Phoenix!!

(source)

If you follow me on twitter than you know I have successfully landed in Phoenix AZ last night! I am here with some of my absolute favorite ladies to do a little bachelorette party fun starting tomorrow! Once the long weekend is over I will be sure to share some pictures of all the fun, but I have a feeling there will be plenty of instagram photos happening before then, if you want a sneak peek.

Hope everyone is having a great week so far! 

x's and o's  

Sunday Snapshot #24 (Video Edition)

(Here is the link just incase it doesn't embed for some people) While getting some links of our work for some clients the other day, I came across one of my all time favorite videos Will and I have done. I hadn't watched it in quite a while so when I hit play I feel in love with it all over again. I feel so weird being like "Hey check out this super awesome video Will and I made because it's amazing," but seriously check it out! I think it's really amazing and would still think so even if I hadn't made it. 
We've been so busy with other jobs and the house that we haven't been able to do videos like these as much as we would like, but I have a strong feeling George Withburn as Javier Cottentail is going to be making his grand return in the near future! 
x's and o's

Baked Apple

As you know we have about a zillion apple trees on our property and the majority of the green apples are ripe. This means pretty much everything I make is going to start having apples incorporated, which is a-ok with me because, come on, who doesn't love apples. So when I heard Will has never had the pleasure of having a baked apple, I knew this was the next item on the list to make. 

Ingredients (adapted from this recipe)

4 green tart apples
4 Tbs strawberry jam
4 Tbs flour
8 Tbs butter cut into cubes
9 Tbs brown sugar
1 1/2 cups oats, uncooked
1 Tbs cinnamon
1/2 Tbs nutmeg
6 Tbs vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Put your oats, sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour, and nutmeg in a mixer and mix well. Core your apples and put a tablespoon on jam in each of the holes. Place mixture on top of each of the apples. Place the vanilla on the bottom of your pan, and place the left over oat mixture on top the vanilla.

Cook for 35-45 minutes, or until apple is soft. These guys are pretty darn delicious and filling so you might want to share one with someone! What are some of your favorite apple recipes, I can always use more :)

We are still waiting for the other shoe to drop with work, which has been both nice and terrifying because the longer the clients wait to start the more crammed we are going to be with the wedding. I think my biggest worry is us having to do work up until the day before the wedding, I doubt that will happen but that doesn't mean I can't worry about it haha.

Hope everyone is having a nice Saturday.

x's and o's

Down to Business

(I am kind of in love with the office cat meme!)

So yesterday we found out that we have two huge jobs for the month of September, which is absolutely amazing when you work freelance. The only downside is that we had to come back to Will's parent's house because their internet is far more reliable than what we can get on the mountain. This means we will not be able to work on the house the month before the wedding! Somehow everyone didn't get the memo that Will and I are getting married in October and need to have time to get things ready and, you know, finish building the house. Couldn't they have just waited until after the wedding to give us all this work? At least we should be able to pay for some people to get some work done while we aren't there and then hopefully we can work like mad the week and a half before the wedding and finish up, fingers crossed! 

Poor Will is going to handle most of the work next week as I am flying out to Arizona for some bachelorette fun with some of my absolute favorite ladies. I am so excited to get some quality time with the ladies, but I can't help but feel guilty about being absent from work in the beginning.  Hopefully the work won't be too bad the first week, and I can jump back in and carry some of the weight. So if I am a little silent over the next couple of weeks you will know why, but I am hoping not to be.

x's and o's

We Did It!

(click on the image to see a larger version of Will's photo)

We got the whole backyard graded and planted with seeds! Granted we still have the whole front yard to get done, but whatever the backyard is done! We probably put in over a week's worth of work into it, and boy was it tiring. Of course, half the days we worked it was super hot with no clouds in the sky (unlike the finished photo above). Now we just need the grass to grow, because this is still our top location to have our wedding ceremony. However if the grass doesn't come in in time, we have another wonderful spot picked out. 

