So, Sadies was last week! Out of my two dance experience, this was probably my favorite dance. Even though the physical dance wasn't actually that great, the group was a lot of fun. I was friends with basically everyone in my group, which made it more enjoyable in all. We met for pictures at Camryn's house around 6:30, even though I lie down the street from her, I still wasn't the first one there, which was a little weird. Actually, not really but whatever. Before Sadies, I was at a wrestling match, but more on that later.
For dinner, our (rather large) group went to Bertucci's. That was fun, except it was a long table to I only really ended up talking to Weston, Serena, Will and Rachael. So, after dinner was where things got a little weird. Someone (I'm fairly sure it was you, Camryn Alix Buss) decided the desserts were too expensive and got the brilliant idea to go buy ice cream at Weis Supermarket. Sure, it was right across the road, but it was freezing literally, it was freezing, and walking over in dresses was so freaking cold. Everyone at Weis probably thought we were really weird, walking around fancily dressed in a grocery store. I ended up being the only one who got ice cream (ugh), because everyone else refused to get ice cream with me. (Thanks, guys) other people actually just ended up getting candy. 
We arrived at the dance around nine, which gave us plenty of time (since it ended at eleven.) There was a photo booth, which was fun (sorry, I'm saying fun to much, should I switch to the word 'enjoyable?'). And there was actually a slow dance, which was a bit awkward at first, but after a bit, it was enjoyable (see? See what I did there?) 
Anyway, after the dance, I went over to Camryn's for an overnight. We sat in the hot tub for a while, and let me tell you, it feels amazing to be in a hot tub when it's way below freezing outside. 

The day after Sadies was Valentine's Day! And sticking to yearly tradition, I remain single and alone. Scratch the alone. On Valentine's Day, I, first of all,  made these little red velvet heart cakes, filled with fresh whipped cream and topped with cream cheese icing. Yum. I heard they were good. And then, I hung out with Ellie. 

Now let's flash back to before Sadies. Before I was getting ready for the Sadies Hawkins Dance, I was at the Field House bright and early at nine thirty in the morning to take wrestling statistics. If you were unaware, Serena and I were doing statistics for the wrestling team. This year, ANC did really well. We won Champs :) and today they're going to States. 

Now, way back before Sadies, let's look at the week before. Ursula challenged me to a fitbit challenge (Work Week Hustle) and for some highly stupid reason, I accepted. For those of you that are unaware. I, Anji Mei Cooper, am a highly competitive human being. Even for things I don't like. For instance, exercise. All week long, Ursula and I were just walking around the school and staring each other down. The treadmill was definitely my best friend last week. I went on like three runs a night an minimum an hour long walk. On one day, I even got up to thirty-five thousand steps one day. It was a very close competition, but I pulled ahead in the end with 140,174 steps and Ursula was quite close on my heels with 137,737 steps. :)
So anyway, thanks for reading, sorry for the short post, but I should really get started on homework! 
​-Anj

Bath Bombs are expensive to buy, but so relaxing. Recently, I've become obsessed with DIY projects and stuff (obviously) and I've also become obsessed with bath bombs, of course, they're expensive to buy (especially from Lush (FYI I love Lush)) so I decided to make some of my own, for a cheaper price. A lot of the ingredients in these are quite easy to find, all ingredients save for citric acid, which, no matter how hard I tried, I could not find in grocery stores near me. So, I ordered my citric acid off amazon (they have everything on there.)  Other than that, all the other ingredients were quite easy to find. 
Now, the main reason it took me so long to create these excellent bath bombs is that I didn't have a bath bomb mold. Still don't. How did I create this round shape? Surprisingly enough, I used tennis balls as my bath bomb mold. See, I used to play tennis but quit, so I have a bunch of tennis balls that are left, unused, in my basement. Now I actually put those things to use by cutting a few in half, washing the inside out and using them to mold the bath bombs. 
Baking Soda and corn starch are easily found in any grocery store, I'm not sure if grocery stores sell epsom salt, but CVS sells a whole ton of it, so you'll probably be able to find it there. As for Essential oils, you can find these pretty much anywhere these days. You don't need high quality, therapeutic essentials oils for this recipe, though. You just need some nice smelling ones. A good place to find some cheaper essential oils is whole foods or a crafting store in the soap making section. 
Coloring is completely optional, though, I find it more fun when your bath is colored, also it makes the bath bombs look nicer when they're colored. You have two options for coloring. Soap or food dye. I usually use a little bit of both, to get the most pigmented color possible. If you only use food dye, be careful and only use a few drops because if you use too much, you'll risk it coloring your skin.
To add the liquid to the dry mixture, you'll need a spray bottle. These are easily acquired by just looking in the travel section at Target or  CVS. A cheap $3 spray bottle is all you need to create these fantastic little bath bombs. 
When you bathe with these bath bombs, you'll not only have a relaxing aroma around you, but you'll also have softer skin when you emerge from the bath tub! The coconut oil makes your skin just a tad bit softer and really, did you need any more pros?

