One of my proudest moments in my life so far.

For those of you who don't know, my Grandma Mackay makes the most perfect delicious rolls ever. Others can not replicate her rolls. But today she showed me how. I can not even say how proud I was when I took those perfectly browned rolls out of the oven. Even though she had been there helping me the entire time, telling me when the milk was scalded, adding flour to the dough, etc., I was sure I could still mess it up. But I didn't! They are delicious! And so are the cinnamon rolls we made with the extras! Totally worth all of the 3+ hours it took to make them. I need to practice so I don't forget how to do it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

My first Etsy shop.

I did it! I made my own Etsy shop. I carved some linoleum blocks and made Christmas prints based on four different Christmas carols. They were really fun to make. They did not turn out exactly as I had imagined, but I suppose that is the fun of hand-printed cards. Check it out at AshleySamantha.etsy.com.

Seriously didn't miss a NOTE!

Last night I went to a Transiberian Orchestra Concert with some of my family. Thanks Linda and Jon for taking us! It was really fun. Crazy lazers, jumping balls of flame, simultanious head banging/hair twirling, rockin' Christmas music. The most amazing part is this story: one of the main guitar guys had been sitting down the entire concert and the main guy told us the story of why. A few weeks earlier the guitar player had tried to jump down a step while he was playing and he slipped, shattered his knee cap, tore his ACL, landed FLAT on his back and DIDN'T MISS A NOTE!!! Seriously kept playing on the ground, flat on his back. Amazing. Amazing! Didn't miss a note. Now, he has been in that 20 years, so he could probably play those songs in his sleep, but like I said, didn't miss a note.

This isn't this year's show, but I'm using it to suppliment my post:

Now I am in MIchigan visiting my friend Brooke! This is going to be a great week.

Didn't miss a note!

I know it isn't Thanksgiving yet but...

If anyone is looking to spend $125 on me for Christmas, I kind of love this bag from the MoMA.

I would also like a really cool job for Christmas. I'll even take that over the bag.

Sometimes the internet lies.

So I've been working on carving some linoleum blocks to make prints for Christmas cards. I keep running into serious issues. First I drew the cards to fit my blocks. Then I bought the cards and realized they were a different size. So I redrew some. The wrong size. So I scanned them and fixed the size on the computer, counting on this piece of information to make it easy to transfer my design over:


as it turns out, that doesn't work. Which is really disheartening after I made a big deal about needing the marker and Char found and drove me on a run to Michaels just to get a marker. One marker that doesn't work. I even bought the best brand: Prismacolor. Now I wish I had purchased graphite paper. I was just so sure the marker would work. It doesn't work on computer prints or black and white copies from Kinkos. I'm pretty sure it would work on a really crappy copier but I don't have one. The Amanda Knight used to have a great one. Well, I just wanted to get this information out there before someone else had their hearts broken from lies. Has anyone had success transferring an image with a blender marker?

I don't have a kid

I ended up going on a date tonight with a guy who had an 11 month old baby. I didn't actually know that until the day of. And it is fine. The only thing was he took me to like the most likely place for me to see people I knew: an art lecture at BYU. Neither he nor the baby liked it and we left early, but I just wanted to say to those people I saw there that I knew but didn't have a chance to talk to that it wasn't my baby. Seriously a first date. I saw the questioning look in your eyes.

Save Pushing Daisies!

So I really like the show Pushing Daisies. Apparently, according to the Nielsen System, it is doing poorly. I just signed a petition to keep it going (I'm serious about my tv these days) and it says "The nielsen system is outdated, and does not fairly represent the amount of people watching." I'd say I agree with that. So if you like Pushing Daisies, feel free to sign a petition here. Or here are some other ideas from E! Networks Kristin Dos Santos:

• SIGN UP: Sign the Save Daises online petition.
• TUNE IN: Watch the show. Live. In your house. Look for the glowing box that receives pictures via bunny ears, a satellite or a coaxial cable coming out of the wall.
• TURN ON: Go to ABC.com and play old episodes. If you have some spare change, download a few from iTunes. If Daisies brings in enough digital dime, that revenue might offset the on-air losses.
• REACH OUT: Contact ABC online or use the quaint ol’ post office to send a letter explaining, in your own passionate but polite words, why and how Daisies is the birdhouse in your soul. The address for ABC is 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, CA 91521-4551.
• PUSH THOSE DAISIES: There are 23,000 species in the daisy family of flowers, including marigolds, coneflowers, sunflowers, chamomile, chrysanthemums, dahlias and zinnias. Send a bunch of your faves to ABC, or better yet, send flower seeds. They’re light and therefore cheap to ship. Seeds last for years and won’t go bad or go to waste, and they could be planted to grow into something beautiful in the spring. Don’t forget to include a note explaining that this is for the love of Daisies!

I kind of love the idea of sending lots of flowers to ABC.

So that's that. I am just putting this out there for informational sake. I'm not really THAT passionate about the show, but it is really well done and Ned the pie maker, well I like him. I'm glad that on this day after election day I still have yet to post anything political. I voted, don't you worry. I always do. But my blog's purpose is not to have anything really very important on it. Done and done.

Everything you need to know about Pushing Daisies:

The past few weeks...

I helped my dad, grandpa, and mom put big tarps on my dad's hay stacks.






































































I carved a pumpkin.






























Sarah and I had really great Hot Dog on a Stick costumes. And as they imply on Freaks and Geeks, the best Halloween parties are the places the Hot Dog on a Stick girls are. Although when I was helping at Sarah's friend's haunted house, I could NOT scare the tweenagers that kept coming through over and over. Hot Dog on a Stick, it isn't scary. But it is delicious.




























I finally learned how to really cure a twitch. Take Zinc. Not eating bananas. Not punching the place where the twitch is over and over (some friends in high school told me that. I'm pretty sure they just liked to hit me.)