Tens from this weekend

Posted on by anna

I missed two days! Bad Anna.

Saturday:
1. An easy clean-up from our party
2. Sleeping in until like 10
3. Staying in bed chatting with my husband until 11
4. Staying in our PJs until 4pm (a VERY unusual occurance)
5. The work we got done organizing our office — pretty clean in there now
6. A whole extra day just to hang out with my best friend (who happens to be my hubby)
7. Girl time at the movies
8. Time after the movie to sit and chat
9. A wonderful girl best friend who gets and me and doesn’t mind that I’m wacky
10. A semi-early bed time

Sunday:
1. My awesome band, The So and Sos!
2. The opportunity my church gives me to play music with incredible people for service
3. Communication with my husband
4. A nap
5. A belt
6. Being able to make lots of food for the Superbowl party. I love feeding people!
7. 3rd place in the chili cookoff
8. A pretty seamless set up and tear down for the Superbowl party
9. The Patriots didn’t win the Superbowl! (Though I was hoping for the first scoreless SB, to be honest.)
10. That we don’t yet have a toddler who wants to follow me everywhere (I say this after having been followed by a 3-year-old into the bathroom last night at church).

Monday’s will have to come later.

Today’s Ten

Posted on by anna

I almost missed it!

1. Having a day off with my love
2. Sleeping until 9
3. Accidental networking at our party
4. Finishing our clean-up in time
5. A good suggestion from a friend that saved my onion dip (silly, I know)
6. Dear friends who fell in love this past year
7. Party outfits
8. A husband who is more encouraging than I can imagine
9. A hope for a family someday
10. A house into which we can invite our friends

It’s been a good day. 🙂

Ten Things Today

Posted on by anna

In case you didn’t hear yesterday, I am writing a list of ten things I am thankful for each day. Here’s today’s:

1. A super-productive morning at work
2. Getting to leave early today
3. A day off tomorrow
4. A scanning copier (seriously I just scanned 109 pages to my email all at once! instead of one page at a time…)
5. Dipping below my starting weight for the first time in weeks (starting weight of my most recent resolution to be healthier)
6.  Impending pork chops with rosemary sauce
7. Someone telling me my hair looked cute
8. An outfit I feel cute wearing
9. A really great MK sales director
10. Elevensies (I’ve taken to eating a small breakfast, cheese at elevensies, and a small lunch, lovely!)

(Als0 — this is my fiftieth post! Yay arbitrary milestones!)

Thankfulness and Joy

Posted on by anna

Today I started attending a women’s bible study on the college campus where I work. The study is called “Growing in Joy”, and it’s led by the president’s wife. She is super tiny, and super enthusiastic. It’s possible I am the youngest woman there by about twenty years. The first page of the study folder is typed in Comic Sans.

And oddly, I couldn’t have been happier to be there. It was lovely to be around women who have been seeking the Lord for decades. Especially since seeking the Lord is something I’m pretty terrible at.

Our homework is to write down ten things each day that we’re thankful for. Er…for which we are thankful. I thought the ‘ole bloggeroo would be a good place for that.

Today’s Ten:
1. My loving husband
2. Creamy Earl Grey tea
3. A night at home tonight
4. Cheese
5. My job
6. A new journey I am currently embarking on with Mary Kay
7. The fact that I really like my boss
8. Having Friday off this week
9.  My wonderful church community and the fellowship we had together on Sunday
10. Having lost the few pounds I gained over the last few weeks

I’m going to try to keep up my ten things. I’m sure some days will be harder than others, but I think it will be healthy for me to do this kind of homework.

Check back tomorrow.

You said you’d bake me a cake!

Posted on by anna

Hello friends! About a month ago, my grandmother turned 75, so we trekked to North Carolina with three tiers of cake and frosting in a cooler and this is how it turned out:

It was a beach theme! Those are chocolate-molded seashells and numbers. The buttercream is spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg to compliment the apple and pumpkin layers, as well as to make it look like sand.

I used a double-batch of Healthy Abundance’s Apple Spice Cake for the 8- and 6-inch upper layers and a one-and-a-half-batch of Sprinkle Bakes’ Brown Butter Pumpkin for the 10-inch bottom layer. I used two mega-batches of my favorite buttercream for all the filling and frosting. I’m very proud of how it came out!

