Heyo! Basic fall-loving internet girl, reporting for duty! Here’s the latest on what’s going on for me this October/November.
October-November Coffee Date
Heyo! Basic fall-loving internet girl, reporting for duty!
How many pictures can a person take of orange and red trees? How many pumpkin spice lattes is too many? How many chicken pot pies is crossing the line? How many chunky sweaters does a person need to own before being considered certifiably obsessed?
These are questions I don’t want to know the answers to.
Stats from this month (and last? I’m losing track):
DRINKS: Pumpkin spice lattes, half sweet, decaf, from Starbucks I’m sorry Caribou you just cannot win this one.
FOOD: Biscuit pot pies, pasta galore, my friend Angela’s tortellini soup which I will be dreaming about until I get her to send me the recipe and grant me permission to share on the blog because it will 100% change your life.
CLOTHING: Skinny jeans, ankle boots, the same three sweaters because I spent too much money on them and need to make them count (plus, they’re very cozy).
Please tell me your stats are similar. And if you live in a warm weather climate with fall things such as warm drinks and boots, I would like to send my condolences.
Okay! Here we go. Big updates this month including this one….
We’re Moving To The Suburbs!
WHAT?! Yes. And just like that, we’re moving to the suburbs.
By “just like that,” I mean after a very long and trying search process which we discussed here, and hypothetically, like, all the time if we’d be getting together in person, but anyway. YAY! A house.
We’re closing tomorrow (WHOA) but not moving in for another few weeks since we’ll do some painting, carpeting, and possibly wallpapering?! before we move in.
Things I’m most excited about with the new house:
- An attached garage. I repeat: an attached garage. ♡
- SPACE. More space. Like, we can have my brothers come stay for the weekend and no one will need to sleep on the couch in the living room kind of space. Like, we can watch TV after Solvi goes to bed and actually turn the volume up kind of space. Like, I can host dinner club again kind of space.
- A bigger yard.
- A more open floor plan that will allow me to be in the kitchen and still see what’s happening in the family room. This was a huge wishlist item for us / me.
Things I’m most sad about:
- A new identity. I love our (current) small house and I think Bjork and I really identify with our small-old-charming-house-in-the-city vibe. Neither of us have ever really felt pulled to have a bigger house, and have definitely not felt pulled to the suburbs. And yet… here we are, buying a bigger house in the suburbs. I am confident that we’ll use the space and love it, and there are so many things we’re excited about with it, but I also think there’s somewhat of an identity shift that we might have to process through with that. (Okay, fine, I say “we,” but Bjork goes with any flow. If it involves processing, it is me.)
- Restaurants. Or lack thereof. Goodbye, amazing authentic taco spot five blocks from our house. Goodbye, hip vegan restaurant just a few miles down the road. Goodbye, charming Selby and all your delicious restaurants. We’ll be back to visit.
- The lake. We live by a city lake, with a path, and it’s always low-key bustling with of a wide variety of people and Disney-type woodland animals, and it’s one of my happiest places. I’m definitely going to cry when I go for my last walk.
We Hosted a Team Retreat
Last week we got to have our entire (remote) team in Minneapolis for a team retreat and it was THE BEST of the best. In addition to our several Minnesotan team members, we had two PNWers (hey Portland), one Pittsburgher, an Ohioan, a Milwaukeean, and a Canadian who brought international snacks and treats which was a highlight if I’m being honest.
These people are so fun to work with, and while there are a lot of advantages of being a remote team, I was reminded of how nice it is to actually get together and spend time in person. Face to face is just a whole different thing. In a really good way.
We are eager to start planning our next team retreat, and I think it might be time to branch out to a new city. What cities are your favorite? Must have: good food and a fun vibe.
Things Are Actually Happening At The Office
WE ARE NEARING THE FINISH LINE!
Garbage boxes are laying all around the office and there are still tape spots on the wall where shelves should be. BUT. Desks are in place, plumbing for the kitchen is done, cabinet delivery is scheduled (next week)! Things are hap-pen-ing.
I don’t want to give away too much yet, but stay tuned here and on The Faux Martha as both of us will do some reveal-y type stuff when the finishing touches have been wrapped up.
Can We Talk About Family Photos
Question for you.
How do you keep your memories and photos organized?
I have about 100 ideas for how to do this, for our family, for us, for Solvi, and what has actually come into existence is zero of my good ideas and tens of thousands of photos on my camera roll.
Things people do:
- Yearly photo books?
- Seasonal family photo shoots?
- Journals with handwritten letters to kids?
- Baby books?
- Videos of trip and special events?
My mom made a scrapbook for me of all the photos of my growing up years and it is so sweet and special. I want to do something like that for Solvi – something that feels personal and memorable and yes, I love photos, so picture-heavy would be great.
