date!

John and I went on a date to a new restaurant in town.  There are SO many new places opening up in our tiny town... it's kind of amazing.  We have so many quality restaurants in our town of 3,000 people.  Spoiled rotten are we!  John is actually in the process of writing up a blog post about our town (I'm not the only one that thinks it's the best place to live ever! I promise!), but he takes foreverrrr to compose his posts, he's a writer so he drafts and revises and drafts and revises, etc.  I just spit up words all over the keyboard and post it, maaaaybe edit it later if I see any glaring spelling/grammar mistakes.  Oh what a horrible blogger!  Anyway...

Friday night we went to, what is arguably, the "nicest" restaurant in town.  I mean this price-wise and fancy menu items & bourbon/wine lists.  It did not disappoint.  It's in a beautiful space, a renovated mill.  Oh the floors!  They are so beautiful!  The exposed brick!  It's lovely!  Enough exclamations.  We had the most charming waiter, Elliott, attending to us for the evening and boy was he helpful.  We also got to talk to the owner and brag about him to her later... love that we've been meeting so many of the owners of our favorite restaurants.  The bourbon list made me miss home... seeing all those Kentucky towns on the list.  I decided I must have a whiskey drink, so I got a Chatham Courthouse Sour and it was fantastic.  John and I got the cheese plate, that he loved... I'm not a fan of too many cheeses (I know, your respect for me just went way down, didn't it?  People think I'm crazy that I'm not a fan of cheese... but let me tell you, blame my body, my body does not like many dairy products, it rejects it!), but I loved the fruit selection on the plate and ate some of the yummy bread.  Then we ordered mussels.  SO GOOD.  We gorged ourselves on the mussels and local tomatoes, dipping the bread into the broth afterward.  And then came dessert.  Elliott told us the very long list of fresh desserts (this menu changes daily) and all of the options sounded delicious but I had to order the dark chocolate pot de creme because pot de creme is possibly my favorite dessert in the history of ever.  It was just as good, if not better, than I thought it would be.  So rich that the two of us could hardly finish the single portion we were served.  I washed mine down with some french pressed coffee.  Such a successful evening. 

During the dinner we discussed some BIG PLANS that we are SO EXCITED about.  Caps are so neccessary here.  Basically, our lives are awesome.  And we ended the evening at home watching Disney movies... we've been on a big Disney kick lately.  The rest of our weekend was lovely... we ate a lot of chili because it was chilly here & made us feel like fall.  We repotted plants and moved some inside, we framed forgotten pictures and placed them on the walls, we did a lot of "Cozy-fying" our house and it was worth it.  I was a homebody before but now I'm even moreso.  Anyway... that was our weekend!  Hope yours was awesome too!!! 

wknd update.

I forgot to do a thankful list on Friday.  I found myself entirely too busy.  John's mom flew in to visit with us on Friday (she's still here, too! flying out tomorrow) and we've been having fun with her.  Topping my thankful list last week probably would've been FAMILY -- it's so nice when we have family over to visit.  It makes me feel even more content.  We had a wonderfully quiet weekend filled with a Farmer's Market trip, Pretty Little Liars marathon (John's mom just started getting into it & asked if we could watch -- OF COURSE I said yes!), a bit of thrifting, games of Bananagrams, naps during the storms, and just having lots of long, amazing talks.  It's been pretty great.  Lauren also sent me a picture of a sweet letter her niece Stella wrote me -- she also has audio of Stella writing the letters.  Oh how I love that girl -- I'm thankful for her too!

1.  John tries to cheat at Banagrams, if someone else calls Bananas first, he just puts his letters down and says he had Bananas too.  Notice how he only has one real word - denial.  Seems appropriate ;)
2.  I had a glass of champagne this weekend while we PLL marathoned.  In a Hello Kitty glass no less.
3.  I've never fallen in love with a couch before, but this one at the thrift store made my heart ache.  A hideous cream & green crushed velvet sectional -- already claimed.  John and I tried super hard to get the guys to let us buy it instead.  Our friends probably would've disowned us for putting it in our house though.
4.  One of the two Stella letters:  "Rhianna, Will you please come see we're (our) garden? And please bring your dog?"

hot weekend.

The heat index in our part of the country was the highest in the nation this weekend.  I suppose it's our turn for this crazy heat wave.   We continued life as normal at first because we are kind of disconnected from the outside world until we go out in the world each day.  No tv & we only get on the internet to check emails and social networks.  Friday we went to the PTA home store and bought a chair and ottoman.  We already have a loveseat and sofa, but the loveseat is still missing its cushions -- that's a humorous and long story that I won't share right now.  We moved the loveseat up into the loft and I spent Saturday cleaning up the chair and ottoman before we brought it in to live in our little living room.  We quite like it.  A lot.  We also spent the earlier part of the weekend picking through other PTAs and used bookstores and ended up coming home with a crazy amount of books (it would be our luck that another town's PTA was having a book sale on their already crazy cheap books) and some records. 

our new chair with some of our new book purchases on it. 
mister's grandmother made that quilt and it's so perfect to curl up in when reading.