Mega-Batch of Buttercream

Ingredients:
1 lb butter, room temperature
~1/3 cup heavy cream
2 lbs confectioner’s sugar
1T vanilla extract

In your stand mixer, with the whisk attachment, beat the butter on high until it is lighter in color and fluffy. Add the heavy cream and continue to beat another minute or two. You should have a very light-colored, light-consistency product right now. (I have a theory that the heavy cream actually whips up a bit in this process as well, but I can’t scientifically verify that.)

Once you have that light and fluffy butter/cream mixture, move the speed to medium and start dumping in your sugar in small quantities. I usually open up the bag and put in maybe a half cup at a time, allowing it to mix completely before I add the next portion.

After you’ve incorporated all your sugar, add your vanilla extract or any other extract (hazelnut, almond, peppermint — adjust amount to taste). To make the spiced buttercream pictured above, add about 1 tsp. cinnamon and 3/4 tsp. nutmeg and mix to distribute.

Frost your cake and enjoy! This recipe will make quite a bit of frosting. Doubling it, I had maybe a cup leftover after doing all three tiers and touching it up. But who doesn’t love having extra frosting around?

Bake in love, babies,

Flour City Girl

One Pot Pasta

Posted on by anna

One pot. For everything (sauce, pasta, etc.). This is my new favorite way to make pasta.

Here’s what you do: Fill your pot with water like you normally would to make pasta. Be sure to salt the water. Once it’s boiling, toss in your noodles.

When the noodles are almost done, you can toss in some fresh broccoli or asparagus chunks and they will be cooked perfectly by the time the pasta is done.

When your noodles are cooked how you like them, don’t just dump it out into a colander in the sink. Keep the noodles in the pot and strain out most of the water, either by putting a colander over the pasta, or using the lid. Leave some of the starchy water in the pot, you’ll want that to mix with the sauce! Toss in your sauce, and if you have any cooked protein ready, you can toss that in now. We like to microwave a few meatballs and toss those in. No need to heat it all again — the pasta and leftover starchy water will heat the sauce.

Voila, one pot pasta! Enjoy!

Notes: As far as pasta and sauce go, if we don’t make our own sauce, we like Wegman’s smooth marinara or tomato basil, and Barilla Plus (more protein!).

Wiped Out

Posted on by anna

This week is showing me who’s boss, and I’ll tell you, the boss is not me. I am sitting at work, thinking about the days to come in my head, and trying to plan a dinner where I can use many of the ingredients that are sitting in my fridge, just waiting to be made into something delicious.

Tonight? Nope, girls’ night.

Tomorrow? Nope, gotta use the Groupon that’s about to expire.

Saturday? Nope, we’ll be rushing to a hockey game from our all-afternoon church activity, so that will probably mean hotdogs and beers.

Sunday? …Maybe? But I have a recording session all afternoon and I’m at this point just expecting to grab food with the guys at the studio and call it a night.

It’s not that I’m complaining about all the beautiful events that are taking place this week. It’s just that I feel like I need a few days to rest in between. You know? So I don’t contract all the diseases the college kids at my job are inevitably trying to give me.

So, I’m wiped. But at least work isn’t crazy. What’s got you wiped out today?

Autumn Poems

Posted on by anna

I was just looking back through old posts and found one with some beautiful poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, celebrating autumn. The season is creeping up, and I thought I’d share these poems again.

“Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke:

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

“Autumn Day” by Rilke as well:

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

One whole year of happiness

Posted on by anna

Happy anniversary to my dear love, Elliot. Yesterday marked one year since our marriage, and I look forward to many more years spent with you.

Photo by Bethany Beams

Photo by Bethany Beams

This year has been filled with so much. We cooked our first Thanksgiving dinner, spent our first round of holidays as a married couple, bought a house, welcomed many friends’ babies into the world, and spent so much time with people we love. We are so blessed to know so many genuine folks, both in our families and in our community here in Rochester. We are continually blessed by our church family. We are just so lucky.

Here’s to many, many more years together. We will hit hard things and overcome them. We will seek out the beauty in life as much as possible. We will cherish each moment and each other.