Hitched

It’s official: my baby brother is all grown up and married. The wedding was wonderful. I had an amazing time, not only partying with family which is always a blast, but just to see my brother marry the girl he loves. And seeing someone who loves him that much, enough to pledge her love and life to him. At the church, I sat with my family, and there was not a dry eye in our row. What a powerful bond is made in that moment. God no longer views us as two separate individuals but as a husband and wife bound by a sacred covenant, that models and symbolizes the unshakeable, everlasting love He has for us. I love seeing them happy. I have found such joy from marrying the love of my life and I am just overjoyed when those I love experience it as well. And I am just thrilled to have a new sister, Kelly! She’s just awesome, and they’re great together. She's such a fun addition to our family, feels like we've known her forever. I'm so proud of Justin.

For as long as we both shall live

I have always been a crafty person. I don’t really consider myself “artistic”, but crafty, yes. My whole life I’ve taken on little projects. As a kid, my Christmas lists were not filled with toys, but with craft kits. I had an extensive “How to Draw ___” book collection. 

This has carried on to my adult years, and I have had another project in the works for a little while. I have been wanting to do something with our wedding vows ever since we got married. I love our wedding vows. Silly thing to say, I know, but I do. We sort of wrote our vows together, more in the way that we took a whole bunch of already written vows and took out the pieces that we connected with and wanted for our marriage. Things that we wanted to promise to each other in front of family and friends to remember for the rest of our lives.

I have always wanted to post them in our home. They mean so much to me. They symbolize us, as people, as husband and wife, as children of God. So finally, close to four years later, I finally did it! And I’m so happy with how it turned out:

 

 I mulled over the project for some time now, thought of different ways to display it, but I landed on something pretty simple, just off-white letters painted on stained wood, but I love it. It was fairly time consuming, but I love projects like this—projects that that are meticulous and detailed and take forever to complete. I am really good at focusing and I get lost in the projects and will do them for hours and lose track of time and realize I haven’t taken a break or eaten or gone to the bathroom in hours. I get in the zone and I don’t want to stop until I’m done.

I tried out two new things that I don’t have much experience doing but fell in love with: staining wood and transfer paper. Both easy but produce beautiful results. Here’s the process:

1. I bought a bunch of pine boards from Lowe's and nailed them together. There are materials that would be cheaper, but I now live in an apartment and don't have my sander here, so I had my limitations.

 

2. Stained the wood and let it dry. Staining is way cooler than painting. I'm in love. 

3. This step was the longest. I figured out what I wanted on the computer and then printed it all out, cut it down to size, taped it to white transfer paper, lined it up to make sure it would be straight, and got to work tracing the letters. 

4. Then I painted over it, and that's it! Meticulous and time consuming work, but I enjoyed doing it.

Simple, right? But I couldn’t be happier with the results. I love looking at it hanging above the fireplace (which was Andy's role in this, thank you!!!). I love the way it looks, of course, but most of all, I love what it represents and I love the man who said these words to me almost 4 years ago. 

Our Whole Food Journey

It’s pretty obvious there are so many diet plans and food recommendations out there—Barnes and Noble has aisles dedicated to what to eat and how to cook it. Everyone has their opinions on what we should be eating. For the past year, Andy and I have really worked on changing what we eat. I think it may have all started with those darn Netflix documentaries that I tend to get addicted too, but then we read Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food which really changed how we view what we eat.

We work really hard to eat “whole” or “real” foods, which basically means non-processed foods that are as close to their original, natural state as possible. It means that we eat lots of fruit and vegetables, whole grains, organic foods, and so on, and cut out “processed” foods (though this word can mean different things to different people). For us, it means we use whole wheat flour instead of white; brown rice instead of white, 100% whole wheat pasta instead of regular. We use local honey or real maple syrup as sweeteners instead of sugar. We buy real butter instead of margarine or other butter substitutes. It also means we read the ingredient label on foods very closely—if something contains ingredients that we don’t know what they are or would not readily buy ourselves, we put it back. We try to buy locally grown and organic as often as possible.  We buy truly pasture-raised meat, eggs, and milk. We never buy “low fat” or “light” products, but rather whole milk or full fat dairy (eaten in moderation, of course). In a nutshell, the least process options available while keeping in our grocery budget and time constraints in mind.

Now, we’re not legalists about these rules. We “cheat” on this quite a bit. We’ll “splurge” on processed foods occasionally (like ice cream!). Andy and I also believe there are situations in our lives that are not regular occurrences where we feel fine with setting aside these “rules”. We go out to eat at restaurants without questioning our order. We fully participate in potlucks and enjoy whatever goodies others share and often bring dishes ourselves to these “special occasions” that we do not typically make for ourselves on a regular basis. We joyfully and gratefully eat at people’s homes that choose different diets than us. We just try to make the majority of what we eat on a daily basis fit these guidelines. It’s important to us to make intentional rather than absent minded choices about what we eat, and choose the best products available to us that fit our lifestyle and our budget.

Speaking of budget, eating whole foods can be expensive. It just is. Yes, there are ways to be “budget friendly.” Making stuff from scratch can often be cheaper than buying prepared foods. We don’t buy everything organic, rather we pay special attention to the produce that tends to have higher levels of pesticides (there are lists of the “dirty dozen” and “clean fifteen” that we use as guidelines). Buying local foods in season (from farmers markets!) can save money. We eat FAR less meat now than we ever did. Many, if not most, of our meals do not contain meat because good quality, locally pastured meat is expensive. Meal planning and finding budget friendly recipes help. So while there are certainly ways to cut costs, overall, we do spend more on food then we used to. But Andy and I think it’s worth it.  