Sunday brought thunderstorms.  Which, for us, means power outages.  Our electricity goes off for brief periods a lot out here in the country.  But it was out for most of the day on Sunday.  We got a lot of reading done during the day.  The power came back on in the evening for an hour and then it decided to stop again.  It's not easy to sleep when you're burning up but we made little beds out in the living room (it was cooler out there) and talked as it got later and later.  It was a bit creepy to see the electric company trucks drive slowly up and down our road with spotlights lighting up the treelined sky trying to find whatever was causing the problem.  Eventually the power did come back on though.  However, Monday had more storms in store for us so once again the electricity kept going on and off -- kinda frustrating. 

In the no power/internet days we had, I decided to dye my hair a dark brown last night.  It's never been a complete brown before -- I always bought an auburn color if I wanted to go darker than my natural ginger.  But I straight up got "dark golden brown" this time and it did not disappoint.  Let's see if my hair, that has a talent for growing superfast and rejecting hair dye (I dye it one day and it's back to normal in less than a week, even with professional dye jobs), will stay dark for a while.  Photobooth pics below!  

hope y'all are staying cool!

home.

I want to post about a lot of things.  My 8 Weeks for this week, how I did last week for 8 Weeks (spoiler alert: not great), road trips, huge casinos (and mom & pop hole-in-the-wall casinos), how much effing fun I had at my grandfather's 90th, crashing class reunions, future vacations abroad, packing/moving/unpacking, drugged sassycats that are so funny and adorable, my good pup, and how amazing it feels to finally be home.

Maybe I'll get to a post about one or two of those soon.  Maybe I won't.  I have a lot of unpacking to do first.  And cooking.  And hammock-ing.  And snuggling with my family in our new home. 

Have a great week!

gramps.

Mister and I are packing things up today for a weekend trip.  Part of the reason for our trip back to KY this weekend is to finish the last of the packing, clean my apartment, settle things with utility companies, and complete the move.  It's kind of crazy to think this will be my last scheduled time in KY for a bit.  Of course, I'm sure I'll be up there soon enough for a mini-trip -- but next time I go, none of my stuff will be there.  Weird.

But -- the main reason why we are going up this weekend is to stay with my parents and then go up with them on Saturday to my Aunt Marilyn's neck of the woods (about 1.5 hours away) to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday!  WHOA!  How amazing is that?!  I'm pretty excited because I will see so much of my family.  All of my mom's siblings will be there (she's 1 of 9) and bunches of cousins and everything to celebrate my gramps.  I'm pretty darn stoked.  I can't wait to see everyone for the day long celebration!  It will be so much fun.  -- The reason for the picture:  my grandfather was a paratrooper in World War II.  He was heavily decorated in the war.  Unfortunately, he's also never really been the same after it -- Post Traumatic Stress and all.  But he's still kicking, and super healthy, and the greatest story teller I'll ever know (mainly because he just doesn't STOP telling stories - ha!). 

90 Years!  So exciting to think about all he's seen.  I'm thankful for all the "long-genes" in my family.

Have a wonderful weekend, loves! 

packing.

This weekend I'm going to be spending some time doing what I absolutely LOVE to do.  PACKING. Actually, I just lied to you, I do not love to pack.  Frankly, I hate to pack.  But it's something that must be done.  Shew -- it seems ever since I left the nest for undergrad some-odd years ago I've moved a trillion times.  I might be exaggerating by a billion million thousand, but you know, a lot.  For the past few years it seems I've moved once a year.  Oh well, life is constantly moving forward right?  Only suiting I get a new location with each step.  But I will be happy when the day comes in the future when I don't have to move so much and can really settle in somewhere.  As for now, though, I'm alright with packingMOVINGunpacking (repeat) for my twenties.  I'm glad for the change while I'm young.

So packing it is.  It's weird that the days are numbered and I'm actually approaching the moving day.  I can't wait!  But packing this weekend will be not so fun.  How does one acquire so much JUNK so quickly?  Ew.  At least I will hopefully get a little break attack in this weekend and watch Deathly Hallows Part I with Lizzie Lou.  Man, oh man, do I ever love Harry Potter.  I will probably watch Deathly Hallows every single day from today til July 15th.  Yes.

Wellllllll.  All of this to say:  forgive me if posts are even more infrequent than usual (not like I've ever been consistent with this blog) because I will be packing up my life and moving it 7 hours away.  So excited to move on!

[both images via weheartit]

sweet weekend and potatoes.

 

My mister and I love sweet potatoes to the extreme.  I am not a big fan of fries in general but I absolutely adore sweet potato fries!  And so does he.  I've always wanted to try and make my own, considering most restaurants where I am don't offer sweet potato fries as an alternative so I rarely eat them.  If you like cooking, I'm sure you already know this but sweet potato fries are SO easy to make.