Ingredients: 
1 cup Baking Soda
1/2 cup Citric Acid 
1/2 cup Corn Starch
1/2 cup Epsom Salt 
3 Tablespoons of Water
2 1/2 Tablespoons of Coconut Oil
Essential oils for scent 
Food or Soap Dye 

Instructions: 
Start by mixing the baking soda, citric acid, corn starch and epsom salt together. Mix throughly. 
Then spoon the mixture evenly out into different bowls, the amount of bowls varies depending on how many different colors you wish to create. 
Now, in a separate container, add your water and coconut oil. Heat this for 45 seconds in the microwave, or until the coconut oil is completely melted. 
Mix this until the water and coconut oil are pretty evenly mixed together. 
Pour a bit of this mixture into your spray bottle and add your essential oil and color. The amount of these two variables depends on how strong the essential oil is and how colored you want your bath bomb to be. The darker colored the liquid mixture is, the darker the bath bomb's color will be. 
Put the top back on and shake the spray bottle. 
Spray about two spritzes of the liquid into the dry mixture before stirring. Repeat this process until the mixture has the feel of wet sand. 
Dump the rest of the colored liquid out, pour some more of the coconut oil/water mixture in the spray bottle, recolor and scent it and repeat the mixing process on the other bowls of your dry mixture. 
You want to use the spray bottle technique because if you don't, the ingredients will react to the dry mixture and your bath bomb will not fizz in the water, so technically it wouldn't really be a bath bomb, just a bath scent and colorant. 
When you have all your dry mixtures colored (and scented) and they're the feeling of wet sand, pack them tightly into whatever mold you're using. Make sure to overfill the mold before pressing it to the other side. Use rubber bands to hold together both halves of the mold. If you want to add something into the bath bomb say, rose petals or bits of lavender, now would be the time. 
 Let sit for about a day before taking the mold off from the bath bomb and rubbing away the side bit so that your bath bomb is more sphere shaped. You also want to let the bath bomb sit for a day so that it will dry out, before you use it in a bath. (Note: It doesn't have to be round, if you don't have any round shapes to make a bath bomb from, you can always just use a cupcake pan or something) 
Enjoy!
Thanks for reading,
​-Anj

