autumn list

image via

1.  Start knitting again
2.  Carve a pumpkin

Bittersweet wreath by MS

3.  Make a fall wreath
4.  Drink spiced/spiked hot apple cider

salted pumpkin caramels from food52

5.  Bake something(s) pumpkin flavored
6.  Take pictures of colorful foliage

image via

7.  Wear scarves and plaid and blazers, oh my!
8.  Go to a corn field maze (I have always wanted to do this and I'm pretty sure Kansas is the best possible place to make it happen)

what I'm reading now

9.  Read a lot of books
10. Make food with butternut squash

corn, buttermilk and chive popovers from smitten kitchen

11. Experiment with pop-over flavors
12. Go to fall fairs


all images found via pinterest

blog love: a cup of jo (and organized photography)

Coming home from vacation I am overwhelmed by all the wonderful things to catch up on in the blogosphere!  One of my all-time favorite blogs, A Cup of Jo, written by Joanna Goddard had quite a few new posts that I like so much I felt an urgent need to share them here.  First up, this one about Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli's new book, The Art of Clean Up.  It features everyday scenes organized into neat rows.  Obviously, I am obsessed.

How amazing are these images?! And how time consuming? Just look at all of those alphabet noodles.  This definitely speaks to my obsessive need to organize and make lists.  Also, at first I thought I was really smart and had picked up on a mistake in the picture of the bowl with the fruit.  The bowl in the first picture has polka dots, whereas the turned over one does not.  Then I realized, the dots are in a line too! Love it. Thanks, Joanna, for sharing!

determined.

In my revived determination to make my dream life happen, I'm going to write a new list of things I really, really want to do and I'm actually going to do them.  No excuses.

example of a "bad" picture

1. Actually take good pictures of the food I make.  No more of this "I'm so hungry I don't care if the picture is good. " I want to set up, find good lighting, and style these pictures.  No more skimping on this.  I'm tired of being excited about a blog post until I see the ho-hum pictures I took to accompany my writing.

2.  Make more gorgeous food (so I can take pictures of it, of course! And, you know, eat it).  I am often sooo inspired by pictures in Food and Wine and other foodie magazines. I yearn to make these recipes and never get around to it.  No more of this either.  I have to eat something, why not make it something delicious and beautiful?

a beautiful picture of a delicious-looking zucchini galette made by my friend, Sarah
aka what I wish my food photos looked like

3.  Along these same lines: learn to make more of my own food. Specifically, learn to can, make jam, make cheese, bake bread.

4.  Dress the part.  Even as I write this, I'm wearing pajamas.  Granted, I love my red and black buffalo check shorts, but I feel markedly happier and more confident when I get dressed.  Throwing on any old tee and shorts doesn't count.  I mean compiling an outfit, a cohesive look.  If I can't style myself, how am I going to style pictures?

5.  Convert my antique store/estate sale finds into something fabulous.  Sometimes I get paralyzed by the possibilities.  Or maybe I feel like if I screw up turning one burlap sack into a pillow, I'll never find another one with which to try again.  There will be more burlap sacks.  And, hey, even if there weren't, even if this were the very last one ever, what good is it doing me tucked away in a corner of my bedroom?

 a sugar sack that I have yet to transform
also a perfect example of a bad picture
p.s. yes, I realize this sack is not made of burlap

6.  Stop being afraid to bring my camera with me when I go places.  Or don't bring it and then "forget" to take pictures.  I am always so nervous that I will get in trouble for taking pictures, but what is the worst that could happen? Somebody tells me to stop? I need to act like a true photographer (even though I'm about as far from it as could be) and just take pictures already.

First step towards reclaiming my life? Dan and I made cheese!  If you know me at all, you know that I am a cheese-aholic.  If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it just might have to be cheese.  I have been wanting to make cheese for a long time now and I was inspired by reading Barbara Kingsolver's chapter in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about cheesemaking with Ricki Carroll of the New England Cheese Making Supply Company.  When Dan and I stopped by the home brewing store (he brews with his friend Chris), I was so excited to see this kit:

Our cheese-making kit

If I hadn't read about Ricki in a Barbara Kingsolver book, I never would have bought this kit.  It looks like it is marketed for 9-year old girls who want to make friendship bracelets (not to knock friendship bracelets - stay tuned for more on this).  But there's something about bright pink and purple doesn't really scream "quality cheese" to me.  However, Ricki Carroll is at the forefront of cheese-making in our nation.  She has been inspiring American cheese-makers since 1978 and wrote one of the first books on the subject, Home Cheese Making.  What to do next? Make some cheese of course!

