Mississippi Mud Cookies

My mama gave me this Southern Living Christmas cookbook last Christmas, and last week I decided to try out this new cookie recipe.

Forewarning: I didn’t use parchment paper because I didn’t have any. It would probably be best to use parchment paper because the cookies, especially the marshmallows, stuck to the pan, and many crumbled when I tried to remove them. Also, the butter I used turned out not to be real butter and instead some form of vegetable oil sticks (something of that nature). The cookies still tasted good, but I have a feeling that’s what made them super crumbly. Also, leave enough time for them to cool on the pan before removing them, or again…they will crumble. “Learn by trial and error”

Prep: 25 min. Bake: 12 min. per batch

1 cup semisweet chocolate morsels

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

1/2 cup milk chocolate morsels

1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. miniature marshmallows

Microwaves semisweet chocolate morsels in small microwave-safe glass bowl at HIGH 1 minute or until smooth, stirring every 30 seconds.

Beat butter and sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; add eggs, 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla and melted chocolate.


Combine flour, baking powder, and salt; gradually add to chocolate mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in chopped pecans (optional) and 1/2 cup milk chocolate morsels.


Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Press 3 marshmallows into each portion of dough.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until set. Remove to wire racks.

(I forgot to take a photo before I put the cookies in a container. Unfortunately I left the crumbled and breaking (bad) cookies on the plate. Haha, so this is the photo I have. I have other ones that looked better…I promise. Remember what I said to avoid the crumbling!)

Yield: about 3 dozen. (I probably made about 2 dozen…depends on the size of your cookies, obvs.)

almost thanksgiving...

I went with my friend, Kelly, tonight to take some Refugee kids to McDonald's. Here are some photos of them...so cute!





These four kids are from Burma. I can't believe how well they speak English! It's so impressive to me when kids know more than one language...and how quickly they can learn them!

Now onto the rest of my post...

I can't imagine being a psychiatrist. How can anyone have their stuff together well enough to advise other people on their own messed up issues? The human mind is too complex for its own good, and no one can be considered "normal". Well, how can one crazy person have the ability to advise and sort through another crazy person's mind? I'm not saying psychiatrists don't help people because many people swear by them. But I am just wondering how someone has the authority to be a psychiatrist. When we are all crazy.

My emotions and thoughts are all over the place, as always. I swear I change my mind 5 million times a day. And how I feel about my decisions and thoughts. If that makes any sense. I want to start living moment to moment and only worry about what is making me happy in that very moment. It is difficult for me because I'm constantly fretting over what I've just done or what I have to do. I get anxious over the smallest things that any sane person wouldn't care about in the least bit. And I'm not exaggerating...in the least bit.

But ANYWAY, I have never been as excited for Thanksgiving as I am this year. Normally I'd rather just skip straight to Christmas. But I think this being my first holiday as a non-student is going to be really good for me. I just hope I don't have any moments of boredom where I can ponder my life. Or else I will have to fill the time with baking tons of delicious holiday treats. :)

The rest of this post got deleted, so I am having to rewrite it. -__-

Now on to acting...I took a workshop this past Saturday with a casting director I have never worked with before, and she gave me both a compliment and critique while watching playbacks of our cold readings: she said she doesn't know me well but can tell that I have training and am good...I am just relying on my acting "tricks". I need to work towards living honestly in the moment, and I couldn't agree more. This is what I have been working towards the last two months in my acting class on Meisner. It is just frustrating because I have been taught by many professors...and many professors have a more mechanical approach to acting. I think the mechanical...ness is rubbing off on me. I am not blaming anyone else; what I do is ultimately because of me. I just have to be patient that it will happen for me. I want to just be. I know I can do it and that I will do it. But it takes a lot of work. Or maybe the problem is I am working too hard...?

Oh, I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife today. I didn't have work today, so I stayed in bed with a glass of eggnog (delicious) reading it until I finished. I've already seen the movie, but still, it is so sad. This story always makes me so depressed. But it's so good. I'm just sad that I've already finished it. I hate ending good books. I also tried yoga for the first time today...kicked my butt! I honestly didn't think it would be this difficult for me as it was! We will have to see how this goes.

Well, I don't have work again tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get to see Harry Potter tonight. Then filming Knife, Fork, Spoon tomorrow night and heading home for Thanksgiving Wednesday morning!

these are a few of my favorite things

I AM EXCITED FOR TOO MANY THINGS.

I am so excited for so many things in my life to happen...I can't wait! I know I shouldn't be looking too far into my future and wanting time to pass quicker than it already does, but THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS.

We wrapped filming on a short I've been working on the past week, Unattainable. I am so excited about seeing the finished product in December, but filming made me so excited about other things as well. For one, the last day of filming we shot at the director's aunt's house. Being inside a well kept house with matching furniture and a landscaped backyard made me want to start planning my future house right away. Other than achieving a successful career as an actress, I desperately want to make a home for my future family. I want to have a playset and a garden and room for my dog(s) to run. I want each room to have a theme. I want huge marble counter tops in the kitchen with plenty of room for cooking and baking. I'm not ready to have kids right now, but I can't wait!

Also, I've never been a behind the camera person. Well, I'm a behind the camera person when taking photos, but I also like being in front of it. When it comes to filming, I always want to be front and center. When shooting this film, I actually got really interested in the whole process that goes behind it. I wish I had double majored in RTF, but by the time I seriously considered it, it would have taken me longer than everyone else to graduate. I would love to learn how to work a camera, how to set up shots, how to edit takes together. I also wouldn't mind trying my hand at directing. I think being an actor first would help me a lot to relate to the actors I'm trying to direct. I have a couple of friends who have been talking for years about creating a web series, so maybe we should finally do this! But I have to admit, though it would be a fun and exciting new experience to work behind the camera, I couldn't give up being in front of it as well. Haha.

On a related note, SOMEBODY LET ME TAKE PICTURES OF THEM. I am willing to take headshots/portraits/whatever any wants FOR FREE. I want to build my portofolio, so please let me! All it takes is a couple of hours of your time, and in return you get some hopefully awesome FREE shots of yourself. Either nobody likes getting his/her picture taken, or else they think I'm actually that bad. Which, I'm not being conceited, but I can't believe. I have to be fairly confident in myself in the things I pursue. I love getting my picture taken, so I guess I can't relate. Haha. I'm not conceited...I'M AN ACTRESS!

I am really excited to see three movies: Morning Glory (with Rachel McAdams, who, you should know, I'm obsessed with), Love and Other Drugs (with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal), and Blue Valentine (with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams). I don't get excited about seeing too many movies, but I am very excited for all three of these. I am especially a sucker for the non-cookie-cutter-Hollywood-predictable-love-stories, and whether or not Love and Other Drugs falls in that category, I'm pretty sure Blue Valentine doesn't. GIVE TO ME.

I put up Christmas lights both in my apartment and at Whitney's house. I LOVE Christmas lights. I don't want to stop putting them up.

This post is all over the place, but then again, so is my mind/life.

it's a new dawn, it's a new day

I have come to realize that your happiness depends almost entirely on your attitude. You can choose to be positive, or you can choose to dwell on the negative. I am not preaching or lecturing because I myself focus all too much on the negative aspects in my life, rather than appreciating the good things. Trust me, it is way more difficult to keep a good attitude; it's much easier to pout and whine and complain about how life sucks.

These past few months have been rough for me. I never knew I would feel at such a loss after graduating from college and being done with school. Sometimes there isn't a reason for me to feel down, but I will. You have to grasp on to those little things in life that feed you happiness. Little things...like bringing a Christmas tree scented candle everywhere with me just so I can light it and always have that scent surrounding me. Or a pumpkin spice scented car freshener so that every time I get into my car, I'm immediately filled with euphoria at the thought of the holidays being so close. Or cuddling up in snowflake pajamas and watching a movie in the dark. These little things are what get me through the day. What gets you through yours?

