...so of course, as the snow falls thick and fast outside, I have been designing a new blog.
Yep.
Another new one.
But I realized that this blog started out as a personal blog and I really want to keep it that way.
As I began slowly changing elements of this blog, I suddenly began to wonder where I would make my truly personal posts, my thoughts about life and stuff.
But shhh.
This new one isn't ready yet!
It might not be ready for awhile, because I want to start this one off on the right foot.
And I can't settle on a good name.
So this blog, an incandescent wanderlust, will stay around.
No worries there.
But I want a more organized lifestyle blog where I post recipes, DIY ideas, natural beauty, homemaking, and things about marriage.
Hopefully, a few of you are looking forward to this. :)
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Monday, February 4, 2013
around the internet no. 2
Two posts in one day! Yeah that's rare. But I have a few links I wish to share with you.
Real Food and Clean Eating
Eat Wild: The #1 Site for Grass-fed Food & Facts
5 Fats That Don't Make You Fat
Gardening
Make Your Own Potting Soil
Frugal and Healthy Beauty
Homemade Lotion Bars and Lip Balm
That's all I have for today! I hope you have a lovely Monday.
Real Food and Clean Eating
Eat Wild: The #1 Site for Grass-fed Food & Facts
5 Fats That Don't Make You Fat
Gardening
Make Your Own Potting Soil
Frugal and Healthy Beauty
Homemade Lotion Bars and Lip Balm
That's all I have for today! I hope you have a lovely Monday.
monday morning vignettes and inspirations no. 2
It's snowing again. Big, white, beautiful flakes. This past weekend my mom and youngest sister came for a visit. We didn't do much other than hang out and talk, though we did go bowling on Saturday afternoon. We all did really well; Mom especially with a game of 163!! All three of my games broke 100, of which I was very proud. Yesterday, Nate and I went bowling again, during the Super Bowl. Neither of us did as well, but we were tired from bowling the day before. Moral of the story: Bowling two days in a row is not usually a good idea.
My whole house is clean, another fact of which I am proud. Many organizational things still need to happen, but the biggest part of the job is done. One of the next things that I hope to accomplish is painting our bedroom. We're thinking of a shade of green; not too pale, but not too bright. More earthy than anything. Of course, then the curtains that are in there will have to go, since they are also green. Ugly green, I might add.
As it is February, when I finished cleaning on Friday, I cut out a myriad of construction paper hearts to tape on the cabinets and windows. I will never stop loving construction paper. So versatile. I will need to make a trip to Hobby Lobby in the near future though, because I discovered I have no glitter! This is a crisis, obviously.
The month of love is upon us. Though of course we should love each other all throughout the year, there is a concentration in February. I do believe Valentine's Day is to blame, though the beginnings of that saint's day were less than glamorous. I've never been a huge advocate of Valentine's Day, partly because the various boyfriends I had over the years were never good about remembering the holiday, and partly because it's so overblown. But you know what? I like hearts and bows and shiny things. And I love creating a beautiful day for the one I love most in all the world, my dear husband.
So here's to being inspired by love, crafted hearts, the cozy snow falling outside, and mugs of hot cocoa with heart-shaped marshmallows floating on top.
(All photos taken with my iPod and edited with the app Snapseed.)
My whole house is clean, another fact of which I am proud. Many organizational things still need to happen, but the biggest part of the job is done. One of the next things that I hope to accomplish is painting our bedroom. We're thinking of a shade of green; not too pale, but not too bright. More earthy than anything. Of course, then the curtains that are in there will have to go, since they are also green. Ugly green, I might add.
As it is February, when I finished cleaning on Friday, I cut out a myriad of construction paper hearts to tape on the cabinets and windows. I will never stop loving construction paper. So versatile. I will need to make a trip to Hobby Lobby in the near future though, because I discovered I have no glitter! This is a crisis, obviously.
The month of love is upon us. Though of course we should love each other all throughout the year, there is a concentration in February. I do believe Valentine's Day is to blame, though the beginnings of that saint's day were less than glamorous. I've never been a huge advocate of Valentine's Day, partly because the various boyfriends I had over the years were never good about remembering the holiday, and partly because it's so overblown. But you know what? I like hearts and bows and shiny things. And I love creating a beautiful day for the one I love most in all the world, my dear husband.
So here's to being inspired by love, crafted hearts, the cozy snow falling outside, and mugs of hot cocoa with heart-shaped marshmallows floating on top.
