A Week of Pictures

I don't really have a particular purpose for this post other than to kind of sum up the past week through some pictures that I have taken.  I love the warmer weather!

We went to the Spring Festival last Saturday & had some awesome barbeque from Archie's in Deep Creek.

Our onions are growing!

The lettuce is growing too! Can't wait till June for some fresh lettuce.

I wanted to add a bit of color to our side porch.

Love love love lilac!

Our visitor today was stealing some bird feed.  It was too cute to stop though.

I've been wanting to paint this bookshelf for a while now; I just couldn't decide on a color.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love this color.  I really like how it turned out!

25 Things To Do Before Turning 25

Somehow we got on the topic of age at work a few days ago, and it hit me that I'm turning 25 within the next year.  How crazy!  I feel like people who are 25 are actually "grown-ups" and have their lives in order.  It seems like they should be settled and making responsible adult decisions.  Although I guess this technically does describe me, I don't feel like an adult.  I feel like I should still be about seventeen, staying up past midnight, sleeping in until noon, and completely care-free.  I guess since we can't stop aging, we might as well try to make the best of every day and enjoy the life we've been blessed with.

I recall reading a blog post probably two years ago written by my wedding photographer, Lauryn Galloway. (You should look up her work here!)  It contained a list of 25 things that she wanted to do before her 25th birthday.  I recall thinking about how much I liked the idea and hoping I remembered to do something similar once I was a little older.  I suppose the time has come that I make my list and strive to fulfill the items on it, so here it goes!

25 Things To Do Before Turning 25
1. Read 25 books.
I love reading and can't wait until the summer every year when I actually have time for it.  I'm not sure what these 25 books will be yet, but I'm excited to start making a list.

2. Grow a bountiful garden.
Last year we successfully grew tomatoes and jalapenos in our miniature garden space.  This year we're hoping for tomatoes, jalapenos, cucumbers, bell peppers, lettuce, onions, & strawberries.  The onions and lettuce are looking pretty good so far!

3. Road trip/vacation with the girls
My roommates and I have always wanted to do a girls' trip somewhere, but we never had money for such things.  Now that we're either out of college or have jobs (for the most part), it would be the perfect time to do it!  A beach trip is planned for next month & I can't wait!!

4. Learn to quilt
Grandma quilted a lot, and I love having things that I know she actually made.  I hope to be able to give my kids & grandchildren something like this in the future, too.

5. Become a more active church member
 Derek and I try to switch between his church and my church every Sunday, but it doesn't always work out.  I want to become more devoted to my spiritual life by ensuring we attend church more often and improving my relationship to God through prayer.

6. Sew an outfit
Why buy clothes when you can make them?  I've never been a super stylish person (not that I wouldn't want to be), but I'd love to make something that I'd be proud to wear.

7. Become less passive.
I have never been aggressive. My elementary school basketball coach always told me that I needed to be more aggressive, but I never changed because was always afraid of hurting someone.  This idea has continued throughout my life.  When someone is rude to me, I counter with kindness.  If I'm told to do something that I'm not happy about, I don't object.  I certainly didn't inherit this trait from my mother!  I'd really like to be less passive and learn to take a stand for myself.

8. Explore our nation's capital
I've had the opportunity to explore DC twice in my life, but it's been over a decade since the last time.  I'd really like to get the chance to actually walk around and explore as an adult in order to fully appreciate what is there.  We're actually planning on a weekend getaway here for our anniversary!

9. Take a food tour
Any time we go to spend some time in a city, I research what there is to do in the area.  The last several cities have all offered food tours.  I think it would be so much fun to travel around to various restaurants and try the tastes of the city!

10. Learn 25 new recipes
I love food.  This is probably pretty obvious with my appearance and most of my blog posts.  Anyway, I'm always looking for new recipes but am usually too much of a chicken to actually try them.  I hate wasting food and am afraid that if a recipe doesn't turn out well, we'll waste the food.  Despite this, I'm going to try at least 25 new recipes and hopefully turn some of them into family favorites.

11. Start an exercise regimen
 A year ago this item would've been "Lose X number of pounds."  Rather than focusing on losing weight, I'm going to work on developing a routine of exercising.  This may just be walking three or four times a week, but regardless it'll be more than what I'm currently doing.

12. Increase our savings
I want to own a house.  I also want to have children.  Both of these things require money and lots of it, so it would be really nice to get our savings up to a place where we could afford these things.

13. Pay off credit cards
 This is probably pretty self-explanatory.

14. Begin an active search toward buying/building a home
It'll be so nice to own our own home!  Our lease ends next May, so hopefully we will be able to locate either a home or some land by my birthday.

15. Declutter my house
This is an ongoing process in my house.  I have to make a conscious effort to sort through, throw away, and donate my stuff because I've always been a bit of a pack rat.  If I don't constantly try to organize, I get very overwhelmed. 

16. Develop & stay up-to-date on a blog posting schedule
I've really been enjoying writing my blog posts, and from what I hear, there's several people who have been enjoying reading them.  I currently don't have any type of schedule or predetermined ideas for posts, so developing something will help me to stay up-to-date without long periods of nothing.

