Three
3 years! Time sure does fly.
Happy Anniversary my love!
And many more :)
I love you with all my heart.
More Fall Fun
Grillin’ and beerin’
You’re the great pumpkin Charlie Brown!
Shrimp n’ grits
Apple season
Apple pie
Amazing sea salt caramel stuffed snickerdoodles {recipe here}
Homemade chili with all the toppings
40 lb. pumpkin! Be still my heart!
Fall Fun Fest 2013
A day at Stokoe Farms!
And an excellent potluck (I made hard apple cider mac n’ cheese!), wine and cider, games, adorable cats, roasted marshmallows, and bonfire on the shores of the Erie canal:
(A ladies picture – sorry Ted, Ian, and Matt)
Hope you’re enjoying your fall as well!
Book Club & Other Happenings
Last Thursday the Book Thieves (our ‘chill-coed-young-professionals-who-love-books-friends-food-drinks-and-smart/funny-conversation’ book club) met to determine our books for next year. We read one book every two months and meet for two months in a row (we discuss the first half of the book the first month and the full book the second month), followed by one month off. This schedule allows us to keep up with our busy careers, families, and social lives and still have time to read other non-book-club books that we have a hankering to read. After much suggestion, discussion, and voting, we decided on:
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (currently reading until December)
- The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
- Little Women by Luisa May Alcott and March by Geraldine Brooks (for our classic…with a twist)
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
- The Bookman’s Tale by Charlie Lovett
Also high contenders on our list (and therefore possibilities for the year after next) were The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue, NW by Zadie Smith, The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, some Sherlock Holmes, Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, and Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah.
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Then on Sunday night we all met for a special Midnight Dinner in honor of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (if you haven’t read it, you’re missing out!). It was all kinds of fun and delicious. We ate our fill of awesome food and desserts, drank butterschnaps apple cider martinis from hollowed out apples, explored a tarot card reading, read fortunes from the book, and enjoyed surprise goodies.
On Tuesday we had an autumn-themed potluck lunch at work – we all brought a homemade fall dish, beverage, or dessert to share, served it up buffet style in the kitchen, and dined together in the library/conference room at one big table. So fun to enjoy a long and relaxing lunch with great co-workers…and so delicious! Fall foods are the BEST. I brought my traditional pumpkin mac n’ cheese. Not pictured were all the tasty pumpkin cookies or breads, pumpkin curry soup, and apple cider. Also, double stuffed Halloween oreos with a peanut butter cup in the center and the whole shebang dipped in chocolate is just about the most phenomenal dessert…ever.
And on Tuesday night Ted and I used a gift card a kind soul had given us to Open Face for dinner (try this sweet and quirky little place in the Southwedge…it’s so fresh and delish!!) and then we had a fun time seeing Pump Boys & Dinettes at Geva.
{via}
What fall fun have you been up to lately?
Long Overdue
After the insanity of the past two weekends of non-stop walking from Fringe Fest show to Fringe Fest show, which were wonderful but far from relaxing, this past weekend was awesome. It looked something like this:
Friday: Pizza, pajamas, and a TV night at home (Last Man Standing, Big Bang Theory, and The Neighbors).
Saturday: Since Ted’s knee is torn and will require surgery soon, we chose not to run in the Photo Finish Philanthropy 5k this year, but we woke up early to stand on a pretty little street corner near mile marker 3 to cheer on my Geva friends and co-workers (and everyone else) who was running. Way to go team Geva for running and raising over $3,400! After the race we lazily ran some errands to pick up pears, concord grapes, autumn corn, and Amish pumpkin bread at the public market, did our grocery shopping, got our flu shots, and went to church. Then we enjoyed the wonderful opening night of The Last Five Years – the show Ted is stage managing and audio engineering, and went out for some late-night dinner and drinks on the patio by the toasty firepit at The Distillery with the cast and their families and friends.
Sunday: Our Artistic Director decided to host the Sunday Salon post-show talk-back for Pump Boys & Dinettes that I usually host, so I had the whole day off – a nice little surprise! We slept in, worked on a few autumn crafty things, did a little calendar and organizational housekeeping, kept tabs on the Packers/Lions game, made a homemade mushroom-Parmesan lasagna and arugula-candied walnut-Boursin-shallot-pear salad, joined Ted, cast and crew for an opening-weekend cast party at the director’s home in the afternoon, and then headed to a fun, fancy, and delicious themed Midnight Dinner in honor of The Night Circus with my book club friends in the evening.
We also finally got around to making some serious progress on my new blog design (it’s looking good!) washing, drying, and setting up our new sheets, comforter, and towels (it was time), cleaning Ace’s tank, spending some quality time together (always wonderful), and socializing with others (which it’s felt like it’s been forever since we’ve done that and suddenly 3 events in one weekend with at least 3 more coming up in the next week).
