the trees, and something she loves even more is to unravel those thread ornaments.

violet is taking a peek at my gift...


happy tree decorating!

all wrapped up for christmas

let it snow!... but, on a school day
this weekend, it is supposed to snow 12 inches! 1/3 of me is happy; 2/3 of me is annoyed. this is because every time it snows, it is on a weekend. it snowed the saturday before last, it is going to snow this saturday, and it is going to snow next saturday. you know, i would really appreciate some snow on a school day. i would even be happy with a two-hour delay. there's nothing better than waking up to my mom telling me there's no school.

we are prepared to be trapped inside for the whole weekend. we have groceries and (most excitingly) the christmas tree! i can think of a few good things that come by being snowed in:

1. i have time to blog, which i usually don't.
2. i don't have as many excuses to put off doing my homework.

the magic of saran wrap
i realized today that places can get a lot of money for christmas trees. today, we got one for $30. one year, we got one for only $6! well... that's probably since it was a few days before christmas... now, my mom's always looking for a cheaper tree.

we couldn't get the christmas tree for the last few weekends since it has been snowing (hmph). today, we stopped by home depot and picked out a cute little tree. then, they came out with a giant roll and saran wrapped it to our car. yes, saran wrapped. who knew the powers of saran wrap were so amazing?


once we started driving, the tree kept making this loud flapping sound. the faster we drove, the louder it was. i never thought that a 10 minute drive on the freeway could be so unbelievably annoying. my mom's solution was to turn the radio up even louder.

the snow is starting to stick to the ground right this second. ella just looked out the window and said, "that's a fair amount of snow."

turkey day

i've always loved both cooking and eating the food on thanksgiving. our whole family starts cooking dinner together in the morning. this year we made: turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn bread stuffing, and pear cobbler.

top chef (s)

on a typical trip to a restaurant, my entire family is usually satisfied with two dishes. my mom says it's cheap to feed me and ella. so at the grocery store, we always try to pick the smallest turkey possible. even still, we enjoy many (many) turkey sandwiches after thanksgiving.

my dad always does all the stuff with the turkey. he marinates it in broth, stuffs it with a whole lot of stuff, and carves it (which, by the way, disturbs me... apparently ella is completely fine with it). the turkey was really good. so tender and juicy. mmmm...

meanwhile, me, my mom, and ella make the other stuff!

cranberry sauce
we start making the cranberry sauce in the morning, so it can harden in the fridge by dinnertime. this year, i think we started too late because it didn't harden at all! oh well, at least it was easier to dip the turkey into. :)

the good kind of crummy
last night, we made cornbread for the cornbread stuffing today. ella cut the cornbread into a lot of small cubes. after we put all the ingredients in it... we got to mash it up into crumbs!

it's better with butter
mom and dad did the hard part: peeling the potatoes... then me and ella did the best part: mashing them! then, of course, we added butter. *drools.* i love butter. my mom always says, "it's better with butter!"

sugary goodness
last thanksgiving, we made pear cobbler for the first time. before that, we always made pumpkin pie. honestly, i'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie, but it's just traditional, you know? the pear cobbler is actually really easy to make, and it is delicious. it requires a lot of sugar though. the first step is to shower the pieces of pear in 2 cups of sugar. it was so tempting to just take a piece and pop it into my mouth.

we served the warm cobbler with vanilla ice cream. ella even added some whipped cream, haha.


i've realized something about cooking thanksgiving dinner: it requires a lot of mashing. we mash the cranberries into cranberry sauce, we mash the potatoes into mashed potatoes, and we mash the cornbread into corn bread stuffing. ahh, mashing. just one reason why thanksgiving is so much fun!

candy junkie

yesterday was... halloween! my 2nd favorite day of the year. my friend emily was having a bat mitzvah, but ella wanted to go trick-or-treating with me. so i figured, why not do both? i went trick or treating until 7:30 pm, and went to the party 30 minutes late.

into the rabbit hole
at first, i was just going to wear one of my old costumes, and ella was going to be a candy corn witch. then, my friend emma asked if i wanted to go trick-or-treating with her. i really wanted to, but ella wouldn't go with the theme. so i made my costume at emma's house and then made a matching one for ella at home!

hint: we aren't a deck of cards
i ended up going trick-or-treating with my friends emma, anais and andrea, their friend mary, emma's sister laura, and my sister ella. it was so much fun!

