While we did not originally have a trip to Connecticut planned for this summer, time on our favorite shoreline never disappoints. We’ll file this whole vacation under COVID silver linings :) Our 2020 trip looked a bit different than past years, even beyond mask wearing and hand sanitizer – as our last two trips were both for friends’ weddings, and were co-scheduled with Natalie and Joe. While there were no big events or cousins this time around, we made the best of it. Here are a few photos, if you’d like to see!
Naturally, much of our time was spent outdoors. We hiked at Avery Preserve, Candlewood Ridge, and Bluff Point (where we hunted for hermit crabs, a favorite from John’s childhood! Octonaut June was enthused.). That top picture is especially sweet to me – my father-in-law enthusiastically met the playmate needs of two children who had gone for months without much social interaction at all, and his and June’s bond was really cemented, I think.
It was an unusually warm week while we visited, so we spent lots of time cooling off at the beach and in the pool! Though the pool was a balmy 92 degrees, so cooling off was a relative term :)
And OF COURSE we spent plenty of time in Mystic, including repeat visits to Sift, MDI, and the brand-new Young Buns Doughnuts, which opened the week we were there! We scooted out to Noank, too :)
A major highlight: my in-laws’ driveway being re-paved. This involved lots of “big trucks,” with Shep is quite predictably ob-sessed with at the moment.
To indulge the other child, we also spent the morning at my family’s horse farm, where we scrambled around in the (400-year-old?) hay loft and pet a few noses.
My highlight? Celebrating Shep’s second birthday at one of our favorite parks, with all four grandparents. It was the most beautiful night, with yummy takeout from Mystic Market, wading at the beach, bubbles, and birthday presents.
We set up under this magnificent tree:
Dreamy, no? And here is the sweet birthday boy, gazing at his four beloved grandparents singing happy birthday to him.
Let’s zero in on that dessert for a minute, though, shall we? Hmm. Doesn’t look quite right, does it?
Indeed it is not.
We had carefully ordered a fruit tart from Sift, carefully toted it ever so delicately to the park… only to have the bakery box inadvertently tipped completely upside down by an unaware grandparent :) So, we stuck a candle in a pile of cream and tart and berries and glaze, which was less than nothing to look at but tasted exquisite. The birthday boy did not care one bit :)
Here is the tart before it met its demise, so you can fully appreciate the artistry!
It was a beautiful night and a lovely trip, made more precious by the fact that we’re not exactly sure when we’ll next see each other again, thanks to COVID and increased preschool exposure. Praying it is sooner than we can imagine!
Also, what a treat because 96% of you wanted me to share my guacamole recipe, so here we are! While I certainly believe this to be the most delicious version of guac out there, I honor and respect that you might disagree. Let’s discuss in the comments :)
My recipe is based off of Bobby Flay’s, which we discovered when we started making his nacho dogs a few years ago (thank me later). I did not grow up making guacamole (I also did not grow up eating it – it seemed green and suspicious and it just wasn’t a thing in my family), but as with so many other seemingly-fancy food items, I was introduced to it by John’s family and have been a convert ever since.
Without further ado, the simple recipe…
Peel and pit two ripe avocados and mash in a small bowl. Avocados are notoriously tricky but I find if I buy them green and firm they are ready about 3 days later.
Dice a jalapeno and add it to the bowl. Dice about 1/5 of a red onion and add that, too.
Add approximately 1 teaspoon of canola oil (makes it nice and silky!). I never measure this – just a small glug – but 1 tsp is my best bet.
Sprinkle over a generous shake of sea salt, then squeeze in one lime.
Mix it all together and give it a taste. If something needs tweaking, it’s usually more salt or more lime! We like to serve ours with blue corn tortilla chips.
How about you? If you’re a guacamole fan, do you like yours with cilantro? Tomato? Peas??
