The Zero Summers (making me one very proud sister)

My classically trained sister now sings for the indie rock band her husband is the drummer for. They are seriously AMAZING. I had no idea my sister could sing like that (i've only hear her sing arias!). Take a listen here.

awkward and awesome thursday

*a blog series started by my fave, sydney p.

awkward:

- the fact that i drank 64 ounces of water and went to the bathroom to pee a total of 8 times today all between the ours of 9am and 1pm. at work. where i am the only female in the entire shop.

- yesterday when i parked directly under a telephone pole and came out to find my car polka-dotted, very densely, in bird poop. the nasty kind.

- losing my license the week i get it and relying on my 6 month temporary one until it expired... which was last week.

- i'm just gonna come out and say it: having my period several days before i even star my placebo pills. what kind of twisted messed up trick are you trying to pull here, mother nature?! cut it out!

- every single time someone new meets cooper: "aw. she's so cute! how old is she?!" or "aw. she's so cute! what kind of dog is she?!" cute things must just always be girls. i thought his brown collar was pretty masculine. he does have a pretty girly whimper, though...

awesome:

- my almost 3 year old niece thinks tiki punch is actually pronounced "sneaky punch"

- getting in and out of the DMV in 15 minutes (Thursday afternoons, people!), new, unexpired temporary license in hand (woohoo!)

- catered work meetings (i love you, 5 star barbecue)

- what i start being when i get sad and stop being sad. (true story.) (i love how i met your mother) (okay. that was super lame. won't happen again, i swear.)

- 3 good hair days in a row, and getting the hang of putting effort into my daily make up routine, rather than throw a few shades of stuff on my face until i look less like a monster.

- husband's test scores this semester. muah! i love you, you little genius, you.

be kind

it was this morning when i found myself waking up on the wrong side of the bed, dragging out the minutes until i absolutely had to get up, or i would go to work looking like ke$ha. i had very clearly woken up on the wrong side. so it's not like i have anything to be grumpy about today. and it was sort of out my hands anyway. i mean, it's not like i consciously woke up this way. in fact, i wasn't even conscious when that decision was made. i was barely conscious when i got out of the bed... you get the point. begrudgingly, i somehow made my way to work after inhaling a few spoonfuls of chocolate chex and kissing husband goodbye. at the office, i did my usual opening routine, doing my best to make it obvious to the man waiting in his car outside that yes, i am here and no, i'm not going to open the door until 8:00. when we actually open. so you can just sit there and practice your patience while you stare at me. i mean, at least make these few minutes of waiting useful, sir. and then, once the morning had slowed down and i had caught up on all my work, i did my bored routine: check email, organize schedule book, read ksl articles online. and that is when i came across an article that was completely irrelevant to me in pretty much every way, but had the best advice i've ever seen written in there right between it's weird mental person metaphors and countless typos (gotta love that about ksl!). all it said was this:

You can be kind regardless of anything. Anything.

i mean, it really is that simple. isn't it? so i'm probably going to let the grumpy take it's course, but i'm not going to be mean about it.

buttermilk pancakes

devin and i are pretty huge pancake advocates. we eat them at least weekly. we've taken to the Krusteaz Blueberry pancake mix, and Bisquick is a decent back-up. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me to make our own pancakes from scratch. mostly because it sounded intimidating and complicated. fact: i was wrong. it's so simple. trust me. the only curve ball ingredient is buttermilk (go figure). which isn't even that out there. it's just something i don't keep on hand, ever... tonight was my first try with these pancakes... and they are mouthwatering. i don't know if i'll ever go back to the powdered "just add water" nonsense.

*disclaimer... i decided last minute to take photos for a blog post, so i only used my phone. and also our kitchen has some pretty weird lighting, so forgive the horrible photos. just trust me when i tell you how amazing they are. you'll just have to see for yourself!

ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

4 tablespoons melted butter + 1/2 teaspoon for griddle

directions:

combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a medium bowl and whisk together.

in a separate bowl, whisk together beaten egg, buttermilk and melted butter.

add wet ingredients with dry ingredients and gently stir together, careful not to over-mix. (batter should have small lumps)

brush hot pan with melted butter before pouring each pancake.

pour 1/2 cup of batter (for a 6 inch pancake) onto griddle. when batter starts to bubble, flip.

devour.

oh, and don't forget the bacon. (we're even bigger advocates for bacon.)

 

my valentine

Devin and I sort of celebrated this Valentine's Day in three's. On Thursday, actual Valentine's Day, a series of unfortunate events landed us both out of work for the day, doing a whole lot of resting. Early, early that morning (like, 3a.m.), Devin got up to use the bathroom and passed out. He smacked his head really hard when he fell and bit his tongue and has a big sore/burn by his left eye. It was pretty terrifying for both of us. So... we didn't really celebrate any further than my poor attempt at heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast (it was the only thing that sounded good to him), some chocolate covered strawberries at night, and watching The Giant Mechanical Man (loved it. watch it). At least we were together for the whole day though...?!

 

Friday, we thought we'd actually celebrate. When I got home from work, Devin was still at the dog park, so I set up a really dorky scavenger hunt around the house with all of his favorite treats and snacks and drinks. Good thing Devin gets me, because he loved it, even though I'm a total goof. We went on our favorite date: up to the city for Thai food and waffles. Seriously, our favorite meal. The yellow curry at ekamai is like comfort food, and the Belgian waffles stuffed with Belgian chocolate at bruges are to die for delicious. After we ate and ran into some friends, we headed over to city creek to walk around and browse the shops. We had a lot of fun in restoration hardware - Devin had never been in the store before! We came home pretty early in the evening and went straight to bed.  