This way of eating also takes a lot more time and energy. There are far less convenience foods available to us. We prepare many things from scratch, including broths and bread in my bread machine. It takes a lot of work to read through labels, and to try to be constantly aware of what is in the food you eat.  Also fresh, unprocessed food goes bad quicker, which means more planning so as not to waste food.

I want to be very very clear about this, these are personal choices that Andy and I have made for ourselves—we do not judge anyone else for their food choices. I understand fully that there are so many “diets” and eating life styles and different guidelines to follow, a new research study comes out every day that contradicts the previous one. This is just what we have chosen for ourselves. And we have really enjoyed it! It’s rewarding to know that we are making good choices for our health. Cooking is fun for us now! I’ve gotten much better at cooking, and it’s been so fun to experiment and try to new foods and cooking methods and find new recipes (I never anticipated we’d be so eager for the months when watermelon radishes are in season or learn how to make homemade mayo!). We have quite a few friends who also follow similar food rules, so it's been a blast to share recipes and tips (we're always open to ideas and recipes, so please share!). And probably the best benefit—the food tastes wonderful!

simplify

I’ve been thinking a lot about simplifying my life. 

Like most people, I have too much stuff.  Too much stuff literally and too much stuff on my mind.

Too many things. I hate clutter. I am NOT a pack rat. I also don’t get sentimentally attached to things very easily. So this means that I am quick to get rid of things that we no longer use. Despite this, I still find I have too many things. And frankly, not only do I not need it all. I don’t even really want  it. I think the more I have the less satisfied I am. It makes me more focused on things. And I do not want to be that kind of a person. That is not what I was created for.

And too many things on my mind. This has always and forever will be a problem for me. The severity of this comes and goes, but I am always thinking of about 42 things at once and usually anywhere from 1 to 100 steps ahead of where I’m at now. And I am such a planner that my natural state is always focused on the future. Either what’s for dinner tonight, what do I have to get done at work tomorrow, and the longer term…what I want for my life in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years…always planning. But never just being. It makes it very hard to enjoy the present. There was a quote from the series finale of The Office that I liked, “I wish there was some way to know you were in the good ol’ days before you left them”. Someday, I’m going to look back on this time in my life, and feel nostalgic and wish I had just been able to enjoy it more.

At church this past weekend, the our pastor read the famous passage out of Ecclesiastes that has really struck a chord for me over this past year, and continues to kind of reemerge in my life periodically:

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This to me is a gentle reminder that there is a time for everything, and right now, at this time in my life, this is what God has for me. I need to be satisfied with that. 

So back to my point of simplifying.  Moving to Iowa was a really good way to do that. We downsized from a decently sized house into a small apartment, which meant getting rid of stuff and really thinking about what stuff we need and what we don’t.  It also was a good way to go from having lots of activities to well, no activities (now that we’ve gotten pretty established here and made good friends, we do have more going on, but it’s not overwhelming). And I really do feel so blessed with where I am. I really am at peace with it. I am enjoying my friends and my husband and my family (and my dog!). I am. I am starting to think this move is like a reset button on my life in a lot of ways. So while this move forced me to simplify in a lot of ways, unless I really work on my heart and tendencies and character, “stuff” slowly creeps back in.

I’ve been mulling over ways to make this a reality for me, but this post seems to have gotten long and rambling enough for one day, so I’ll share more a different day.

We made it through the winter

It has been a few months since I wrote here…blog fail. Ah well. I thought to write something a few times but I just felt like there wasn’t too much going on that was interesting enough to write about. And please don’t get your hopes up, there still isn’t really. I sort of feel like we hibernated for the winter. But I'm okay with low-key.

I started a new job!  And though I’m only 3 weeks into it, I really like it. It’s with a subsidiary of General Dynamics, which is an information technology company that works on a variety of government contracts. I’m working on a Medicare contract that runs a program for physicians to report “quality measures”, or basically, how well they care for their patients. I’ve worked in a variety of healthcare jobs in the past, and now I’m on a team that administers some of the programs I used to work on the other end of, so it’s really interesting to me. So far I really like the work—I think it suits me well, and I also am really liking the team I’m on. 

Andy and I had a really fun date night last weekend at Valley Junction Gallery Night. Valley Junction is this really cute neighborhood near us with fun stores and antique shops and restaurants, and of course, galleries. So on Gallery Night the shops stay open late and serve snacks or appetizers or wine or hot chocolate. It was such a fun night! My favorite shop was called “Hinge,” –I had to restrain myself because I wanted to get everything there {I asked the cashier if I could just move in}.

[stole these photos from the internet]

 

 

 

But I managed to narrow it down, and we walked away with 2 fun purchases—a giant letter “B” and a little white owl. So then when we got home I needed something to hang on the wall with the B, so I made a couple of wall hangings with burlap and upholstery nails (thank you Pinterest!). Love it. {Though since we live on the third floor and this project involved nailing into the wood frame, I do not believe our downstairs neighbors were nearly as thrilled…}

And then the next night we finally tried Casey’s Pizza. We have been hearing about Casey’s Pizza ever since we moved here. Casey’s General Store is the big gas station chain here…so we were not super excited to try the gas station pizza. But everyone…literally EVERYONE here said it was pretty great, so we finally ordered one, and it was really good! So friends, be enticed to come visit us, because we may just treat you to some Casey's Pizza :) And that was our true Iowa experience for the week.

So there, how's that for low-key? But we've been enjoying ourselves. Enjoying this city, each other, friends, and just this stage in our lives. Also enjoying this spring that has begun! (though I hear it's still winter back in WI. Sorry guys, people here are already mowing their very green lawns!) Things are good.