Camo, Cold, and Caribou Coffee

Thanksgiving. A time most people associate with family and going home.

Unless, of course, you're me. Like any reasonable person would do, I forsook the relative warmth and manageable travel distance of my home in Michigan for the frozen, barren wasteland of Minnesota to celebrate the customary giving of thanks with my housemate, Emily. After setbacks from standstill traffic in Illinois, crawling along through dense fog at 4:00 in the morning, and spending 12 hours folded like a pretzel in the backseat of our crowded SUV, I had a revelation.

I have serious issues.

Puling into her driveway at 5:30 am on Wednesday, we were worn out and exhausted, but so happy to be there and excited for the five days we had ahead of us. Our weekend would be devoted to eating, baking, decorating, and making every effort to forget for a time that we are senior college students with finals right around the corner. Challenge accepted.

Thanksgiving day was absolutely perfect. Starting with coffee and sugar-coated cinnamon rolls and ending with parlor games in the living room, the day in-between was filled with family, football, and food, parades, powder snow, and lawn golf, topped off and tied together with the best that life has to offer: laughter and love. Some people are blessed with the gift of hospitality, and Emily's family overflows with a triple portion of this quality. As Em's baby niece cooed with happiness and her brother and dad joked back and forth at the dinner table, I leaned back in my chair, belly full of food and heart full of joy, feeling completely welcomed, content, and enveloped by a sense of acceptance and security. Scientific fact: Minnesota is a frozen tundra because all of the warmth is tucked away in the hearts and homes of its inhabitants.

 

I am a Christmas purist. Firmly set in my belief that Christmas should not be celebrated until after the fourth Thursday in November, I Grinchishly scorn all Christmas food, music, and decorations until that blessed day. After that? Ho, buddy, you better watch out and better not cry because the crazy Christmas lady is bout to bust out her moves.
With all of this seasonal fervor, it's rather surprising that I have never been to a tree farm. (Shocking, I know. Don't judge.) So you can imagine my excitement when, the day after Thanksgiving, Emily and I trekked out in the Minnesotan wilderness with her dad to hunt down that perfect coniferous symbol of peace and goodwill toward men.

There was just one thing I didn't take into account: Minnesota is cold. Very cold. Like, make you want to die cold. According to my dear friend, it's okay because there are different kinds of cold. (Quoting her, "at least it's not a bitter cold. This is more of a numbing cold.") People be crazy. Cold is cold, and all of it is bad. My enthusiasm for our hunt was slightly dampened when the frigid air ate through my boots and gloves, setting my digits on fire, but it was quickly renewed when we bagged the biggest, fattest tree I have ever seen in. my. life. We carted it off to the barn, where it took five men to get this monstrosity through the tree-wrapper. I don't think you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation. Putting it in perspective - they grow their boys big in Minnesota. We're talking strapping, muscular, quintessential males that sport camo and Cabela's. So when I say that it took five of them, you can start to imagine the enormity of this tree.
While they were up to said endeavors, I ventured into the tree farm store to thaw my frozen body. My breath caught in my throat the instant I walked through the door - it looked as though Christmas had exploded all over the inside of the room, the shining, glittering guts dripping down the walls in an epitomized array of every kind of happiness and cheer. Plopping myself down next to the old wood-burning stove, I sipped a cup of hot apple cider in perfect bliss.

Once we got the tree home, Emily and I set out on a mission to make the tree as perfect as possible. Five hours later, I was covered in glitter and had come to the conclusion that Christmas tree lights are quite possibly an invention of the devil himself. HOWEVER, our efforts paid off, because the tree looked absolutely phenomenal.

Every girl needs a night out on the town every once in a while, and the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul offer the perfect opportunity. Our decorating ventures finally accomplished, Emily and I made a night of it. Dressed up like total babes, we attended a comedy show playing in the downtown Music Box theatre and ate appetizers afterwards. Good laughter, good food, and good conversation with a great friend always make any day a success.

Em's mom spent the day with Em and I on Saturday, the three of us baking a variety of delectably delicious combinations of butter, sugar, peanuts, and chocolate - otherwise known as Christmas cookies. One of the most fascinating things I've ever made is toffee. If you like toffee or have a desire to like toffee in the future, don't read this. Literally two ingredients (butter and sugar), toffee goes through several stages as it cures on the stove, the last of which resembles, quite realistically, a simmering, shiny tan brain stewing on your stovetop. Once you've got a toffee brain in your pot, you pour the blob out on a pan to solidify.