I looked at recipes during the day but once I got home in the evening after procuring some sweet taters, I didn't even look at any and just did what I thought would work.  All you do is skin and cut up some sweet potatoes (I did three and it was way more than enough for the two of us -- but nice so we could enjoy some the next day, too!) - make the strips of potato about 1/4 inch thick-ish, toss em in a bowl, use just enough olive oil to lightly coat them, toss in whatever seasoning you'd like, I also tossed in some sea salt, line them up on a baking sheet and toss them in an oven (450∘) and bake them for 20 or so minutes, flipping once halfway if you'd like.  I couldn't figure out how to flip halfway without burning myself (trust me, I would've) so I just let them bake on one side the whole time and they were fine.  Also - my oven gets SUPER hot so some ovens might require 30 minutes instead of 20.  They were delicious!!!  So so so good.  We ate so many straight away instead of even waiting for the rest our our supper to finish cooking!  And the next day for lunch I just turned back on the oven, put the rest on a baking sheet and popped them in for about 10 minutes and they were lovely again!

So yeah, as someone that needs to cook more, I was pretty proud of myself that I actually made these and they actually turned out amazing.  Yay!

Other than that, my weekend was filled with watching Weeds on instant, porch sitting, thunderstorm watching, dog cuddling, and writing my two weeks notice (which I turned in today!  yay!  I'm officially going to be unemployed on April 22nd - then it's packing, moving, and finding new work in my futureland!  I'm a combination of nervous/excited - like 27/73% respectively!).  I was uber nervous to turn in my actual notice to Linda (immediate supervisor) because I love her more than words and hate to leave her, even though she knew it was coming and was just waiting for the day, but everyone at work was so excited for me today when I announced what I was doing (Linda was the only one that knew previously) so it made me happy that everyone was so happy for me.  Very happy.

Anywho ... that's all, folks! 

IMAGE CREDIT: HERE

my wknd.

[click to enlarge. duh]

So my weekend was pretty low key.  But lovely.  I had an awesome lunch with a dear friend -- so lovely to catch up over falafels.  Friday night mister & I built a fort in the living room -- we even moved my huge mattress in the middle of it.  We rented the first season of the tv show Community and cuddled up in the fort and laughed.  (Annie is my favorite character so far! Though I've not seen all the episodes.)  Sunday night we of course watched The Academy Awards -- kinda blah as far as the Oscars go, but still okay.  Mila Kunis gets my award for best dressed!  As far as our music went - I came home from work to see my pre-ordered The Valley package in!  I think we listened to the album no less than 5 times straight through on Friday night while we talked and snuggled - it's my favorite Eisley album maybe!  Saturday mister finally purchased The King of Limbs for digital download (he's been so excited about it for awhile now) and we listened to it while we played games that night.  He seems a bit disappointed in it (he's a HUGE Radiohead fan). I liked the last half of the album alright, but I really am looking forward to listening to it when I'm not distracted by game playing so maybe I can soak it in a bit better.  I like Radiohead but don't really consider myself a big fan, so I feel like my opinion on the album doesn't really matter.   We went to The Peddler's Mall with my mama on Saturday for a bit (the only thing we purchased was 1$ & for my dog... ha!) which is always an interesting experience.  Sunday night we took down our megafort and then were so sad by the sight of the regular old living room that we built a mini-fort with the sofa & loveseat and made a bed in that for Oscar viewing.  In other news - my parents love my man more than me I'm afraid (ha!) and only ever want to talk about him... their next long weekend mini-vacay is going to be to his neck of the woods - they're excited, he's excited, I'm excited -- I've made a good choice with that mister, I tell ya.  I know I sound like a broken record, but he's just the greatest thing in existence.

[I apologize for the jumbled, single-paragraph format of this entry.  It's Monday night.  It's rainy & gross outside.  And I'm sleepy.  Hopefully you can make sense of summa that up there.]

xx

wknd.

It's almost the weekend.  Here are my thoughts.

• excited for the shoestring budget road-trip with mister to the land of our future.
• lookin at livin' quarters to call our own in the land of our future is going to be fun.
• seeing a lovely little band for the third time of my life will be so very fantastic that i will probably spend saturday gasping and sighing a lot and my face will be plastered with a ridiculous grin.
• linda always says "if money can fix your problems, then you don't have any problems."  i'm starting to understand the wisdom in this.  this mantra of hers is speaking to me this week when money has got me down.  trying to be positive.
• being positive is made so much easier with mister's encouraging words.
• everyone makes mistakes.  everyone has flaws.  everyone is going through trials and tribulations in their lives.  
• it gets me weak that The Justin Bieber Experience was on glee this week. 
• i'm not a fan of the biebs.  i don't hate him, i'm just indifferent.
• mister & i fight over who gets to play angry birds on my iphone.  it was started this past weekend when we went to visit my sick aunt that had that game on her ipad.  we started to play, became addicted, then my aunt got mad because mister & i surpassed her level and she took the ipad away from us.  i dl'ed it on suri cruise (my iphone), but it's not the same as on an ipad.  we still fight over who gets to play though.
• the longest bullet in my list is about some dumb game.
• modern family is probably the show that i most relate to in life. 

THE END.

(you're welcome)

{IMAGE VIA WEHEARTIT}