So it's been a while since a life update. A long while. Why? Um. My usual excuse- I've been rather busy. With school work piling on top of school work as well as the deadline for the completed rough draft of my novel, I've hardly had any free time. On the bright side though, GUYS I'M FINISHED THE ROUGH DRAFT OF MY NOVEL.
​The deadline was yesterday- the 31st of January and I finished writing it on Friday, arguably Saturday because it was like one in the morning, but I'm going to say Friday. I spent all Saturday morning putting it together- arranging the chapters how I wanted them and stuff like that. I know it's only a rough draft, but I find the prospect of even being this close to finishing my own book very exciting. See, I have finished other books, but all of them had been fan fiction, so it doesn't exactly count (not that there's anything wrong with fan fiction) for the last two years, I've been trying works of my own. My biggest issue with my own stories is self doubt, what if no one likes it? blah, blah, blah. Yeah, everyone says write for yourself, but really, if you only write for yourself, what's the point?
My self doubt causes me to get 200-300 pages into my stories, before deleting the entire story and starting again. If you don't believe me, ask Ursula, she would know. My second biggest issue with my own stories is that I have so many ideas in my head, I stop halfway through one story to start another one. Yeah, it's an issue. 
Anyway, I finally actually finished one of my stories. Sure, it's only a rough draft, but I'm still super proud of myself. I know there are a bunch of grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, but I'm excited to be revising my own book. See, it's getting printed into an actual book form and I'm going to be editing it from there. I'm not too happy about the cover look, but I can work on that later. Anyway, that's the update on my writing hobby! On to other things. 
As many of you probably know, it snowed recently. Snowed a lot. Now it's all gross and muddy but let's not think about that. Back to the snowing, you probably are not wondering, hey, what was Anji doing during that snowstorm? But I'm going to tell you what I was doing anyway, because I'm bored and have nothing to do (slash am procrastinating) On that wondrous three day weekend, I watched the entire X-Men franchise. Little known (not really) fact about me, I'm obsessed with comic book characters, and it was only a matter of time before I binge wanted the X-Men movies. It was wonderful and I highly recommend y'all watch the series. For the most part, the movies are quite good and I'm very excited for Apocalypse to come out. Extra excited because SOPHIE TURNER is debuting as young Jean Grey and we'll get to see more Scott Summers (which is also quite exiting) and Scott may probably meet Alex Summers. YESS THIS IS SO EXCITING. Also, Batman v. Superman, Captain America Civil War, Suicide Squad and Dr. Strange come out this year. It's very exciting. I'm very excited. Haha, can you tell I'm excited? 
Anyway, aside from being a lazy butt and watching movies in the evenings, I also baked a batch of red velvet cupcakes for Sadies (more on that later) and went to see The 5th Wave. If you're interested, my review is here. I'm trying to think of what else I did, but I'm kinda forgetting, so moving on. 
Sadies. Yeah. That's coming up soon. For all y'all who were unaware, Sadies is our school's winter dance. It's switched, though, so the girls ask the guys. I decided to ask this guy named Will, and this is how I did it. 

So I made cupcakes because, well, I'd be more likely to get a yes if I gave the boy cupcakes. I decided to make my usual- ultra moist red velvet cupcakes with whipped cream cheese frosting. Whipped cream cheese frosting is just as good and sweet as regular cream cheese frosting but more light and fluffy. I heard they were delicious. Anyway, back to how I asked. 

Tada. Anyway, I added my number to the card and just expected him to text me yes or no. Haha, yeah that didn't happy. Um. it was a bit of an awkward exchange. If you hadn't figured out, I'm a very awkward person, I mean, obviously, because I'm blogging right now, but whatever. And by bit of an awkward exchange, I mean a very, supremely large awkward exchange. I would account that mainly on me, because come one, Awkward is basically 90% of the part of my brain that I use. In my free time I write on my blog, read books and talk to my cats. If I did not already establish it, I am probably the most awkward human being on this planet we call Earth. 
​

This past Thursday was my mom's 60th birthday. Kinda. I mean, the birthday is kind like the time you've lived on Earth so I'm not sure if it really counts, but I'm going to count it so... Yeah. Happy Birthday, mom! And I just realized I put her age online. Aren't you not supposed to post that past like twenty five or something? Whoops. Sorry, mom. Anyway, for my mom's birthday, I took a break from my writing and made chocolate cupcakes with fudge buttercream icing. : )

So... I should probably go now. Thanks for reading my life update (if anyone's still reading this far down. FYI those are no fry yeast doughnuts. They were very fun to make and quite delicious- texturized just like a regular fried donut. If you don't want to miss a any of of my confections, feel free to follow any of my Social Medias, I usually post a picture on instagram.com/anjimcooper (my 2nd Instagram), my Facebook  (see About/Contact) and on my Snap Chat (which is anjicooper) 
Thanks for reading!
​-Anj