Moving

We're moving today! To a house! With lots of windows, hardwood floors and plenty of space for us and our sweet woofers. I've scheduled some random posts for next week since I have no idea when our internet is being set-up, and new photos will be around soon I'm sure.

We're literally moving seven minutes from our current apartment, but the change to an actual house will be lovely. Hope everyone has a great weekend, for some of you it's finally time to bust out those benchwarmers (hot cocoa with peppermint schnaps, right?), Irish Coffees and apple cider with lots of rum. For the rest of us...cold beer and margaritas will still do!

Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf

I made the Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf from The Post Punk Kitchen for a brunch recently. It was delicious. It's full of chocolate chips, pumpkin and just enough spice.

I made a few changes to the recipe. I melted 3 oz of dark chocolate in stead of using cocoa powder and used a mix of spelt and whole wheat flour. I was trying to clear some stuff out of our pantry, and since spelt and whole wheat tend to soak up more water than all purpose I think the melted chocolate worked. And, really, no one will complain that the bread is "too moist" or "too chocolatey."

Pumpkin, because fall is here

The boiling water trick works like a charm

Big mess!

Final product (the loaf pan is from Crate and Barrel, orange because it's fall)

Weekend in Review

Heavy-duty packing mode this weekend! Also, some family and friend hangout time, spending a little time at the new place measuring and looking around. The dogs love the backyard already. Also, some baking and attempting to clean out a fridge a bit. To the photos:

Adorable nephew

 

Vegetarian chili (recipe...sometime soon)

Pumpkins! (at my sister-in-law's)

Very early morning eggs with herbs (chives, tarragon, thyme)

Grey afternoon

Making a huge mess

Weekend Notes:
Nothing like laughing with Noah and eating a giant bowl of chili to take your mind off packing and moving.
Those eggs were seriously the best I've ever had. Well, I don't remember them super well since it was 5 am but I bet they were great.
Making a mess of our kitchen wasn't on the packing to-do list, but it resulted in a Chocolate Pumpkin Bread that brought the house down at a brunch. I'll post more about it later this week. Or I'll just post photos of packed boxes and impress you all with my overly involved packing procedure. By "impress" I mean, show you what a crazy person I am. Have a great week!

Weekend in Review

Not many photos of our weekend, it mostly consisted of packing, lounging around and seeing a few friends and family. I did not see Real Steel, because it seems silly. I can't actually tell if the filmmakers are "for real" about that plot? That's neither here nor there!

Pumpkin bread (recipe coming tomorrow)

Bailey, window

China, packed

We can leave our windows open now, the weather has finally started to turn a bit crisp. It tends to warm up by mid-day, but the change is still nice. Packing is kind of a hilarious enterprise at this point, I'll post more later but for now let's just say A and I have already had one pretty silly fight about it.

Friday Five

Woofers

I'm not feeling very positive or optimistic these days, and I'm working on being alright with that. I'm just starting to figure out how I even feel, so we'll see where I end up with all of it. In any case, these small things have made me feel a little less down, and in some cases have at least offered some distraction from "what the hell am I doing with my life?" questions. Always a good distraction. This weekend I'm packing, pumpkin-patching, puppy play-dating. I haven't really seen or talked to A all week since he's been working every night, but it'll be nice to hang out some.

Foggy morning*

Stock photo of Essie's Chinchilly**

Thread, organized***

Petit Pains au Chocolat from here****

*Fall is coming, slowly but surely, here to Mississippi. It's mostly only noticeable in the mornings when it's mild and sometimes a little foggy and at night when it's just chilly enough to need a light sweater to be outside.
**I'm breaking out the fall nail colors, and I'd completely forgotten about Chinchilly. It's really flattering on fair skin folks, and it works on warm and cool skin tones. It's a bit darker than it appears here, but not vampy at all.
***I'm trying to organize the sewing/fabric materials in our spare bedroom, and I've discovered that I've got a ridiculous fabric collection going even though I only sew maybe once a month. And when I say sew I mean "I made pillows and simple a-line skirts". The upshot here is I have a-line skirts in every length, pattern and color I'll ever need.
****A ridiculously easy recipe, I used Valrhona Chocolate and whatever random puff pastry Kroger sells. I think Pepperidge Farms? I brought these to an early morning meeting and the response was almost equal to if I'd walked in with a basket full of yawning puppies. Except they didn't pet the pastries, they ate them. All. Quickly.

Mawwiage

Our marriage is like a recycled tire monster: odd but lots of fun!

As of Saturday, A and I have been married one full year. And it’s been a pretty full year! I wrote a few reflections that I want to share. This won’t be the kind of thing you all dig. So feel free to skip right over it!

My marriage isn’t really a fairy tale, and I don’t generally feel called to describe it as “magical” or “breathtaking.” I think it’s fine for people to do that with their own story, each marriage is probably different. I don’t think Andy is necessarily my “soul mate”, because I don’t really think that’s real. Or maybe for some people it is, but not for us all.

I generally think that I got really lucky to meet and connect with a person when I was pretty young, I was open to a relationship at the same time he was. Somewhere along the way we decided that being with each other was so much better than not. I guess that seems like I’m leaving things out, and I kind of am. But nothing out of the ordinary (we dated, we fought, we made up, we fought louder, we made up, rinse and repeat).

I think that might sound dull, but it isn’t. Or perhaps that it lacks romance or grand, sweeping dramatic gestures. But, really, it’s just honest. Our relationship just has it’s feet firmly placed on the ground. It’s been that way for a long time. So, we got engaged, we planned a wedding (I am leaving a lot out here, planning the wedding was THE WORST) and we got married. And it was beautiful. Our friends and family were there and the whole wedding weekend was kind of like a 48 hour hug with all of the best people in my life. And then our marriage started. Here’s a little of what I learned:

1) Our issues are best solved over beers.
2) Our marriage isn’t about two people becoming one. It’s about two people sharing their lives while  still being individuals.
3) Whatever hard work our marriage requires, we get it back tenfold.
4) Marriage made me a better person. I’m slower to judge, I’m slowly learning to listen more and I am slower to assume I know what another person needs or wants.
5) A and I will never like the same TV shows. Except for Dexter. But everyone likes Dexter.
6) Plenty of people set their expectations for our marriage. The only expectations that actually matter are ours.

Week/Weekend in Review

After a week of traveling around, A and I arrived Friday in Pennsylvania to celebrate a dear friend's wedding along with some of my closest friends. It was a weekend full of giggles, sneezes, drives to and from the Pittsburgh airport (in what might have been the best car rental choice ever),  some dancing, some drinking and some much needed catch-up chats.

I always miss my best friends, but it seems like the days right after a weekend with them are the days when I remember just how much I love being near them. If you have friends who are scattered about and who you don't see often, you'll know what I mean I think. This weekend was tiring and I'm sure we all arrived back home exhausted. But in another sense, I came back home feeling more like myself, happier and more balanced.

I don't have any photos to share, I think a grand total of one photo was taken the whole weekend. So, just take my word for it: Everyone looked great, we smiled a lot.

A and I also celebrated our one year anniversary on Saturday, and I'll share some more thoughts about that in another post this week.