Life In Limbo

Lately | January

January 21, 2013

Excited about some mini-adventures coming up in the next month. I’m going to Ottawa with friends for Winterlude, which promises to be cozy and homey and lovely. And then a few weeks later, one of my best friends from home is going to come visit me!

Reading Flannery O’Connor’s short story collection “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. I’m enjoying these slightly dark, well-written stories, and having fun Googling their analysis after I read each of them to see if I can gain more from each one.

Watching Django Unchained – I’m halfway through as we speak! It’s very Tarantino, but considering that I love his movies, that’s not an issue for me. I am really enjoying it so far, I think it’s disturbing but at times funny and very clever. We’ll see how I feel about it when I get to the end and read a few articles of different perspectives on it.

Thrilled that I learned how to manually set my white balance, and thrilled about how my photos are coming out a million times better with just this one simple trick.

Planning my trip to Europe, one small little piece at a time.

Proud that I’ve been keeping to a sleep schedule for the past week or so and that because of it, I’m getting more time in the mornings.

Trying to enjoy wintery details, like being cozy inside with a prime view of beautiful snowstorm flurries, or the crystalline frost pattern on one of my windows every morning.

Journalling to stay grateful and in the present moment instead of pining for the past or trying to control the future.

Texting my best friends at all hours of the day and night has been such a lifeline.

Considering baking this caramel date loaf with the leftover dates I have from those Larabars.

Obsessed with Olivia’s and Max’s photography.

Making lists on lists on lists to tame my crazy brain (works every time).

Pondering what my next creative endeavour will be – knitting has temporarily worn me out.

Happy that it’s sunny today, that I am loved, that I have so many people to love.

Everyday Beauty: Week 2

January 18, 2013

Hi! So, please bear with me as I figure out my favourite format for these end-of-week photo posts! I like including photos from Instagram, but they’re small and not great quality so I think it’s better I keep them small in the post. But I also want to be able to share some of my other photos when I have them. This format is what I’ve come up with for this week, let’s see how it works out. Also: I’ll be posting these Friday, and they’ll show everything since the previous post. One of my nightmares last year was having to try and match up the week of Project 365 with the photos…this year I’m not stressing out about it.

We had our book club meeting on the same night as we made s’mores in my friend’s fireplace! Both were fun activities. Highlight was playing “Kiss Marry Kill” with all manner of celebrity examples, and listening to “Boyfriend” to the chagrin of most (but not all) of our friends. There was a double birthday party night (two birthdays and two parties) on Saturday, it was a lot of fun to see everyone and plan a surprise for both of our friends! We had a Girls night where we watched the new episode of Girls, had an intellectual discussion about it, then watched the Mindy Project, and did not have an intellectual discussion about it. All in all, it was very fun.

I’ve been doing a little yoga, drinking a lot of tea, experimenting with a couple of new recipes, and reading a lot – as much as I can! Of course, school is pretty busy, they’re really making me work for this last semester! So I’ve been doing a lot of readings and diligently going to my classes. The weekend ahead promises to be full of work (actual work, and schoolwork) so I’m going to try and put my head down and barrel through it.

Happy Weekend!

xo.

Homemade Chocolate-Cherry Larabars

January 17, 2013

Yum!

I’ve been meaning to make my own energy bars for a very long time. According to my Pinterest board, I’ve been meaning to make them for 15 weeks, ever since I pinned this recipe for Cherry Pie Larabars! Turns out I didn’t even use that particular recipe, but my point is that the intention to make a healthy energy bar has been in my mind for a while.

For those who don’t know what a Larabar is: it’s an energy bar, made of very few ingredients, combinations of different nuts and dried fruits. I’ve tried a couple flavours in the past and did not like, but I was very open to the idea of making some of these simple bars at home, especially since those bars are pretty pricey!

I had a lovely sushi lunch with my friend Laura the other day, and amidst talk of dating no-no’s and the upcoming running season, we talked about trying to eat healthier, plant-based meals and she reminded me about this great blog, Oh She Glows. It’s a vegan blog with all kinds of delicious-looking recipes, and I’m having a good time looking through the archives! When I looked it up again, the first recipe on the homepage was for homemade Larabars, quelle coincidence. Anyways, I was inspired, blah-dee-blah, and found this recipe for Dark Chocolate Cherry Energy Bites that I made in due haste, yestereve.

I don’t have a very powerful food processor. It is tiny. I think the issues I’m having with these bars being slightly more crumbly than I’d like is due to the fact that I had to process the individual ingredients one at a time in my mini food processor, and then combine all the ingredients with a wooden spoon and my hands. They pressed nicely into the pan and stuck together, but didn’t hold up 100% when I put one in my bag to take to school. But the good news is, they’re delicious! So tasty. Considering that I’ve never liked dates before, ever, eating a nut-and-date-based energy bar was remarkably pleasant. Other notes: I couldn’t find dried cherries as per the recipe, so I used dried cranberries that are flavoured like cherries. That’s sort of weird, but I just went with it. The recipe only made 8 bars, and they are dense with healthy, pure, raw ingredients.

I’m excited to experiment with different flavours of homemade Larabars! I like making trail mixes every once in a while, but these bars are a more compact version of the same thing and I think I might like them better, because bars are more fun to eat, n’est-ce pas?

Happy Thursday! TGIAF!

Project 365 Book

January 15, 2013

I’m so totally thrilled with how this little book turned out. All along, throughout the project, I had been hoping to print all my photos from Project 365 into a Blurb book and it was so fun to get the book yesterday and finally see them all in print. I was so excited about getting it I was tracking the package online every day and left a little note for the postman about which buzzer was mine (they never buzz, and then I have to trek out to the UPS store to get a package that could have just been delivered straight to me!).

Anyways, I love it. It is the visual record of my 2012. I intentionally printed the book with 8 photos per spread – partially because of cost, partially because I love being able to see about a week at a time. Also, as I’ve said repeatedly throughout the year re: this project – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Not every single photo is special. But together they are so special! And I love that I can remember things that were happening that day when I look at the photos. I made this 7×7 book using Blurb and I am very happy with the results.

Plus – guess what? I learned how to manually set my white balance when I took these photos this morning! So Project 365 (the learning, the growing, the improving) has come full circle and is going full steam ahead. Yay!