I think I'm officially in the everyone-is-having-babies phase of my life. Between September and March of this year seven of my friends will have babies, it's so exciting! If I want to stick to my hope of making each of my friends homemade baby gifts I need to get serious, and fast. I might even need some assembly line action! For inspiration I've been leafing through Simple Sewing for Babies, which always makes me excited to get out my sewing machine, and taking stock of my fabric stash. I know I can whip up a tag blankie in just a... Read more →

One will make you laugh, the other will make you cry. The Long Road Home by Gail Caldwell (you can read an excerpt here) will make you cry. When I visited D.C. for a wedding in September the friend with whom I shared a hotel room had just finished this book and lent it to me for the plane ride home. It's a memoir of a friendship, a best friendship, between two women and of the loss the author feels when her friend dies of cancer. I usually stay away from heavy topics like this in books but I'm so... Read more →

{home in Austin} Hi! Hi! I've missed you! How are you? Confession: last weekend I made a secret trip to Austin! About a month ago I was suddenly missing Austin, my parents, and two of my closest girl friends. I was emailing a lot with my friend one week and wanted to much to just hang out and have a good catch up. So I thought, why not?! The secret part of the trip is because only four people knew I'd be in town. Since I've been in Arizona there have been bachelorette parties, weddings, holidays, and a music festival... Read more →

I'd love to be a canning, preserving, and pickling kind of gal. I love the self-sufficiency of it, or the idea of it. I've read books and websites and even jarred chutney with a friend one time but still don't have confidence in myself. The possibility of something going wrong and canning something that isn't safe to eat is definitely intimidating! But when we got pickling cucumbers in our Chow Locally share last week I decided to give pickles a go. Pickles seem straight forward enough and as I started reading recipes there were several that did not include boiling... Read more →

Chris and I both have the bad habit of checking our phones right after we wake up. Chris checks his email, looks at his calendar for the day, and then reads ESPN (if it's basketball or football season). I check out new blog posts on Google Reader, see what's happened on Instagram, and then check my email. All of this usually before 5 AM (have I mentioned that we get up crazy early?). It's something I don't like but haven't really tried to stop…until now. This past week we both read the New York Times article on busyness and I've... Read more →

Chris and I got up early - even for us! - to drive an hour across the valley to the 4th of July Summer Series #3 race that started at 6:30 am. It was perfect weather for a race: overcast, temp in the 80s, and an almost cool breeze. Since this race was a 4-miler and I've only gone on a few runs since the last race I didn't feel I was up to hitting a 7:35 pace. So I didn't make my goal of getting faster at this race but I did have a great run and my finish... Read more →

In the hopes of reading at least one awesome book this month I checked out a short stack of books from the library today: Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott (on audio) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart My ideal situation is usually to be listening to an audio book while reading at least one other book. We'll see how this trio works out... In other news, tomorrow's the 4th of July! Oh, and there's a chance for rain! A Wednesday holiday is kind of weird but a break mid-week could be perfect.... Read more →

This was what the evening sky looked like this week as a dusty haboob rolled through. This is the haboob we got last year - it was crazy! There's an official "monsoon season" in Arizona that starts around mid-June and brings dust storms, evening thunder and lightening and a handful of stormy days. After months and months of clear blue skies it's so nice to have some actual weather. My window at work faces east, where the storms usually build, and I'm looking forward to watching some summer rain roll in. Rain is certainly an event here. At work you... Read more →