from left to right: andrea (card), mary (queen of hearts), ella (card), me (card), emma (tweedle dee), laura (cheshire cat), anais (tweedle dum).


can you tell what our theme was? when we were out collecting our candy, people asked, "hey, are you a deck of cards?" hmm... maybe they didn't see all of us.

i can be a zombie card next halloween
in the afternoon, before trick-or-treating, i was raking leaves with my mom and the temperature was perfect. i was thinking how great the weather was for trick or treating. but then, it rained. my costume was made with cardboard, tissue paper and glue, and ella's costume was made with cardboard, paint and markers. not exactly waterproof costumes!

i'll take the unwanted candy
once back at emma's house, we dumped all our candy onto the floor. first, we sorted them into piles to make candy trading easier. well, ella just left hers in a big pile. we also developed a "trash pile": you just throw any unwanted candy want into the middle, and it becomes a free-for-all. once andrea said, "who wants to trade me something for this?" after the silence that followed, she said, "ok, i'll just put it into the trash pile." then, everyone lunged towards it. i guess it wasn't good enough to trade, but it was good enough to take from the trash pile. i found myself taking a lot of stuff from the trash pile... i really should have been more selective.

lol moments:
when we were waiting in line for candy at one house, the man was saying "choices... choices..." i get to the bowl, and it is: snickers and crunch. wow. lots of choices you got there.

when my mom was driving me from emma's house, she saw someone's costume and said "hey, it's a hobo! wait... it's a witch..." apparently it was a very ripped up witch costume.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

after trick-or-treating, my mom drove me home so i could change into a different costume for the bat mitzvah. i imagine i would look very awkward as a dancing card. i changed into last year's outfit: a harajuku girl!

technical difficulties
the party was at a hotel. i had some trouble figuring out where the party was. i asked the front desk where it was, and they told me to take the elevator down to the ballroom. in the elevator, there was no button to go down! i just hope no one saw me standing in the glass elevator staring at the buttons. i walked out to ask for more help, and, of course, in the other elevator there were completely different buttons. one huge one that said "BALLROOM."

bat mitzvah swag
there was a candy bar, but since i got there late, all that was left were m&ms, gummy bears, hershey kisses, and tootsie rolls! i missed out on the junior mints, kit kats, and skittles. i comforted myself by remembering my my giant bag of trick-or-treating candy.

there was also a green screen, where you could pick a background and then pose for a picture. there were so many themes choose from! skittles, tootsie rolls, shrek, star wars... haley and i ended up going with star wars, so we striked a battle pose. haley was holding her light saber (well, actually an inflatable guitar), and i was kneeling on the ground all freaked out.

free giveaway
we got a cozy black sweatshirt as the bat mitzvah favor. it is ginormous on me! it has a cute orange ghost and says "emily's bat mitzvah!"

happy halloween!

yes we candy!

hi loyal readers of the infrequent trizzle,

thanks for checking this site often enough to see this post (my last one was on august 8th). you may ask, what has happened since then? broken hand? buried under schoolwork? blogger's block.

THE SHORT:
august: trips to scotland, thailand (touring northern thailand), going to the pool.
september: the month of nothingness... except for school.
october: debate awesomeness (4-0, 2nd place team with jessica and tori, 10th place speaker). grandparents visiting. obama campaign in northern virginia. ami visiting and dressing up as obama on halloween. traveling to atlanta with minishock. having my parents send me off by myself with a cash bribe to do so.
november: david's bar mitzvah and the kennedy center in the same day! california and historic election! craft night.
december: of course... christmas!

THE LONG:
barack-o: ami is my mom's friend from college. he lives in thailand, but he's not thai. he was here for two weeks to work on the obama campaign in virginia and i did too because maryland always votes democratic. on election day, they called obama the winner in maryland with exactly... 0% of precincts reporting. i made phone calls to people who'd already been called a few times so they were pretty angry. from this, i've learned that if you don't want to be called anymore, just say that you are voting for mccain... and they will stop. the last time virginia voted democratic was when lyndon johnson won the state in 1964. if the math is too hard, it has been 44 years. 44 YEARS.