mozzarella's optimum stretching temperature is 135 degrees

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, what's up with that picture?  I mean, it's terrible.  I'm sorry I'm making you look at it.  But to be completely honest and much to my chagrin, it's the best cheese-making picture I took. And it's terrible.  I mean, is it even in focus? Anyway, Dan and I made both mozzarella and ricotta.  We then used the mozzarella in a roasted vegetable and orzo dish and an heirloom tomato, basil and mozzarella salad (all of the vegetables were locally grown).  

We used both the ricotta and mozzarella on grilled pizzas.  For crust we actually used whole wheat naan from Whole Foods and a whole wheat pre-made crust from Trader Joe's.  I wanted to make the crust from scratch, but making the cheese from scratch was enough for me at this point.  One thing at a time, people.  We topped the pizzas with varying combinations of pepperoni, a natural spicy italian sausage, homemade pesto, zucchini (I was inpsired by Sarah's galette, pictured above), new potatoes, and red onion (all locally grown). 

I feel like I'm back on track to making my life what I want it to be.  I, honestly, feel happier already - like I have taken control.  Cheese-making turned out to be just what the doctor ordered (minus that whole cholesterol thing).  Now, I just have to keep at it!  Dan and I are hoping to develop our cheese-making skills to the point where we can make hard cheeses someday.  And of course my other goal is to take good pictures of it, too.

a late spring/early summer list

So, it's a bit late for a spring list, but now that I'm in Kansas City with wonderful weather (okay, right now it's a bit hot for me, but I'm trying not to be a wimp...), I am inspired to do all sorts of things.  Of course, it's easy to imagine finding the time to do all of this stuff while unemployed...but in addition to finding a job, these are (some of) the things I want to do this summer:

1.  take pictures of Kansas City with my new camera

2.  run outside.  a. lot.

3.  plant and grow vegetables and/or flowers

photo by judy white

4.  swim in the lake
5.  catch fireflies in a jar
6.  bake things when I'm no longer at high-altitude

photo by Michelle at une-deux senses

7.  become crafty
8.  have a picnic
9.  keep knitting

braided scarf

10.  make my own cheese
11.  make my own jam
12.  celebrate holidays in an over-the-top cheesy manner

martha stewart

13.  put my toes in the ocean (it might be too cold to swim when I'm first in Maine)
14.  eat a lot of caprese salads with delicious, fresh tomatoes
15.  drive my car in Kansas City and be able to see out the back window for the first time ever (normally it's overflowing with stuff for a cross country move)

Kansas City Public Library found on Pinterest via

16.  make it to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game?  maybe this is wishful thinking...
17.  try to make macarons (and hopefully not fail too miserably)
18.  refurbish some old piece of furniture

chair after

19.  find the perfect shoes to wear to Sara's wedding
20.  make a cool way to hang/organize my jewelry
21.  actually wear my jewelry

jewelry on hooks

a list!

My first list of my new blog!  I love lists.  If you didn't read my old blog, you don't know that.  But since I only have 5 8(!!) followers right now, I think you all know me well enough to know that I love me a list.  This list, in the spirit of all things New-Year's-Resolution is about things I wish to accomplish....sometime in the relatively near future.  I'm not really sure what I mean by "relatively near future," so we'll see.

Please note that they're listed in no particular order.  With to-do lists of more menial tasks, I generally prefer to list them in order of importance.  But here, it's too hard to tell.  What's most important today, might be least important tomorrow.

1.  Be brave.  I really want to try things that push me to my limits and then some.  I tend to wimp out a lot.  I think I'm a bit of a perfectionist and often don't like to do things if I don't know how good I'll be at them.  This fear is magnified when I know other people will be watching me potentially fail at something.  Ugh. I hate it.  But my biggest goal (I think this is #1 on the list for a reason) is to really work on not caring a) what other people think and b) whether or not I am good at something, as long as I am enjoying doing it.  NOW, the problem here is that I generally don't enjoy doing things I'm not very good at.  Especially if everyone else is better than me.  So I need to give new things a few tries.