Mmmmmm, brains.

Just think, next time you eat toffee you can pretend to be a zombie. It might even taste the same.

In this season of gratefulness and appreciation, I am most thankful for the relationships God has graciously given to me. I am so, so blessed. Blessed beyond measure to know some of the most incredible people - in Indiana, Minnesota, and beyond.

Workin' on my Wife Skills

I went home this past weekend for the first time in months. The week and a half leading up to this weekend and the month that is coming are roughly equivalent to hurricane Sandy on steroids (too soon?), so the fact that I was able spend some time ignoring the millions of things that I have to do was like an island haven of peace in the middle of my own personal storm. My mantra for two weeks had been "home. home. home. home."

There's no place quite like the MidWest. It reminds me of one of those relatives that you love because you're related to them, but there are quite honestly no other legitimately valid reasons why. As I crossed the Michigan/Indiana state line, warmly welcomed back by the Pure Michigan sign, the happy feelings welling up inside of my chest were quickly squelched by the memory of a sign I had passed a while back on the highway advertising Deer Pee for sale. At first I thought surely I had read it wrong, but realized after several minutes of thought that my first instinct was correct. Flabbergasted, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to sell urine. ...Or, perhaps the better question, why anyone would want to buy it. My older sister kindly set me straight later by informing me that deer hunters spray it on themselves to cover their scent and/or attract all the boy deer.

Fantastic. At least the buying and selling (and hopefully spraying) of the urine was happening in Indiana.

And after that fascinatingly random side-story, back to the weekend. I’d been planning this weekend for two weeks. Nothing and no one was going to stand in-between me and my perfect weekend. At school, I have neither the time, energy, resources, or space to cook food, bake things, make crafts, or all the other various "domestic" kinds of things that litter the Pinterest boards of girls across the country. All my pent-up crafting and homemaking energies were going to expend themselves in one massive creative explosion. Determined to be all the stereotypes of a woman hyperbolized to the max for two days, I had my Friday and Saturday planned to a "T".

On Friday morning, I would go out to an early breakfast with my momma, go grocery shopping, and pick up craft supplies, then in the afternoon I would start the soup for dinner in the crockpot, finish my laundry, wash the dishes, bake a pumpkin spice cake, and sew a shoulder bag all before my family came home for dinner, at which time I would present them with a three-part dinner and a clean house. On Saturday, I would create my own laptop cover, go thrift store shopping with my sister and my boyfriend-in-law, and complete with excellence the mountain of homework that has accumulated in my planner. I AM WOMAN.

Surprisingly, those two days were a great success.

When I say surprisingly, I really do mean surprisingly. That wasn’t facetious. Most of the time, my grandiose plans for homemaking involve an extreme excitement for starting a project, which quickly deteriorates into bewilderment and frustration when I realize that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with this project and my life in general, leading to an existential crisis wherein I despair at the fact that I am an untalented blob with no use to anyone or anything. At this point, feeling as helpless as a one-finned platypus in the Sarahan desert, I turn the half finished disaster over to my mother. She finishes it for me. Every time. (God bless that woman. She is a saint.)

This time, however, I was determined to finish everything myself. I would be accomplished if it killed me. I would like to be a wife someday (at this point, the probability of that happening is somewhere around the odds of winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning 7 times in 6 years, but the point still applies), and I figured that I should probably start practicing those skills that most wives effortlessly seem to have.

So, what were the results of all my hard labor? 

Well, I’m glad you asked cause I was about to show you anyway. I’m a bit addicted to Pinterest, and I found a recipe several months ago for a Tomato Basil Parmesan soup. Freaking kidding me? That sounds delicious. I was determined to make it at some point in my life, and this weekend seemed like as good a time as any, so the soup was the first part of my family’s three part dinner. It was a huge hit with my parents, at least (my sister was slightly less enthused), delicious, and so easy to make.

Here’s a link to the original recipe: http://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/2009/03/day-56-tomato-basil-parmesan-soup.html. 

