When the moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie, that's amore.

So something I've learned about myself while being on my own in Portland is that I love to cook and bake. I might not have all of the ingredients or the tools used to cook the recipes that I find, but I definitely make do. One of my favorite ways to pass the time is to go on the Food & Drink board on the website Pinterest, and they have some of the most delicious looking meals and snacks and drinks. The best part is that they're 'pinned' by other people who have made the recipes or plan to make them, so they give a lot of tips about ways to change the recipes to make them your own. I've found that my favorite kind of cooking is opening the fridge and then proceeding to mix things in pots and pans. I've made some pretty good stuff so far too! I've even taken in some of my baked goods into work, and the shop guys devour it in minutes :)

Healthy Banana Bread - made with honey and applesauce instead of sugar and oil!

Brocoli Chicken Cheese Rolls

Zucchini Boats

Baked Oatmeal Muffins

Mini Pot Pies!

These have all been my favorites so far, but I've made a ton more than that. And I have about 250 more recipes to try out within the next two years, so I'll probably post something about it when I find a really good one! If you want the recipes for any of these, just let me know! :D

Ain't no mountain high enough.

I had another fantastic weekend in the great state of Oregon. After all the rain and gloom we’ve had in the past month, who knew I would be able to get a really bad sunburn on a 3 hour hiking trip in slightly overcast weather?

This past weekend, I went camping with one of my sorority sisters who is currently interning in the greater Portland area as well. Oddly enough, she is from Michigan but attends Penn State and is a member of the 10-year-old Phi Sigma Rho chapter there. We had never met before but early last week she invited me to go camping with her and her family, and I thought “why not?” She picked me up in the afternoon on Friday and we drove for four hours across the mountains. It turns out, we have similar likes/dislikes, ambitions, ideas, and from what we can observe our boyfriends are even that similar, too. I guess that’s just what happens when you meet sisters from other chapters. :)

Anyway, this weekend really rekindled my absolute LOVE for camping. There’s just something about cooking food over a fire, star gazing into the late hours of the night, and breathing fresh air for 24 hours a day that gets me. My ENTIRE extended family goes camping every summer, and it’s always something I look forward to months in advance. Unfortunately, due to my location and limited time for travel, I won’t be able to attend our tenth anniversary camping trip this summer :( I’m hoping I’ll be able to video call them so I can see all of my Kentucky family though!

I was also able to say I did a lot of “firsts” this weekend! I:

• Went hiking for the first time

Saw a mountain in real life for the first time

Went minimalist camping for the first time
(sorry, no photo for this!)

Went to the highest elevation above sea level I’ve ever been at (6,000+ ft)

It was such a SPECTACULAR weekend! I really hope that my sister and I will be able to go camping more often this summer and see all the beauty of Oregon!

We're painting the roses red.

It was quite a successful weekend if I do say so myself! I was able to accomplish another “Portland Must” to knock off my list of things to do here, too!

Friday night, I went with three of my coworkers to see The Avengers for the THIRD time since it came out in early May (and I’m not ashamed of it). I think the movie only keeps getting better each time I see it. I’m going to buy in on DVD that day it’s released in stores, and probably watch it as soon as I get home. :P

Saturday was much more eventful though. I went out to an early breakfast with my manager and a coworker in the Eaton graduate program called the Leadership Development Program, or LDP for short. We went to The Original Pancake House, and I MEAN the original, that was built in 1953. Portland is famous for being home to this restaurant before it became a chain, and it definitely still has that atmosphere. The waitresses are all dressed in pink skirts and aprons with their hair up in ponytails, and many of the framed pictures and artwork are from it’s original days. It’s a very quaint breakfast/brunch area, and the food was delicious! I would highly suggest it to anyone visiting Portland. After breakfast, we went to the Rose Festival Parade, which was very much like any other parade I’ve been to, but it was still fun to see the crowds of people and the floats. We wandered around the city for a while after, walking in and out of stores we thought looked neat, and then got lunch at a local bar and grill. Then we walked to the famous International Rose Test Gardens, since it was such a beautiful day out (and that’s pretty rare here!). Since Portland is dubbed “The City of Roses” it only made sense to create a rose garden, which is now home to over 7,000 flower beds in over 550 varieties. Some of the roses hadn’t bloomed yet, but there were still plenty to look at and smell. Here’s a few of my favorites:

This purple one is my favorite. It's called "Rhapsody in Blue" which is a beautiful song composed by Gershwin :)

I was pretty worn out after such a long day walking around the city, so I went home, watched the Stanley Cup playoff game, and went to bed early.

Sunday was a little less eventful, but the weather was superb. It felt like Michigan weather, which I’ve missed more than anything here in rainy Oregon, so I laid outside in the sun almost all day long, read a book, and took a nap. Personally, I think it was the best day yet. :P

Run, run with her top down, baby, she flies.

I accomplished one of my summer goals this weekend, and it’s so exciting!! My original goal was to run a 5k by the end of the summer. I’m not too athletic, and I’ve never trained for sports or anything in my life, so I thought a 3.1 mile run in three months was fairly reasonable. I started going running at the end of the school year to relieve stress from finals and projects and setting up everything for my internship, but I could only go so far before I felt completely out of breath and my muscles started to hurt. It helped that my friend Teagan would go with me though! She was very encouraging and helped me run our short routes without stopping.

As soon as school ended and I started running at home, it got more difficult to do it by myself. But I ran everyday, even if I had to stop and take a break in the middle of it. I even took my younger brother along with me a few times because he plays soccer, so I figured he could give me some good tips, too.

When I got here to Portland, it was even MORE difficult than at home. Oregon, very unlike Michigan, is FULL of hills and trails and I’m pretty sure it’s at a higher elevation than my hometown, too. I mapped out all of my routes the first day I got here, so I could stay motivated and not fall behind. I’m slowly getting used to all of the hills, but they are definitely my least favorite part of running. :p

So as I’m going through training everyday, I found out that there was an upcoming 5k called the ‘Starlight Run’ during Portland’s HUGE city fair. (When I say huge, I mean it. It is about 5 weeks long, and there’s events every Thursday-Sunday in downtown Portland including their famous Portland Saturday Market, a traveling amusement park, and music concerts at night!) Well, as soon as I saw that there was a 5k, I signed up for it without hesitation. I even got two of my co-workers to come along and run with me!

By the day of the run, I had only ever accomplished running ⅔ of the length of a 5k, so I was a little nervous that it would be hard for me to finish it. The best part about this run though, was that it wasn’t supposed to be a super serious run where you try to get your best time. Everyone was dressed up for the Rock N’ Roll theme and there was a costume contest before we started. It put everyone in such a good mood, and it really helped encourage me to do my best no matter how far I could get or how fast I ran.

By the time it was ready to start, I was warmed up and ready to go. My friend tracked the first mile, which wasn’t too bad, but I was dying and ready to take a break by the end of the second. But I was able to get a lot of motivation from the crowd. The 5k precedes the Starlight Parade that’s full of lit up floats and clowns and normal parade cars, so the community sets up camp early in the day to get good seats. Everyone cheers you on as you run and the atmosphere is just so energetic. The kids line up along the side of the road to get high-fives, too! Seeing their faces is what encouraged me to keep going. :]

All in all, I finished the 5k, without stopping, in under half an hour, which was better than my original goal! I’m really proud of myself for getting this done, but now I don’t know what to do since I finished a goal so early on in the summer! Maybe I should double it and run a 10k by the end of August..