(All photos taken with my iPod and edited with the app Snapseed.)
Friday, February 1, 2013
friday foodie favorites
Oh yes, it's Friday. I should be cleaning the house because my mom and youngest sister are coming for the weekend, but I've been cleaning all week (a weird obsession in this new year). And it was time to stop and eat lunch. My breakfast was sadly lacking this morning (coffee and a small piece of mango cake), so I figured I needed a fair amount of calories in my lunch. So I made a salad. I luuuurrrrvvvve salad. This salad, among a few different kinds of greens/herbs (baby spinach, arugula, chives, parsley), contained two of my new food obsessions: avocado and hemp seeds. I've had a bit of an obsession with avocado for a little over a year now, though I only just recently figured out how to cut them without mashing them... I usually mash half an avocado and spread it on toasted bread as a base for a sandwich. Hard-cooked egg goes really well with avocado. The other obsession is relatively new. I had been searching for hemp seeds for a while and finally found them at Costco. They taste a bit nutty and are super good for you. I sprinkle them on toast, put them in my smoothies, and sprinkle them on salads. So yummy. My other obsession lately is San Pellegrino. For those of you who have never had it, it's sparkling mineral water from Italy. Never thought I'd like sparkling mineral water, but there you have it. And because it's fizzy, I can trick myself into thinking I'm drinking a soda. (Club soda is good for this, too, because it's really only one step above sparkling water and still has zero calories.)
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
around the internet no. 1
It's snowing so profusely outside that I feel I ought to turn some Christmas music on and bake some cupcakes. I just might yet today, because I'm definitely not going anywhere.
Today's blog post is the start of a new series here on my blog. Every morning I get on Facebook and see all kinds of awesome links from the various pages/blogs I follow. I then proceed to share a few of them on Facebook. But I think maybe it'd be more efficient if I just shared them all in one place that isn't Facebook. So, without further ado, I present to you "around the internet" a posting series of links that I find in my travels and explorations online.
Health and Wellness
8 Things Your Grandparents Did That Could Save Your Life
Homemade Cough Syrup (with coconut oil!!)
Frugal Homemaking
Top 5 Simple Green Ways to Stay Warm in Winter
Baking and other Sweet Treats
Homemade Powdered Sugar
Raw & Vegan Chocolate Peppermint Brownies (these just sound SO yummy)
Vegan Mango Bundt Cake (I made this the other day!)
Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes
Frugal and Healthy Beauty
Homemade Bronzer
Homemade Mascara
Today's blog post is the start of a new series here on my blog. Every morning I get on Facebook and see all kinds of awesome links from the various pages/blogs I follow. I then proceed to share a few of them on Facebook. But I think maybe it'd be more efficient if I just shared them all in one place that isn't Facebook. So, without further ado, I present to you "around the internet" a posting series of links that I find in my travels and explorations online.
Health and Wellness
8 Things Your Grandparents Did That Could Save Your Life
Homemade Cough Syrup (with coconut oil!!)
Frugal Homemaking
Top 5 Simple Green Ways to Stay Warm in Winter
Baking and other Sweet Treats
Homemade Powdered Sugar
Raw & Vegan Chocolate Peppermint Brownies (these just sound SO yummy)
Vegan Mango Bundt Cake (I made this the other day!)
Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cupcakes
Frugal and Healthy Beauty
Homemade Bronzer
Homemade Mascara
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
on being a coffee addict
With the 200th anniversary of Pride & Prejudice having been yesterday, I should probably be posting about tea. I've posted about tea on here before, though that was at the beginning of this blog. I guess I'll have to make a new tea post! But today is about coffee.
I have lots of thoughts about coffee.
My main thought about coffee is that generally I like it all.
Basic filtered coffee.
French Press coffee (definitely a favorite)
Espresso.
Light roast.
Dark roast.
And everything in between.
Etc.
If there's a way to make coffee, chances are I'll like it. (I'm not too keen on flavoured coffees, though.)
I even like chocolate-covered coffee beans!
The thing is...coffee isn't cheap. Nate and I were discussing coffee and prices yesterday (yes, that's how important coffee is to us!) and we both came to the conclusion that at this point we are better off buying better quality coffee (we had just been purchasing the containers of pre-ground Hills Brothers Coffee) and paying a bit more. We've been consuming less coffee already this year than we were last year. Part of this is probably because we're eating better! Whole foods FTW! Anyway. I prefer purchasing whole beans and grinding them myself; I have a sweet little grinder that works great. (That's also the best way to prepare coffee for the French Press because it needs to be a coarser grind.) It's a little bit more work, but honestly the coffee tastes so much better. So the consensus is that our future coffee purchases will be whole bean only. This kind of leaves out flavoured coffees, but those aren't really that great. More on that in a moment.
