Warm Weather Dog

Many of you know Arley, our Boxster (she's a Boster Terrier/Boxer mix). She's from South Carolina. We adopted her from a Boston Terrier rescue when we lived in the NC. Because of her southern pedigree, our little dog is a total weather wimp. Temperatures dip below 40 degrees and she starts to think that going outside is akin to summiting Everest.

Snow, you ask? Arley met snow for the first time last year and she's pretty sure snow is Mother Nature's own practical joke. How could anyone be asked to stand on wet, frozen ground for any amount of time, ever in their lives? Seriously.

We're always brainstorming new ways to accommodate Arley's delicate sensibilities. Ok, I try to accommodate and Boyfriend is quick to remind me that "She's a dog, she'll be fine." So not the point, Boyfriend.

Anyway, we have afghans on the couches in which Arley can cocoon herself unless she manages to get a toe caught in the loops and freak out.  So, that's a solution as long as the blankets aren't trying to fight back.

We also, against our better judgment, bought her a sweater. It is important to me that you know that said sweater was on clearance at Target for something like seven dollars. So, there's that. Arley doesn't mind wearing the sweater so when we remember to put it on her, it sort of helps keep her warm. Much to my surprise, it was actually a challenge to find dog clothes (that phrase, man, that phrase) that are intended to keep a dog warm. The vast majority appear to have the exclusive purpose of money-waste. This is a long-winded way of saying that if you wanted to buy Arley this we wouldn't be mad at you.

I'm writing this post from my parents' house in Missouri which is one of Arley's favorite places to visit because while she loves my parents and brother, the main draw is a fireplace! Last Christmas, you could find our dog laying belly first inches away from a roaring fire. I'm pretty confident Arley believes the spot in front of the fireplace to be heaven.

How are you holding up in the beginning of winter? Arley and I are already over it. Have a happy Thanksgiving! 

There's No Magic Like Children's Books

To quote Kathleen Kelly from the Nora Ephron classic, You've Got Mail: "The books you read as a child become part of you in a way that no other reading in the rest of your life does." One of the many benefits of my Master's program is the excuse to read great kids' books. I've been reminded of books I loved as a kid and been exposed to a long list of new greats.

As I'm sure a lot of you were, I was a voracious reader as a kid. My all-time favorite is Harriet the Spy. I really, really wanted to be Harriet M. Welsch when I was ten years old. Unfortunately, my neighborhood was quite boring. I still love a good composition notebook, though.

This is what a hero looks like.
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If I had to choose an author whose work was consistently awesome I'd go with E.L. Koningsburg without hesitation because: From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Escaped adolescence without reading this one? Get thee to the library! Or Amazon, whatever. Should you know a nerdy child at any time in your life, immediately hand them a copy of The View from Saturday and stand back; your work here is done.

I want to go to there. Also, pencil sketches, amiright?
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These, of course, can all be described as one of the greatest kid terms of all time: "chapter books." You remember when you graduated from those flimsy little readers to chapter books, don't you? It was marvelous. You'd passed up the beautiful illustrations of picture books and entered the children's book void. Then, behold! Chapter books!

Life-altering chapter books aside, picture books are their own kind of magical. An easy way to find wonderful picture books is to hit up the list of Caldecott winners. The Caldecott award, in case you're not a children's literature nerd, is an award given for illustrations in literature. Some of my favorite past winners include Make Way for Ducklings, Where the Wild Things Are, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble was written by William Steig, who wrote some of the greatest picture books. He's responsible for Amos and Boris as well as a personal favorite from my childhood, Doctor DeSoto (yes, that's the story of the fox who's a dentist).

Go forth with your library card! Relive your childhood! Be the favorite relative this holiday season! Read!

Thanksgiving

Holiday travel season is quickly approaching! Actually, in our house it's more like Get-all-the-projects-and-papers-done-so-we-can-enjoy-the-holidays time. It's a mouthful. On our docket this year: Kansas City and Springfield, MO with a stop in Columbia for Thanksgiving, a nice long Christmas in KC and back to Indiana to move into our new house just after the new year!

Last year, Boyfriend braved Michigan with me and my extended family. It was fantastic. We ate too much, stayed up late making stupid jokes and it snowed! This year it's my turn to tag along for his family's festivities. We're headed to southern Missouri for Thanksgiving day. Boyfriend has a bunch of family there and we'll all be getting together for too much food and carrying on.

We might head back to Kansas City in time to see the Plaza lighting, which, for non-Kansas City residents is the city's official holiday season kick-off. The Plaza is a beautiful shopping district with Spanish architecture and high-end stores. On Thanksgiving night, hundreds, maybe thousands of Kansas Citians buddle up and mill about until a local celebrity flips the switch and row after row of lights outline the Plaza's buildings. It's one of those simple, pretty holiday moments.

The other side of Eric's family will get together on Saturday where the eating and carrying on will continue! Sadly, Sunday it'll be back to Indiana to kick into high gear and finish out the semester. Whew.

I've had a lot of picture-less posts lately. Allow me to remedy that. Here are some randoms I found on my computer. If you just can't get enough, I'm also on Instagram, Feel free to follow along, I'm pinsinthemap.

We made a feast a couple years ago...for two of us. It was awesome.

Boyfriend and I grinning excessively into my phone

Getting excited about the holidays? Trying not to think about it?

Fun Perks

Have you heard of Influenster? It's a pretty cool thing. They'll send you free stuff to test out (depending on the interests you indicate) in exchange for reviewing the products on their website and social media. Recently, I got a box of goodies from them (they're called VoxBoxes) and the coolest thing in this box was a mascara from Rimmel. I'm a total mascara junkie, so I was jazzed.

It's called RetroGlam because it has this big wavy brush that's supposed to help replicate that 60s Twiggy look. As a mascara junkie, I was skeptical but it's good stuff. Not flaky or too dry and doesn't cost more than your lunch (necessary for grad school life).

Photo from rimmellondon.com

We're having a beautiful Fall weekend in Indiana. I'm going to go enjoy by making pot pie!

Halloween Costumes

Belated Halloween costume photos! Boyfriend was a very....accurate Macho Man Randy Savage. I am proud and a little embarrassed to tell you that I am responsible for adding all that ribbon, fringe, and sequins to that shirt. So. Much. Hot glue. He was the spittin' image. And had the catch phrase down.

My costume was a bit more subdued. Jessie from Toy Story's 2 and 3. I got completely bogged down in getting everything as accurate as possible. I'm obnoxious but if you ever need to borrow a cowgirl shirt, I'm your girl. I was tempted to make Arley a saddle and have her go as a miniature Bulls-eye. Maybe next year.

Speaking of next year, I think we'll have trick-or-treaters at our new house. We've never had trick-or-treaters! Realer posts coming soon!

Home Resources Binder

This is one of a series of posts that mysteriously reverted to draft form. They were actually posted quite a while ago but they're here for now. Sorry about the craziness!


In an attempt to not let this whole homeownership thin go up in flames I am determined to begin organized and stay organized. Luckily, I have a deep, some might say troubling, love of labels, dividers, hole punches and the like. It's nothing to be concerned about, I swear. Really. Whatever.

Anyway, enter the Home Resources Binder (this great idea brought to you by the modern manifest-er of all great ideas, Pinterest!). This is one handy, tidy place to keep all important house-related things. Ours already has documentation about our furnace and water heater, garage door warranty, utility information and potential paint colors. Everything we want to know about our house to keep ourselves sane is kept in there. Want one? Neat. I want you to have one. Behold!

Get yourself a three-ring binder, a package of dividers and a bunch of sheet protectors. Impulse buy some pens or a notebook. You good? Excellent. 

Let's continue. Grab a piece of scrap paper and brainstorm somewhat categories make sense for you. Here are ours:

When you've got an exhaustive list, slip all the relevant documents into sheet protectors in the appropriate categories and bask in your organized glory. 

Mmm, labels. 

To the Ozarks!

This is one of a series of posts that mysteriously reverted to draft form. They were actually posted quite a while ago but they're here for now. Sorry about the craziness!


Boyfriend's parents have a place in the Ozarks in southern Missouri. It's the place where his family congregates several times a year for catching up, overeating, incredibly competitive Monopoly games and the kind of relaxed weekends I thought only existed in movies and on Sandals commercials.

For those unfamiliar with this part of the country, picture hills, not so much rolling as tripping over each other and doubling back, weeds that when left untamed turn into trees and a beautiful, humongous lake smack in the middle of everything. It is as beautiful as it is strange.

The Ozarks is also one of those places with massive resorts and fancy condos just miles down the road from fairly serious poverty. It is, in that way, just like the rest of the state. The wonderful thing about going to the lake is you can do just about anything. Lazy float trip down a cute, little river? Got it. Crazy tubing on the busy lake? Check. Napping on the dock? Yep. Eating round the clock? Of course! This is summer vacation, isn't it?