On Saturday, Devin had to work in the morning and wouldn't be home until 3:30. I planned to sleep in and get some things put together for my shop and take the morning easy. What I actually did was watch every Julia Roberts movie on Netflix, a hundred make up tutorial videos on youtube, and ate cereal, so... 

Devin had said before he left that he had a surprise for me tonight. That he felt like we didn't really get to celebrate. I was excited all day and when he got home, we took cooper to the park for about an hour and then we headed to Park City. I was totally lost and confused. I mean, Devin had even put on a nice shirt (which he never does. like, ever!) and we were going up some winding road in Park City with lots of lodges and cabins. I was clueless until we passed a sign listing a lot of different lodges and showing which way to go for which lodge. One of the lodges on that list was the Stag! Devin's brother, Brandon is a chef at the Stag and it's a pretty big deal. You've heard me gush about Brandon's cooking - he's amazing at what he does. And Stag Lodge is pretty prestigious. It's a private restaurant for Deer Valley property owners, which we obviously aren't, so it was a huge privilege to be invited to the restaurant. Devin said he had called Brandon up earlier that day telling him he wanted to surprise me with dinner in park city and asking where he could go. Brandon said there was no way he'd get a reservation anywhere on such short notice, but to give him an hour and "see what he could do." Brandon is amazing. I can't say enough good things about my brother in law. He so quickly became one of my favorite people - it's probably because he is so much like Devin. It all started on my wedding day when he came up to me during the reception, hugged me, said "congratulations, sis" and kissed me on the cheek. He's such a stand up guy. Anyway.. he got us in. The arguably the fanciest restaurant in Park City. It felt like a dream! 

I'm a pretty big foodie, so I tend to get overly excited about particularly good meals, but this is a whole new level of good food. Service was amazing, the restaurant itself was gorgeous, detailed, and cozy, and the food... oh, the food. 

We started out with surprise ors' devours from Brandon: the most amazing, perfectly crisp sesame wings. I could have eaten a bucket. And I'm not a huge wing person. 

For dinner: devin had the all-natural beef burger with caramelized onions, mushrooms, aioli and bacon. It looks so good! I got the adult grilled cheese. sourdough, red onion marmalade (the best part!!!!!), cheddar, bacon and get this: maple syrup. I will never stop talking about this sandwich. I even admitted to Devin that it trumped the sandwich I had on our wedding day (I hadn't had any appetite for about two days, but after we got married and had walked all over the temple grounds taking photos, I had never been hungrier, so we got sandwiches in Nauvoo Cafe with my parents - and it was the most delicious thing I had ever put in my mouth - until now.) It was seriously amazing. Phenomenal. It was not just a sandwich. I'm actually pretty sure it's what Heaven tastes like. 

For dessert, Brandon brought us out bread pudding in chocolate and bourbon sauce. I had never tried bread pudding because it has never appealed to me. This bread pudding changed me, except that I'll probably never eat bread pudding again, because there is no way it will ever live up to this one. 

Best meal of my life. Including our unforgettable meals at Communal, and that incredible dinner at Double Black Diamond Steakhouse in Brian Head. I felt like royalty eating such amazing food in such a nice place, and Devin had definitely pulled off another perfect surprise. I love every second of that evening. And it was so much fun to Brandon at work, totally in his element. He has a seriously talent for cooking. He has also started up his own personal chef service so if you ever want to eat food delicious enough to bring you to tears, visit his website here.

After we ate, we took a stroll up and down main street and weaved in and out of galleries and boutiques. It was a busy night in park city, but beautiful none the less. It always seems like Christmas in that town. I love it. 

I suppose you could say I had a pretty memorable valentine's day this year. Thanks, love, for always thinking of me. Thank you for surprising me, and adoring me. I absolutely love you.

twentysix | eleven

Big news! After about a year and lots of hard work, I have finally opened an etsy shop! I am really excited about it, and feel like it's been pretty well received so far. I have a lot of ideas and plenty more to add to the shop over the weekend, hopefully. It has been so much fun to design my own products and work with my husband, as well. He has been showing me the ropes in taking pictures with his fancy camera and editing with photoshop - I'm still a beginner! So far, this shop is everything I wanted it to be, and it has turned out better then I thought it would! I am so grateful for all the help I have had while getting everything together, and all of the support from my family and friends I've had over the last few weeks! Go ahead and visit my shop! There's more to come - trust me!

 

cooper update

Cooper is almost 7 months old! I can hardly believe it. He is FIVE YEARS OLD in dog years. And trust me, he acts like it. He is the greatest dog. He is so smart and always so sweet. He's definitely a mama's boy. He hasn't learned any new tricks lately, unless you count humping, because we are now officially dealing with that. He is 100% recovered from his neuter - you'd never even know it happened! This week has been pretty rough for him. We have been making him sleep on his own bed (instead of ours) and he is finally getting the hang of it, but he has also been waking us up to go to the bathroom several times a night, which he hadn't done in months (i think it's his revenge). He has also chewed up some carpet this week so.... we'll be using our tax return to replace the carpet in our bedroom! awesome! It's hard to be mad, but he definitely got in trouble. It could have been worse, so I'm not going to dwell. We haven't weighed cooper recently and it seemed like he sort of plateaued around 35 pounds for awhile there, but I bet he's 40 pounds by now. He is sleeping right next to me while I write this, all snuggled up. He is really great at nuzzling his cold wet nose right into you when he is sleepy. It's the cutest thing. And he snores like you wouldn't believe! We've started going to a new dog park, and everybody there loves him and he makes friends with all the other dogs every time, even the ones that are ten times smaller and ten times bigger than he is! We always joke that Cooper really knows the dog park etiquette, because he is such a gentlemen when we go, and always so well behaved. We are pretty lucky to have this little guy.