Though I was glad to have our photos organized (and VERY glad to have them backed up), the real culmination of my photo organization project was this: making printed photo albums of our life together. You all know how important family stories are to me, and having an actual book to look through to help us tell those stories was the next logical step – and to me, well worth the time and expense.
In turning to the project of family photo albums, my first decision was at what interval to print them. The vast majority of people seem to do yearly albums, but to me that seemed a bit excessive when I considered the full span of our (hopefully long) life together. Do I really want to have 60 photo albums on a shelf one day? While I would be exceedingly grateful to have 60 years of memories, I don’t think I need 60 albums.
I settled on one album for every five years, beginning with the year we began dating (our senior year of high school). The first album would run 2005-2009, the second, 2010-2014, the third, 2015-2019, and on from there. I readily admit the editing is only going to get harder in the thick of these family years, but I like that a five-year boundary forces me to focus on the best, most poignant, and most illustrative memories. The albums will be heftier than they would be if we were to do annual albums, but in a more concise package!
With our photos organized and the interval set, I found myself procrastinating on making that first album earlier this year. It took me a bit to figure out why, but I eventually realized: I was afraid of missing something. Unlike a folder on a computer or a blog post, I can’t just go back and make an edit if I realize I left out an important event or a killer shot a few months down the road. That was paralyzing!
What eventually tipped me over the edge? I believe it was one of you who posed the question: wouldn’t you rather have 95% of your memories and favorite photos in book form as opposed to 0%? When framed that way, the answer, of course, was and is yes. While not perfect, I also realized I could always slip loose photos into the album pages down the line if I later found a gem that HAD to be included.
To help ease my mind, I did send a quick query to a few friends and siblings who I knew might have snaps from our earliest years together, in the hopes of gathering up any loose ends. I also scrolled through old Facebook albums to download anything I could find that wasn’t already accounted for. Finally, I had a few dozen printed photos from high school and college that I didn’t have digital copies of, so I brought them to a local photo store to scan.
With my photos at the ready and my mind at ease, it was time to begin designing! But which photo album company to choose? Though I love the idea of using the same company for all of time, I quickly realized that was a bit silly: who knows which company will be in or out of business in 25 years?! So, I made the best choice I could for this first album, and am keeping my mind open for future albums.
For our 2005-2009 album, I chose Artifact Uprising. AU has an excellent reputation and we had used them for our parent wedding albums with great results, so they were my natural first choice. I chose the Hardcover Photo Book, 8.5×8.5″ size, in Midnight Blue, with 50 base pages and a total of 64 pages. It came out to just over $100 with a promo code. Though I’m happy with the end result, there were pros and cons.
What I loved about Artifact Uprising hardcover photo albums: — It would be hard to make an ugly album, even if you don’t fancy yourself a designer. Their layout options are simple and classic. — The album itself is great quality, and I loved the color options for the cover fabric.
What I did not like about the AU hardcover photo albums: — When centering text on the cover, there was no way to tell whether it was perfectly centered (heck, they even have guides on Instagram!). — The most number of photos allowed on a page is four. While I appreciate the restraint of their layouts, there were some events where I really wanted to have a grid of smaller photos, as in our wedding album. — I would really have preferred to have had an embossed title right on the fabric cover, but that’s only an option in their layflat albums (which didn’t feel right for this book; they’re also more expensive). I’m the type of person who takes dust jackets off books because I find them annoying, but if I did that with this album, it would just be blank. — Not knowing how many pages I would ultimately end up with, it was hard for me to choose the base number of pages and make sure I was getting the best deal. — You can only move spreads of pages around within the book, not individual pages. — It told me a BUNCH of my photos were too low res, which I found insulting, ha! While I appreciate the caution, they seemed to print just fine.
Though the list of cons is longer than the pros, I’m really happy with how our Artifact Uprising album turned out! We’ve loved having it out and flipping through it with the kids (June really likes the picture of me on a carousel, ha!). If you have any questions at all, I’m happy to answer!
