lorenius

There is a house a few blocks from mine that has had Easter decorations up for awhile. These are not just any Easter decorations either, it pretty much looks like the Easter bunny exploded with a full load of eggs.

I finally remembered to take a photo last weekend. I think people have been taking eggs because there were a lot more.

My friend Liz had this on her blog and I had to share…

Seems like a flash mob from Sound of Music. Rather amusing but can you imagine how annoyed you’d be if you were late for your train and that was going on in the middle of the station?

I picked up my new Audi after work today. I love it!! And it’s so fast…I barely realized I was doing 85 on 287. Need to keep an eye on that.

I need to think of a name for it.

Glamour has done a photo shoot entitled “American Icons” and it’s young female stars dressed up as iconic women. Lindsay Lohan as Madonna, Alexis Bleidel as Rosie the Riveter, etc. I don’t get the point of when they have people reenact stuff like this. Kinda like when LL did that Marilyn Monroe photo shoot…except I guess the point of that was to see her full body freckles.

I really need to pay more attention when I book flights. I booked my flight out to tahoe (into reno, out of san fran) a few days ago. I thought I had booked the 5:30pm flight on saturday. Turns out I actually booked the 7am flight.

I was almost 10hrs late for my flight. Thanks to Greg for pointing this out.

Now I probably would have noticed this when I sent my mom my flight info..but at least now I know I have to pack friday night.

I went car shopping today. First stop was Subaru of Morristown.

We walked in and walked around. I checked out the new Forester. It’s way too big.  I want a AWD wagon..not an SUV. So that was out.

I wanted to see an Outback but they didn’t have a showroom. So we asked a salesman and he took us out back to look at them. We took a 2.5 Limited out for a spin. It’s nice inside but lacking on of the things I really want…acceleration.

As I took a right turn up a slight hill I tried accelerating. Well I had the pedal to the metal and didn’t go anywhere.  So that’s out.  I talked to the salesmen and they do make turbos but he said they didn’t have any and they would be over $30k.  If I’m going to spend that much I wouldn’t spend it on a Subaru.

Next stop was Audi of Bernardsville. I had an appointment to test drive an A4 Avant that had the options I wanted. Did a little drive that included a couple of miles on 287 and this the 2.0 Turbo definitely had some pickup. It was also really nice inside – black with beige leather.  The electronic parking brake was a little weird. We talked to the salesman a bit and then headed to my aunt/grandmas and had lunch.

Then we headed to Fair Lawn to Jack Daniels Audi. That place was a mess. There were people everywhere and we had to wait over 30 minutes even though we had an appointment.  The salesperson we dealt with was ok but overall seems like this dealer was a big hassle to work with. Anyway I’m at least glad to have some numbers from them to use to get better prices at other dealers.

PS This is the car I want. Although I think I may go try some other cars.

I have been looking at the Audi website and I noticed a European Delivery section. Basically you can order your car in the US then pick it up in Europe. Drive it around and drop it off to be shipped back to dealer…all for the price of the car…and airfare. For Audi you get a complimentary night in a hotel and insurance for 15 days.

http://www.audiusa.com/audi/us/en2/experience/european_delivery.html

some other companies do this as well
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/strategies/articles/139806/article.html

This morning on my way to work I had a little car trouble. As I was merging off the highway exit my car decided to stall. It’s automatic. It stalled 3 times before I was able to go and then it made horrible squeaky noises.

So when I left work today I was a little worried. In the parking lot it was making lots of weird noises and I was trying to decide what to do. As I was getting near the highway entrance it got very weird so I pulled into the parking lot of the Olde Mill Inn and it totally dies. I coast into a parking spot. I couldn’t even get it started. It would turn over and sort of start, then die. So I call AAA.

About 30 minutes later the flatbed truck shows up and he gets my car started in order to move it. I was going to bring it home but my brother calls and says to drop it off at the dealer. So we drop it off at a Subaru dealer but service is closed. So I dropped my keys and I’ll call tomorrow.

The big question is how much it’s going to cost to fix. My car is 10 year old and I’m planning on buying a new one this fall. So I’m starting to look at new cars now. I want another awd wagon.

I made some cupcakes for my sister Vanessa’s birthday. They were incredible.

I started off using Grandma’s Chocolate Cake recipe from Cake & Commerce. It was delicious. One of the nice things about it is that it uses vegetable oil instead of butter so it’s easy to make it last minute. My butter is always in the freezer so if I have an immediate cupcake baking need it means waiting a few hours for it to soften or doing some work to speed it along.

That recipe doesn’t have instruction for cupcakes, but I filled each with 1/4 cup of batter and baked for 25 minutes on 350°. The cupcakes shrunk slightly but rose to have a nice little dome.  It yielded just over 2 dozen cupcakes.

I decided to do a mint frosting. Rather than doing a regular buttercream,  I used a white chocolate butter cream base and my modified recipe is below

. I’m just not feeling regular buttercream any more. The white chocolate buttercream is tasty without being cloyingly sweet. It’s also stiffens up a bit so that you don’t mess up your icing. That’s great if you plan to transport your cupcakes!

White Chocolate Mint Buttercream Frosting

yield 2 3/4 cups

Ingredients

• 2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, softened
• 12 ounces white chocolate
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract (do not use mint)