i always want my parents to dress up for halloween, but they never do. my mom always says she's not that cool. but this year, we were thrilled to have ami come with us. he combined trick-or-treating with canvassing by dressing up as obama! it was kind of a last minute thing, so we saved money and printed out a picture of a mask. he wore a suit, obama pins and all that jazz. the tough part was finding out who was for obama and who wasn't. one person said, "that IS scary!" other than that, most people seemed like they liked it. at each house ami would say, "yes we candy!" or sometimes, "we are the trick-or-treaters you have been waiting for." the cherry on top was the deep obama voice and dramatic hand motions.

david's bar mitzvah: since i had a performance at the kennedy center on the same day, i missed the whole ceremony. it was disappointing because the ceremony was shortened, but i missed it!! i guess i will go to unshortened bar mitzvahs from now on. i only got there during the after party. i missed all the big hats but i got there early enough for the sumo wrestling. there were gigantic sumo wrestler suits and wigs. it looked hard to walk (or move) in them. i didn't have the nerve to play, but it was interesting to watch.

got hope, but wish i could vote

hi everyone!

sorry that i'm not keeping very up to date on my blogging... but for my birthday, on january 23, my family and i went to manhattan, new york, where i was born. we walked a lot and it was freezing cold which was a bad combination. my legs basically went numb if i walked for more than 7 blocks. the bagels at Ess-a Bagels were really yummy. we trekked 14 blocks each way from the hotel to get them. it was worth it though. weirdly, i felt VERY lucky to ride the subway, where my legs could thaw. but... in some of the subway stations, the escalators were broken, so we had to climb about 10 flight of stairs (over 100 steps, maybe 200). also in the subway station, that was much more dreadful, was a man who was playing violin to get some money. but it was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. after we passed, my mom whispered, "you're WAY better than he is." and i was like, "um, YA!"
my dad and i saw the musical, "legally blonde." i thought the acting and dancing were really good but the songs weren't very original. most of the songs had "ooooh my god" in their lyrics. during this time, my mom and sister were at m and m world admiring m and m's dressed like the statue of liberty and saturday night fever's tony manero. there was even a scanner that told u what color m and m u are. when i was at the musical my mom and sister also went to the american girl doll store for the 2nd time that weekend.

we went to a store with gigantic stuffed animals and lots of candy called FAO Schwarz. there were really big pink stuffed dogs lined across the wall, twenty foot tall dragons and life-sized mythical creatures from the harry potter novels that were really freaky... to me at least (i'm easily scared.) there were also some people who were dancing on a keyboard mat. it was actually really impressive that they could jump on notes together, so from that you could tell that they had to be working for the store and weren't just kids playing for fun.
for my birthday i got a 2nd DDR dance mat from my cousins. and i got a digital recorder from my parents. it's a really good gift for me because i can record how my violin and quartet sound.

i've been playing a lot of violin lately especially because i've been playing with a quartet for the solo and ensemble festival next month. the music on its own isn't difficult, but when we play as quartet it's hard to stay together because we play at different speeds on our own pieces. i cue the quartet, as to when to start playing, with the scroll of my violin. but not just that, but i get the "honor" of sniffing (loudly) a beat before we start because our cellist can't see me since my stand is in the way. my quartet is going to play minuetto by bach for the festival. so sometimes my mom and i say "you bach!" as a pun on "you rock!" i haven't decided yet what solo piece to play though. i'll probably do either a bach minuet in G or a baccarini piece.

i was really excited because i got to see obama speak at the comcast center, at the university of maryland on february 11, the day before the maryland primaries. my mom, my sister and i were walking down the line of people, and i was amazed at how long it went. every time we turned a corner, there were more people standing there. the line had to be about 2 miles, literally. it snaked from the comcast, over the hill, past the parking garage, across the footbridge and past the rec center. the line probably went further than that, but luckily we saw someone we knew waiting in line. she told us that the police officer told her she was at the halfway point. we stood with her for about 10 minutes, then we were able to return the favor by bringing her into the arena early when the officers let us bypass the line and go in a side door because our party had kids in it. we got pretty good seats where we could actually see his face. we waited in the arena for about 3 hours before obama actually came to speak. while we were waiting, about 2 hours before his speech, "cheerleaders" kept chanting and trying to get people to cheer. all fired up! ready to go! (it gets very annoying after a while). i think that obama's a good speaker and the speech was really inspiring. it was a great experience seeing him live and hearing him speak. i really like when he said "things now aren't how they have to be. it's time to turn the page." i hope he wins the most delegates so he can run in the presidential election. i like his message in how he wants to change things. if i was 18, i'd vote for barack obama.

beatriz

ps. my best post this year!!