17. Learn to can vegetables
I feel like this is a necessity in life.  It's so convenient to have vegetables on hand during the winter months--especially ones that you know are healthy and grown organically.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to can some of our garden vegetables this year!

18. Make homemade ice cream
Yum.  I've been wanting to try this for a while, but just haven't had the opportunity.

19. Get to the top of Seneca Rocks
 Probably the most famous attraction in our county is Seneca Rocks.  People from all over come to scale the rocks or just walk up to the top.  I think it's only appropriate for the people who live in the area to make it to the top and see what all of the fuss is about.  However, after nearly 25 years, I still have not made it up.  This is going to be the year it happens.

20. Visit & Explore a new city
I love to travel.  I mean, really love.  So, I'm always really excited to go somewhere new and explore the different features that make each place so special.  I think we're going to be making a trip to Baltimore later on this year, so hopefully I'll be able to check this item off the list.

21. Paint something
Painting is so peaceful and therapeutic.  Anytime I sit down and paint, I can immediately feel stress leaving my body.  We "inherited" most of our furniture, and a lot of it could use a good face lift.  I've been doing some research on how to paint and add legs to get a certain look, so hopefully I'll be able to do something along those lines this year. 

22. Build a piece of furniture
The old chicken coop at Grandpa's fell down.  It hadn't really been used for years and was pretty worn, so it was no surprise when it finally fell.  I'd really love to take some of the wood from it and build a piece of furniture.  I've been thinking about making a small kitchen island or something similar.

23. Stop biting my nails
I'm the last of my friends to bite her nails.  Most of the time I don't even really bite them..I pick at them until they tear.  I would love to have long and strong natural nails.

24. Write letters to friends via snail mail
No one writes actual letters any more; it's almost like a lost art.  I'd really like to start writing to friends and keeping in touch through letters instead of just texts.

25. Spend more time with family
This is always something that should be worked on in my opinion.  We get so caught up in an everyday schedule that it's sometimes hard to find time for each other.  We currently have dinner with our families once a week, but it'd be nice to increase the amount of time spent with them and do activities other than just dinner.

Caramel Peanut Butter & Nutella Popcorn

I've had an incurable sweet craving all day.  Usually when this happens it'll go away if I have some water, fruit, or a stick of gum, but nothing would satisfy it today.  And, it wasn't even like I wanted just anything sweet--I wanted chocolate.  I craved chocolate with an extreme intensity, like no matter what I could possibly do, there was no way it would go away without chocolate.  Have you ever had this happen?

I started thinking about what I could make to fix this craving, but I wanted to try something new.  I quickly skimmed over our pantry and freezer noticing cereal, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Nutella, and Red Hot candies, but nothing came to mind.  Thoughts of possible snack ideas crawled through my mind until I remembered how my college roommate loved to eat popcorn.  An idea immediately snapped into my mind: chocolate popcorn.

This doesn't sound incredibly appealing at first thought, but when I consider the AMAZING flavored popcorn some friends sent us from Garrett's Popcorn in Chicago for Christmas, chocolate popcorn doesn't seem so far fetched.  I searched through some recipes online to get some ideas of exactly how I would do what I was hoping to create, pulled some jars out of our pantry, and got to work.

I ended up creating a surprisingly, amazingly, chocolatey dessert popcorn that will be making a return appearance in our house in the not so distant future.  The recipe I created is below:

Chocolatey Caramel Peanut Butter Popcorn
Ingredients:
1/2 cup unpopped popcorn
1/2 cup peanuts, unsalted
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Nutella
1 tsp vanilla








Directions:
1. Pop the popcorn into a large bowl.

This is the air popper from my childhood! Lots of popcorn has been made in this over the last 20 years!

2. In a small saucepan, mix sugar, honey, and corn syrup over medium heat.  Bring to a boil, and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly. (Don't overcook!)

3. Immediately stir peanut butter, Nutella, and vanilla into saucepan until well blended.
4. Immediately pour over popcorn, add peanuts, and stir to coat.

5. Enjoy! :)

Do you have any good popcorn recipes?  Feel free to share below!

A semi-blurry visitor we had earlier

Taking a Personal Day

One of the things I've learned about myself over the past few years is that I generally don't get stressed out easily.  When thinking about the times that I should have been stressed, like during finals and wedding planning, I can remember feeling a little bit of pressure but nothing extreme.  I typically have a "why worry because it's all going to work out", carefree attitude toward what could be stressful situations.  And, even though I guess I could be considered a procrastinator, I honestly feel like I do my best work when there's a time crunch and I know I have to have something done in the immediate future.

Even though I don't typically get stressed out, I have been feeling SUPER stressed out the last several days.  Part of it is from various things happening at school that's completely out of my control, and I guess part of it is from personal things going on in my family.  This stress has caused my sleep to become restless, dreams become really strange, and my body to get physically ill.  I know I can't do anything to fix these problems except wait, but for some reason my body is responding to these things differently than normal.

