delight in life

currently.

listening: Shakey Graves, Roll the Bones
eating: candy corn
drinking: water, trying to fight back this headache
wearing: my new glasses, skinny jeans, boots, and a sweater! hurray fall.
feeling: grateful to Chris for cooking dinner
wanting: to make some Halloween decorations out of paper
needing: a vacation. 5 weeks to Thanksgiving!
thinking: about my job interview next Tuesday, for a job I really want
enjoying: PBS Masterpiece Emma, for the third or fourth time. It's so fun!
wondering: how my silly cat is so comfortable in such funny positions.

(post inspired by Tina)

corn maze

Last weekend we took a little trek up to Maryland to get lost in an enormous (42-acre!) corn maze in the shape of Transformers robots. They warned us it would be a little muddy because of the rain a few days earlier, but we weren't too worried. We can take a little dirt!

However, we were not expecting ankle-deep, squelching, lose-your-shoe mud. Our jeans and shoes still haven't recovered.

It wasn't as great as we were hoping, but we did have lots of fun despite the mud. It was pretty chilly and I was super excited about the chance to bust out my winter coat for the first time. We sat by the fire in the world's largest teepee, drinking hot chocolate and watching people shoot pumpkins out of a cannon. Happy fall.

for the cure.

Remember last year, when I ran a 5k with a bunch of friends at work?

Well, my friends are all doing it again this year. They couldn't talk me into flying down there to join them again, but I did join their team and I'll be "sleeping in for the cure" this Saturday. My race bib came today! So funny.

(If you'd like to donate to the Susan G Komen Foundation, you can do so here.)

curtains!

We finally hung our curtains! We're pretty happy with them. The morning after we put them up might have been the first time either of us slept through sunrise since we've moved here. We have blinds too, but they are ugly and we can't put them all the way down at night because the cats like to sit in the windowsill. Happy cats = soundly sleeping people. Curtains are definitely superior to blinds: they're attractive, they block out the whole window, and the cats can climb behind them easily!

These pretties are from West Elm. They had a curtains and drapes sale a few weeks ago so I grabbed these for the same price I would have paid for something way less cute at Target. Turns out tall, wide windows can be pretty expensive to cover up!

I like how when the drapes are closed, it sort of looks like a headboard.

But mostly I like how our neighbors across the street can't peek in anymore.

simple baby quilt

I finished another quilt this weekend! This one's a little different, as I don't even know who it's going to! I just found out that the family support group at Chris's job gives a quilt to every new baby, so I obviously had to contribute.


(That crooked piecing on the back is driving me crazy!!!)

When I was planning a big quilt for myself, I thought this fabric might be a good choice, but I couldn't be sure from seeing it online, so I ordered a pack of pre-cut squares to see in person. I'm SO glad I did that. I ended up not loving the fabric enough to make my quilt out of it, but I think it makes a super cute little crib quilt.

 

chris's new business cards

Chris has been getting lots of gigs all over town since we moved here, which is great! He used to get called all the time for stuff when we lived in Texas, so it's nice to see that starting to pick up again. He usually has a really good time when he goes to a new gig, and I always enjoy the extra money. :)

We thought it was about time he had some business cards to hand out when he's at these things, so I made some up. We got them from moo.com, and I've heard oodles of good things about them from all over the internet. I'm happy to report they're all true! I was so happy with how the cards came out. The paper is really thick and fancy feeling, and the print quality is fantastic. Great price, too.

The image on the back of the cards is an outline of the mouthpiece Chris uses to play his euphonium. It's probably not that recognizable to a non-musician, but after a unscientific poll among my friends who are all pretty familiar with brass instruments, I decided it would be recognizable to anyone he'd be handing the card to. Making that outline stretched my Photoshop skills to the max! It's always fun to learn new things.

 

fall recipes

In the interest of celebrating fall, I wanted to share a couple recipes that I was excited to try out last week when the weather dropped into the 50s.

First, pumpkin nutella swirl bread. Oh my goodness. I found this via Elise Blaha's 40 Loaves project, and it is so good. The actual recipe is here. The recipe is for mini-loaves, and she also suggests you can isntead make 2 8x5 loaves, which was my plan. When I poured it into my first loaf pan, though, I thought it didn't look like enough, so I just made one loaf out of the whole batch. I also only used half the recommended Nutella. Even swirling it in the middle of the loaf and not just on top, 8 tbsp seemed like a lot, so I went with 4. I had to bake it for about 70 minutes before it was cooked through. It smelled super delicious and tasted fantastic.

Last week's other yummy fallish recipe was chicken enchilada soup. Super easy, as are most crockpot recipes, and really tasty. It made great leftovers too!

resolved: october

Nothing too challenging this month. (Well, the jobs, that might be a tough one.) Mostly I just want to enjoy this lovely season and make lots of soups and breads.

(ps: happy birthday to my beautiful, talented, supportive, hilarious mother! I love you Mom!)