I like stuff. Call me materialistic, but stuff can make me unreasonably happy. Introduce a bonus element such as a low price or high quality and I get damn near ecstatic. Example? This Christmas Abby's brother and sister in law got me a Kindle and I basically stopped talking anybody except to show them features I discovered on the Kindle. I literally took it with me, everywhere. Like a child.
One of the ways I express my love for stuff is to tell (read: pester) Abby how cool stuff is. Abby, being the loving and supportive fiance she is, politely suggested that I start writing about stuff rather than regale her with my latest interest (read: obsession). She pointed out that rather than tell her about reviews of stuff I've already bought and used, I could tell the world. Just to be clear, that last bit places the blame for all of what follows squarely on m'lady's shoulders.
Another way I express my love of stuff is to read reviews about stuff I need/want. This means not that only will I be reviewing boring things you probably don't care about, I'll be linking to other blogs about those same things. It's a network of useless of information. I mean, at least Abby's posts are about food or exercise, things that most people use, or could use. My posts will instead discuss stuff I either want to own, already own, or just stuff I'm thinking about. You're welcome.
1.12.2012
A Practical Wedding
As a Christmas-and-engagement present to myself, I bought a copy of A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration. It's by Meg Keene, who created A Practical Wedding the blog while planning her own wedding a few years ago. After reading a post on her site today I decided to write something here about the book.*
I can't remember how I stumbled onto A Practical Wedding, but I'm glad that it's one of the first wedding-related media I found. Meg and the other writers present a sane account of a variety of wedding issues, along with stories from couples planning their weddings and "Wedding Graduates" who share what they've learned. She's a proud feminist and I admire the way she writes about LGBTQ couples (just when you thought a hetero wedding couldn't be any more complicated).
While we're pretty excited to be engaged, John and I both have reservations about wedding planning. So many people we know are happy for us, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But in the short time we've been engaged, I've already gotten a small sense of how many expectations come with wedding planning. Meg covers a lot of the issues that concern me, and she does it with compassion for all parties involved. She also discusses something she calls the Wedding Industrial Complex, and the perceived need to have OMG EVERYTHING at your wedding, but to also make it as personalized as possible (read: spend money). This book devotes a whole chapter to the history of the modern wedding (which I obviously love), and points out that many traditions that we may consider super important are less than 50 years old. Her point is not to abolish wedding traditions, if, say, you really love the idea of walking down the aisle. She just means that if you don't want an aisle at all, your wedding can still be meaningful. The same goes for favors, a unity candle, a white dress, a sit down dinner, or fancy chair covers.
Unless you really like fancy chairs, in which case, go for it. That's the tenor of the book, more or less, and I find it helpful as I start to think about wedding plans. John and I want our wedding to have some very traditional elements, but it's nice to have some guidance on how to sort out which traditions are important to us. For example: yes, we're having attendants, but they won't be divided by gender (in fact, we're having one big ol' group of them, and we're calling it the Fellowship of the Ring. I know).
The book the blog also deal with difficult topics, like how to grieve the fact that, for whatever reason, you may not have both parents with you to plan your wedding. She has stories of couples planning their wedding while one is severely ill, or when a parent dies close to the wedding date. While I'm grateful not to be in that situation, it is interesting to read accounts of people who overcame them, and to think "if those people can plan a wedding while their dad had cancer, then surely we can do this without making ourselves crazy."
Some other general guidelines from the book and the website:
- "I will not remember what my wedding looked like; I will remember what it felt like."
- If, at the end of the day, two people marry each other, then your wedding was a success.
- One and done. As in, make a choice and stick with it. Second guessing will make us all nuts.
- Your wedding guests are "grown ass" adults (unless they are, you know, actual children) and it's ok to treat them accordingly.
- Where you spend money matters more than how much you spend, and spending money is a political act.
So that's my 2 cents. Our wedding will probably be a fairly frequent topic here, but this isn't a wedding blog. Obviously, it's a stuff-we-eat-and-happen-to-do blog, and I don't want to ruin that incredibly consistent theme by letting the wedding take over. Just a wedding-related post now and then.
*Meg posted these ads a couple days ago on A Practical Wedding and gave permission for people to use them on blogs, websites, etc, as ads for the book. As usual, I'm not receiving any kind of compensation for this post and I payed for the book myself.
