Squirrels Gond Wild

I have so much to write about all of the sudden! My good friends' wedding and the half marathon are at the top of the list. But first, a note about fall.


The squirrels that live outside of our house have absolutely lost it.

This picture doesn't convey the drama going on. Every morning, we wake up to the sound of large acorns hitting the side of the house, the metal overhang on our porch, and the wall AC unit. It sounds like the squirrels are hurling the biggest nuts they can find at our house, like they're trying to send a message. When we come outside, I often see several waddling off in terror, their mouths as full as possible. Somehow, in the process of stuffing their faces, they have begun to strip branches off the tree - you can see the scattered limbs in the picture. Why is this happening? Are they gnawing on the branches? Our yard is a dangerous place, since you're in danger of being pelted with either a stick or a nut while trying to get from the car to the house.

Meanwhile, inside, we made our first chili of the season, and washed it down with a pumpkin beer and a cheesey-beer biscuit.

John and I have tried a whole bunch of pumpkin beers, and we're quickly learning why so many of our beer aficionado friends are down on them. They can be kind of terrible. But both the Nightmare on Mill Street and the Mill Street October Fest are fine, autumnal beers. They come in a seasonal sampler pack, and we were glad we tried it. 

This chili calls for some pumpkin beer, and we used another Ontario pumpkin ale that neither of us liked at all, but the chili still tasted good. You can find the recipe for the chili here: Pumpkin Black Bean Chili, from Veggies by Season. 

In a last minute attempt to use up the pumpkin ale that we didn't care for, I did a quick internet search for "Beer cheddar bread" and came up with these biscuits. The only thing I'd change for next time would be to forgo the muffin cups and just butter/flour the pan. They stuck slightly to the paper, but they were light, flakey, and buttery on the inside. John and I tried hard not to inhale these little cheesy bites: Cheddar Beer Bread Muffins, from The Beeroness (a website I think we'll use again). 

Happy Fall! Anyone else have a massive squirrels-gone-wild party in your yard?

The Island Will Come to You

A few weeks ago, our downstairs neighbors moved out, and we discovered that they left a nice, portable kitchen island. John and I considered taking it (I voted no), and we meant to ask our landlord if we could have it for $30 or so. Instead, we forgot. Until Friday, that is. That afternoon, our landlord emailed and asked if we wanted the island. FOR FREESIES! John immediately jumped up and ran downstairs to snatch it. We hauled it upstairs and I gave it a good clean with a vinegar and water solution. And voila! It's our island!



























After some debate, we've decided to name it Buffet the Vampire Slayer, or Buffy for short. Other potential names included The Buffet, and Freebie.

You may now admire its features.

Note the cool, granite section on top, supported by extra drawers and and a cabinet beneath, now filled with beer.























































We've discussed getting an island like this for a couple years, but I never felt like I could justify the expense. Turns out, all we had to do was wait 2 years and a perfectly good island found us instead. I feel there is a Zen lesson of some kind...inside its many spacious compartments.

July Foods and the Room Switch

July of 2011 was the only part of the summer that we spent in Ontario. I thought it would be fun to do an end-of-the sitcom, "what have we learned?" kind of post.
1. July is the only "hot" month in Ontario. So eat something cold.
By that I mean we had a week of temps in the high-80s to mid-90s and a fair bit of humidity. Our central air fought bravely, but it was stuffy in our apartment for a while. Our solution to this was to keep the oven and stove off as much as possible and expand "Salad Night" into "Dinner."



A caprese-style salad with mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, and arugula.














We also made potato salad for lunches with this recipe and an amazing strawberry pesto pasta salad that I didn't photograph, despite its beauty.





















Other salad favorites this month: Greek barley salad and this delicious, extremely simple chickpea salad. Those chickpeas are going to be on the menu again soon, and would be perfect to take to school or on a car trip.

When my parents were here, we decided to show off the fabulous Asian grocery store we've recently fallen in love with, United Market. We bought these red bean ice cream bars as a sort of experiment, and John and I LOVE them! They're so creamy (and full of sugar). It's a totally different context for beans and it's delicious.



















The same company makes a lot of other flavors and now I want to try all of them.


2. When it's hot, get out of the apartment and go to the beach.
This one shouldn't take a lot of 'splainin. The beach is awesome and breezy. It's currently John's favorite place to take a nap.





































Even though this July had the hottest day on record in London, ON, I managed to give myself frost bite by leaving an icepack on my hamstring and then falling asleep while watching "Kingdom of David: The Saga of the Isrealites." Please enjoy this picture of the back of my thigh, just above the knee. It stung for a day or two, and then went away, kind of like a sunburn. Giving myself frostbite on what was literally the Hottest Day Ever was one of those moments when I felt grateful for my now 8 years of higher education.


That red shape is from the ice pack wrinkles.














3. Say yes to rearranging your furniture.




















The above photo was our bedroom, and now it's The Den. The ceiling fan in that room was a plus, but it also has eastern facing windows that allowed Mother Nature to wake us up really early every morning. The sun is so strong that I felt like I was getting a tan line from my pjs. It's also a small room, so we bumped into each other as we got dressed, and I whacked my leg on the bed pretty much all the time (because I'm obviously coordinated; see above).

