I’ve been feeling the need to get my blog on lately, perhaps because I’m having a real life tale of expansion in a more drastic way than I’ve ever experienced before:
Bubbles and bite
Keeping with the food theme, we have been trying desperately to keep up with the influx of produce from Erik’s farm.
Grains of discovery
Oh, this is a food blog?
In that case, I have a food miracle to talk about.
Once upon a time, I was an actual regular blogger. I hosted a Bob’s Red Mill giveaway, and 178 people entered.
Ever since that time, I have a received a twice-a-year sampling of new Bob’s Red Mill products. I’m not talking about wimpy little samples, either. I’m talking about multiple full-sized packages of whole grain gold. Continue reading!
Performance
For Solstice/Christmas, my mom gave me a box of flowering jasmine tea.
I loooooove jasmine tea, but I didn’t want to waste these talented performers on a regular ceramic teapot. I needed to see the performance.
Armed with the Amazon gift card that my office gave us for getting married, I spent days laboring over the reviews (all mixed/negative) of various glass teapots and ended up going with this one
On a glorious January evening, my Amazon box finally arrived. In addition to the teapot, I had made all sorts of fun purchases. In fact, here’s exactly how exciting my shopping cart looked.
It was probably the most boring order to ever pass through the halls (if there are even halls?) of amazon. But I was thrilled when that box finally arrived because it meant I could finally have my tea.
There’s a point to all this rambling about my amazon order.
I started pulling out my catch one by one, taking each item out of its packaging, admiring the brilliance of my everloc chrome dental station, etc.
And then this happened.
WHAT?!
WHAT?!!!!
And so, what could have been the most boring blog post in the world (for everyone except me), just got a little more interesting.
So yeah. Time for some tea!
I made a video. Because I was that excited to spend my evening watching a tea ball unfurl. Please watch it on mute. I sound like I’m 10 and I don’t know why I’m whispering. And I say thing too many times. And the unfurling wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I had anticipated.
We transferred it to the infuser cup a few minutes later. The switch did wonders for aesthetics.
Same teapot, different day, different ball.
In the end, the teapot lasted not much longer than my final ball of performance tea. The glass spontaneously shattered one day, soaking and burning everything around it with boiling hot tea. I guess the excitement of a life well lived finally proved too much.
Nesting
December 22nd was our official move-in date at the new apartment.
I did not take photos of the move because I HATE moving. However, this move was probably the best move of my life. Have I mentioned the peace? And the space? We have the whole second floor. And NO ONE lives above us. And rent is easily half of what it would be if we were still in NY. But the commute is three times as much … so yeah, still coming out about even.
As I already mentioned, Erik was in charge of “before” pictures. They all look like this:
He thought I wanted him to take before pictures of the walls and not of the rooms.
Anyway, we’ve been working on gradually making some subtle rental-appropriate improvements that make us happy.
For example, see that random turquoise threshold on the bottom right?
After a couple weekends of sanding through four layers of what was surely lead paint (we used masks!), I put down a coat of strain and a coat of poly … and we had a decent-looking threshold:
The mix-and-match linoleum remains a problem. I’ll have to work on the landlord a bit for that one.
The turquoise is still alive and well in the back half-bedroom (currently masquerading as a walk-in tool closet). We’ll have to address that at some point as well.
Erik’s mom and stepdad came out from MN for New Year’s weekend and helped us feel homey with cupcake plates and competing NFL fleeces. Neither of which did us any good in the post-season.
We used their visit as motivation to get to Halibut Point finally:
Brrrrrrrr.
Their visit also motivated my mom, dad, and stepmom to come up to Gloucester for brunch at Sugar Mag’s and a snow walk around the harbor. And musical winter accessories it seems.
And tea in our new bay window nook!
A few more of my new apartment favorite things …
Ocean frost on the bathroom window:
A colorful snowy neighborhood:
A colorful cozy living room:
And the perfect sunrise view from my spot on the bed:
Visitors welcome!
Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition 