Lady Nine

One more walk around Lake of the Isles before the snow comes Wow! It has been a really busy couple of weeks. In fact, this last month has been a bunch of lovely chaos.  The best part is that life is running its course right now, and I am in the race.  I am hoping that things continue to move upward for me, and I promise to do my best to keep posting through the madness. Thanks for sticking with me and my blog. XO

We are one day away from the start of the holiday season!  Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and Jon and I always dress up and go out with friends to sing karaoke. We went out this past weekend as Ms. Scarlet and Mr. Green from the classic game/movie Clue. It was a fun costume to put together (thank you Target.com) and we had a fun night out singing our favorites.  Here are a few of my favorite Halloween blog posts to help you celebrate this year. Happy Halloween everyone! A spooky punch to serve at your party or for the adults that stop by with the trick-or-treaters Even though I'm a dog person, I do love these   photos of Blackie . I don't have baby fever, but Taza's kids make me want little ones to dress up! Especially as Anna Wintour ! I still find myself looking at wedding blogs, and here is an gothic inspired wedding  perfect for Halloween! Put together a last minute Halloween dinner for some friends!

Years ago, I remember sitting in my college apartment, reading an email that just told me I was accepted for a study abroad program in Florence Italy.  To be honest, I was shocked.  For some reason, I didn't think I would get in.  I think because none of my other sisters had studied abroad, so for some reason I didn't think I was meant to either. Months later, I was living in a beautiful apartment in Florence, living with girls I had just met a few weeks prior. I have thousands of memories and stories from my time there, but a few of them stand out more than the others. This is one such story.  Towards the end of my time in Florence, I was getting very homesick. It's hard to even admit now because I would do anything to go back and live there again!  However, I had lived there a few months, and was really homesick. I missed my friends and family, but mostly I missed my sisters. (this was before Skype or FaceTime was popular).  The first weekend of Nov...

Sunshine through the autumn leaves It has been a busy week and I am very much looking forward to the weekend.  Work is picking up and I find myself setting a goals outside of work hours that keep me just as busy. However, I am happy to be working on so many things that I love and still having the time to spend with Jon and my friends on the weekends. I hope you all had a great week and have something special planned for the weekend, even if it's perfecting the art of doing nothing. Cheers! These candles smell amazing and I love the wine bottle touch It's never to early to teach kids to cook Special mid week social at the Hotel Ivy Gorgeous architecture at the Itasca building

I have most of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. They have such great recipes and I always find them easy to follow with delicious results.  I wouldn't call this Wheatberry Salad a fail by any means, but it definitely did not turn out the way I expected.  The wheat berries took twice as long to cook as the instructions said, and I they didn't really turn "soft." It was more like "chewy."Nonetheless, it was an easy dish to make (I even made pesto sauce while waiting for the wheat berries to cook) and I look forward to having it for lunches this week. Raw Wheatberries I use Alessi coarse salt when I salt water for cooking Ombre Onions Fall Colors

As most of the country begins their slow decent into the autumn season, Minnesota tends to jump in full force the moment we have one day less than 70 degrees. The leaves are turning beautiful colors of orange, yellow and red, and the chilly weather is making it tough to leave my house in the morning without a jacket and scarf. I welcome the change of seasons and have already made updates to my wardrobe and living spaces. Here are some quick tips on how you can make some easy changes to embrace the autumn season. 1.  Stock up on baking items.  Do an inventory of your spices, baking ingredients, and tools to see what you need. I just picked up some new cookie sheets from Kitchen Window as my old ones needed to be donated. Baking is much more fun when I know that I already have everything I need, and then I can make my pumpkin bread during the week. 2.  Switch your bedding.  This is something that a friend of mine showed me, and I am determined to do it...

I have to admit, I am a total wuss.  I do not like horror films and I rarely get pleasure out of being scared.  That is not to say that I would not be good in scary situations, (I would never follow a serial killer into the basement of his home as Jodie Foster did in Silence of the Lambs) and I like to think that I can think fast in panic situations.  However, I do like the spooky spirit of Halloween, and enjoy watching some semi-scary movies made for wusses (thank you Disney) this time of year.  Old movies in black and white are my favorite, and the scary movies give me enough thrill to watch in the dark on a chilly October evening.  Here is my list of movies I will be watching this weekend while I begin to put together my costume for Halloween. 1. Hocus Pocus 2. Young Frankenstein 3. Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein 4. Clue 5. Practical Magic 6. Rear Window 7. Death Becomes Her 8. The Craft 9. The Birds