Eleven months in, baby!

Eleven months in and I'm finally hitting my stride. 

Sounds ridiculous I know, to take 11 months to get comfortable in anything, but that's what it's taken me to get used to having Mike as my life-long sidekick. 

Which is totally awesome by the way. 

Eleven months and I never mess up my last name anymore - not even when signing my name. And bonus, I answer to "Mrs." - though it still makes me feel frumpy and old.

Eleven months and I don't kick Mike in the side at night and hog all the covers because I'm not used to sharing my bed. 

"The Help"

If you haven't read "The Help" by Kathryn Sockett, stop reading this right now and go read that instead.

Fine, I know you won't. But you should have. It's my favorite book of all time.

Wait, let me think about it....

Yes, confirmed. Favorite book of all time.

You must read it. Here's the cover so you know what to look for:

And good news - it's being made into a movie - check the trailer below, but don't judge it off the trailer. I guarantee the book will blow the movie out of the water. Not because the movie is bad, but because books are always better.

DIY Flower Pins

Last week a few girls and I got together to craft.

Yes, that's right. "Craft."

I never thought I would grow up to craft, let alone host six other girls to come and craft with me. Sure, I was in 4H growing up (Not as weird if you're an Iowan. Stop judging me Minnesotan-city folk) and I actually sewed a dress all by myself once. 

It was this cute little sleeveless red number, with a small A-line to it. I worked my rear end off on that thing.

But apparently not enough of it.

The first time I ever wore it, the dress ripped right down the back when I bent over to pick up a pencil.

I was in Sunday School.

Talk about a modest church-going girl.

New Micrrrroooooundo!

Ahhh, I wish the title of this blog post had a little audio clip so you could hear what I hear in my head.

A couple weekends ago, my brother Brad and my dad helped Mike install the microwave in our kitchen.Once installed, Brad kept telling me to look at my shiny "new micrrrroooooundo!" every ten seconds.

It probably took him ten seconds just to say it every time.

It sounds a little Spanish, but with a very "Bradley" twist to it - if you know him, you know exactly what I mean.

Oh, and he's 26. Just in case you were wondering.

The Garden

I've been researching and planning our garden for weeks. I've asked everyone I know what they're doing this year, what works best for Minnesota gardens, and had even been contemplating taking a gardening class. I've had a running list of what I'd like to try growing and I've taken notes on when they needed to be planted, how far apart, how big they get, etc. I suppose you could say I had a few expectations for how planting the garden would go. I had always envisioned when planting the garden, Mike and I would take our time. Since neither of us had ever gardened, it was a big deal to me and I wanted to do it right. 

I particularly had a vision for how I would choose my plants:

After driving leisurely to Home Depot, possibly with a coffee in hand, I'd troll the aisles slowly, selecting the perfect Big Boy Tomato plant. Then I would  methodically check out all the varieties of beans before deciding on the perfect one. I would do this for each and every single vegetable, taking all the time in the world. Next, I'd meander over to the flowers and choose what should go in our two front pots, possibly discussing with a fellow shopper what spike might look best with which flower or stopping a Home Depot attendant (those people are brilliant) and asking about the different growing patters of a particular fern. I would then slowly push my now full cart to the attendant and check out stress-free with a smile. 

I'm fairly certain the reality of Mike and I's garden shopping experience was about as far from my lovely dream as possible. 

Spring!

Sorry, blogger has apparently had the melt down of the century and it hasn't been working for the past couple of days. But I've been wanting to show you all these photos because, finally spring has sprung!

It seemed like it happened over night, and actually, I think it did. I went home to Ames one day last weekend and the next day I came home to all of this:

Citrus cat tongue and other baking mishaps

I don't like making anything I can't taste first. That's why I'm a terrible baker. I can't tell you how many times I've contemplated if I could cut out the center of a cake and adequately hide the hole with frosting. Or a raspberry rhubarb crumble - could I just fill it with whipped cream? Add a strawberry for garnish? Tell people Mike can't control himself and he ate it?

My mom always said cooking is an art, baking is a science. And science is basically math. And I sucked at math. I don't do numbers of any kind, (That's why learning to use the thermostat is still one of my New Year's goals - I've been avoiding it like the plague.) and I'm not a perfectionist, which makes me the worst baker in the history of the world. 

I once served pumpkin bread to our guests as soup. 

The bread was burnt on the outside and liquid on the inside. Mike loves batter so I assumed they would too and scraped out the inside, throwing away the burnt parts. Hence, pumpkin bread soup. 

Mike ate it like a champ. My guests were polite, but disturbed. 

Technology native? Not so much.

I'm blogging on my parent's iPad right now.

I'm about as fast on it as when I burned all the fingers on my right hand.

You know how they say we Millenials are technology natives? Well, I feel like a total foreigner on this piece of technology.I press and weird things pop up, I push and the screen scoots away when I don't want it to, and I stab and nothing happens.

I''m totally helpless.

This must be how my mom feels all the time.

Which reminds me, Mother's Day is tomorrow!

Which also reminds me that I probably shouldn't have said that about my mom.

Good thing she most likely won't read this until Monday (Hi mom!), so I'll have plenty of time to make up for it between then and now.

Better get started. I'm out.

DIY: Moooi Random Light Tutorial

***Update 3/5/12*** Check out how the Mooi Light fared here.

This post officially documents my first successful DIY project. People said it couldn't be done - or rather, I couldn't get it done - but booyah! I did it and it was a success! 

Don't worry, you can gasp out loud.  

I was totally shocked too. 

Check it out: 

For quite sometime now I've been looking for a lamp to put on the left side of our living room. We don't have a lot of floor space and I tried placing a floor lamp there, but it just looked too crowded. So instead, I started wondering if I could just hang a pendant lamp, saving space, but giving us the light we desperately needed. As I was searching for a pendant lamp online, I stumbled on this $2,400 gem:

The Moooi Random Light. 

Yikes strikes. Not gonna happen in my lifetime - on this side or the other.

Dear Ames

Dear Ames,

I miss you. I never appreciated you enough. I miss your open roads, minimum traffic and the fact that it only takes ten minutes to cross from one side of you to the other. I miss knowing every road and not having to use my GPS whenever I go somewhere - even on the third trip. I regret not drinking Stomping Grounds mochas more - though many would say I drank them quite enough. I miss your third-best water in the United States and I'm crying over leaving my favorite Target (No, they are not all the same - always remember that Ames. Your's is the best). 

Which reminds me, I even miss your mall. North Grand Mall may be old, dilapidated, almost vacant and unloved, but in it's heyday, it  introduced me to dark wash jeans from Gap (perfect for minimizing my child-bearing hips, prominent even at age 15), and it kept me smelling like  Bath and Body Works' Cucumber Melon for four straight years. Without that mall I would be stinky and naked. I owe it one.