I guess my body is not used to so much racking because it is pretty much dying! I'm talking about back muscles I've never felt before are hurting. Will makes fun of me (in a nice way) when I complain because he has been doing this type of work all his life, so he is pretty darn used to sore muscles. 

The rest of today I am just cleaning our little cabin home and letting my muscles take a little breather, before getting back into the house and tackling the next project on our long list of things we need to get done. 

Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday! 

x's and o's

Apple Cinnamon Wheat Pancakes

When Hannah and Eric were here a couple of weeks ago we did our mountain breakfast tradition of Apple Cinnamon Wheat Pancakes. With so many apples ripe up here already I can constantly trying to find new yummy recipes I can incorporate them into, and these pancakes are one of my favorites! But fair warning they are extremely filling and can sneak up on you, so try your best not to devour all of them in one sitting.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour (I used some really wonderful kind from Trader Joe's it was something like 100% Whole Wheat White Flour, and it worked wonderfully)
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg
3 Tbs butter, melted
2-3 green apples cut into thin slices
cinnamon to taste (I usually use 1-2 Tbs)

Lightly grease up a frying pan or griddle and put on medium heat. Use a large spoon or ladle to put batter onto the griddle. Then place apple slices on top of the batter and spoon some more batter covering most of the apples. Cook until golden brown on each side (or cooked in the middle).

Serve with syrup and a glass of milk and enjoy!

Oh man just writing this post is making me so hungry for these guys, I think I might have to make some tonight for some breakfast for dinner.

Today I will be outside once again grading top soil and planting grass seeds, definitely not the most fun thing in the world but it has to be done. And of course once all the grass starts growing in it will be worth all the hard work we put into it.

Hope everyone have a great Monday!

x's and o's 

Long Time No See

I just looked to see when the last time I did one of these outfit posts and it was November of last year! Well I guess that is kind of expected when you are building a house and pretty much everyday consists of work jeans and a work shirt. There aren't very many variations. But today we had to go out to Winchester for Will's eye appointment so I decided I was going to get a little dressed up. I thought it would be the perfect time to do another outfit post, however I was fighting a losing battle with rain, so I was only able to get a couple.

jacket//Old Navy
dress//Forever 21
leggings//Target
shoes//Gap

I love this dress mainly because it's just so simple and fun! Oh and it has a zipper, I have a weird love of dresses with zippers in cooperated on them. 

Wigs just kept mewing at the screen door until I picked her up and let her see what was going on. She can be quite demanding sometimes.

I must say that I still feel incredibly goofy when posing for photos, maybe it gets better the more you do it? Anyone else feel that way about taking pictures of themselves?

Can I just say how happy I am that jean jackets are back in style! As a small kid I was obsessed with them, and have at least five different styles in my closet, including one with the Looney Tunes logo stitched on the back (yup I was super awesome, haha). And I'm all kinds of excited that the weather as of late has allowed me to wear said jacket!  

How Does Your Garden Grow?

So I haven't done much of an update on our little greenhouse as of late. I had planned to take some pictures of our out-of-control squash plants, because they had seriously grown to a ridiculous height. But as I mentioned the other day we were without power up here, meaning our greenhouse was not getting watered. Our over achieving squash plant sadly bit the dust (as did a lot of other plants), but not before leaving us some wonderful gifts! 

More squash, some peas, a scallion, tomatos, and quite possiblely the world's smallest watermelon.

Our poor watermelon plant never got replanted into one of our ground planters from its large pot, so it got stunted. It still gave us a pretty tasty little watermelon though.  

Oh these peas were so wonderfully yummy! 

I ended up cutting up most of these guys and putting them in our pasta sauce last night. There is nothing quite as wonderful as having fresh veggies in a pasta sauce.

We spent the majority of yesterday raking out the top soil, and we are only a fifth of the way done, haha. I don't think I really realized how much grading we did a couple of weeks ago. But we are primarily working on the areas where we're planning to have the wedding so the grass can get planted. Hopefully this weekend will bring us some cooler weather so the raking won't be quite as miserable.

How's your garden doing?

x's and o's

Photo an Hour(ish)

Yesterday Will and I drove back to the mountain from DE, and I thought it would be fun to try to do a photo every hour. Well I didn't end up getting a photo every hour mainly because I kept forgetting to take a picture, haha, but here are the ones I did end up remembering to take:

8:00

This is where Wigs sleeps every night, and in the morning she likes to look at my computer with me. Also please forgive everything going on with my face it was early, haha! 

9:30

Adding appointments to the good old Google calendar.

11:30

And we are off. Wigs got her safety harness and is in her favorite place to travel, Will's lap.

12:30

The travel meal, Veggie Burger from Burger King it's pretty much the only time we ever eat fast food.

2:00

Driving over the Chesapeake bay!

3:30

GPS taking us on a new faster route!

5:00

I think Wigs is pretty ready to be done driving.

6:30

Got to the house only to find out the electric company came early to hook up our permeant power,  and in the process cutting our temp power. This meant our fridge had been powerless for the past 4 days. so as you can guess it reeked! Ugh we are still cleaning it.

8:00

Super amazing cloud formation. 

So our trip back to t he mountain went pretty well minus being verbally accosted by some crazy lady at the grocery store (it was the most terrifying and funnest thing to ever happen to me) store and our really gross fridge. We are happy to be back in our little cabin home, but I think Wig-wog misses having a huge room to run around in, but soon she will have a whole house!

How has your week been going?

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Wednesday!

x's and o's

Sunday Snapshot #23 (and a Guest Post)

July 2009

This is from my first trip to Maine with Will. We are staying at his aunt's cabin who had an incredible tire swing, and thought it would be wonderful to get a picture of use swinging together. Well, this is what came out, haha. Even though it is blurry and Will's head is half cut off I absolutely love it! It was just so much fun getting to swing around on it, we felt like little kids all over again. One day when the house is all done hopefully we can find a tree big enough to hold our own tire swing! 

What are some of your favorite childhood activities that you still do? 

Also be sure to check out the guest post I did over at the adorable Aarika's blog. I don't want to give too much away but it does involve some delicious snicker doodles!

Hope everyone is having a great Sunday. We have been enjoying our little DE visit, but I think Wig-wog is having the best time of all with such a big house to run all around in, hehe.

x's and o's

If You Really Knew Me

I have seen this little thing going around and when I spotted it over at Beca's blog I thought I would partake because honestly it seems like fun. 

If you really knew me...

You'd know that I split my lip when I was little, and now when I smile big one side of my smile is always bigger than the other. So if I tried to take a legitimate smiling picture it looks like I'm being silly. So I tend to do closed mouth smiles, which I think come off as smirky. Oh well what's a girl to do? Hehe. 

You'd know that sometimes I get horrible giggle fits that I cannot stop for the life of me. And when they get really bad I start to cry. So I look like a complete nutter laughing and crying uncontrollably. 

You'd know that I have a really hard time letting go of friendships, even if they are toxic ones. I've talked about it a little before about there being this weird divide of friends, those before my mom got sick and passed away and those after. The friends from before are the hardest for me to let go of. 

You'd know that I become very loyal to specific actors, so much so that I say things like "I sure hope Kyle Chandler's (coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights) movie career takes off, he sure seems like a swell guy, I really want him to do well." Yup I'm one of those weirdos. 

You'd know that I pretty much put pepper flakes in everything I cook. It's got to the point that when it isn't in something Will asks where they are, haha. What can I say I love spicy things. 

You'd know that I come from a family of very distinguished lawyers and judges, but chose not to go into law but rather got my BFA in photography. Then started to work with Will creating/shooting commercials and other varies video projects.

You'd know that I could hardly sleep the night before we went to meet/bring home Wig-wog and woke up at 5AM eagerly waiting for everyone else to get up so we could go! It's really kind of sad how excited I was (wait a second no it wasn't because it was one of the best days ever!) 

