A Cookie Within a Cookie?

Recently, my friends Carly, Kayla, my brother Greg, and I decided to bake something my brother's friend had found. He calls them "Cookie Inception." Basically we made a chocolate chip cookie with an oreo inside of it. We made the chocolate cookies from scratch using the Nestle Toll House recipe, which can be found here or on the back of their semi-sweet chocolate chips bags. After we made the dough we wrapped our chocolate stuffed Oreos in chocolate chip cookie dough. It seemed a lot easier than it actually was; I would recommend putting flour on your hands or keeping your hands wet so that the dough doesn't stick. After you wrap them you put them on a cookie sheet to bake. We baked ours at 375 degrees for about 15-17 minutes.

 The cookies do not look too pretty when they come out of the oven, but you can easily fix that. We just cut around the Oreo to get the excess chocolate cookie off; make sure you cut while they're still warm or the cookie can break. This ended up being something really simple and fun to do, and they tasted amazing!

Locked and Loaded!

Toby Keith has always been one of my favorite artists; one of the first CD's I ever bought was his Greatest Hits album. I learned every word to every song and could sing them all day long. This came in handy last night because I got the chance to go to his Locked and Loaded tour with my good friend Kara, and it was amazing. (Please excuse my squished cowboy hat in the picture above. It was 103 degrees, so the hat ended up on the ground until we took a picture.)

Toby had two opening acts; newcomer JT Hodges, and Eric Church. I'd never heard of Hodges until I found out he was opening for Toby, so I went on iTunes and bought the only song he had on there, "Hunt You Down." It's a catchy song that I think will help his popularity. However, no one knew it or anything else he sang, so he got a lackluster response from the crowd. The biggest cheer he got was when he said Eric Church was coming up.

Eric received at much better response when he took the stage. He started with an older song that I was unfamiliar with, but a lot of other people seemed to know. I only own one of his albums, but I knew all of the songs from that album. He got the biggest response to his songs "Carolina" and "Smoke a Little Smoke." He was the home town boy from right here in North Carolina, so everyone loved him. He finished his set with "Smoke a Little Smoke."

The anticipation for Toby was unbelievable as we waited for him to take the stage. His performance started with a video clip sponsored by Ford that ended with a bang, literally. He started his set with "Bullets in the Gun" and then sang a lot of his newer songs. He used a lot of video and animation clips as well as plenty of pyrotechnics. My favorite song that he performed was "Should've Been a Cowboy;" the audience was very into that song and everyone knew it. He ended the night with "American Solider" and "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue." Overall his performance was great, and this is definitely a concert worth seeing.

Eric Church

Toby Keith and his big TV screen that was a huge component in his show!

Harry Potter Midnight Premier

Last night I somehow got sucked into going to the midnight showing of Harry Potter with a friend. I am in no way a die hard Harry Potter fan. I've only seen the first movie, so I was extremely worried I would be utterly confused throughout the final movie. I was confused for the first 2/3 of the movie, but then a flashback cleared a lot of it up for me. I ended up really enjoying the movie, and it was a great experience. Most of the people there were dressed up as Harry or any other member of Gryffindor. I felt very under prepared for the occasion. My friend and her two brothers all dressed the part so I walked in in my bright pink hoodie looking like a fish out of water. Fortunately, I fit in better once I put on the Harry Potter 3-D glasses (you were supposed to recycle them at the end, but they were just too cool to give up). After seeing the final film, I feel the need to watch all of the other ones and close the ten year gap I have between the first and last movie.

Without the glasses the night would not have been as amazing as it was!