But I feel like there are too many good ideas and not enough time. Do I keep it digital? Should everything be printed? Where does handwritten come into play? I need to make a (streamlined, manageable) plan now that she’s turned one. What do you recommend?
Homemade Potpourri
My friend Ang taught me this trick years ago and maybe you all already know it, but it’s so good that I think it is worth shouting from the internet rooftops again and again, weekly, until spring.
To make your house smell like fall / holiday / Christmas magic, just simmer some dried spices (cinnamon sticks, cloves, nutmeg, mulling spices) with some fresh or dried fruit (orange peel, apples, etc.) and maybe some fresh herbs if you’re feeling it – like rosemary, bay leaves, that kind of thing. Keep it on the stove for a few days and just warm it up every so often (we’re not eating this – it’s just for smells). YOUR LIFE WILL BE CHANGED. You may never light a holiday-scented candle again. It’s natural, it’s cheap, it smells so good.
- Have you done this?
- What ingredients do I need to throw into my next batch?
Sage Says…
This season, do not forget the pure joy of a cozy fall sweater (or, in this case, neck sweater).
And she is correct.
It doesn’t matter whether you treat yourself to new fuzzy one (like me) or dig a tried-and-true favorite out of your closet (like her). Chunky, warm sweaters are one of the best things that a person can wear when the weather gets un-handle-ably cold outside. If it makes you look just slightly like an arctic marshmallow, then you’re doing it right.
I love the coffee date posts because I love hearing from YOU! And fall is giving us lots to talk about. Hope your October-November has been full of sweaters, warm drinks, and doggie snugs – you know, the life-giving little joys.
Filed Under: Life
November 4, 2019
Nice to meet you!
I’m Lindsay and I ♡ FOOD. I used to be a teacher, and now making food and writing about it online is my full-time job. I love talking with people about food, and I'm so glad you're here.
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I enjoyed trying your potpourri a couple times. I started with throwing all the apple peels from making your apple cake in. Then I did 3 cinnamon sticks a few whole cloves and a mandarin orange peels. Boiled on low. It was lovely! I turned off and kept it for the next few days and had good luck keeping for 4-5 days. So nice! The whole family noticed and said it seemed like Christmas. I also tried putting some whole cardamom pods in one batch. Thanks for this tip! I tried this years back and forgot what fun it is!
No help on the photos front. We have a shared Google Photos album that our family can see, so at least they can access the photos even if they’re not in physical form.
I’m in Orlando, and today is the first day the high is less than 70! I’m wearing a sweater dress with tank top and leggings layered underneath, and boots. I know exactly how ridiculous it is but a) I’m actually cold otherwise and b) this is fall and I’m going to squeeze what I can out of it!
For a retreat may I suggest New Orleans, because good food, good vibes, the friendliest of people. Or Portland ME, because lobster, all the restaurants packed into a very small amount of space
and moody ocean vibes.
I definitely feel you on the need for having a photo system!
What has worked for me over the years is to buy old-school photo books (the kind where you slide your 4x6s into the designated pockets) and fill them with printed photos every 3-6 months. My husband and I try to print photos that are representative of our life — sometimes its a trip or holiday, other times it’s just everyday life, or simply *LOTS* of snapshots of our sweet little toddler. I loosely label the sections by writing the approximate timeline and what was going on a 4×6 card. For instance a card might say “Camping with Siblings at Yosemite, July 2018” or “Spring 2019 — First Mother’s Day; Around the House; and We Love Our Doggies”. Then I slide the written card in a pocket right among the photos. There isn’t a real formula — the point just being to get the photos in a physical existence and somewhat organized/written about. When an album is full, we start the next.
I hope you find a system that is meaningful and doable for you!
Hi Lindsay!
This is such a beautiful post! It makes me miss the lake I used to love hiking around 20 years ago in another state and want to take photos of every colorful tree I see. Fall is definitely my favorite season! This fall has been full of pumpkin spice coffee, sunny days, crisp nights, cool new boots WITH non-slip soles (I hate to slow down), new friends and personal growth experiences for me. I’m having one of the best years of my life and I’m on the experienced side of 40 without having magically changed into my grandma or, worse, my mother lol. Yay me!
The thing I want to offer my opinion on though is the yearbook thing. Please cut yourself some slack. Take lots of pictures (like tons) for sure, maybe keep a calendar to remind yourself of important dates like “first visit to pumpkin patch” “first haircut” “laughed at my joke about…” but the 1st five years go by so fast. Sleep and personal time to recharge to be a better parent and have the energy to make the most of each opportunity to share an experience with her are at a premium. There will be so many days when she’s in school and evenings when she’s sleeping over at her BFF’s to pick the right photos to put in a book and write down the memories and handwritten letters. Just my perspective.