You'd know that I have a love/hate relationship with my jowls. They are exactly like my mom's, which makes me love them because when I look at myself I can see her in me. I hate them because I think they are just huge, like you can store three bags of nuts in them for winter huge. But as I grow older I am really starting to embrase them more, they are the jowls my mother gave me and they aren't going anywhere.

You'd know that last year Will and I did so much traveling we were never home for longer than a week or two before we had to go to another state for work or some reason. It was a lot of fun traveling all the time but it sure got tiring. 

You'd know that if left to my own devices I would cook a new type of cookie/pie everyday. Baking is one of my favorite ways to relieve stress and is a fun creative outlet for me. I absolutely love coming up with new recipes, and if I had more people to try them out on I wouldn't have to worry about gaining tons of weight. 

I think that is probably a good amout of things for now. I really had a blast with this so you might just see it pop up every now and again. 

Tell me something about yourself! 

x's and o's

I tried to get a picture with little Wig-wog but she was not having her picture taken today. So this is all I got, which I think might just be picture gold! I think she was still grumpy at me about the medicine I had to give her earlier. I tried to tell her it was for her own good, but you know kittens, hehe.

A House in Progress

Will and I are in DE visiting his parents for the week, and I had every good intention of bringing the photos of the house with me to do a blog post about what we have done recently, but I forgot. Well I didn't really forget, they are all on my desktop which is what I usually use, I just didn't transfer them over to my laptop, oops. I do have some photos on my phone that I will share, but I promise there will be better quality ones once we get back to WV next week. 

Before... (all the below pictures were taken towards the end of last year and the year before in the fall months)

There was lots of dirt mounds everywhere from when we first started building the house.

We had tons of scrap wood covering the yard, and an incredibly cool tower we would use to look down into the valley and across the mountain. But it started to become a little too wobbly so we took it down and now use the cupola to see everything. 

After... (I just put a whole bunch of phone photos into a panorama pretty quickly so that's why the there are blocks that look all different)

All that dirt will hopefully be grass by the wedding! Eeek so nerve-wracking! And that mound of dirt there blocks the windows from the road so it will be a quite little sitting area once the grass starts to grow. It should also be very pretty to look at too. 

We are planning on having the ceremony here over looking the valley. And then the reception will be just to the right of this picture in the apple orchard (which you can see in the above picture).

It's pretty funny to look at the after pictures because it kind of looks worse than the before with no grass, haha! But trust me this is a lot better, you don't have to worry about tripping on things quite as much, and you can see down into the valley from the living room now. It's pretty darn wonderful!

Now that the outside is pretty much done (minus the grass) we are focusing all of our efforts on the inside of the house! I can hardly wait to get it all plumbed and wired. I don't think I will ever take having running water and an oven for granted ever again, haha! Oh those things are going to happen so soon I can almost taste it! Haha I just realized that every other sentence in this post has ended with an exclamation point, and as it should really because this is exciting stuff (at least for me, hehe)!

I hope everyone is having a great Friday!

x's and o's

Also thank you to all of you who have participated in the survey, I'm already getting back some great information. Like how you love hearing about the house building, which makes me so happy because it is such a big part of our lives!

A Little Survey

With so many new faces around here I want to get to know a little about you all, so I was hoping you would will be willing to take this super quick survey. I swear it's short, I'm talking about only six questions and a space for you to ask me a question and/or leave a comment.

And don't worry I'm not planning on changing/formatting my blog, I'm just curious what you guys enjoy about it :)

Thank you in advance! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday! 

x's and o's

Apple Pie!

When we first found this property one of the very first things that came to mind was something along the lines of 'Oh my goodness I can make so many apple pies!' I mean who wouldn't think that when buying several acres of an old apple orchard. Sadly it has taken me about three years to finally get to make an apple pie from our apples. The first year we owned the property we ended up getting up here a little late in the apple season and decided to make apple cider with the still viable apples. Then last year there wasn't a single apple on the entire mountain, due to a  late frost that killed all of the blossoms. 