I can't remember how I stumbled onto A Practical Wedding, but I'm glad that it's one of the first wedding-related media I found. Meg and the other writers present a sane account of a variety of wedding issues, along with stories from couples planning their weddings and "Wedding Graduates" who share what they've learned. She's a proud feminist and I admire the way she writes about LGBTQ couples (just when you thought a hetero wedding couldn't be any more complicated).
While we're pretty excited to be engaged, John and I both have reservations about wedding planning. So many people we know are happy for us, and I'm incredibly grateful for that. But in the short time we've been engaged, I've already gotten a small sense of how many expectations come with wedding planning. Meg covers a lot of the issues that concern me, and she does it with compassion for all parties involved. She also discusses something she calls the Wedding Industrial Complex, and the perceived need to have OMG EVERYTHING at your wedding, but to also make it as personalized as possible (read: spend money). This book devotes a whole chapter to the history of the modern wedding (which I obviously love), and points out that many traditions that we may consider super important are less than 50 years old. Her point is not to abolish wedding traditions, if, say, you really love the idea of walking down the aisle. She just means that if you don't want an aisle at all, your wedding can still be meaningful. The same goes for favors, a unity candle, a white dress, a sit down dinner, or fancy chair covers.
Unless you really like fancy chairs, in which case, go for it. That's the tenor of the book, more or less, and I find it helpful as I start to think about wedding plans. John and I want our wedding to have some very traditional elements, but it's nice to have some guidance on how to sort out which traditions are important to us. For example: yes, we're having attendants, but they won't be divided by gender (in fact, we're having one big ol' group of them, and we're calling it the Fellowship of the Ring. I know).
The book the blog also deal with difficult topics, like how to grieve the fact that, for whatever reason, you may not have both parents with you to plan your wedding. She has stories of couples planning their wedding while one is severely ill, or when a parent dies close to the wedding date. While I'm grateful not to be in that situation, it is interesting to read accounts of people who overcame them, and to think "if those people can plan a wedding while their dad had cancer, then surely we can do this without making ourselves crazy."
Some other general guidelines from the book and the website:
- "I will not remember what my wedding looked like; I will remember what it felt like."
- If, at the end of the day, two people marry each other, then your wedding was a success.
- One and done. As in, make a choice and stick with it. Second guessing will make us all nuts.
- Your wedding guests are "grown ass" adults (unless they are, you know, actual children) and it's ok to treat them accordingly.
- Where you spend money matters more than how much you spend, and spending money is a political act.
So that's my 2 cents. Our wedding will probably be a fairly frequent topic here, but this isn't a wedding blog. Obviously, it's a stuff-we-eat-and-happen-to-do blog, and I don't want to ruin that incredibly consistent theme by letting the wedding take over. Just a wedding-related post now and then.
*Meg posted these ads a couple days ago on A Practical Wedding and gave permission for people to use them on blogs, websites, etc, as ads for the book. As usual, I'm not receiving any kind of compensation for this post and I payed for the book myself.
1.07.2012
What's New
I love Christmas, as I'm sure you know. But I also love the first couple weeks of January when I get to detox from all the Christmas eating, margaritas, and decor. It's a good time of year to try new things and to get everything in order for the start of next term. So here's some of what we did this week.
My prize for participating in the 12 Days of Gym Christmas came in the mail!
The card reads: "Abby! Congratulations for your outstanding effort during 2011's 12 Gym Days of Christmas!"
That was a nice pick me up, since like I told a couple of people, I was in a race with myself over the holidays to see how fast I could gain 5 lbs. Let's just say I won. But this button was a good reminder that I did a lot of good things to take care of myself during December, and I can keep doing them. Now I need to find a place to prominently display my prize.
For instance, I've tried a couple of healthy recipes last week.
This first one John and I sort of made up. It was supposed to make tacos, but when we forgot to buy tortillas, it became a "burrito bowl," a la Q'doba.
Black beans, red peppers, an onion, a jalapeno, and cilantro cooked together until the beans break down. We topped it with more cilantro, some cheese, and the awesome Frontera (Rick Bayless) salsa.
Next I made the Back on Track salad from Oh She Glows for lunches this week. One change from her original recipe: red quinoa instead of wheat berries.
I ate it over a bed of spinach and topped with an avocado, but you can just eat it straight. It's really flavorful and full of good vegetables. My hope is that I can find a few more recipes like this one to take as school lunches this term.