And now our big, former living room is our big, current bedroom. No apologies for the unmade bed.





















From the perspective of the bed. The curtains are temporary and make it look like a harem.












We are in love with the new arrangement, as all of the air conditioning/heat vents are now free and the air circulates better. We also have tons of room to get dressed and exercise in the space near our dressers. It makes sense to keep our living room in the smallest space, since we use it the least of any room, and we rarely have more than 2 people over at once. It actually makes the apartment feel bigger than before.
That pretty much wraps up July.
During August, John and I are spending several weeks in Chicago so that he can do research. I'll be doing school work, too, but from my aunt's couch, thus allowing me plenty of time for general fun in the city. If you have a recommendation for a Chicago activity/place to eat, please let me know! I hope to have some fun pictures and things to post here from that trip.


Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Frigidaire Pro

Two weeks ago our apartment welcomed two new additions. First, the patio furniture:




















Once the weather finally improved and John killed some of our neighborhood wasps, we started looking around for cheap patio furniture. After considering a set at JYSK (similar to this one but on sale for $40) we remembered that winter can last for up to 6 months, so there's no point in spending a lot on patio furniture. I almost bought two chairs and a small table from Wal-Mart that are exactly like the ones we bought, but then John thought to look on Kijiji (like Craigslist), where he found the set we have now for a whopping $15. Score!





That milk bottle has flowers in it. Duh.













We sat outside the next night and ate dinner on the new-to-us table. I plan on spending a lot of time in those chairs this summer.

Then, after a long process of talking to our landlord and calling repair guys and appliance guys, we got a new fridge! Our old one was so old that they don't make parts for it anymore, and it apparently really guzzled the electricity. It would trip the local breaker it was on and shut off until we realized and reset it. It's not ideal for times when we're traveling.


























But then the new one arrived! First the guys came and removed the cabinets above the fridge, since the new one is too tall for them. I put everything out on the counter tops before they hauled it away. Watching them struggle to get it down the stairs reinforced to me that I don't want to get a couch because I don't want to have to move one in and out of this place.

























AND BEHOLD!!!!!! OUR NEW FRIEND, FRIGIDAIRE PRO!
Aka, Blue Velvet.
























Ooooooooooooooh!!!!



















Ahhhhhhhhh!!!




















I think we're going to get along just fine.

The Comps: A Narrative Through Food

I decided the week before our exams started that I wouldn't upload any photos from my camera. "It's the comps!" I thought, "No fun of any kind!"

That turned out only to be partly true. For the first two weeks, I worked about 7-8 hours a day, every day, and I wrote a LOT in that time. But by the end of the second week, I was physically spent and really stressed. My body figured out a new way to manifest that anxiety in my skin:






Nope, not a sunburn.











That picture doesn't really convey how red my skin was (and that's good, it's less gross). Basically, it looked like I had a sunburn on my chest (just above my tank top) and neck, but I actually had some kind of rash. You can also sort of see the irritated skin around the corners of my mouth. A doctor at UWO gave me some stuff to put on it, and after I kind of hit a bottom with my stress after week 2, it went away. That seemed like a big warning sign to me that my 8-hour a day method was not working out.

So I took some time away from the exams each day, I was more liberal with break time, and I still finished with a couple of days to spare for final tweaking and editing. I guess I won't really know how it went until I know if I've passed, but I know for sure that I couldn't have finished them at all if I'd continued that way for all 4 weeks.

Today I uploaded the photos I took on my point-and-shoot camera during the comps, and of course, they are mostly food pics. So here's a very random account of some stuff that happened during the comps and just afterward.

Our last pre-comps meal: cajun catfish, hot crash potatoes, and whisky glazed carrots (based on this recipe, but with WAY less butter).















At one point during the exam our friend Dana had a party, so I made some vegan chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and iced them with very non-vegan peanut butter cream cheese frosting that was left over from the Easter cake we made.

















It was nice focus on something other than the exams and get out my cake deco kit. I was particularly proud of how the piping turned out on these! Also, I've had some hits and some misses with this cupcake book, but the basic chocolate cupcake recipe seemed pretty solid. I'll probably make these again.























Here they are perched on top one of my many piles of books for the comps. I ended up checking out probably 30 or so books and I initially stacked them in little piles in the living room.





Note the laundry, clean but not folded. That was the way of things during the comps.













Unrelated to the comps, John and I decided to get a small table to put some potted herbs on, and didn't find one we liked. Instead, we bought this new-to-us bookcase and figured it could do the job.


















The herbs looked nice on it, and I realized that I could put my books for the comps on it. Win win! But that window doesn't give the herbs enough light, so they went to live in the kitchen/balcony. Still, the new bookcase is probably our favorite piece of furniture.

John and I planned all our meals for the comps in advance, including this little number: grilled cheese on bread from the farmer's market, and roasted tomato and garlic soup. Nothing like comfort food when you have to write 60 pages in 4 weeks.


