This year I decided was the year to give it a go, despite not having a real oven (next week we should have the permeant power put in so I can finally hook up our real oven, which makes me so excited!!) So I went a head and made the apple pie in our very temperamental toaster oven. I have burned many a baked good in that thing, so I just altered the heating directions a little and luckily it worked perfectly this time! I was beyond excited especially because I had a little audience anticipating some yummy pie. 

Normally when I make apple pie (or any pie for that matter) I use this pie crust recipe, because it is the greatest pie crust ever! Unfortunately we don't have a really great prep area in our kitchen as of right now, plywood counter tops ugh, so I just used some store bought pie crust (Food Lion brand) and it tasted pretty yummy. If you end up making that crust for this pie be sure to double the recipe so you have enough for the top crust too. Alright, now that I am sure I've got your mouth watering with these pictures, on to the recipe! 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

3 Tbs flour

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup white sugar 

1/2 cup brown sugar

10-12 small-medium tart green apples (I love tart and sweet combo)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Cut your apples anyway you like them, I like to have the pieces pretty thick and have the skin still on them. Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Once melted add in flour and stir unti mixture thickens. Add white and brown sugar and stir while bringing to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer. You want it to be a thicker syrup mixture. 

Put your crust in a well greased pie dish. Fill with apples and create a kind of mound. Next pour your sugar syrup over top slowly as to make sure it does not run off. Be sure to cut some vent holes on your top curst before coving the apples. 

Cook for 30-40 minutes or until crust is golden brown. 

I originally found this recipe here. 

Let me know if you try this recipe out, I would love to hear if you guys love it as much as I do! 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Tuesday! 

x's and o's

And I'm Back!

Phew, it has been a loooong couple of weeks, between work and the house I am absolutely exhausted! Thankfully both Will and little Wig-wog let me sleep in today and I am feeling a little bit more rested. We got a lot of the dirt work done around the house (I will do a big house post later this week), which I am all kind of excited about. Not only is our beautiful view now unobstructed, but we have it all ready to plant the grass, which will hopefully will be grown in enough for the wedding! Please keep your fingers crossed for that one, cause otherwise we will have one dusty wedding haha. 

Our super long work week came to the most delightful end when our amazing friends Hannah and Eric came up for some quality time, and of course some super yummy foods! The weather has been so nice lately that we got to do both dinner and breakfast outside, it was pretty splendid! 

Our grill is pretty much on it's last leg (haha get it). It was something that Will's dad got for free and then brought it up for us to use. It works pretty darn wonderfully as long as you don't mind how it looks. 

Will was our grill master general for the evening. Unfortunately by the time the food was ready I was too hungry to remember to take some pictures of our wonderful meal. But let me tell you it sure was delicious! 

Some of our green apple trees are already ripe so I thought it would be nice to make an apple pie, and I must say it is the best toaster oven apple pie I've ever made. Recipe coming soon. 

The next mornings meal was just as wonderful as the night before. We decided some apple cinnamon wheat pancakes would be rather yummy, and boy were they. Recipe coming soon too. I hope you all are enjoying all the recipes I am sharing, because I love making them! 

The pancakes were so filling that two were plenty for everyone so Will and I got to have the left overs this morning. 

Hannah enjoying our breakfast outside.

It was such a great time getting to hang out with some wonderful friends and getting to relax a little, especially after a long and stressful week. It was a lot of fun catching up, watching bad movies, and just filling our bellies with lots of delicious foods. We don't get hang out with our friends often enough so it is always extra fun when they come up for a visit!

I must I am happy to have the time again for some more regular posts. It's kind of funny how much I missed updating and reading others blogs. So tell me what have you been up to lately? 

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

x's and o's

Holy Moly!

Oh my goodness guys, I have been so incredibly busy with working on the house that I just realized I've surpassed 200 followers! I am all sorts of excited! Never in my wildest dreams did I think when I started this blog it would grow the way it has. I feel absolutely honored for every comment I receive and the wonderful blog friends I have made. Thank you all so much!

x's and o's

PS Things are starting to wind down on our big push on the house so hopefully by next week I can get back to a little more regular posting schedule, which will include house and greenhouse updates!