You might be noticing some changes around Make It soon… sadly, Chris and I have broken up. We have nothing but complete love and respect for each other, and it is out of that love and respect that we decided to experience life on our own. Chris was the greatest boyfriend in the whole world and I am so lucky that we spent the last 6 years together.
So… a lot of things in my life are going to be changing! And it’s terrifying!
(but I didn’t want that to stop me from doing what I thought was best)
1. Chris is moving out. 2. Coincidentally, Graham is going to be moving out too. 3. After some thought about my living situation and Chris’ (soon-to-be) living situation, we decided it was best that Joe go with Chris. My home is going to go from 3 adults, 2 dogs to me just living by myself.
Please wish me luck in my new adventure. I realize people make huge decisions like this every day, but it’s the biggest, craziest thing I’ve done in a loooong time.
Do you know where to take your pet if there were (heaven forbid!) an emergency? What if there was an emergency at 9:00 on a Saturday night? What about 5:30 on a weekday evening? Would you drive to your regular vet? Or need to go to an pet emergency hospital? I don’t want to have to think about it…
We have a cabinet with Joe treats and his leashes, and in there we also have a paper that says “IN CASE OF A JOSEPH EMERGENCY” with address, phone number, and hours of operation for our regular vet and the closest emergency vet. There are also directions to both vets and a bit of health information for Joe.
It brings a bit of piece of mind. If you’d like a template, you can get it here!
This is a super yummy soup recipe that I usually double so I can freeze or just have for leftovers for days and days.
Creamy Chicken Rice Soup
original recipe here
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped celery
2 tablespoons butter or stick margarine
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 (14.5 ounce) cans reduced sodium chicken broth
2 cups cooked long-grain rice
1 cup cubed cooked chicken
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup 2% milk
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon white wine (optional)
- In a large saucepan, sauté the carrot, onion and celery in butter until tender.
- Stir in flour until blended, and then gradually stir in broth.
- Add the rice, chicken, salt, pepper and garlic powder; bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Reduce heat to low. Stir in the milk, lemon juice and wine if desired.
- Cook and stir for 5 minutes or until heated through.
This is what Joe does as I cut the chicken for the soup:
Can’t sleep?
I learned this trick from my first “grown-up job” boss and she said she read it in a psychology textbook. It doesn’t work for everybody, but when it does work for people I usually get a phone call a couple days later along the lines of “OH MY GOD that is the best trick for falling asleep EVER!” because this trick is so awesome.
This trick works when your body is tired but your mind is racing and you can’t turn it off. It also works when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep.
Here’s what you do:
- First, get comfortable and close your eyes
- In your mind, slowly draw a square
- In that square, slowly draw a circle
- In that circle, slowly draw the number 50
- Erase the whole drawing and start again: draw a square, draw a circle, and then draw 49
- Continue counting down (erasing the image, drawing again and counting down) until you fall asleep!
MOST people (including me) never get passed 40 – well, I did once but I just started over at 50 and I didn’t get far after that! I understand that it works because the drawing and the counting focus both halfs of the brain. But I’m not really sure why it works, I just know that it does.
I think it’s important to actually draw the shapes… very slowly draw the square, then the circle and then 5-0.
I’ll try my best to answer any questions you might have. Please let me know if it works for you!
I thought I was sooooo clever when I put “Cup Of Joe” on my Starbucks 16 oz Custom Tumbler last year (get it? Our dog’s name is Joe… all the pictures on my COFFEE tumbler are of Joe… Joe is another word for Coffee… are you chuckling quietly to yourself yet??) – so clever, in fact that I actually Googled “Cup of Joe” and that’s how I found one of my most favorite blogs A CUP OF JO. Turns out Joanna is like 2 years more clever than me.
I ended up deciding to put this post in “Make It Green” since I know using my Cup of Joe has reduced the number of plastic coffee cups I’ve put in my local landfill – but I could have just as easily put it in “Make it Special” since I happen to think these photo tumblers make excellent gifts. Especially when you make the custom insert to put in there…
…To make it a little easier, you can find blank templates here!
If you enjoy using Adobe InDesign, there’s an InDesign template for you. There is also a Microsoft Word document you can use if you’re savvy in Word and if you just want download the template and print it out to color or paint or cut-and-paste pictures, you can use the PDF template.
For Valentine’s day last year, I made one for Chris and he just loved it (I made one for me too).
Aren’t the lights in downtown San Diego pretty? We took Joe for a stroll late tonight and soaked it all in.
I created a little map of a typical downtown walk for Joe here:
View Joe’s Walk around Downtown San Diego in a larger map
I have pretty much been wearing this since I got it… I wear it to walk Joe, I wear it to bed, I’ve even worn it to work:
Can you tell it’s my new favorite shirt? I must immediately return to the little boy’s section at Target and buy a couple more…
I had such a wonderful weekend. It was one of those weekends that subjects unsuspecting co-workers to a 15 minute breakdown of every wonderful detail when they ask “did you have a nice weekend?”
On Saturday, Chris and I took Joe for a hike up Iron Mountain and then headed up to Julian for dinner. It was all completely spontaneous (we’re lucky we had enough water for the hike!) and all so nice.
On Sunday, we started the day with Crab Hash Potatoes and lounged around… mostly recovering from the the hike the day before!
Crab Hash Potatoes
16 oz frozen hash brown potatoes
3 tbsp vegetable oil
4 strips bacon
1/3 cup onion, chopped
6 oz crab meat
Dash of Old Bay Seasoning
- Cook hash brown potatoes according to package directions
- In a seperate frying pan, cook the bacon. Remove bacon strips (keep the bacon fat!) and crumble.
- Cook the onions in the bacon fat and transfer to the pan with potatoes. Add the bacon too.
- Add Old Bay Seasoning and crab meat and cook until heated through.
- Serve with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce (made in a blender – it comes out perfect every time!)
