Blogmas Vol. 5

Harriet the...tree?!

It is truly the most wonderful time of the year because I get to have a forest up in my house! The Christmas tree is one of my most favorite parts of the holiday. The smell alone is intoxicating. Picking a tree typically is a spiritual experience for me. I take my time, I feel the tree spirits talk to me, I commune with the one I think is for me, we make an aggrement and I bring her or him home with me and lovingly dress them up.

Not this year.

This year I sent my most wonderful wife to our local hardware store during nap time and told her to pick a big one! I explained the whole spiritual experience but I'm not sure that's SPs way. So I sent her off and hoped for the best.

And my woman delivered! In true SP fashion she didn't even untie the thing - she picked a big one of the instructed specie and came on home. We unwrapped our beauty, cleaned her up a little bit and now we're letting her settle in before we fluff and trim her. Don't worry friends, we talked to her and she let us know she is in fact a she.  And because SP did such an awesome job choosing our tree baby she got the honor of naming her.

So I present to you...

Queen Harriet the Tree!  

In all her naked glory!  Fluff and sparkle to come my friends!

Merry Blogmas! 

And obviously a few bonus pics of our little elf!

 

Green 2.0

Ok I'm home from work today sick as a dog (I love me a summer cold really close to my program start date - dear immune system your timing is impeccable)


But I had to show you these pictures of my real life VEGETABLES that are at this exact moment growing in my tiny, crappy patio garden.  I'm so proud I could cry.  I forced SP to come admire them with me.  She's so cute and was super proud and told me even if we can't eat them in the end she thinks its a win!


Well so do I...look at these beauties! (we are affectionately referring to the bell pepper as "the butt" - yeah we're 12)


Without further ado...

Baby tomatoes!  I hope we get to eat them :)

PEPPER BUTT!

And the mystery plant that JUST KEEPS Growing...WHAT IS IT?!

Before

After

I'm cautiously optimistic that my black thumb may be turning just a little bit greener!


Happy 1st Day of Summer!  I hope you are spending it in the pool and not at home blowing your nose like me!


Besos!

Cookin Craze

You guys I have the cooking bug.

Like real bad.

I don’t know what’s going on.  This is so not me.  I mean don’t get me wrong I’ve always liked cooking to a point but lately I’m like all about it.  Like its my hobby or something.

Maybe its all the food network I’ve been watching (its reaching obsessive proportions) or maybe its all the plants growing in my backyard (seriously, you guys!!! They are alive!) but I get home and I just want to cook something  delicious up.  On Monday I made a pot roast.  Making a pot roast (not in the crockpot) takes commitment.  You must treat your pot roast well, you must be gentle, rub it carefully, sear it  to perfect caramelization and then let it stew until it is beautiful and juicy.  Several hours later pot roast heaven occurred in my mouth. 

Oh Hello YUM YUMs!

Tuesday I made pasta with sundried tomatoes, sausage, spinach and cheese and it was the bomb diggity.  I also made peanut butter cupcakes with peanut butter fudge frosting…from SCRATCH.  A to the mazing.  Sorry no pics of that meal (because it got eaten oh so fast)

Tonight it’s homemade pizza.  I even made the dough this time.  And the basil, get this, is from MY GARDEN.  I have a garden you guys.  Even I’m shocked.  I probably just jinxed the crap out of myself and everything will meet an untimely death tomorrow but today, today my garden is gorgeous!

That basil is from MY GARDEN!!! 

Now lets not get any crazy ideas, I’m not quitting my life and going to culinary school.  For several reasons 1) That much butter and cooking of good things would definitely cause me to weigh 800 lbs 2) I may be a decent cook but I’m not that skilled 3) Sharp knives and me don’t mix all that well

Probably tomorrow I’ll be sick of it again, but right now its so fun.  I’m loving creating things, especially from scratch that look beautiful and taste good.  I love using fresh ingredients and knowing that the food I’m putting in my mouth didn’t come out of plastic and doesn’t have 15 ingredients that I can’t pronounce.   Its really satisfying and pretty ego boosting I’m not going to lie.   I have skillz you guys. So mom’s coming this weekend – what should I cook for her?!

Want to come over for dinner?

Besos,

Sarah

I'm not dead.

And neither are my plants!  (knocking on some wood right about now).  In fact...drum roll please, on Sunday I bought even more plants.  I know you're probably thinking - oh sarah why tempt fate?  But that's just me.  I'm such a rebel ;)

What I really didn't need was to have more living things to take care of when my work schedule is bumping up like crazy and we're 4 months away from our wedding - but clearly I didn't consider these factors whilst I was convincing SP to allow me to hoard plants in our patio.  Kori is not pleased to say the least.  Her patio is shrinking by the hour.  And I won't even let her eat the leaves off the plants...meanest mom everrrr.

What are dead, however, are my arms.  My bootcamp class is kicking me in the boot.  When I get home it takes every ounce of energy I have to lift my arms up to wash my hair.  If I wasn't so insanely sweaty and stinky I wouldn't shower, like if there was any possible way I could get away with not showering, I would - seriously.  I was so tired yesterday when I got back that I just collapsed on the bed.  I was late to work and I didn't care because I literally couldn't lift my body out of bed.  It was like swimming through mud.  Yesterday was one of the days that I was incredibly glad I work at a desk.  Because if I had to do any kind of manual labor yesterday - I would have been fired.

That being said, I love bootcamp.  I love that at 6am nobody wants to talk, they just want to work out.  I love that when I groan and grunt nobody rolls their eyes or looks at me funny.  I love that even if I haven't turned into a 90lb model my body is getting really strong again.  I feel powerful - and that really is the point of exercise isn't it?  (or to clear your arteries or something...)  Bootcamp was probably infinitely harder yesterday due to the large amount of cheese that was consumed this weekend.  I couldn't help it - mexican food taste testing for the wedding (what what?!)...

 

 You wish your wedding food was this good!

...and a papusa at the whole earth festival brought me far more joy than any ounce of extra weight could hurt my self esteem.  It was worth every fat gram and every calorie.

It was a beautifully full and slow weekend.  SP had to work on Saturday so I had a whole day to myself.  Before 10am I had done 5 loads of laundry, washed the dog and changed the sheets.  Then I read an entire book ( Kisses from Katie) which, while a little too Jesus heavy for me, still made me want to sell all of my belongings and take SP and move to Uganda to adopt as many tiny, beautiful babies as I could find.  SP got home from work later that afternoon and I proudly proclaimed "I never changed!" as I was still in my pj's and still on the couch.  I even napped.  It was a miraculous day.

On Sunday I talked to my momma for 45mins.  I'm not sure why I'm pointing that out since I talk to my mom freakishly often.  It was nice to not talk about wedding plans the WHOLE time ;)  And then SP and I went to the Whole Earth Festival - which is only the best reason to live in Northern California.  The weather was perfect, the food was amazing, and we bought some lovely fair trade items. 

Here is the only picture I took this weekend - SP eating 5 gallons of ice cream at WEF

And then I lost my mind and bought a lot of plants (again)  Apparently I should not be allowed near gardening stores on Sunday afternoons - because I can't help but try to recreate the garden of eden on my 3 foot by 10 foot patio....mmmmm  It was a very happy un-mothers day to me!

Hope everybody out their celebrated their momma's and to all the non mothers - happy un-mothers day to you!

Channeling Kermit

I have taken the plunge friends.  I've become green.

I am a self proclaimed plant killer.  Like I can't keep a plant alive to save my life.  All throughout college my mom would come visit and she would buy me houseplants (because she is a strong believer in having foliage in the home) and I would kill them.  I don't know what it is.  I can keep a dog alive no problem...well...I can keep a dog alive.  In theory shouldn't that be harder than plants?  yeah no.

So the only houseplants we have now have been SP's domain and SP's domain alone.  I don't water the plants.  I don't move the plants.  I don't change anything about the plants.  I stay very far away from them in fact in hopes that my bad plant juju will not kill them from afar.  I've never even wanted plants that much.  I think they are pretty and I recognize that they are important for the planet.  I just know my skill set limitations - and plants are outside my talent area.

But I don't know what happened.  I kept seeing all these cute gardens online and it was earth day and everything.  And then I saw THIS.  And I was like, WANT WANT WANT.  I love fresh herbs.  The idea of pulling them off my wall and putting them into my food was like the cherry on my housewife fantasy.  So I forced SP to take me out to get some mason jars and some herb plants and some wood and other weird stuff (I don't do home goods).  I was all excited and stuff until we got to home depot and that was ALL SP.  Because me inside of home depot is like a lost child.  I wander around all doe eyed looking at weird building paraphenalia thinking wh wha whaattttt.

And then we had all the herb garden stuff and something snapped in my brain.  And the insane person inside of there said, Sarah you should plant a garden on the tiny ass patio of your tiny ass townhouse.  The frenzy began.  I had SP pulling out giant pots and researching types of potting soil.  So I spent that evening potting my plants (probably way too close together) and watering them and trying to figure out where they were going to fit.  And then trying to figure out how to keep the dog from eating the leaves (WHAT THE EF DOG?!)

But even with all that...

Ta-da!

LIVE PLANTS!!!

Thats a bloom people, that means maybe if I pray a lot there will be tomatoes!

Clearly the herb garden is currently not on the wall.  Thus is the project problem. It's so fun for a little while.  And then its really not that fun.  And then it sits there half done.  But I am DETERMINED to finish.  And by me I mean I've determined SP is going to finish it for me...just kidding...sort of...mmmm love you SP ;)

Also amongst the planting and cleaning up of the patio we found this plant.  We thought this pot was empty.  But when SP pulled it out it was full of potting soil...and a plant.  10 points to anyone who can figure out what it is.  In the meantime we've decided to just let it grow and see what happens.  If it's a weed...it's kinda pretty. And clearly it's hearty since it was left for dead for at LEAST a year....(see I'm such a killer!)

So it's only been about 2 weeks.  But that's about 2 weeks longer than I've kept any other plant alive so I guess that's an accomplishment.  I'll keep you posted peeps.

Post Script: I have to thank you all for the encouragement on the last post.  I feel like changing my body is really hard.  But changing my mind is also REALLY really hard. So it's nice to know there are people in my corner :) If you're in Sac and in the bootcamp market check out Kristin Walton!