Anyway, because I felt like an anxiety attack was well on its way, I decided to take a personal day off from work.  I had wanted to save my personal days, mostly because I feel selfish for taking a day off of work for myself, but decided that we're given them for a reason.  I told myself that I would only do what I wanted to do and forget about everything that I had been worrying about.

It was a gorgeous 70 degrees, blue skies, and sunny throughout most of the day.  After watching the news with a nice cup of coffee, I decided I needed to fill up the bird feeder in the yard.  We surprisingly get several types of birds at the house even though we're so close to the road, but they've been rather scarce lately.  Our small wooden bird feeder hangs from the side of a tree that can't be more than 5 feet from the main road in town.  I'd been wanting to do something with it for a while so I decided that today was the day.  I dug out some old turquoise paint and had at it.  This small project led to several other small projects, and I successfully crafted and cleaned my stress away.

We bought this watering can from Target last year mistakenly thinking it would actually work as a watering can.  It leaked most of the water out before we even got to the plants, and the pretty baby blue checked pattern faded within about two months.  So, I changed it.

I painted it yellow and this year I plan on planting flowers in it for a decorative accessory on our front porch.

Rearranged sitting area.  Please excuse the pretty gross cement.  I cleaned it today, but we rent our house so we unfortunately can't paint/stain the porch

Both kitties enjoyed the open windows and the breeze today.

Hopefully we'll have some good onions in a few months.

I know it's not super clear (it's our neighbor's tree), but the blooms are beautiful.  This was as good as I could get from our house.

A very relaxing evening after a very relaxing day on a clean front porch with "Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife".

Sunday Funday and Playing in the Garden

This morning arrived bright with sunshine and happily singing birds.  I love the peacefulness of Sunday mornings, of doing a few simple things around a quiet house before sitting with a cup of steaming coffee and a good book.  Derek and I come from different denominational backgrounds, so we try to switch off our churches every other weekend, although it doesn't always happen like that.  Since Derek was off of call from work this weekend, it was our turn to make the trip to my hometown.  Halfway up the road, my sister called to announce a change in plans for the day.  The clear skies and 70 degree weather was perfect for working in the garden.  With the help of my mom, sister, brother-in-law, niece, and husband, we tilled, plowed, and planted part of Grandpa's garden, gathered up broken sticks and limbs, trimmed bushes, and ate an excellent dinner.  Here's a few images I gathered throughout the day (with my brand new "birthday" camera!).

 Before we left this morning, I saw some visitors in front of our house.  LOVE this zoom on this camera!!

 

Many, many days were spent at my grandparents' house. Love this place.

Proof that Grandma is still with us.  She always had the most beautiful flowers.

Lots of memories riding with Grandpa down the road in here

The old smoke house

After many years of putting in all the hard work, he gets to just sit back and watch.

Hog enjoyed a day on the farm.

Planting potatoes

Hog likes the new camera, too.

Sewing Project: Apron

Katie and I joke that we were born in the wrong decade--a few decades too late.  We love just about everything when it comes to a 1950s/60s housewife lifestyle and could pretty easily slip into that type of role.  Cooking, cleaning, and sewing are all part of what we enjoy doing.  Don't get me wrong, I love my job!  It's an incredibly rewarding feeling when I know that a student finally "gets it" after explaining something three times in three different ways.  But, I also don't know if I'd even give up my job if an opportunity arose and we could live on one income.  I guess this is where the name for this blog came from--a "wannabe housewife".

Anyway, I learned to sew when I was in high school.  My home-ec teacher (who I love dearly & was partial inspiration for me wanting to become a teacher) taught us how to sew pillows, pants, and purses.  I haven't sewn much since then and actually didn't even own a sewing machine until last year when we decided to make curtains for both my and my sister's weddings, but I really enjoy it!  Making something useful out of a single, flat piece of fabric is amazing!  So for my birthday, I decided I was going to buy some fabric.  I slowly scanned all of the bolts of fabric at the store until I finally decided on two: a pinkish-coral floral design and a marigold yellow.  I immediately decided to turn this fabric into an apron.

Here's a recap in pictures of my process.

This large rectangle will become the skirt of the apron.

A smaller piece will become the bib of the apron.

I sewed two pieces together to form a thicker apron--to create a liner.

The smaller rectangle was cut to create a curved top.  I later have to make the dip in the center a little more accentuated.

I sewed the edges over to get rid of the unfinished edges (on two pieces: the outer piece and the liner).

The finished top with both top pieces sewn together.

I cut two strips the length of 2 yards and sewed them to create a finished look.

One strip gets sewn to the skirt to make the bottom of the apron.

The other strip is cut in half and sewn to each side of the top.

Finished product!

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!  I didn't use a pattern, I but tried it on a few times to create any adjustments needed.  My sewing machine cooperated throughout the entire project until I got to the pocket.  It seems so simple, but my bobbin just would not cooperate.  After about 45 minutes, I finally got the pocket sewn on, but it was definitely a fight.  I plan on trying another, but I want to make ruffles on the bottom of the next one.  I'll post pictures if/when it happens.

Happy Monday!