She Likes Purple

Cookbook Recommendation: Joy the Baker Cookbook

In the past, I'd write this kind of thing over at Food Lush (I miss that place) but this is my only space to ramble these days, so lucky you.

I made a goal this year to cook one recipe a week from all the cookbooks I currently own, and let me just say that was a stupid goal. I edited the goal (my goals, my rules) to cook 30 recipes from my cookbooks anytime over the year. Just whenever. At my owwwwwn pace. I love making my own rules.

(I'll make a 10-recipe feast in December, for sure.)

Anyway, I'm seven recipes down. (You are BLOWN away by the time I spend in my own kitchen, aren't you?) And I noticed five of those recipes are from the Joy the Baker Cookbook. Guys, you really need this cookbook in your life. 

Every single thing I've made has been delicious and that's a pretty good track record. Mike raves! Mike is kind of picky and hates about 50% of the things I make. (He eats them all! He just requests I don't add any of those things to the regular rotation.) (I glare at him a lot.)

I made this goal to see what cookbooks I really love (since I paid money for all of them) and this is one I'm so glad I own. 

It's also like 75% chocolate, which is an excellent percentage in my book. 

Seven Quick (Jumping Back Into Blogging) Takes

I have vacation recaps to write and Pinterest projects to share and suggestions for where to eat in both DC and New Orleans, and I hope I get to all those posts before 2014. In the meantime, let's dust off this blog. Seven quick (okay, not quick at all) takes...

1. Last week (wait, week before last...April you are so nuts), Molly's eyes swelled up and got a little goopy. At first, we thought it was just allergies, but then we realized she had also stopped eating and wouldn't take a treat. (Molly is like her mother. She will always take a treat.) Turns out, she had a severely abscessed tooth that had infected her nasal passages and was causing her eyes to swell. She is, thankfully, nearly good as new after a round of antibiotics and pain killers and shouldn't need surgery. Phew!

It really sucked, though, during the time we weren't quite sure what was wrong with her. Molly is usually fairly healthy. I mean, she's given us a scare or two before, sure, but it had been awhile. It was this weird wake-up call that our girl is nearly 10 and she's not exactly facing more years ahead of her than are behind her. 

When the vet went over our options with Mike, she mentioned that if the antibiotics didn't work, surgery to remove the tooth would be necessary and it would be expensive (MANY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EXPENSIVE). We don't have a budget item for Very Expensive Pet Surgeries, but when Mike talked to me about it, it was just a given we'd figure it out. She's our girl.

She's a dog, yes, but she's also Molly. Molly! I've loved her for as long as I've loved Mike. While she can be pretty irritating on a day-to-day basis (she's the neediest living thing in my house), this was a reminder that she is absolutely part of our family. 

Again, she's feeling much better. She probably wishes she had pulled these shenanigans years ago because we've been giving her cheese on a nightly basis, and we don't protest at all when she worms her away into our bed at night. 

So many of my friends (online and off) sent out love to her, after I mentioned what was going on, and it meant the absolute world to me. Seriously, thank you so much if you were one of those people sending warm thoughts to our girl.

She's doing so much better, she's practically skipping.

2. Have I talked yet about Justified? Well, I fell down a Justified-sized hole on Amazon Prime a few weeks ago and basically watched the entire series in something like two weeks. You'd be disgusted if you weren't so impressed, right? (Or maybe you're just disgusted...)

At first I was hesitant to start this show because I was (foolishly) led to believe there are no love stories, and I'm a girl who really prefers her TV shows to have a love story or two. But, 1) there totally are and 2) who really cares when Timothy Olyphant is wearing that cowboy hat so well throughout the series.

I'm all caught up in time...to wait a year for the next season! Cable TV seasons routinely break my heart.

3. I hesitate to declare this here because I've been doing it for a WHOPPING two days, but I've finally started my 30-Day Shred Challenge. That would be 30-straight days of doing (level 1, I'm not insane) the 30-Day Shred. This is such a quick and effective work-out, and a few Twitter friends are tackling the challenge with me. Want to join us?