Tuesday we had a brunch with a few friends to celebrate the end of the exams. It involved mojitos in some glasses I bought at Goodwill (score!).

















I've also been experimenting with variations in iced tea, including this one with either mint or basil, plus frozen raspberries. I usually add 3/4 tsp of simple syrup. It's easily spiked with whatever alcohol you prefer!
























So there you have it...a super random post about what we've been eating and doing for the past few weeks. I may write more about the comps themselves another time, but it's still hard to turn my brain off after thinking so intensely for 4 weeks. John and I have a lot of fun stuff coming up in the rest of June and later on in the summer that I will be sure to write about here. John and also joined an ultimate frisbee league, and I have some pictures to show off that I took with our fancy new camera (thanks, John's research grant!). Hope you're enjoying the summer so far!

Coffee Table Decor

Something about the New Year makes me want to redecorate my apartment (it's not specific to this apartment, it happens every year). You have to take the Christmas stuff down and get back to work, even though it's still snowy and spring is literally months away. It's the time of year when I start putting on coconut-scented lotion and visualizing my happy place (Lake Huron...not that it smells like coconuts there, but you get the point).

Between the New Year fever and all the posts on Young House Love, I got the itch to find something aesthetically pleasing to put on our coffee table. Over Christmas it had a red table cloth and some votives. When those were gone, it was just bare and depressing.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I had two jars from Bulk Barn that I bought for housing cashews and almonds. Their latches were really bent, making them a pain to actually open. So instead of scrapping them altogether, I decided to remove their lids and latches (though they still have some metal on them that I didn't bother to take off) and put candles in them. Their bottoms are slightly round, so a candle doesn't just sit in them without some support. Enter a $5 bag of river rocks from Pier 1 (apparently cheaper in the U.S. - $3.50 - surprise, surprise). John asked afterward if I considered just getting rocks from the river in a local park, and I think I'll probably look into doing that in the summer. For now it's out of the question...way too snowy.

Anyways, after constructing my little jar-of-rocks-candle holder, I had this:



















I moved the plant in from our office/spare bedroom, and added a couple of larger coffee table books/magazines, and I was pretty pleased with the result. The only thing that bugged me was the pot our plant sits in. I inherited this plant (and it's twin, now deceased) when my old voice teacher at IU moved to Boston. This plant could survive if I kept it in my closet, and I think it will do even better in all the indirect light the coffee table gets.

I digress.

I wanted to find a more modern looking pot for it, but I figured I might have to wait until stores like Home Depot start getting their garden stuff in. But no!


















I found this little number for $5 at the grocery store. It was probably marked down because it had a few chips. To "repair" them, I used the Young House Love trick of coloring them in with a brown sharpie. If you get really close to the pot, and I pointed them out, you'd probably notice. But they blend in well! A cheap solution to what was cheap to begin with. I didn't feel bad about coloring on my $5 pot.




Before.
















In transit.














After!










I'm pretty pleased with how the pot has worked out. The light bounces off it really nicely when the candles are lit. And although I wondered if the plant would survive the move, it seems to be doing well.




The little mason jar is from some salsa that I bought at the church Christmas Food and Craft Emporium.












It's nice to light the candles and study in this room.

















John and I have plans to paint the coffee table over the summer. He got it during college and it became a sort of fun thing for people to sign when they were at his apartment. Some of the messages are hilarious, but in general, we both feel like it's time for a change. Any color suggestions? We will also probably inherit some green curtains to put in that room in May (I hope!).

Tour of the Tree

**Note: I wrote this last week after a few too many days of being pretty stuck inside our apartment. We left London for a few days and we know there is even more snow waiting for us when we get back. Sigh.**

I thought I'd take you on a personal tour of our Christmas tree. Because you're snowed in for the fourth straight day, too, right? You've stared at the snow, whirling around in the street light until you think you see your own face in it, too, right? Until it looks like it's actually going up, instead of falling?

Okay then!


My mom has given me a Starbucks ornament for the past several years. I'm not obsessed with Starbucks, but the ornaments are kind of snazzy. I probably go there during Christmas more than any other time.




















































































They're American Girl sized!

Most (oh, all) of our ornaments were gifts from either my mom or John's mom.

























John's mom usually had a theme. This sparkly guy was from the year of fish ornaments.
























The year of bears.


























That angel wasn't part of a themed year, and I think she gave it to John independently of the usual ornament tradition.
The ornaments from my mom, besides Starbucks, don't show a pattern. But they're also only a fraction of the ornaments she's given me over the years. We've got this G. I. Joe ornament:

























An Eiffel Tower from my mom, the year I went to France.

























And a beautiful red ball from my Grandma Madge.
























I took these elves from my mom's boxes of Christmas stuff years ago. I can picture exactly where they were in our house growing up: lowest, left-hand side section of the entertainment center in our living room when we lived on Hemlock Lane.




















These houses are from a series that Hallmark started the year I was born. My mom has bought one every single year and usually puts them in my stocking. Every year is a different type of building; a barber shop, a Victorian house, a drug store, other old-timey places.


















We've started calling the living room "the Christmas room." I like to plug in the tree and write my papers there.