Thankfully Thankful

Every year as the weather begins to change I find myself in a nostalgic mood. Fall is the best time of year and I often catch myself feeling more grateful for the people in my life. I don't know if it's because Thanksgiving is nearing and you often have those conversations around the table or what but I continue catching myself taking moments to reflect on how grateful I am and decided this time to quickly write some of it down.

It is extremely easy for me to get wrapped up in the negative and I have to consistently remind myself around October to take a deep breath. October is a busy time at work and I catch myself feeling burnt out. Between commuting, working late, conferences, and life, I begin to feel emotionally and physically exhausted. However, regardless of how busy and crabby I get, I know when I walk through the door Andrew is there. There are weeks we go without seeing each other for longer than a millisecond as we run out the door but once the dust settles we are still in stride with one another and no matter what season it is- I am extremely grateful for that.

Someone's sleepy. 

An integral part of our family are our dogs-Alba and Bailey. If you follow me on any social medias you are fairly acquainted with them. They truly are our kids and when they're not around we are lost without them. Over the summer as we prepared for a vacation and had dropped them off to be dog sat at Andrew's brother's house. That evening we decided to go on a walk which we frequently do with the dogs and we both discussed how a piece of our life was missing without them there. On top of Andrew being behind that door every time I come home I know one of them will be there to greet me.

How could you not be grateful for these two?

Believe me- there is a ton more I am grateful for! Remember I said October was busy? Maybe I'll be able to carve more time in the future to continue to share things I'm thankful
for. Until then....

Sunday Project

Can't believe we are already into December and are fully into the Christmas season! This will be the first year I have a place that is "mine." I've always shared an apartment with roommates and had the liberty to do what I wanted but this year I've been responsible with making it my "home" and I've come to realize I enjoy cooking, crafting, and decorating more than I thought before.

In other apartments where I knew I'd be for a short year before I went home for the summer I never put more effort than to hang a poster on the wall and call it good. However, now our plan is to stay in one place for awhile. To be completely honest, that was one of the main things I was looking forward to after graduating grad school- have a place to live for more than 2 years. I was tired of moving. In our new apartment I have been able to really make it ours and have started to think more "domesticated" (I used to always call my best friend Stephanie this because she always was thinking in a Susie Homemaker way when I would just shrug these things off). 

One project I've been waiting to tackle is cleaning and re-doing my Kitchen Aid mixer. When Andrew, my sister, and I rented a house out in Warrensburg I got the opportunity to go through Andrew's grandma's old things and take what we needed. When I was in the process of doing this I came across her old KitchenAid mixer. The mixer was a dingy yellow color that needed a little TLC. When I took it, I didn't care what it looked like- it was functional and that's all that mattered to me. Now that the kitchen is mine and Andrew could careless what it looks like, I've started to make it look "pretty." My mom had told me about some blogs she had read awhile back about taking them apart and cleaning them and hand sent me one that seemed fairly easy to tackle and with the holidays approaching, I bust out the KitchenAid mixer and started baking. 

There were a couple of different recipe's I wanted to try so I  spent the majority of yesterday making

• Butterscotch shortbread
• Puppy chow
• Crockpot Chex Mix
• Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins

After my baking purge I finally decided to take the time and deep clean- and I mean DEEP CLEAN- this KitchenAid mixer and repaint it. We decided to go with a Hunter Green color that would cover the spots that didn't seem to come off and WALA!

There are still a couple places I need to touch up but I'll save that for another Sunday! Next on my list of projects- Christmas gifts!