Successes, Failures, and Beyond

I flew into Salt Lake City Friday night and was picked up by Shirley who drove me down to my sister's apartment in Provo. Once there I finally met her fiance in person.

Saturday morning we all got up to pull together the bridal shower that Shirley, Jenna, and myself were throwing for her. It was a successful event, save for one terrible tragedy. My macarons did not turn out.

It is rare that I experience a cooking or baking failure. Does that make me sound prideful? Sorry, but it's true, I make good stuff. I'm good at it and I like it. This was not one of those times. See, my sister has a roommate with a Kitchenaid, and I plugged that sucker in, so happy and excited that I was going to get to use it.

Unfortunately, The whisk attachment does not reach the bottom of the bowl. I didn't realize this until I had whipped my egg whites to a bubble bath consistency, had added my sugar and whipped until it looked like a glossy shaving cream, and dumped in the almond powdered sugar mixture.

Then I went to fold in the powdered sugar and there at the bottom of the bowl were unwhipped egg whites. It was too late. They weren't whipped and I couldn't get that batter to thicken to the right consistency to save it's life.

Thus, there were no macarons, and I was sad.

We still had a pretty good spread of cake balls, cookies, fruits and veggies with dip, bread with artichoke dip, and pink lemonade to drink. Plus we played a guess the jellybeans game, and after the guessing happened, we ate them.

 Alicia received all manner of gifts, including, but not limited to a muffin tin and muffin mix,

 Jenga,

 gift cards,

 and water guns.

 Alicia was very happy with the deliciousness spread.

 She had a lot of friends that came to eat stuff and give her gifts.

 Shirley found those really cute lanterns for us to decorate with.

 More friendly bonding over food and present times.

 Hubble and "The Red Head" (what Adrian calls Dayna) came to the party!

And Alicia was very excited to receive finger paints.

So the party in and of itself was a success. I also jetted to a friend's wedding immediately after the party, and I suppose you could say that it too was a success. They were married, I ate delicious food (I seriously ate so much food on Saturday it was ridiculous) and got to see old friends and catch up on life with them.

Since that time I've also met some of Adrian's family and have been trying to work off the 11 pounds I must have gained on Saturday alone. Yesterday I walked to the Creamery on 9th and it was sunny and warm outside. It was wonderful. I love warmth, and spring break, and studying for my test on Saturday and researching for my paper due next week, and watching my AZ law class videos.... 

Good times. Without macarons... I want to retry the macarons before I leave, because I hate that they failed.