winter time fruit

i love fruit - strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, watermelon, grapes - so the grocery store in the winter can be a little disheartening. there is no good fruit to be found, or if it's there, it's WAY more expensive that anyone should have to pay for a tiny clamshell container of fruit.

thankfully, God in his great wisdom, did leave us with one fruit that's delicious and easy to get in the winter - clementines!

i love these little guys - easy to peel (although as you can see, i'm not one of those talented people that can keep the peel all in one piece), just the right portion (regular oranges are a little overwhelming for me), and available in large quantities in the winter! i eat at least one, sometimes several, every day and never get tired of them :)

got any of your own secrets to surviving the winter fruit famine?

4 months and counting...

today, alex and i have been married for 4 months! in the spirit of my 2 month anniversary post, i thought i'd spend some time reflecting and share some additional marital wisdom :)

1 - spending time together = becoming more like each other: alex has discovered he actually really enjoys reading (we even got library cards!) and i've become a much more knowledgeable football fan (football is 4 nights a week in our house - thursday, saturday, sunday, monday). also, i think we're finding each other funnier than ever before...i don't know if that means we're actually becoming funnier people or perhaps our standards are lowering ever so slightly :)

2 - when one of us cares deeply about how something is done, it's best for the other to let them do their thing: i never had a real Christmas tree growing up (allergies run deep in my family), so the whole picking out a Christmas tree process is a bit of a mystery to me, but to alex, it's a science - how many needles fall off when you bang it on the ground, are there any obvious holes, is it the right shape, etc. and even though it's FREEZING outside, you have to examine every potential tree. so this year when we went to select our tree, i just sat back and let him do his thing, and we came home with the perfect tree!

for me, the example may seem...kind of stupid, but i care deeply about how the dishwasher gets loaded. it's better for alex (and our marriage) if he just puts the silverware in the way i tell him to and doesn't resist. the silverware gets cleaner my way anyways.

3 - cooking for two means tuna and crackers no longer equals an adequate dinner: when you're cooking for two, you actually have to COOK and not just combine whatever's left in the back of the cabinets. and because cooking (and doing the dishes) can be a lot of work, you often want to make enough food to feed you both for more than one meal. be sure to adjust your portions appropriately though, because a box of pasta that used to feed me for a week now feeds us for 1.5 meals. boys eat a lot.

4 - two people = more than twice as much laundry: maybe this is obvious to other people, but i didn't really think about how much bigger alex's clothes are than mine, which means we actually have more than just twice as much laundry to do. maybe i should just take my wise husband's advice, and instead of doing laundry more often, we'll just get a bigger hamper!

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Alex and I set aside this Saturday for Christmas decorating!!! Of course, this primarily revolved around selecting, setting up, and decorating the tree. So, this morning we set out for the Home Depot to make our selection. Chicago had it's first major snow last night, so a lot of the trees were coated in snow and therefore would be soaking wet when we wanted to bring it in the house.

Thankfully, the one we ended up with was under a covering, and quite dry :) It's about 7ft tall and filled up the space in our place really well:


After getting it in the stand, we let it dry for a little while. I worked on Christmas cookies and Alex worked on the rest of the decorations. When we were done with that, it was time for lights! You'll notice, these lights have white (i.e. super noticeable) cords. When I first selected these lights 3 year ago, it was my first time with a real Christmas tree and I didn't know you were supposed to buy the ones with the green cords so they blend in. Whoops.


After the lights we hung the ornaments - my favorite part :) So many of the ornaments have special significance and fun memories associated with them. Here's the finished product (minus the tree skirt):

We love it! Now our place looks really festive and we're feeling the Christmas spirit :)

recommended reading

when it comes to reading, i'm what i'd call a "binge reader". once i get started in a good book, i can't put it down. this weekend i even made us late to a social event because i just HAD to finish the book i was working on :)

in fact, it was such a great book that i wanted to recommend it to you all here - it's called "April 1865: the month that saved America" by Jay Winik. it's non fiction, about the final month of the Civil War with portraits of the major players woven into it. it covers Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln's assassination, and so many critical events in our nation's history. the reconstruction of the United States was not a forgone conclusion after the Civil War, and this book made me really appreciate the greatness of our leaders at the time.

i learned a whole lot from the book (did you know the succession process for the VP to take over if the President dies is not actually in the Constitution??), but it's not a heavy read necessarily. it's about 380 pages and i got more invested the more i read. if you're looking for a good read over the holidays, i'd highly recommend it!

now, it's time for a novel - on to "The Help" for book club!

we (meaning alex) know someone (sorta) famous!

last night, alex got his first interview with an actual professional football player for his blog! he spoke with none other than W&M's own Derek Cox, starting corner back for the jacksonville jaguars! alex knows derek from his days as the student-athletic-advisory-council vice-president (derek was the president) and they've kept in sporadic touch since graduation.

although derek has NO idea who i am, i'm a big fan of his and love seeing someone i (sorta) know on TV. we watched his first start ever against the indianapolis colts last year, when he picked off peyton manning in the end zone on their first drive. we happened to be in Indy at the time, watching the game with my extended family, who are all big colts fans, and we LOVED rubbing that in :)

any famous or sorta famous people in your lives??

view from the top!

last weekend, alex and i took a last-minute, spontaneous trip to our nation's capital to see friends, and we had such a blast! we got to relax, play games, watch football, and just generally enjoy everyone's company :)

as an added perk, we got to take several special tours, including the Dome of the Library of Congress! located across from the Capitol, the LOC Dome gives you a great view of the city and the National Mall. i took this shot with my phone, so it's not the best, but here's an idea of what we saw:


alex, who is afraid of heights, was a real trooper, particularly on a windy day, until i started getting closer to the edge to take a picture of the flame on top of the LOC Dome - then he was less than pleased :)

pick a persona!

since i spent most of my days at a desk in front of my computer, i find it pretty easy to get bored with my surroundings. thankfully, someone brilliant at Firefox has found a way to help me combat that - they created "personas" which are basically banners that run across the top of your window, and they have all kinds of themes and colors.

whenever i'm feeling the need to a change of scenery, i change my persona, and then change the colors of my gmail to match. today, i'm trying out a new one:


and i can't decide how i feel about it. it's really bright, which i like in theory, particularly as it's getting dark outside so early, but it might actually hurt my eyes to look at it all day. what do you think? what tips do you guys have for making "desk life" more interesting?