4. I read this beautiful post about Holly's grandmother who recently passed away, and besides being reminded that Holly talks about love and family and nostalgia better than anyone, I was also struck that I won't ever be able to write a similar post about either of my biological grandmothers. 

This makes me sad, on a basic that-kind-of-stings level, but right after that thought struck me, it occurred to me that Kyle will be able to write something that heartfelt one day (if writing becomes one of his things) about either of his grandmothers. Kyle is such a lucky boy, for a million reasons, but the relationship he has with both of his grandmas (Nana and Mia, as he calls them) is near the tippy-top of the list. I've said this before and I'll say it dozens more times, but the fact that he has this beautiful, special, unconditional thing with them both, something I never had, is one of my favorite ways we're rewriting history together.

5. This feels like a very silly thing to mention, but I am trying to fill a list here. I made some small edits to this site all on my very own, so I'm basically a web designer now (ha). I added new social media buttons, new "top post" pictures (right-hand sidebar), new links, etc. Just messing around a little bit, but enjoy if you...enjoy sidebar badges and those kinds of things. 

6. We're debating taking Kyle camping for the first time this year. We need to make this decision pretty much immediately because Texas is going to get really hot in about two weeks. We'd just drive up to Oklahoma for the night, no big deal, and I think Kyle would love it. I mean, he's in such a fun stage, where everything new is So! Much! Fun! Mike really likes camping, too, and I really like when they do outdoorsy stuff together and leave me in peace to read, so it kind of works out for all of us. Last time Mike and I went camping, there was a burn ban, so we "camped" while eating dinner in nearby restaurants. That felt a little fraudy. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on our camping plans as I'm sure you're on the edge of your "WILL THEY CAMP?" seats. 

7. Speaking of Kyle, age four has been a lot of fun so far. I loved age two (so much), and still loved age three (though will readily admit that, oh boy, do you have to pay attention when parenting a three year old--they will take a mile if you give them half a centimeter), so I was a little nervous about age four. But, regardless how hard age four can be (friends start to mightily influence other four year olds, unfortunately, wiping away ALL MY HARD PARENTING WORK IN ONE AFTERNOON), the age is just so HILARIOUS. He says the funniest damn things. He has said in the course of a week, "Slip me some skin, Mommy," and "Oh phooey! Phooey is my new word, Mommy." He spells words and can read a little bit and I'm amazed anew that I get to hang out with this kid. He's my son! It's very delightful every time I remember that.

I've figured out that babies just aren't my jam. I love babies! I especially love snuggling your babies and just...passing them back to you when they show the slightest sign of being unhappy about something. But toddlers? Then kids? Oh yeah. They're my speed. 

I remember when Kyle was between one and two, maybe 15-16 months or so, and the weekends were kind of brutal. One, Mike worked weekends back then so it was just my boy and me, filling up two straight days, and I'd be so relieved by Sunday evening, which is a hard thing to confess. I was just so exhausted and he wasn't quite talking yet but he needed EVERYTHING and I couldn't sit until he went to bed. Now, we watch The Voice and he helps me cook and he makes me laugh EVERY SINGLE DAY and he asks me questions about geography and dinosaurs and stuff I really like answering. So much better than angry pointing, like he did back when.

Anyway, the other day he was looking at a picture of my mom and me from when I was in college and if there's ever a picture of me that he's not in, he assumes he was in my tummy. "Is that when I was in your belly?" "No, actually, that was before you were in my belly. That was even before I knew daddy!" He did not understand. He looked at me like I was nuts. Before him? BEFORE? No such thing. He finally said, "Oh, I must have been sleeping."

He walked off, cool kid that he is, with his hands in his pockets, and I thought to myself: I'm just so glad you showed up.

I'm so glad we're here.

