not necessarily in this order

Some numbers from this past week… 3 : micro-decluttering sessions I did in the house (a shelf in our closet, the side counter in the kitchen, the bathroom vanity) 1.5 : days of school yet. LM is so ready to be done and advocating for not going to the .5 tomorrow because “what even is the point?”   303 : place on the hold list I am for  Yesteryear   3 : new places Maysie went on walks at over the weekend. Now that she’s one with 1:1 training, we are exploring our town and some trails and she’s (mostly) behaving. The girl just loves saying hi to people.  1 : loaf of sourdough baked during our one weekend in June without a recital!! The freedom!! 2 : weeks until school starts back up for me. I have a better schedule in mind for this asynchronous class, so I’m hoping to keep Full Send Summer going rather than living in functional freeze like I did with my first class earlier this year.  Sometimes the easiest way to get out of writer’s block is just to write, ri...

  Well, we made it through the holidays! On the other side of New Year’s, I’m happy to “countdown” a few favorites from the Christmas —> New Year’s season! 4 advent calendars The Mr got a snack one with flavored nuts and meat sticks. It was good for the first 6 (varied nut mixes) and meh for the latter 6 (the same 3 meat sticks repeated.  LM got one of her favorite YouTuber’s Christmas advent which had 12 little plushies of some of the characters in holiday outfits. Now, as a Moriah Elizabeth forward family, there was some sadness with missing favorites, but overall a huge win and great for decorating LM’s pink tree.  I had a 24 day calendar with miniature versions of classic literature each day. It’s super cute - each one has a quote on the back and a loop from the spine so I’m going to make a garland for my office - and I may have squealed when I opened  Anne of Green Gables .  As a family, we also did the  Taskmaster  Advent calendar which was th...

  This has been a week. Honestly, this has been a year. However, the Mr having a full week business trip the week before Christmas (and the week that all of LM’s activities do their “ let’s do a Yankee Swap ” and “ let’s wear Christmas pajamas ” nights on top of my car battery dying and our first snow was a bit much, haha! On this winter solstice, Lil Momma and I are writing our intentions for the new year and sending them off into the universe the next few weeks. I’m truly excited to end this year at a slower pace (Monday is my last day of work until after school break) and reset my house and habits. And, of course, there’s the baking, haha! As we gear up for Christmas week, here are five things I’m excited to make: One : I’m using Sadie, my sourdough starter that I started at possibly the worst possible time 8 weeks ago, for the first time and risking our traditional Christmas Eve and Christmas Day  cinnamon rolls  on a Sadie-risen recipe.  Two : I’ve started makin...

  One : Poor Maysie got spayed and had her dew claws removed last week. The weekend was sad and hard when she wasn’t feeling well, but we are glad the hardest part is over and she’s on the mend. She’s doing ok physically but her energy came back after 36 hours and it’s all we can do to keep her quiet. She has the cone through next Tuesday, so here’s hoping we can keep her healing and avoid too intense of cone bruises on our bodies, haha! Two : Thanksgiving is a whole thing because Maysie is tall enough to get her head on the table and counters (cone and all), but I think we have a plan to manage. I’m trying to make it easy on myself and baking off homemade Italian rolls on Wednesday instead of trying to time their rise and bake with a turkey on Thursday. We are also baking Lil Momma’s request of Salted Caramel Chocolate Cookies and the Mr’s “pumpkin pie from the can” on Wednesday, too, to simplify what has to happen on the day itself.  Three : I have a MRI on my back and hip...

  We made a trio of cookies to get us through the holiday this year and fill out some small gift boxes for Lil Momma’s friend crew. Baking cookies is such a weird nostalgia thing for me because while my grandmother, Mimi, loved baking and always had these tins of homemade cookies she’d pull out after dinner for all of us, my own mother (her daughter) thought baking was the worst thing in the world and I grew up thinking the best chocolate chip cookies were Betty Crocker’s bag ones. (A fact that horrified my Mr when we first started dating, haha!) I’ve come to really enjoy baking in the last decade or so and love to try a new recipe each Christmas along with our family favorites. LM loves to help now, which warms my heart, even if that help is more measuring and taste testing vs cleaning up. Our new recipe for this year was for Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Mel’s Kitchen Cafe ! Described as “ They are a delightful cross between a soft, chewy chocolate cookie and a rich, fudgy brow...