I’ll be back in a few days to share more. Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful October!
{It’s beginning to look wonderfully autumny around our house! Ted surprised me on October 1, when I got home from work, with that beautiful white pumpkin, a “just because/happy October!” card and the little round orange pumpkin in front of the card…just because he knows how much I love October. He’s the best!}
Unplug October
I’ve decided to unplug a bit this month.
October is my favorite month and I’d like to live this month to its fullest. We’ve got a handful of fun social engagements on the books, family in town for a week, a trip out of town for a few days, our anniversary, a bunch of exciting but busy theatrical pursuits at work, and a fall to-do list of goodness to enjoy. I’ve also got a long-overdue and very exciting complete revamp of this blog in the works and I’d like to have some free time to spend on perfecting it (coming soon!), as well as a few other projects I’ve been procrastinating on for quite some time that I’d like to make time for. And I want to relax and bake and read and go for walks and watch Gilmore Girls and be present with my family and friends and do nothing but enjoy the cool, crisp autumn air and soak it all in.
In truth, I’ve also been feeling a bit bogged down lately too. And I have a sneak suspicion social media – blogs, facebook, pinterest – might be the culprit. Unfortunately, social media also has a tendency of sucking up time and energy that could be used more positively and constructively elsewhere. I think unplugging from these things will help me to focus better on my work, my passions, and my play this month. I think it’ll help me enjoy October more because I won’t be inundated with words and pictures of all the things I cannot afford or do not have time or resources to do and yet look so appealing that I am overwhelmed by the thought of them. I think unplugging will help me appreciate and enjoy the simple yet wonderful things in my life more, and also help me to be more productive and successful in my own way, on projects and down time that matter to me.
I’m not gone for good, by any means. Over the course of this next month, I might stop in once or twice a week for a post if I have something particularly exciting to share. I certainly don’t want to lose my readers, and I really do hope you’ll stick around. I’m more unplugging from facebook, pinterest, and the reading of other people’s blogs than the writing of my own – which I consider to be a fun, healthy, and creative outlet for myself, but also something that can take up a lot of time. So I’ll still be posting this month, just more sporadically than usual. When I return to 5-days-a-week blogging in November I’m sure I’ll have a ton of fun stuff to report…and a brand new, totally redesigned look for the blog!
Enjoy your October. Take some time for yourself this month. I’ll see you soon.
Links to get you through the day
Planning a roadtrip? Check out this fun website.
Maps that will change the way you see the world
From screen to stage: what films are headed to Broadway
This is the sound of my heart breaking because it’s just not fair out there and it shouldn’t be this hard for anybody to make a life for themselves
Texts from my cat – just in case anyone who knows me hasn’t seen this yet (which is incredibly unlikely because I talk about it constantly and Ted is sick of hearing me repeat the “needles” joke at least three times a day)
Along those same lines, enjoy 22 totally ludicrous products for cat owners
If you’re attending any autumn event (potluck, party, etc.) that I am attending this season, I will be making this (dibs!). This epic dish combines two of the things I love the most – mac n’ cheese and Woodchuck hard cider. Culinary victory!
Thank you convenient New York state fall foliage forecast map, for letting me know when I can look forward to peak color in my area!
You’re welcome. Happy hump day!
My October
“October is crisp days and cool nights, a time to curl up around the dancing flames and sink into a good book.”
Welcome, most prized and glorious month of the year!
Today I’ll not dwell on our government’s inability to get it together (thus affecting the lives of thousands of Americans), or the thousands of dollars in medical bills we’re bound to start receiving from our insurance company over the next several months due, in part, to America’s wildly outrageous and absolutely un-affordable health care costs. But there’s really not a lot I can do about either of those things.
So, instead I’ll be grateful and enjoy some of my most favorite October blessings:
Pumpkins
Corn mazes
Fall farms
Hayrides
Fall foliage
Crisp weather
Hard cider
Apple harvests
Caramel
Potlucks
Warm drinks
Delicious seasonal eats (of which there are too many to list)
Wonderful scents
Good books
Sweaters, scarves, boots, tights, and other fall fashions
Halloween
Get togethers with family and friends
Our anniversary
More pumpkins.
This month brings us one fun fall farm day with friends, an autumn potluck at work, an autumn potluck/bonfire/pumpking carving party/movie and game night with friends, a Midnight Dinner with the book club, my parents visit to Rochester, a few fall foliage tours and other autumny outings, our visit to see my brother and his family in Virginia, our third wedding anniversary (which we will celebrate at the circus!), Halloween, and the openings of The Last Five Years and The 39 Steps at our theatres.
All on an extremely strict budget. It can be done!
Happy October!
I’m so excited you’re here!