I think one of the bravest things I ever did was drop everything on the East Coast and move to Colorado.  And I wouldn't trade that decision for the world.  Sometimes I reflect on my move out here and think to myself, "I did it!"  I thought this especially often my first year here, when everything was still shiny and new.  But even now, I will still look around me in awe at the grandeur of the mountains and feel proud of myself for making this happen. Just imagine what other amazing things could be in store for me if I could just be a bit more brave.

2. Get better at knitting.  Knitting is randomly something that I'm not very good at (yet!), but am very motivated to learn.

3.  Get better at photography.  Same deal as knitting.  Plus, I can't let my brand new camera go to waste.

4.  Take a step back. I tend to get stressed really easily.  I don't know why.  I need to work on being able to take a step back and evaluate what's really important in a situation.

5.  Maybe take a sign language class this spring?  I really want to do this.  Ever since the 5th grade, I have had this weird, stalker-ish obsession with sign language.  I've never done anything official about it, but have picked up on random signs here and there along the way and stored them in some weird file in my brain.  (My favorite sign is for "freeze pop.")

What's holding me back?  Well, I have to figure out (tomorrow) whether or not I qualify for in-state tuition.  If I don't, I refuse to pay $253/credit hour at the local community college when in-state is only $47/credit hour.  I'm sorry, but is that inflation ridiculous or not?  If I can't get in-state, then I'll have to continue my stalker-ish ways until another sign language opportunity presents itself.

Update:  They wouldn't give me in-state tuition.  They accused me of "trying to get cheaper tuition"....well, duh?  Who wouldn't try to get the cheapest tuition possible?  Sigh.

6.  Cook at least one challenging recipe a month.  I feel like I've fallen into a bit of a cooking rut and what better way to get out of it than to learn new recipes and challenge myself in the kitchen?

Could be tricky in this kitchen.  I bet all of my friends in NYC are getting ready to yell at me for this comment.

7.  Put the laundry away right away!  Sigh.  I hate wrinkled clothes.  And, in general, I'm too lazy to iron.  So, I need to put away my laundry immediately after it comes out of the drier. Dryer? How do you spell that?

8.  One thing I always want to do (speaking of drier/dryer) is improve my vocabulary.  The other day on the bus, a friend and I were talking about how we'd gotten a little worked up when talking about a past friend who is not a very good person (to say the least).  I was saying we were "aggressively angry" and he said, "incensed, if you will."  Yup.  Aggressively angry vs. incensed.  In my defense, he went to Yale.

A wordle of my old blog, The Good House.

9.  Save more money.  Living in Colorado has really taught me a lot about what's important to me in life.  And while I do like nice things and buying clothes, there are many things I like more.  For example, hiking, cooking, skiing, and traveling.  I also realize that I took a "serious" pay cut in moving out here.  So, I want to a) not buy such frivolous things as often and b) realize that I am probably behind on my savings (does $50 count?) and need to start catching up on that. For serious things, like retiring some day and buying a house.

10. Smile more.  Two and a half years ago, it was brought to my attention that I tend to look really upset/bored when, in fact, I'm enjoying myself.  I was on a trip to Spain through my old employer with two other employees and a group of high school students from Iowa.  The whole group took a day trip to Morocco, where a photographer took pictures of us all day long.  It felt like the paparazzi, but was really some touristy gimmick.

Image from said tour in Morocco taken on my crappy old camera.

Anyway, at the end of the day, the photographer passed the newly developed pictures around the bus.  Obviously, he hoped that he could sucker us into buying documentation of our cultural experiences.  But for me, and one of my colleagues, this experience was eye-opening in a different way: we realized that we looked REALLY angry about being there.  And, why should we look that way?  We were on a FREE trip to Spain and Morocco, after all.  And, I really did enjoy seeing the sights and soaking up a culture and CONTINENT I'd never been exposed to before.  And yet, I looked angry.  Ugh, what's up with that?

SMILING (kinda) about my inability to keep fondue in my mouth/to get it there in the first place.

Ever since then, when I see myself caught unaware in a photo, I check how happy/sad I look.  Unfortunately, I often look more sad than happy.  I don't want to portray this anymore!  To those of you reading this, please, please, excuse me for always looking like a jerk!  I hope to work on this, but if I can't make myself subconsciously look happier, then know in the future not to take offense.  I'm probably enjoying myself!