Link

I think I've found a new favorite website. I seriously sat and read this blog for three hours yesterday (after I had all my chores done!). Now I'm spoiled for choice about which project to take on next..

Craft Gossip has something for everyone, no matter what sort of creative things you like to do.. or even if all you like to do is sit and fantasize about the creative things you will do someday when you can.

I'm excited about moving out of the "sitting and fantasizing" category and back into the "able to do crafts whenever I feel like it" category.

Thoughts

I've spent the last hour or so in the kitchen, scrubbing pots, scrubbing counters, and dealing with rancid food that didn't get cleaned out of a pyrex dish soon enough. Let me tell you, rotten curry is NOT a good smell. I also cooked spaghetti for my lunch. By the time I was done with an hour of running the hot water and boiling more water in a pot, the kitchen was so hot that when I opened the freezer to get ice cubes out, the clouds of "steam" that poured out of it were so thick that I couldn't see.

These are the things I learned today:

• When my kitchen is clean, I feel dramatically better about life in general
• It is always better to wash things immediately after they get dirty, especially if you are OCD and prone to minor panic attacks about touching mold or rotten food. (You'd think I would have internalized that one sooner. Sorry, mom and dad.)
• Cooking isn't as much fun when it's only for me
• If you don't like pears, but you buy them for your husband and he eats all but one of them and then loses interest, eventually that lone pear will start to rot, until its insides liquefy and turn into something that smells very much like vinegar, and looks very much like maple syrup. This will drip out of your fruit bowl and onto your cutting board, and you will feel stupid when you finally find it under an avocado and realize that that's why you can't get rid of the fruit flies in your kitchen. Ew.
• Housework is much better when, upon its completion, you can flee back to your air-conditioned bedroom

This is what God is teaching me about marriage, love, and dying to self: that I, who hate making beds (especially beds that are merely a mattress on the floor and are up against a wall), will make the bed when I get up, not because I was asked, but because when my husband comes home from work tonight, I want him to have an inviting place to lie down and rest.

Lumberton

So, for the last weekend of our honeymoon, we decided to go to a Live-Action Roleplaying event. This is something Dave has done before, and I never had. Essentially it involves spending the weekend at a Girl Scout camp, dressing up in costumes, getting foam swords, and fighting people dressed up like monsters.

It was so fun that I feel sort of guilty about it.

I did bring my camera, but didn't take any pictures. However, our friend Jill also brought her camera, and she did actually take pictures... so here some are.

Dave models the linen tunic I sewed for him
on my new sewing machine


Making music on blades of grass... music
that sounded like dying geese.



Apparently, I wasn't able to blow on blades
of grass with a straight face.


I know I look really angry here, but I'm not. It
was just incredibly hot, and the sun
was in my eyes.

I admit, I was dubious about the whole exercise, but it was tons of fun. There's another event in August that I think we're going to try and go to again. I've got a couple of modifications to make to Dave's costume now that I've seen it in action--the snaps need to be moved a little and reinforced, etc... but all in all I was pleased with how it came out, especially given that I haven't sewn a piece of clothing other than that one in about four years.

Plus, I got to dress up like a gypsy and sing folk songs to the most appreciative audience I've ever had. How could I not want to do that again?

The Honeymoon Wraps Up

Well, it's time to settle down into real life again, I suppose. We're coming up on our 1-month anniversary of married-dom. I'm not entirely sure how it went by so quickly, but it's probably because we were so busy being totally freaking rad that we forgot to notice the passage of time.

We've been enjoying our wedding gifts--some, I confess, more than others. For instance, the two lovely clocks we got still aren't on the wall... but our salad bowl gets used nearly every day, all of our towels have been through the rotation at least once, and our sheets are soft and comfortable. The two dutch ovens we got have been seeing a lot of action, and I spent two full days glued to my new sewing machine, making a LARP costume for Dave.