Seven Quick Takes: Family Issues, Taylor Kitsch, Smoothies + More

1. My dad was in Texas this past weekend, visiting for a couple days. Kyle hasn't seen him since he visited last summer, so it was great that he took to my dad so quickly. He even asked for him over and over after we dropped him off at the airport yesterday morning. My relationship with my dad is ... complicated (mostly complicated for me, admittedly) but it was still a good visit. I appreciated that he complimented our newly cleaned house and our tiny town and my sweet boy. (He called Kyle "perfect" and although he's not, ohgodno, his grandpa should think he is, so it was nice to hear.)

A visit with him stirs up so much in my head and heart, and I'm still waiting for the stirring to settle. Still, it was good to see him. It was good for Kyle to see him.

 2. Let's move on from Family Issues with an uplifting note on Savages (ha), which we saw while my dad was in town (heads-up: kind of an awkward movie to see with your father) and despite it being hide-behind-my-hands violent, I actually liked it. Taylor Kitsch redeems all those John Carter Battlestar Whatever Movies and brings the Tim Riggins-level appeal (apparently what Tim Riggins was missing all this time was FACIAL SCARS, who knew!) and Blake Lively even made me hate her a little less.

I don't know that I'd recommend it--man, it's just so violent and I know there are few people who seek out these kinds of movies--but I felt myself enjoying it in the middle of it, to my own surprise.

3. Hey, don't know if I mentioned it but a couple weeks ago we hosted Hometown week at Food Lush and Style Lush and I'm so crazy proud of the quality of the posts from that week. If you're visiting Texas, Chicago, New York City, California, and many other map dots, bookmark these posts, my friends!

4. My mom and I recently saw Jersey Boys together, and it was such a perfect day. We took in an afternoon show and then had a delicious dinner followed by champagne and cupcakes at my mom's house. Kinda funny, though, while I had definitely heard dozens of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons songs, I couldn't remember if Frankie Valli was one of the singers on the plane that tragically crashed in the '60s, so the whole time I'm bopping to "Oh What a Night" and "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don't Cry," I kept waiting for Frankie to die in an awful plane crash. (Spoiler alert: He was not on that plane.)

5. Kyle is in this (adorable) phase where everything is "super" something. "Daddy drives super fast!" "That toy is super cool!" "The plane we'll fly on is super big!" and, basically, Mike and I have adopted it in our own vocabularies. Forgive me, boss, if my next marketing plan is "super awesome" or something like that. It's just, man, this kid is cooler than I'll ever be.

6. This is kind of a silly thing to write about but I had the most delicious smoothie from Whole Foods last week and I am STILL THINKING ABOUT IT. My life is thrilling. I've begun talking about smoothies.

7. I'm gearing up to start training for another half-marathon (well, two, actually) this winter and that means training starts in a couple weeks. I'm adjusting last year's plan to take into account that the half-marathon I ran at the end of my training last year was pretty brutally awful those last three miles, and I'd like to feel more rockstar than puking-in-a-Luxor-trashcan this time around. I very highly doubt that I'll be recapping each week's training like I did last year, but I'm sure I'll still talk at length about the training. Really this is all just to warn you that things may get Running Heavy around these parts again after a very Running Light spring. (First things first, I need new shoes, and I think I need them to be a fun color this year.)

From Austin to Downton Abbey to Car Accidents

I skipped town this past weekend, which you might know if you follow me on Twitter. I was in Austin, visiting Cherie and brainstorming design and business ideas for Cherry Jean. It was a great weekend, super productive and relaxing, which is a pretty fantastic combination for any weekend, I think.

The view wasn't too bad either.

There were also a few drinks -- a small hiatus from my drinking hiatus, so to speak -- because whenever I'm around Cherie, it just feels like there's a reason to celebrate. That's the sign of a good friendship. 

Some sort of spicy margarita!

Side note: I realized, when I got to town, that nine years ago (this week!) Cherie and I were in Cancun together, on Spring Break as 21 year olds. Oh MAN how times have changed. We wholeheartedly decided we'll be ever grateful Facebook didn't exist back then. It's bad enough I have to stumble upon those drunken photos when I'm cleaning out a box in the attic. If I knew YOU were stumbling upon them too, I might set fire to the internet. 