As far as whole bean coffee goes, I still do like Hills Brothers. Starbucks is good, too, but I've actually gotten to the point where I don't want to spend money there. Not that they really bother me or anything; the place is just too tempting. And I prefer independent coffee shops. There's just a cooler atmosphere. (Sorry for sounding hipster there; I never really liked being a mainstream consumer so yeah.) But I've been researching different kinds of coffee lately, because I'm a nerd like that. Based on what I've tried in the past and what I've been reading online, fair trade and organic are seriously the way to go. Not only for the reasons most people buy fair trade and organic, but because that coffee is inevitably amazing. I'm actually super interested in purchasing some coffee beans from Grounds for Change because it sounds like exceedingly good coffee. I'm sure that in the future I will be reviewing various roasts from various places.
Of course, I don't have a problem purchasing coffee at the grocery store. That's fine. I'm there a few times a week anyway; Nate called me a "European food shopper," which I take as a compliment. He meant it as one! Besides, shopping for small amounts of food at least a couple times in one week makes it easier to spend less money, at least for me. Anyway. I don't buy coffee at Wal-Mart anymore, though. Who knows how long it's been there...and I don't buy food at Wal-Mart to begin with, so why would I buy coffee? In fact, I avoid Wal-Mart for the most part.
So, flavoured coffees. I used to buy them with wild abandon. Well, not quite wild. And not quite with abandon. But I would occasionally snap up the packets that would make one pot. But what I quickly discovered was that unless there was peppermint in the coffee, I couldn't really taste the flavours. And sometimes all I could taste were the flavours; it seemed like the coffee was watered down. (I found out that this is because in order to flavour the coffee properly, it has to be barely roasted. Ugh.) And if I want flavours I can just add creamer or syrup (of which I will now be making my own). And then I stopped purchasing creamers because even that didn't taste right.
Yes, I am a coffee addict, but not because I need the caffeine. I just like the taste and experience of a delicious cup of coffee. Nate is also a coffee addict, but more so because of the caffeine. I have noticed that he doesn't need as much, though. We have almost completely stopped buying soda (mostly we use it for mixed drinks and that sparingly), and he doesn't complain of caffeine headaches as often. I sincerely hope this is because of my cooking and food choices!
Anyway, to wrap up a long and involved post, I want to challenge you if you are a coffee drinker. Try grinding some whole beans yourself. Maybe even try a French Press. And look into the world of fair trade and organic coffees. You just might find your new favorite roast.
I have lots of thoughts about coffee.
My main thought about coffee is that generally I like it all.
Basic filtered coffee.
French Press coffee (definitely a favorite)
Espresso.
Light roast.
Dark roast.
And everything in between.
Etc.
If there's a way to make coffee, chances are I'll like it. (I'm not too keen on flavoured coffees, though.)
I even like chocolate-covered coffee beans!
The thing is...coffee isn't cheap. Nate and I were discussing coffee and prices yesterday (yes, that's how important coffee is to us!) and we both came to the conclusion that at this point we are better off buying better quality coffee (we had just been purchasing the containers of pre-ground Hills Brothers Coffee) and paying a bit more. We've been consuming less coffee already this year than we were last year. Part of this is probably because we're eating better! Whole foods FTW! Anyway. I prefer purchasing whole beans and grinding them myself; I have a sweet little grinder that works great. (That's also the best way to prepare coffee for the French Press because it needs to be a coarser grind.) It's a little bit more work, but honestly the coffee tastes so much better. So the consensus is that our future coffee purchases will be whole bean only. This kind of leaves out flavoured coffees, but those aren't really that great. More on that in a moment.
As far as whole bean coffee goes, I still do like Hills Brothers. Starbucks is good, too, but I've actually gotten to the point where I don't want to spend money there. Not that they really bother me or anything; the place is just too tempting. And I prefer independent coffee shops. There's just a cooler atmosphere. (Sorry for sounding hipster there; I never really liked being a mainstream consumer so yeah.) But I've been researching different kinds of coffee lately, because I'm a nerd like that. Based on what I've tried in the past and what I've been reading online, fair trade and organic are seriously the way to go. Not only for the reasons most people buy fair trade and organic, but because that coffee is inevitably amazing. I'm actually super interested in purchasing some coffee beans from Grounds for Change because it sounds like exceedingly good coffee. I'm sure that in the future I will be reviewing various roasts from various places.
