Last Day

Well, today is officially the last day I will be 28. Tomorrow I turn 29 and will begin my last year as a twenty-something. If the next year is anything like the last couple of months have been, then I am so excited to see what the year brings.

Today I had an awesome day! I started my journey of baking and it was a ridiculous amount of fun. My first project was a yeast bread. It was a little intimidating at first as I've never even used yeast before, let alone bake any type of bread. It was a bit of a process, with having to let the dough rise not once but twice, and I'm just a little bit of an impatient person, but it was so worth the wait!

Here is my beautiful dough after mixing and a bit of kneading.

 Here it is all puffy and gorgeous after it's first rise.

Here Vaeh is punching it down, getting it ready for rolling and putting it into the pan for it's second rise.

And here it is, in all of it's baked, crusty, soft, golden brown glory.

I'm so incredibly proud of myself. If you've never baked bread before, you must try it. The sense of accomplishment after you take it out of the oven is HUGE. 

During the periods of rest for the dough to rise, I decided to make some granola in between those pauses. Granola is a very inexpensive thing to make and it's good to have on hand for snacking or for cereal. I didn't put much into this, I just used what was on hand; oats, ground flax, salt, cinnamon, melted butter and honey. 

This is a picture just before going into the oven.

And this is after coming out.

 

I'm definitely going to keep this up. My house has never smelled so heavenly, and for whatever reason, all this baking happening today made me go to town cleaning my house. So now I'm relaxing on the couch with my feet up, enjoying the delicious smell of freshly baked bread, along with the faint aroma of cinnamon, my house is organized and I get to share my wonderful day with all of you. It's a very good day. 

Tomorrow my birthday-day will start off with waking to a tidy house (how great is that?!) and then I plan on baking one of my favorite cakes; the pineapple upside down variety :) I found an interesting recipe for baking this in a crock pot and it's kind of piqued my interest. I'm doing a very basic version of it, not going too fancy, in case it totally bombs. That way I won't be so upset about it. After that I'll probably just relax at home (as much as I can while working) and at some point go and renew my drivers license and pay my cell phone bill. I know what you are thinking. My life is so glamorous. Please don't be jealous. Really. It's not very becoming.

So that is the plan. If anything changes I will be quite surprised, and it takes a lot to surprise me. So long 28! You've been good to me and started me off on a path I really never saw coming. To 29: you have some big shoes to fill, but I have no doubt in my mind that you will exceed my expectations.