Contrary to the image people get when the word “vegetarian” is used, I am not an animal rights extremist, nor am I one of those individuals who doesn’t bathe for weeks on end and weaves all of their own clothes out of hemp fiber and dandelion greens, but I do try to eat healthy, so I avoid meat and most animal products for that reason. In order to maintain my vegetarian ways, I substituted vegetable broth for the chicken broth, soy milk for the half and half, and Chobani for the butter.

I didn’t take pictures of these, but I made grilled pepperjack cheese sandwiches to go with the soup. That was the second part.

The third part was a pumpkin spice cake. I found a terrific idea (again, on Pinterest) of stacking two Bundt cakes on top of each other to make the shape of a pumpkin. How cute and clever, right? What an awesome harvest time food idea. Let’s just say that my efforts were a little less like the cute harvest time food buffet and more like the dessert that would be served in a Tim Burton themed Halloween dinner.

Cooking: 2 for 3. Hey, I’ll take that. In baseball, that’s a kick butt batting average. It’s all about perspective. The crafting projects I took on went fantastically well, though, so I’m happy enough.

Here’s the shoulder bag that I made (pattern available at http://crazylittleprojects.com/2012/09/messenger-bag-tutorial.html):

And here is the laptop cover that I made (no pattern for this one, because I did it ALL BY MYSELF. That’s right. Be jealous.):

I discovered that embroidery is actually kind of fun! I started toying with this dangerously tempting idea of making all my Christmas presents this year by embroidering things for my friends and family. Better be careful, April. You had some successes this time around, but that existentially challenged Saharan-dwelling platypus could reemerge at any moment…

#RealTalk

As I was sitting at my table in the Jackson library this lazy Friday afternoon surrounded by forgotten books and papers, daydreaming about warm kitchens and crafty projects, and feeling super hipster in my thrift store altered skirt and homemade legwarmers, I suddenly remembered that I created a blog once. A procrastination break is always a good thing, so I reminisced about my once-ambitious intentions of spreading clever ideas and useful tips to anyone who might be interested (and who wouldn’t be interested in what I have to say). 

Well, we can see how long those ambitious intentions lasted. After a few attempts at this blogging thing, I quickly realized two things. The first is that blogging is actually a lot of work. I had this beautiful vision in my head that I could effortlessly be a witty, interesting person departing my wisdom to the masses through my well-written – wait, what? Blogging requires me to write? Well, that’s a problem because I hate writing. Three full years of college plus some change has taught me that a quality paper does not simply spring from my brain through my fingers to settle gracefully onto the beautiful white electronic page on my computer screen. My papers are born. If you have ever witnessed a live birth, you need no further explanation. To those of you who had never had the privilege, let me elaborate. Birthing is an extremely painful and laborious process that involves blood, sweat, guts, and tears, the occasional scream, and plenty of pitiful whimpers and pleas for it all to end. 

The second thing I realized is that, contrary to my egotistical belief that people were just waiting en masse to linger on every word that I might say, not a lot of people were interested in reading my blog. Granted, it might have helped if I had tried writing more than three posts and advertised it a bit more, but I didn’t think of those things when I was shamelessly wallowing in discouragement and self-pity (hyperbole, guys. Please don’t take that one seriously). I felt like a battle-weary kitten presenting my hard-earned, bloody, dead mouse (seems legit, that’s a pretty accurate description of my writing) to my unappreciative owners. Crushing. Basically, I was spending a lot of time working on something that no one was reading. Ain’t no body got time fo dat! 

After a sufficient period of self-reflection and study, I got over myself and realized that it really doesn’t matter whether or not anyone reads this. Normally, talking to yourself is the first sign that you’re losing it, but since I lost it a long time ago, nobody needs to be bothered. Anyway, I had a conversation with myself that went something like this:

“April, do you enjoy doing this?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then.”

Yeah, I know, I talk too much. Workin’ on it. Basically, this is something that I slightly enjoy doing. Not more than eating. Or looking through clothes on Pinterest that I will never be able to afford. Or doing dishes. But it is something that is marginally entertaining. So, by golly, I’ll continue to do it! So here we go, blogging round two.

And if you just happen to want to follow along, I suppose that’s okay, too.