I have actually been working on a lot of acting projects lately. I finished a studio shoot, am filming for a short film, was cast last minute into another studio shoot today, and will be rehearsing for another workshop this week. I'm not getting paid, but I'm getting to do what I love. When I get down about the career path I've chosen, it's always nice to be reminded how much I love it and how much it's worth it. I have to be happy that people actually like my work...that they think it's great and that they want to work with me again and again. That in itself is comforting. I feel like I'm always striving for something else, something more, like I can't feel content with what I have. But I do have accomplishments. Everyone has their problems, and most are much more worse than mine. I don't want to settle in life, but I also don't want to always want something more. I'm working hard at keeping a positive attitude towards myself and towards life in general. Life is too short to spend even one minute unhappy. I want to enjoy every second of it. I want to look back on my life and have absolutely no regrets. There are so many things I can't wait for, but I need to focus on the now. I need to live my life right here right now. Let's all be positive together, so none of us get each other down.

Really, more than anything, I miss Betsy. This Friday it will be one month since she passed away. I can't explain to you how much I love this dog and how I've never hurt more badly than I did when she was hurting and then when she was gone. We picked up her ashes the other night, so it's nice to kind of have her with us again. I think about her every single day, and I wonder when or if the hurt will ever go away. Here I'm telling you to focus on the positive, but death is the one thing in life that I can't change my attitude about. It's so certain, so conclusive. You can talk about heaven being infinite, but life on Earth obviously isn't. There's no explanation as to why she had to be taken away from us. No explanation, no good reason. It happens, and it's something I don't think any of us could ever learn to cope or be okay with. The physical impossibility of ever seeing someone again is heartwrenching. And that's the risk you have to take when you give someone your heart, and I certainly gave Betsy mine. You have to risk that your heart will be taken away also. But she was worth it. The best dog in the world.

We love you, Betsy. We miss you. Keep watching over us girl because we need you.

it's the most wonderful time of the year

I need this, the holidays that is. They couldn't be coming at a better time. Halloween showed up so suddenly that it came and went too quickly for me to fully enjoy it and all of the Halloween festivities I had planned to do. This Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years I am going CRAZY. So if you don't like this time of year, stay away, because I am not letting anyone bring me down. Christmas has always been my absolulte favorite favorite favorite time of the year and since I've grown older, I've tried every year to relive the excitement I felt as a kid. Normally I fail at providing myself the same amount of anticipation and excitement, but this year, I will not. So everybody, if you care an ounce about me, please play along. I really need this more than anything right now. I got so stressed out about squeezing every Halloween thing into one weekend, I only planned a costume last minute and didn't even get to carve my pumpkin. But this winter season, I am excited for...

...making Thanksgiving pies without the help of my mother, shopping on Black Friday, making smores in the backyard fire pit, decorating a (real) Christmas tree to put in the "man cave", planning a Christmas party with White Elephant and a plethora of delicious Christmas baked treats and hot cocoa, playing Christmas music NON-STOP from the day after Thanksgiving onwards, watching every Christmas movie I can get my hands on (most importantly, The Santa Clause), ice skating, going to look at Christmas lights, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, making Christmas cookies and gingerbread houses, taking so many (good) photos to commemorate such an amazing time of year, drinking eggnog, helping my mama make Christmas dinner and pies, buying boxes of chocolates, shooting off fireworks for New Year's while drinking hot chocolate, making New Year's resolutions that we'll never stick to, having Andria (hopefully) come visit in Austin, and EVERYTHING ELSE I FORGOT.

Here are some photos from Halloween weekend (most of which Caroline took). It may look like I enjoyed every second, but it felt too rushed, and I didn't get to do EVERYTHING I wanted.