Of course, I don't have a problem purchasing coffee at the grocery store. That's fine. I'm there a few times a week anyway; Nate called me a "European food shopper," which I take as a compliment. He meant it as one! Besides, shopping for small amounts of food at least a couple times in one week makes it easier to spend less money, at least for me. Anyway. I don't buy coffee at Wal-Mart anymore, though. Who knows how long it's been there...and I don't buy food at Wal-Mart to begin with, so why would I buy coffee? In fact, I avoid Wal-Mart for the most part.
So, flavoured coffees. I used to buy them with wild abandon. Well, not quite wild. And not quite with abandon. But I would occasionally snap up the packets that would make one pot. But what I quickly discovered was that unless there was peppermint in the coffee, I couldn't really taste the flavours. And sometimes all I could taste were the flavours; it seemed like the coffee was watered down. (I found out that this is because in order to flavour the coffee properly, it has to be barely roasted. Ugh.) And if I want flavours I can just add creamer or syrup (of which I will now be making my own). And then I stopped purchasing creamers because even that didn't taste right.
Yes, I am a coffee addict, but not because I need the caffeine. I just like the taste and experience of a delicious cup of coffee. Nate is also a coffee addict, but more so because of the caffeine. I have noticed that he doesn't need as much, though. We have almost completely stopped buying soda (mostly we use it for mixed drinks and that sparingly), and he doesn't complain of caffeine headaches as often. I sincerely hope this is because of my cooking and food choices!
Anyway, to wrap up a long and involved post, I want to challenge you if you are a coffee drinker. Try grinding some whole beans yourself. Maybe even try a French Press. And look into the world of fair trade and organic coffees. You just might find your new favorite roast.
Monday, January 28, 2013
blogging is hard
Sharing my life with people has never been the easiest thing. Oh, I can talk just as well as anyone, and carry on a conversation. If someone asks me what I've been doing lately, that's easy enough. But when I blog, the deeper nature of my mind tends to come out. I find meaning in everything. And sometimes I blog about something that I don't feel like anyone I know personally could possibly understand. My previous post on vegetarianism is one such topic. Not nearly as deep or thought-provoking as a few of the posts I wrote on relationships last year, but still.
Blogging is hard, both the reading other blogs and the writing of your own, because it forces you to discover things about yourself that you never knew. I'm serious about this. When I begin a blog post, I have a general idea of where I want to go with it, but I rarely know exactly where I'll end up. Sometimes what I write is almost a complete surprise.
And then there's the simple fact that if you share the link to your own blog on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site, people you know personally are going to read it. This is where I may be different than most people. For whatever reason, I would rather have people I don't know reading my random thoughts and adventures. It's kind of a place to hide, I suppose.
Sharing these posts with my friends and family on Facebook is hard for me to do. I don't need affirmation for what I'm doing and/or saying, but the possibility of someone I know hating what I write just eats away at me. At least it used to; my blogging confidence is much stronger now. Not sure why.
***************************************
Why am I writing about this on a dreary Monday morning? I just want to make clear that this is my blog and whether I write about my love for my husband, the DIY stuff around the house, compassion for animals or the adventures I hope to have someday, these are all thoughts from the deepest portion of my heart.
Blogging is hard, both the reading other blogs and the writing of your own, because it forces you to discover things about yourself that you never knew. I'm serious about this. When I begin a blog post, I have a general idea of where I want to go with it, but I rarely know exactly where I'll end up. Sometimes what I write is almost a complete surprise.
And then there's the simple fact that if you share the link to your own blog on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site, people you know personally are going to read it. This is where I may be different than most people. For whatever reason, I would rather have people I don't know reading my random thoughts and adventures. It's kind of a place to hide, I suppose.
Sharing these posts with my friends and family on Facebook is hard for me to do. I don't need affirmation for what I'm doing and/or saying, but the possibility of someone I know hating what I write just eats away at me. At least it used to; my blogging confidence is much stronger now. Not sure why.
***************************************
Why am I writing about this on a dreary Monday morning? I just want to make clear that this is my blog and whether I write about my love for my husband, the DIY stuff around the house, compassion for animals or the adventures I hope to have someday, these are all thoughts from the deepest portion of my heart.
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