So it's come to this.....

So Nick is now in full swing of his rotating schedule and has been on graveyard shift for the last 7 days. What does that mean for his currently unemployed, naturally a night owl wife? My schedule goes down the tubes with his. Last night was the end of his rotation as a result we both slept until noon then got up and puttered around the house from a sleep hangover until about 10pm when we both were WIRED. End result, we both look up from our knitting/crocheting and cupcake eating at 4:30am and decide we were sleepy. Let me spell that out for you. Two, perfectly decent looking, intelligent, no longer in college, late twenty somethings are staying up til the wee hours of the morning to bake from scratch and practice hobbies traditionally saved for frumpy seniors with 12+ cats (although I guess yarn work has had somewhat of a little hipster revival, so I am holding on to that). Ridiculous? Yes. How we roll? Fairly routinely.

Ever since we moved I have been baking with a fair intensity. This has started to become a somewhat inebriated tradition of ours when friends come over. We will have a few drinks and then Nick will look at me and sheepishly ask, "Will you make cupcakes/cookies?" And, provided we have the ingredients on hand, who am I to turn down a chance to throw back a beer and lightly dust the entire kitchen with flour or confectioners sugar? No one.

Last night's venture required some serious sobriety though. I have recently been obsessed with the irreverent mixture of salty and sweet things. So I had been sitting on this idea of a bacon-caramel cupcake. The cake itself was a butter cake recipe, the icing, caramel flavored, then topped with real bacon bits. Last night was the first attempt, and while the icing (which I had to BS my way though) didn't get quite the consistency I wanted, the flavors showed serious potential, so I will call it a success. I mean really, how delicious do those look: The yarn work has had a resurgence in our house this week. As part of my new years resolution (#7) I decided I was going to teach myself how to crochet, legitimately. So this week I busted out the book I bought and jumped in head first. This inspired my husband to start knitting again. Wait.....oh......you didn't know that the Lieutenant knitted? Great story. A girl I knew in college taught me how to do a single crochet, a very basic stitch. I called my husband (then boyfriend) and mentioned that I learned and he decided to one up me by going home and asking his mom to teach him how to knit. That Valentine's day we both gave each other handmade scarves. To this day it remains one of the most endearing and nauseating things we have done. So we picked the hobby up again and yarn has just exploded all over our living room and the cat is running around like addict locked in a pharmacy. You can basically hear Lizzy's inner cat monologue running a mile a minute, "Holy crap, you guys finally picked up a good hobby. There is so much string for me to play with.....AHHH!"

It is now a little after 1am. We have both yarned 'til we went crossed-eyed and promised we would be in bed by 2am.....here's hoping.