This last recipe isn't exactly a health food, but if you keep to a moderate portion of cheese per serving, then it's not too bad. It's Lasagna Soup from Closet Cooking. We subbed a pound of mushrooms with 2 tbps chopped sage for the sausage, and it was delicious. It also made a big batch, so we have that on hand for a few more dinners.
And since it's still January and this is a blog, let me state a few goals I have for this year.
My prize for participating in the 12 Days of Gym Christmas came in the mail!
The card reads: "Abby! Congratulations for your outstanding effort during 2011's 12 Gym Days of Christmas!"
That was a nice pick me up, since like I told a couple of people, I was in a race with myself over the holidays to see how fast I could gain 5 lbs. Let's just say I won. But this button was a good reminder that I did a lot of good things to take care of myself during December, and I can keep doing them. Now I need to find a place to prominently display my prize.
For instance, I've tried a couple of healthy recipes last week.
This first one John and I sort of made up. It was supposed to make tacos, but when we forgot to buy tortillas, it became a "burrito bowl," a la Q'doba.
Black beans, red peppers, an onion, a jalapeno, and cilantro cooked together until the beans break down. We topped it with more cilantro, some cheese, and the awesome Frontera (Rick Bayless) salsa.
Next I made the Back on Track salad from Oh She Glows for lunches this week. One change from her original recipe: red quinoa instead of wheat berries.
I ate it over a bed of spinach and topped with an avocado, but you can just eat it straight. It's really flavorful and full of good vegetables. My hope is that I can find a few more recipes like this one to take as school lunches this term.
This last recipe isn't exactly a health food, but if you keep to a moderate portion of cheese per serving, then it's not too bad. It's Lasagna Soup from Closet Cooking. We subbed a pound of mushrooms with 2 tbps chopped sage for the sausage, and it was delicious. It also made a big batch, so we have that on hand for a few more dinners.
And since it's still January and this is a blog, let me state a few goals I have for this year.
- Make it through the Iron Strength routine Carla sent me from Runner's World. I did less than half of it last week and I could barely walk the next day. Strength training is conspicuously absent from my running training, and I hope that doing it will help me avoid injuries and physio this year.
- Dress like a grown up in public. Since I'm done with coursework, and I have an aversion to make up anyways, I tend to just throw on whatever's (mostly) clean for the few occasions when I do leave the house. This is probably a good excuse to buy some grown up shoes so that I don't just wear my old Nikes everywhere...right?
- Buy a bike. I want to spend my Christmas money on a bike so that I can actually try a triathlon this year. I know nothing about bikes, but I want to learn before I make any purchases. Nothing fancy, since I'm not trying to actually compete. But something I could ride around or to school, and for an amateur triathlon.
- Running specific: go below a 60-minute 10K. I know I can do this. My goal is for it to happen at the Forest City Road Race this spring. I'd like a 5K PR also, but the one I got this fall is pretty good and I'm not going to set that as an actual goal until next fall.
1.01.2012
A Very Fort Wayne Christmas
This year we spent Christmas in Fort Wayne with my parents. I took a bunch of photos, which I will present here mostly in chronological order, starting with Christmas Eve when I took some tree bokehs.
Dad, John, and I started Christmas Day with a dog walk.
The woods where we walked them were really pretty in the light. You don't have to get up too early for pretty morning light in December.
Double suspension.
Toby was thrilled to go back to the car at the end of the walk so that we could go home and open presents.
John and I got a bunch of fun Christmas presents, including these microphones for something called "Merryoke." Each microphone plays a series of Christmas songs for you to sing along to, and an "elf voice" button that transposes your voice up two or three octaves. Very entertaining for us, sort of frightening for the dogs.
John looks like a weird elf in this picture, with his merryoke mic.
After present opening and breakfast, Dad gave us a little archery lesson in the backyard.
It was a relaxing holiday and we're sad that we have to go back to work. But we'll be back in Indiana a few times in the next year for some very exciting wedding planning.
I hope you had a great holiday and a Happy New Year!
12.31.2011
Niagara Engagement Vacay
WOOT! We're engaged! Several of you probably knew that we were headed to Niagara for vacation, but the engagement plan was in the works the whole time. Here's the long version of the story.
John and I decided a while back that he should get an awesome...thing when we got engaged, since I got a beautiful ring with a pearl that my mom brought back from Japan over 40 years ago (another story).
With historic items at the Niagara Historical Society Museum.