We headed down for the 4th of July. Arley came with us. She wouldn't miss the opportunity to sit on a dozen different laps in a weekend. She lives for that kind of thing.

Well, the dog got what she came for and so did we. The weekend was a blur of tanlines, food and sleeping in. Vacation success! I'm not getting any better remembering to take pictures...use your imaginations if you want to see me lazy and sunburnt.  

The Kentucky Bourbon Trail

This is one of a series of posts that mysteriously reverted to draft form. They were actually posted quite a while ago but they're here for now. Sorry about the craziness!


A few weekends ago (sorry for the radio silence, by the way. Life, etc.) we got to go on another little beat-the-winter-blues getaway. Boyfriend's birthday was a couple days ago and as my gift to him I arranged a quick trip to bourbon country. For those without booze nerds in their lives, the Bourbon Trail is a small area of Kentucky where half a dozen or so distilleries are located, included some major national brands like Four Roses, Wild Turkey and Jim Beam. We live just a couple hours away so we headed down to Kentucky on Saturday morning. We would be staying in Frankfurt but there are distilleries in several smaller towns close by.

First up was Four Roses in Lawrenceburg, a unique distillery because of it's Spanish architectural style. The tours for most of these places are free so you need to do nothing more than materialize at the top of the hour. The Four Roses tour starts with a short movie and a little history of the grounds. The coolest part of their tour, though, is being able to walk through the actual processing areas. They don't kid around. There are pans of boiling water to watch out for and massive vats of yeasty mixes. The highlight of these tours for bourbon fans of course, is the tasting and at Four Roses you get to taste three different bourbons. I am not a big bourbon fan but even so it is interesting to try different types back to back.

After Four Roses we checked into our hotel and recharged for the evening. I love trips like this because we had a couple things scheduled but no particular plans in between. We consulted UrbanSpoon to get an idea for dinner options and decided to head to a little place in downtown Frankfurt. Pretty good food, really attentive service- as it was St.Patrick's Day weekend the chef brought out a little of his corned beef for us to try. We also got free birthday dessert and we didn't have to listen to anyone sing! Score! After dinner we had a reservation for the ghost tour at Buffalo Trace.

Arriving at Buffalo Trace, we were both taken by the size of the operation. That place is huge! There are not only processing buildings and a visitor's center but a historic home and a large cabin-style banquet facility that was hosting a wedding when we there. As for the tour, we assumed it would be a mix of campfire style stories about the spooky history of the distillery and bourbon info. We were unaware that a lot of the tour rehashes the episode of Ghost Hunters at the distillery. Even better, some of our fellow tour-goers fancied themselves amateur ghost hunters complete with an app to detect...whatever you try to detect when you think your phone can help you hunt ghosts. So, that was...that. The coolest building in my opinion was the storage facility. Rows upon rows, floors upon floors are filled with barrels of aging bourbon. It was a great little weekend away that ended with my acquiring the stomach flu. Awesome.

Back to normal life now. My birthday is next week! Hooray cake!

Two Full-time Graduate Students

For the first time since we started dating, Boyfriend and I are both full-time students. He's a year and a half into a PhD program and I started working on my Master's this semester. Here's what to watch out for if you find yourself similarly afflicted:

We've both stopped doing the little household stuff. I find that being on campus all day and still having homework to do at night is more draining that having a 9-to-5 job that I could forget as soon as I was driving home. Result: mounds of laundry, a sink full of dirty dishes, general grossness.

We have similar schedules. For instance, neither he or I have classes on Fridays. Lunchtime study date? Ok! Running errands at 10am on a Monday? Doable. It's nice to take advantage of the random free time we both have.

Stressful, busy times are now the same for both of us. Midterms? Finals? Those take over both of us, now. I used to be able to shut the door to our guest room/office knowing Boyfriend would be working until the wee hours and go about my evening. These days you'll find us side by side on the couch, computers in laps, bags under eyes.

We're both actively working toward something. I have cut back significantly on freak outs regarding my meaningless job and wasted potential (Yes, I have been a real peach to live with at times). We still take turns being overwhelmed but there's structure, a purpose. I like it.

I'm glad this will not be our situation for more than a couple years. Two stressed out grad students with no one else in the house to keep us in check can get ugly. That and I cannot wait to have my own classroom. Speaking of which, my math lesson looms ever closer. I'm pretty excited.

P.S. Kindergartners are the best people to talk to about Halloween. Seriously.