 The Mr and I have been together for 19 years. When we began celebrating holidays (a whole other journey that we went on) in like year 3, we did this elaborate Thanksgiving for 2 in our first house. It was the first time I had spent Thanksgiving away from my parents. We made so much: a full turkey, cornbread stuffing, roasted green beans and crunchy onions, apple pie, and a pumpkin pie cheesecake.  I was sure the Mr would love it - pumpkin pie was his favorite. But the next day we ended up giving it away to friends because it was good for a piece but not for a memory: he wanted pumpkin pie like on the can . It’s what he had growing up and it WAS Thanksgiving to him.  Now, I don’t eat pumpkin pie (nor any custardy or cream pie, to be honest), but I am specific about recreating my food memories so I totally got where he was coming from. From then on, I made the pumpkin pie on the back of the orange Libby can and hoped for the best. Now, we’ve had our ups and downs with figu...

5 recap rambles from the weekend that was and a fun blogging challenge for the week that will be!   One  Thanks for all the good thoughts for LM! She was pretty oof on Saturday with a chunky cough and congestion, but  managed to rally for Easter  and went back to school today. (well, that was a fight, but it happened)   Two  Since her babysitter was ok with the cold, the Mr. and I were able to go to the  Murder   Mystery   party  with my former workout friend group! It was  Deadwood themed , so we all dressed up in our best 1800’s Western garb (which was wild) and a couple of friends decorated the house where we met like a saloon! The company we used was called  nightofmystery  and they supplied everything you really need to hold one of these parties (character descriptions, how to “run” the party, costume suggestions, etc.). We all received cards with objectives for our characters to figure out clues (the Mr. ended up bei...

Well, we made it! It was one of those weird life moments where the day itself was significantly less stressful than it has been in past years (weighed down so much by logistics and illness), which made us all feel incredibly guilty for enjoying our “all pajamas, appetizers and dessert forward, sad-and-fun-and-small ” Christmas. We felt our feels and had some laughs and memories and had a lovely day together, which was the best part.  I had leaned in on prioritizing bakes to give us things to do. I stand by this strategy; however, we could end up with a significant amount of desserts for only three people. It is what it is. I’ll start with the random one: on Christmas Eve Eve, Luke and I decided we needed a cake-like dessert for us to eat because we are not going to eat the one Lil Momma was making (a favorite of her and my mom, but too sugary and cool whip-y for me and too peppermint for Luke. We have been watching the Christmas Masterclass episodes of the Great British Bake Off w...

What a week, what a week… I have been seeing all these memes about the audacity of people still sending emails and work tasks when it’s basically the limbo that is Christmas week into New Year’s and I feel like life doubled down to make it super real to me!     Work has been oof the past few days as I found out me (and a bunch of us) are  losing our assigned workspaces  in the office and need to be cleaned out by mid-January. I always knew it was a possibility, but such a bummer to hear about this of all weeks (and with no warning / appeal) (and right before my 10 days off) and have to communicate to 30+ unsuspecting folks I sit nearby. I mean, I have no intention of going  in 4 days  a week just to ensure I can be assigned a desk again, but it’s hard to deal with change when there’s no good reason. This all may be my hatred of packing, too, haha! There are worse things, but airing a small grievance felt right? Random penguin to transition into holiday top...

Our Thanksgiving was the quiet and weird one we figured it would be. Lil Momma asked for a pajama day and we leaned into that vibe:    Don’t want to start cooking until after we watch the parade?  Sure!   Having trouble timing the rolls with the turkey being done?  Rolls are the appetizer course!   Apple dessert not made yet?  Dessert will be dinner!   I had missed my usual “carbs are the priority” test bake weekend, so all of the baking was an “on the day” risk – but, we were ready for it!   LM had asked for “ homemade Bertucci’s rolls to dip in olive oil with parmesan ” as her one meal request. Now, I have made dinner rolls, but I haven’t made Italian ones before. I found  this recipe  and did my best to time it out. Making the “biga” 12-24 hours ahead went well (don’t ask me about the 2 forgotten bigas from the tests that never happened, haha, but please don’t), but I ran into some trouble with not knowing how long the first and ...

Obviously, it's been an emotional few weeks, but life peeked in, as it does, and we keep going, as we do. A few memorable moments from recent times: One  the casting came out for LM’s spring musical theater class musical,  Matilda Jr.  a few weeks ago. The owner (who was my teacher when I was a child), had pulled both LM and I aside the week before and said what a great audition she had, which made us both feel a glow because LM had worked so hard in preparation. Wildly, she did not get either role she read for - but, she did get one of the leads! She’ll be the villain, headmistress Agatha Trunchbull. She had a moment of sadness (“ But I’m not a mean person! Do they think I’m mean?! ”), but came into excitement when she realized that she’d have 2 songs and a ton of lines. This will be a journey, haha .  Two  the cast came off! (check out its final Tarbies trip below). We had a countdown of days going, but the Friday popped up when we had to head back to the orth...