Congratulations on the new house! I hope your move goes smoothly, your house becomes home quickly, and you and your family have a blessed winter!
I really do look forward to these posts so much. When I see a new one pop up in Bloglovin’, I open in a new tab and wait until I have a hot cup of coffee in hand and a few minutes to soak it in.
I recently started working on a remote team, and I’m already looking forward to our team retreat early next year. It’s nice to be able to work from wherever, but there’s something for getting to spend quality time with the people you talk to every single day as well.
As for the photo ideas, I vaguely remember Elise Cripe talking about how she prints books with photos of each of her daughters every year to capture their growth and lives: https://eliseblaha.typepad.com/golden/2014/07/the-dear-ellerie-photo-book.html. That’s not exactly the post I was looking for, but maybe creating an album on your phone of your favorites throughout the year would make it easier to send it off to a photo book printing service around the holidays when there are plenty of coupons?
And finally, moving to the suburbs! My husband and I live outside of Boston, and when we were moving farther out, I had an identity crisis like this as well! We really just prioritized having a place we could walk to and walk around, and a home that we’d love being in all of the time to make up for not being in the middle of city excitement all of the time. And honestly, we have been so much happier creating this home. I hope you are, too! See you next month 🙂
I must confess I am a warm weather climate girl and we STILL drink PPL, wear sweaters and boots, and have fires! at 50 degrees, mind you, but when you are used to 110 for the summer, 50 degrees is chilly! And what’s up with MN anyway? We were in St. Paul (beautiful city) for my niece’s wedding Oct. 12 and IT SNOWED. Not fair!
Hi Lindsay! I love love love your blog! I just wanted to say thank you for being authentic and NORMAL! I love your honesty and your recipes are to die for. Thanks for your little corner of the internet! 🙂 Coffee dates are my favorite!
i use chatbooks for all my IG photos and for the photos i ‘heart’ on my phones camera roll. you have many options for printed books/covers and they have special edition books you can make. the format would work for you to hand write things on the pages just fine! reasonably priced and almost automatic. Plus: my kids and family love thumbing through them 🙂
First of all, I adore reading these posts. It always feels like we actually had a coffee date right after 🙂
That’s so exciting on the move; congrats of this big next step!
I am actually currently searching far and wide for the perfect chunky warm sweaters. Would you be able to share where you got yours? Thanks!!
Take all the pictures and then do a weekly or monthly backup. I do both an external hard drive AND a cloud backup. Because VIDEOS!!! Looping this to the memory book, question. Check out doing a monthlly chatbook or a seasonal or annual Pinhole press book? I have a friend that had a simple notebook for each of the 3 year children and she carried those books daily for YEARS. But first words and silly pronunciations and favorite colors/flavors/clothes for that season were documented and she is using them for a special scrapbook when each one graduates school. Also you can easily create albums on the iPhone and move photos to different albums for easy review later. A little work on the front end and then just make that time each week/month/season part of your routine and boom.
You will find your place in the suburbs. Once you find your favorite breakfast spot, favorite park, favorite grocery store you will be fine.
I saw The Budgetnista had her team work their retreat into the annual budget for their company, like 2% of their profits or revenue or something. You have done some great friend trips. Maybe take your team to AZ, CO, Chicago, Anna Maria Island, FL, some special place in CA, Austin, TX. You will find a place!!!
Yes, I have done the potpourri, love it. Need to do it again!
I live in the suburbs with a detached garage and I cannot imagine the excitement you are feeling about now having one attached to the house. It will be SO NICE come winter!!
XOXO
Re: how to save photos for posterity. Printed and in books. why? 1) because it “forces” you to choose and to limit the number of photos; 2) it preserves (physically) the photos. [We’ve had personal computers since 1979 and gone through many incarnations of “save.” I have dozens (hundreds?) of both hard and floppy disks of material I can no longer access]
I really needed that post, it was like catching up with an old friend!
Expresso loooks delicious 🙂
Two things: 1) Your team should come to Denver because it’s centrally located, charming, and full of outdoor fun and delicious food!
2) I try to stay on top of the photo thing by making an annual photo book via Shutterfly. I try to record memories and provide funny little anecdotes (like silly sayings that catch on in our family lexicon) or meaningful things. I include a page for each kid when the chronology comes along to their birthday, and I write a note to them, expressing what I love about them and what they love right now. (Maybe in 20 years, they’ll be like, “Oh yeah! Remember how Peter wouldn’t stop singing that Imagine Dragons song?”) They LOVE when the book comes in the mail. It takes a lot of time but it’s also such a helpful and fun reminder of our lives together–the big trips/events, the hard things (one year has photos of my mom with barely any hair when she was going through cancer treatment), and the simple day-to-day stuff. Tip: Try to knock it out in a weekend. I find that once I get going, I’m motivated to wrap it up, but if I let it linger, I feel less motivated. ALSO: I do write my kids notes for their birthdays and just keep them in a folder. I haven’t given them to them yet or made a plan. I’m just keeping them for now… Good luck, and let us know what you land on!