Anyway, here were are, mid-brainstorming session. 

When I got back, Kyle almost instantly came down with the flu and that is officially my least favorite way to be welcomed home. No, wait, that's a lie. My least favorite way is when my husband gets it too. 

Where is a spicy margarita when you really need one? NOT IN MY HAND, THAT MUCH I KNOW.

I'm getting through this week with a steady stream of Ignoring The Laundry Pile and Trudging through Downton Abbey. I know, you flew through it (the show, not my laundry pile UNFORTUNATELY) and maybe you even loved it enough to write fan fiction about it but, well, I'm trying. I'm trying to love it! I like it a lot! I just don't....love it. I'm not obsessed with it. I'm not texting friends about it and please don't think that's an activity below me, oh no, because let's all think back a few short weeks to the days when I wouldn't talk about anything BUT Sons of Anarchy. My family and friends took it upon themselves to just roll their eyes before I even started talking because WE GET IT, YES, JAX IS VERY ATTRACTIVE. PERHAPS WE'LL MOVE ON NOW. Jonna, who was on the receiving end of most of those texts, would most likely hear her phone chime and say to her husband, Adam, "I bet Jennie just finished season three and is using a lot of OMGs again! Think if I ignore her, she'll stop?" (Spoiler alert: Nope!) 

I should say that I ALL-CAPS LOVE Mr. Bates. He's the very best! I want him to live next door to me forever. That's not too much to ask of a fictional tv character, is it? (And Anna! She's the loveliest. I also have a soft spot for flawed, complicated Mary. I love a good flawed leading lady.) See, I like it. I like it a lot. I just don't love it enough to shell out money for season two. (Maybe you'll buy it for me?)

Anyway, I'm now going to gloss right over getting rear-ended today because it's just one of those things that happens in life and while it's all very annoying and there is no person on earth who would ever be delighted to sit on the phone with MULTIPLE insurance company representatives to hash out an accident, it's normal. It's preferable even to some of the worse things that could surprise you in your day. I'm (mostly) okay, the car is (mostly) okay, and I think we'll just move on now, never to think of those stupid five minutes again and maybe even be just plain grateful it wasn't worse. 

I will say that I don't really give a damn what I decided to give up and for how long, when your family gets the flu the same week that you get into a car accident, you have a drink the size of your head and you enjoy every sip. So, that's what my Thursday night is going to include.

What about you?

I Did Not Have This On My Wish List

The string of words I may just hate more than any other string of words is, "Kyle feels a little warm." These are the words Mike said to me just last night and less than 24 hours later Kyle was on my lap in his doctor's office with a very high fever. 

(Kyle is kind of known for his very high fevers and, man, do I hope that notoriety changes to something more awesome in the years to come. Like Very High Paycheck or Very High Adoration For His Mother or, even, Very High Threshold for Reality TV Subjection.)

Anyway, we're doing ok, what with the vague diagnosis the doctor sent us home with (probably a virus, could be the flu, might be pneumonia, let's revisit on Thursday if the fever's not gone), but the best part of all this is that I woke up sick this morning, too. I've been feeling a little something coming for a couple days (Mike was sick all last week), but I can sometimes ignore those feelings long enough for them to go away. Not this time, it seems. This illness is kind of like our laundry pile in that way.

Just so you know, my very long holiday to-do list did not include "sit on the couch all day with Toy Story 3 on an endless loop" but I'm now adding it just so I can draw a line through it. When people ask where their presents are this year, I'm just going to go ahead and dive into why I think Lotso was more a sociopath than just a bear dealing with abandonment issues. One thing to have trouble trusting and maybe run a weirdly controlled ship but quite another to SEND ALL THE TOYS TO THEIR FIERY DEATH WITHOUT REMORSE. 

Anyway, let's hope that we're all back to better by Sunday, and here are a few other things I've been meaning to tell you about. 

- I totally failed on creating my Holiday Activities Advent Calendar, so I'm considering creating a January Activities Calendar instead. January kind of sucks anyway (well, after my birthday) what with all the dieting and exercising and cold-ass weather, so why not inject a little fun into it. I'll think on some activities and share them with you.

- Speaking of dieting and exercising, I'm giving up meat, alcohol, and sweets again this January (well, after my 30th birthday party OF COURSE), and while it seems sort of eye-rollingly ridiculous and/or annoying, it's something I kind of enjoy doing and definitely benefit from. So, yeah. That's the plan. Who's with me?

- Katie has kicked off a very cool charity donation series this week. Comment on each post so a little extra money goes to each awesome charity she's featuring. I love the idea and hope you'll comment.

So, there you have a few odds and ends of us right now. A lot less "Christmas menu finalizing" and more "medicine administering" than I'd really prefer, but this is what Christmas GETS for being smack-dab in the middle of cold-and-flu season.

This is also a perfectly fine reason to go ahead and add booze to each meal of the weekend. Or, at the very least, ice cream. Oh, don't act like ice cream isn't the perfect side dish for Christmas dinner steaks. 

Where Do You Live?

I love traveling.

You know this if you know me. (Or have read this site for longer than five minutes.) I get twitchy when I haven't gone somewhere (anywhere!) in a few months. I'm up for any trip, too. Whether it's a crazy family roadtrip or a girl's weekend or a day trip to some no-name Texas town, I'll probably be game. My budget doesn't often allow for anything extravagant, but I do my best to travel as cheaply as possible. Travelzoo, my friends! Bookmark it today.

I have a folder in my email titled "travel" and another titled "restaurants" and I fill them with links to places I want to go, places I want to stay, and places I want to eat. I also have a spraedsheet with things I want to do and try in my own area. (I kill at parties. Invite me to one today!)

But, aside from all that crazy, one thing you may not know about me is how much I enjoy hearing about where other people live. I love talking about your hometown just as much as my own. Or, where you like to travel to or where you were born or where you love to eat. Basically new places are my absolute favorite thing right behind my son's smile and Tim Riggins' everything.

So because it's Friday and because I have a kind of stressful day ahead, do me a favor and answer me this (to give me some fun reading material to enjoy during said stress):

Where do you live? What's your favorite restaurant there?

(This isn't for stalking purposes, in case it's coming across that way. I mean, I'm crazy but not that crazy.)

To Catch You Up

(In list form, to give you the foolish impression this post is cohesive, when it totally isn't.)

1. So, I caved and flipped on the tv this week. IT WAS GLORIOUS, BY THE WAY. Apparently my breaking point is sacrificing The Bachelorette because going without tv was harder than all the days without meat or cheese or chocolate or booze combined. My whole idea behind doing away with my DVR queue was to read more, to meet that goal of reading 25 books this year, and I realized quickly I just need to turn off the tv more often, instead of never turning it on. Never turning it on is depressing, and no one should voluntarily be depressed.

2. Kyle's officially in a full-size bed. I'd be sobbing over my baby no longer being a baby if it weren't kind of nice to read bedtime stories while laying in a new bed instead of uncomfortably sitting cross-legged on the floor. He'll also occasionally request for Molly to sleep with him, until about a half-hour later when he screams for me to come take her away, she won't stop moving, "GET OFF MOLLY." Oh that poor, poor dog.

3. Hey, speaking of Molly's endless supply of patience, we've given Kyle his first chores around the house, aside from picking up after himself and helping me with the dishes (which he loves, don't feel badly for him). Every day he has to put up his shoes and feed Molly, and he takes a lot of pride in these tasks while also taking his sweet, toddler-loving time with them. So, Molly just sits there, waiting for him to scoop up enough food for her before dropping it into her dish, which could take entire minutes. She just sits there, staring at me like, "HAVE YOU NOT TORTURED ME ENOUGH, WOMAN." I swear, it's shocking that dog doesn't constantly chew my good shoes or pee all over my pillow.

4. I recently found Barnivore, a great site for vegan-friendly booze. You are welcome, if you ever find yourself in a similar Crazy Vegan Situation.

5. The Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Championship, I'm sure you heard. I want to be really thrilled about this because it's exciting! Go Mavs! We were the underdogs and Dirk seems like a really decent (albeit unattractive) man! But. Yeah. I'm just not a basketball fan. I was happy to see them win, sure, although by "see them win" you do realize I mean "realize they won when my Facebook feed erupted in exclamation points"?

6. I re-discovered Kelly Willis the other night, a Texas country artist I used to listen to a lot in high school and college. One of her songs, "Not Forgotten You," was perhaps THE song I got over my first love to, and as I stumbled upon it in a random way, I couldn't believe it had been over ten years since I wore out my CD playing this song on repeat. It took me right back. What break-up/moving-on song is like that for you?

7. My son is cute, let me show you.

8. It is so hot in Texas. I complain my way through every summer (and, admittedly, every winter), and I know it's annoying, but it's also just so miserable. The other day I picked Kyle up from school, and we had to run to the store. As we got out of the car, I said, "Ugh, it's hot," and Kyle said, "GO AWAY SUN! IT'S TOO HOT!" I was proud, I can't lie. 

9. I've signed up for the Rock N Roll Las Vegas half-marathon, this December, so we'll be traveling to Vegas for that. It falls a month before my 30th birthday, so we're combining the two celebration-worthy events and while I'm really excited (I'm one of those people who falls very much into the I Love Vegas camp), I also think it'll be quite the interesting trip. The first two days will be all run, run, run, sleep, sleep, sleep and the last two days will be all I AM GOING TO BE THIRTY HAND ME THAT BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE. My body is going to be drastically flip-flopping between "I am so proud of you!" and "YOU ARE FIRED!" But, hey, if you are looking to run a half-marathon down a neon-lit strip at night and then celebrate with lots of bubbles, come join me!

10. Kyle calls umbrellas "kites" and, yes, I did die of the cuteness the first time he did this, if you're wondering.

You apparently need more than one computer to blog

Mike was out of town for a few days, and he took my laptop with him. Apparently when I don't have a laptop, I don't blog even though there's a perfectly good desktop upstairs.

That's partly because I'm kind of lazy and partly because I'm not entirely convinced our upstairs isn't haunted. For no other reason than it's creakier up there.

Mike left town for his first motorcycle race of the season. That might sound strange if you didn't know he races motorcycles. But he does! He's good, too, and he likes it a whole lot. Now, while blogging -- my hobby of choice -- isn't as butt-clenchingly dangerous as his, he's ridiculously supportive of me, so I try my best to be the same of him.

I'll tell you what I mind a whole lot more than his racing motorcycles, though: how he manages to complain about how sore he is after he races motorcycles. I love that you're happy, babe, but I don't demand back rubs after a particularly grueling blog post, now do I?

I MIGHT START, THOUGH, OH YES.

Anyway, while he was gone, Kyle and I did a little cleaning (mostly me), Handy Manny watching (mostly him), hosting some friends for dinner (shockingly, mostly me again), running with half of my new running group (definitely not Kyle unless you count the running away from me he did when I found he had colored all over his bedroom floor), and not-any-at-all sleeping in (Kyle made sure this included us both).

He wasn't all blatant disobedience, though, as sometime over the weekend, he picked up the catchphrase, "See you tomorrow!" This started when we were heading to my mother-in-law's house for dinner. "Bye bye house, see you tomorrow!" Then I left him there to run to Target and he said, "Bye bye Mommy, see you tomorrow!" He did this a bunch. And while he says a ton of OMG-SO-CUTE things, this is right up toward the top of the list. Yes, two isn't so bad so far.

This post is a bit spacey and I'd love to string it together better, with more cohesive thoughts but it's late, Gossip Girl is calling, and my husband is sighing loudly about his back from the other room.

But, tell me, how are you?