I live in toronto with my boyfriend in a wee apartment. the kitchen is a user-friendly nightmare, every flat surface becomes usable space. everyone except my kitchen companions hes learned to vacate the kitchen entirely when i bake. To fund my baking i work at as a barmaiden. I love high heels, wine, pink roses, sparkles, rock music, running, black eyeliner, toronto, crosswords, tattoos, pinball, ufc, sports, horrorscopes, pool, bowling, mini-putt, offside humor (cnd. spl.) and trash tv. I have 1 younger brother and thats me in a nutshell. plus: i like to Party. baking. its awesome. the smell from the oven, decorating, giving it all away to people and the big smile on their face saying "mmmm vvis iss foooo gooooo" (thats what people sound like mid-cupcake-eating). Its also a curse: once people know you bake your done for. be prepared for dissapointed looks and interrogations as to why you didnt bake anything (like..ahem.. my boyfriend's hockey team). Also my brother always gets some of my "not as beautiful as the rest" baking mutations. Both sides of my family are cookers/bakers. up until a few years ago my cooking skills were adding hot water to ramen noodles (college baby!)Then i started to work nights at a bar and on my nights off i would go over and try to cook a dinner for my dad and brother. My dad was a very open minded recipe guinea pig, with a lot of reassuring "no dont worry its good, ill still eat it" but regardless was always candle lit with a bottle of red wine I have become the baker my friends turn to. baking has also given me the confidence to attempt cooking and adapting my own signatures to my baking recipes. its allowed me to become confident and more creative, a huge step forward and more to go. After 2 successful attempts at baking i figured i had become a cullunary genuius. So i tried sugar cookies with a weee-teeny-tiny glove mitten cookie cutter. i dont really know where the train derailed but the dough was this crumbly, semi-useable disaster. i've learned now when to pull the plug when its not going to happen, but then i didnt. i pain stakingly tried to get the golves to have all their "fingers" attached for an eternity. to boot they burnt in the oven so my efforts were in vain. i cried my eyes out. trashed the lot and drank a bottle of wine and vowed to never bake again.