For our second album, I’m considering a few other album companies, including Milk Books (who printed our wedding album!), Shutterfly, and Mix Book. If you’ve had experience with any of them, I’d love to hear!
This is also the last post in this photo organization series, so if I left any questions unanswered, ask away! So glad to have these out in the world, and I hope they’ve been helpful!!
Hello to my favorite month, September! It’s when we got married, that back-to-school freshness is thick in the air, and the weather in New England is my absolute favorite (it’s not too shabby in NC, either!). August was wonderful to our family, and there’s so much to look forward to this month, too.
On my calendar this month: — The first day of fall! We’ll bake apple cider scones for our family and June’s teachers, a tradition we started four years ago. — Our annual camping trip with the Rays — Our eighth wedding anniversary!
What I’m loving right now: — I don’t have a ton of seasonal decor (even for Christmas!), but these wicker pumpkins (one more size here) were too good to pass up. — I’m late to the party, but John and I watched The Last Dance (on Netflix) while on vacation in Connecticut and it was excellent. It might be my Enneagram 5 showing, but give me a well-done look at almost any subject and I’m hooked. Michael Jordan is a FASCINATING human, the storylines are compelling, and the editing is so good. I’ll dock a few points for strong language but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it. — We aren’t beyond the realm of full-on parental supervision yet with the ages of our kids, but I’m glad that there are a growing number of options to help facilitate the kind of “free-range childhood” many of us grew up with. This article lays out several of them.
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What I read in August: — The Giver of Stars | This came highly recommended (and was my August EFM book club pick!) but I thought it was good, not great. The characters felt a little two-dimensional all the way through, and Alice’s husband and father-in-law were so awful that the first half of the book was kind of hard to read for me. — The Paris Wife | This novel was enjoyable, but knowing only a little about Hemingway and his first wife, I felt a general sense of dread hanging over me the whole time I was reading, knowing that I didn’t know what was going to happen but that things wouldn’t end well. If I had known Hadley’s life turns out in the end, I think I would have perked up a little :) Also, I assume the more Hemingway you’ve read, the more interesting you’d find this book! (I’ve read very little.)
Revisiting my August goals: Begin reading Mark with John Book our camping trip for this fall(Now just praying for good weather!) Sort through my SCC secretary responsibilities and make an easy-to-follow yearly checklist Watch Just Mercy with John now that I’ve finished the book(The movie was great – but the book is 1000 times better. I think I’m going to write a post about both to convince any of you who haven’t dipped your toe in yet to do so! :)) Buy a new handbag(Done! Went with alllllmost the same thing, just with a longer strap and in navy.) Edit June in June, Volume 5(Done! Worldwide premier coming soon!) Complete four more Advent ornaments(FIVE! The ball ornament, mitten, stocking, tree, and star!) Post all three parts of my photo organization guide(Parts one and two are live; part three will post later this week!) Clean out downstairs craft supplies once kids go back to preschool(Oooh I am SO HAPPY to have this done! Here’s a before and after.) Do something fun with at least one friend couple(With two, actually! :)) Mock up a design board for our upstairs bathroom(Not only mocked up, but progress is underway!) Ride our stationary bike Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (This experiment helped me ride more than last month, but sometimes I used the excuse of it not being a M, W, or F to not ride, which was counterproductive. Trying something new this month!)
September goals: — Film Sheptember, Volume 2 — Read a marriage book in honor of our anniversary — Complete our upstairs bathroom renovation — Complete four more Advent ornaments — Ride 50 miles on our stationary bike or out in the wild — Add plants to the master bathroom — Begin family “by-laws” in a Google Doc (more to come on this!) — Adjust the styling of EFM’s H1 headers so I can use them! — Send a care package to a former babysitter who’s a college freshman (ideas for that here!)
Alright, let’s hear it: who wants to fight me on The Giver of Stars? :) Otherwise, I’d love to hear your favorite month of the year (and why!)! OR your favorite marriage book!