Highlights of the honeymoon:

1. Excellent food! I keep meaning to take pictures and then not doing it, which I think I'll regret later. I've been trying to make bread, and we've been doing almost all of our shopping at Whole Foods (with the occasional jaunt to Giant Eagle for dry goods). We've done a good job of sticking with mainly fresh produce, usually local and/or organic. Very little processed food. Very lots of deliciousness. For instance, last night we rubbed a chicken down with rosemary, sage, thyme, coriander, garlic, and olive oil, then roasted it in the dutch oven and made couscous in the broth when it was done cooking. Now we have half a chicken left--the meat for chicken salad, the bones for stock. We've also identified several restaurants that we really like, including Lemongrass (for Thai food) and the Jerusalem Grill (very very tasty falafel).

2. Lots of sleep. This is a big one for me, because historically I have wicked insomnia. Well, no more. It's boring to stay up once Dave is ready for bed, so I don't. And it's a lot easier to fall asleep when someone else is being sleepy next to you and insisting that it's time for bed. I've gone from an average 3-4 hours of sleep a night with lots of waking-up in between to an easy 9-10 hours a night.

3. Trip to New York. We went up to ye olde homestead in upstate New York for July 4th to put in an appearance at my family's yearly reunion. Highlights-within-highlights include a picnic at the rest stop overlooking Chautauqua Lake, illegal home-launched fireworks, really good catered food, Scrabble, and a comedic little interlude involving us, naptime, a locked door, a trio of 13-year-old cousins, a video camera, and the roof outside of our windows.

4. Movies. We saw Public Enemies and Harry Potter in the theater. I recommend either or both to any reader of this blog. They were lots of fun. We've also been watching lots of movies at home, thanks to Netflix and the awesome TV my oldest brother and his wife gave us for our wedding.

5. Trip to West Virginia. This is probably going to warrant an entire post on its own once I get photos. We went to a Live Action Roleplaying event down in Wheeling, West Virginia. That was pretty much the final Big Event of our honeymoon, which is funny given that the camp rules prohibited us even from kissing or hugging during the weekend. That being said, it was tons and tons of fun and I want to go do it again, maybe when the weather cools down to a more reasonable temperature.

6. My birthday! As of yesterday, I am 25 years old. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction at having got married before this happened. Dave gave me a new sewing box for my birthday, after watching me ogle the ones at JoAnn's for an unreasonable amount of time. For someone who doesn't sew himself, he showed excellent taste. It's roomy and attractive and will match the other things I own. Win.

We've been slowly (and I do mean slowly) unpacking things, washing all the clothes that have sat in garbage bags for the last month while we moved and got married and did more important things, and organizing our kitchen. We're getting to know our neighbors. There's a couple living on the second floor who seem to be a lot of fun, and a very friendly guy lives on the corner just across the street from us. He came over yesterday to introduce us to his dog, Puff Daddy, and to inform us that he lives in the house where Paul Newman was born.

Maybe now that I'm all caught up it will be easier to go back to individual blog posts about one thing instead of these massive catch-up summaries.

Et voila. Our honeymoon.

Wedded bliss

So, I'm pleased to report that being married is The Best Thing Ever. Seriously. Couldn't be better, unless perhaps we were independently wealthy and Dave never had to leave and go to work.

We've been enjoying our wedding gifts heartily, from the artwork on the walls to the dishes in the kitchen to the towels in the bathroom. I feel so loved and taken care of, and surrounded by the love of our friends as well as the love of my husband.

Speaking of experimenting with wedding gifts, we got a cast iron dutch oven and I decided to use it to try making the New York Times' No Knead Bread recipe. We had Dave's brother over to sample it (along with some pate, merlot, and camembert).

I'm going to be making a post about the recipe and the process, because it's so easy that nobody who reads this blog has an excuse not to try it for themselves and enjoy its deliciousness. Seriously, we've been seriously discussing just not buying store-bought bread anymore.

But that post isn't ready yet (the pictures need to be edited). In the meantime, I will give you this spoiler--a photo of my beloved in our home, getting ready to share good food with people we love. I don't know that I could get a much better portrait of him--wifebeater, tattoos, good food, good drinks, good friends, and a radiant smile. Throw in some books and there's the love of my life.

Showing off the first meal ever
served to guests in our home

I really like it when things that I think are going to be really good turn out to be not just really good, but mind-blowingly wonderful.