After a lot of discussion, it was decided that we would go on an awesome vacation to Niagara on the Lake, which would serve as the setting for us to actually get engaged. We had a wonderful time there in April and we were excited to go back.
John with other historic items in the War of 1812 gallery. The Niagara region in Ontario was the site of a lot of War of 1812 action. And you know what that means - 2012 is a big year! An issue for a separate post, I'm sure.
We arrived in NOTL in time for some afternoon touristing and wine tasting. Our first stop was the historical museum, where we saw (among other things), a small table made in Paris during Rameau's lifetime.
We stopped at this gazebo on Lake Ontario for some pictures (part of John's plot).
He reviewed his notes while I snapped a few shots, and then he awkwardly said, "Hey...it's time." And proposed.
That night we had dinner at the Ravine Winery Bistro, concluding with chocolate pot de creme.
Ravine was our favorite dinner of the two, though we also had a very nice meal at Strewn Winery. We tasted wines at both Reif and Stratus wineries. I think Stratus, the relatively new place with a modernist design scheme, was our favorite over all, though Strewn is arguably a better deal for their inexpensive, delicious wine. We fit in a 3 mile run along the Niagara parkway on a chilly cloudy morning, followed by fabulous diner breakfast for $3.50. This vacay was a good example of how you can take John anywhere - an upscale winery restaurant, followed by a cheap diner, and then episodes of Seinfeld at the hotel at night.
The vacay was the perfect start to our Christmas and a fun place for us to get engaged. By Friday morning we were itching to call our friends and family to announce the engagement, and we headed to Fort Wayne just afterward.
John and I decided a while back that he should get an awesome...thing when we got engaged, since I got a beautiful ring with a pearl that my mom brought back from Japan over 40 years ago (another story).
With historic items at the Niagara Historical Society Museum.
After a lot of discussion, it was decided that we would go on an awesome vacation to Niagara on the Lake, which would serve as the setting for us to actually get engaged. We had a wonderful time there in April and we were excited to go back.
John with other historic items in the War of 1812 gallery. The Niagara region in Ontario was the site of a lot of War of 1812 action. And you know what that means - 2012 is a big year! An issue for a separate post, I'm sure.
We arrived in NOTL in time for some afternoon touristing and wine tasting. Our first stop was the historical museum, where we saw (among other things), a small table made in Paris during Rameau's lifetime.
We stopped at this gazebo on Lake Ontario for some pictures (part of John's plot).
He reviewed his notes while I snapped a few shots, and then he awkwardly said, "Hey...it's time." And proposed.
That night we had dinner at the Ravine Winery Bistro, concluding with chocolate pot de creme.
Ravine was our favorite dinner of the two, though we also had a very nice meal at Strewn Winery. We tasted wines at both Reif and Stratus wineries. I think Stratus, the relatively new place with a modernist design scheme, was our favorite over all, though Strewn is arguably a better deal for their inexpensive, delicious wine. We fit in a 3 mile run along the Niagara parkway on a chilly cloudy morning, followed by fabulous diner breakfast for $3.50. This vacay was a good example of how you can take John anywhere - an upscale winery restaurant, followed by a cheap diner, and then episodes of Seinfeld at the hotel at night.
The vacay was the perfect start to our Christmas and a fun place for us to get engaged. By Friday morning we were itching to call our friends and family to announce the engagement, and we headed to Fort Wayne just afterward.
2nd Annual Shu'Pippen Family Christmas Photo
Let's just say I've spent a lot of time this Christmas break widening my butt and not much else.
Here are some belated Christmas that John and I took with the camera timer. Just like last year, they are about 75% goofy, 20% serious, and 5% accidental.
The official winner:
The nice ones:
Here are some belated Christmas that John and I took with the camera timer. Just like last year, they are about 75% goofy, 20% serious, and 5% accidental.
The official winner:
The nice ones:
12.25.2011
"Like a loaded gun."
Last week John and I went to Niagara on the Lake for a wine country vacation. We told some people we were just going there to have a little relaxing time to ourselves before traveling to my parents' for the holiday.
But secretly, we also went because we decided to get engaged. It happened under that gazebo on Lake Ontario, but it was rainy and grey that afternoon. We went back to snap some sunny pictures when the weather improved the next day. The one below is from a few moments before he proposed.
John had the ring for a couple months before he proposed. He said it was like having a loaded gun in the house.
I have lots more to say about all this, and I'll write multiple posts about the trip. But for now, omg. We're engaged. Woo hoo!
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