Kid’s photos honestly. I do a bit of all. I have written letters, I do photo books every so often. They have baby books that are sort of complete-ish. I think its so different from when I was a kid because pictures of me in winter there are like, maybe 5? But We have the ability to take WAY more pictures of our kids. So definitely print the best ones, get good at editing down how many you keep even electronically because like anything if you have too much of it you’ll use none of it. Love your retreat and your fall is sounding amazing! We’re a bit more winter-y already here in Manitoba but winter can be cozy too. Praline latte here I come!
I used to love making homemade potpourri this way… as a teenager (very early signs of domestication – ha!). I love orange slices with cloves and cinnamon sticks. I used to keep it on our wood burning stove, which is a great natural humidifier. Just remember to add water often (oops).
I do an annual family photo album on Mixbook – this is my 12th one this year and I love having that record of the year and all of the adventures we got up to with the kids and dog and others. The key to success in this endeavour – given all of the time constraints of family life – is to do a quick photo review on a regular basis and copy photos for the album into their own folder. Since I use a digital camera, my trigger for this is every time a I do a download of the photos to the computer – about once every couple of months. Then I only have a couple of months of photos to go through and identify ones that would be good for the album. More importantly, when it comes time to do the album, I already have all the photos set aside in that folder ready to be uploaded to Mixbook. This approach works really well for me – still doing it 12 years in! I don’t think I could keep it up if I didn’t already have the photos set aside because it would just be too much time to go through a whole year’s worth of photos. Good luck and be sure to let us know what you decided to do.
Ah, fall is a distant memory here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! -18 C at the moment, with a fresh blanket of snow.
Dear Lindsay, I can’t begin to tell you how your posts always make me smile:)) your enthusiasm and playfulness is fabulous and infectious. As to storing photographs, I am still figuring out a way to get out of the digital jungle, that my collection has become, and move to a more analog, slow, pouring-over-album with hot chocolate kind of method. Am not there yet, sadly. Good luck to you with your new home and all the beauty around. And happy fall!!
We moved from the city to the suburbs about three years ago – and while we were worried about very similar things are you, the space and the backyard and the attached garage all make things so much easier with the kids. We keep thinking we should have done it sooner. That being said, I miss the bakeries!
I have three girls, ages 13, 10 and 3. I haven’t always done well with the picture thing but I did make them all a book for their first birthdays and they each love theirs and look through it sometimes. We also started making a phonebook for every trip we take so we can preserve our favorite memories. The kids love pulling these out (so do I!).
Good luck with your move!
xoxo
Hi Lindsay! Great catching up over virtual coffee! Suggestion for retreat-Scottsdale AZ. Great hotels, restaurants and such a fun vibe. Oh and the weather is nice for hiking Camelback Mountain. On an unrelated note, if you are not following @thoughtsofdog on IG you should. Will make you and Sage laugh all day every day!! All the best to you and the fam
I’ll forever be behind on photo management/albums but my goal is twofold.
Each kid will have 1 hand-made scrapbook, which is likely to become a couple books. First year has a page per month; after that, it’s 2-3 spreads per year. I do photos to show growth, special cards, momentos (bracelet from hospital, a piece of a christening gown made for my daughter), and art/school work to show progress.
The bulk of the photos will be in a yearly digital scrapbook done on Shutterfly or a similar site. I like that I can print multiple copies, so that one day, each child will have a complete set. It’s a BIG effort to make each year but it’s much smaller and easier than a paper album and easier to duplicate
Set up an email for Solvi and send her emails whenever you have something (little or big) to say. You can include photos or not. Give her the password when she gets older. I think it would be so fun to have letters from my parents throughout my whole childhood!
And make some photo albums, they are fun to look at!
For photo organization (well maybe more so photo display vs. organization), my boyfriend got me a Nixplay digital photo frame one Christmas and I LOVE it! You control all the photos from the Nixplay App on your phone and the photos get sent automatically to the frame. You can create different playlists to assign to the frame (I have playlists for when friends / family visit that include photos of them) and the frame can be set to turn on with motion (energy-saver)! You can also add videos. I’ve given this as gifts multiple times and everyone loves it! Find it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nixplay-Widescreen-Digital-Wi-Fi-W10B/dp/B078NQPCTR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa