I See Lots of Soup in My Future

If I wasn't feeling the fall fever yet, this picture has definitely done the trick.

It's like squash heaven.

Dad just sent me this (rather blurry) picture of the squash he and mom just picked from their garden. Those are twenty glorious butternut squashes, which can only mean one thing. . . my freezer had better be filled with delicious butternut squash soup pronto.

So. Excited. For. Fall.

DC Wandering, Friends, and TOTEM!

A few weekends ago, my friend Jason came down from the Big City to visit me in the Capitol City for the weekend.

Love this guy!

I met him at Union Station and we proceeded to walk around the city a little bit... it was only his second time in DC, so he was excited to see more of the memorials/important buildings.

Side of the Postal Museum

First we tried to go to the postal museum, which is conveniently located next to Union Station. I've been there before and I found it fascinating (although my a weird obsession with stamps may have had something to do with that). Unfortunately these plans were foiled by the smoothies we had only partially finished, because drinks are not allowed in the museum.

The building that houses the museum is very cool though. It's also a real post office, so we looked around a little bit, and I managed to snap a quick photo of the ceiling before we left.

I would love this to be my post office!

Then we started walking towards the back side of the Capitol building. I'd never realized you could get there so easily from Union Station. On the way we saw this cute little squirrel "sleeping" on the side of the road.

RIP poor little squirrel.
Now you won't be able to chew anyone's fuel lines.

I've never seen the Capitol building from the back before and it was beautiful! There is so much more to it than I ever realized! We walked around for a little while before heading back home.

The Capitol from the back

The Capitol from the front/side.

Then on Saturday night we saw TOTEM, a Cirque Du Soleil show! We were joined by Jenny and Mik and my friend from school, Jamie. Totem was probably one of my favorite Cirque shows so far (I've seen two others, Kooza and Ova).

The show is sort of an evolution/nature based one, so there were lots of "animal" acts and Native American things and then the introduction of science and technology a little at the end via an appearance by Charles Darwin. There was one hilarious scene where they recreated the monkey to human evolution picture. There weren't as many terrifyingly dare-devilish stunts in this one as there were in Kooza, but there was so much cool artistry and the acts were just fascinating, that I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Jason, Me, Jamie
and the TOTEM frog man!

The Cirque logo was projected onto the ceiling and it looked very cool.

Check out the TOTEM trailer below... The Native American ring dancers were one of my favorite acts!

Speaking of Heaven...

I finally managed to upload the pictures from our trip up to Vermont and I'd say that these reflect a little slice of heaven too. 

While we were there, we went up to visit my brother's new digs in Burlington. It was pretty amazing up there... We went to some delicious restaurants and hung out in downtown Burlington, we also did the Ben and Jerry's factory tour (yummm!), beer tastings at Rock Art Brewery, visited the Lake Champlain Chocolates factory (although we were 20 minutes too late for the tour), and just generally had a good time as a family!

Check out the scenes from Burlington...

Lake Champlain at sunset

Mitchell works right off the lake, so he sees this every day.
Officially jealous.

He can also walk here from his apartment,
so he can get here pretty easy.

Mitchell's work home (kind of)

Ben and Jerry's Factory
Flavor Graveyard!

Glad none of my favorite flavors have a headstone here yet!

A Little Slice of Heaven

My parents are currently ensconced on a balcony at 5,000 feet altitude somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains... or as my mom called it,  "heaven."

Check out the views.

Are you jealous? Because I am!

I Never Thought I'd Actually Go Looking for Dishes to Wash!

There is something new in my life that makes dishwashing probably one of my favorite things ever.

Pear Ginger Dish Soap 
 Orla Keily for Method

I picked this dish soap up at target the other day, partly because I thought the packaging was adorable, partly because I had a coupon, and partly because I was intrigued by the thought of pear-scented soap.

Best. Decision. Ever.

It smells amazing and officially makes me want to do the dishes all the time!

In a completely unrelated (but strangely so) incident, I was perusing some of the blogs I read on the very rare occasions that I have free time, and I came across this umbrella...

Cross Hatch Stem Minilite Umbrella

...which I'm officially completely head-over-heels in love with. As in if I had $49 to spend on an umbrella, I would have bought it about 5 minutes ago. Guess who's website popped up when I clicked on the link? Orla Keily's!

If I had another large wad of cash around, I'd invest in these too... an awesome laptop case and this adorable mug.

Quilted Acorn Print 15" Macbook Sleeve

Scribble Multi Stem Mug

How Cool Are These Little Guys???

So it's a well established fact that while I'm all about words and punctuation at this stage in my life, I'll always be a science nerd at heart. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled across this crazy awesome picture that a friend of mine posted on Facebook!

a water bear, courtesy of a scanning electron micrograph and Nature

How incredibly adorable is that?? Is it weird that I really want to hang this picture on my wall? I'm smitten.

This guy is seriously tiny and has been deemed the hardiest animal on Earth, thanks to its ability to live in sub-zero temperatures, solar winds, and the vacuum of space! Cool. To learn more about them, check out this super interesting article from Nature.

Apocalypse Now.

I don't know if you've heard about it, but the middle atlantic area (i.e., Arlington/DC/where my parents live) was party to a killer wind/rain storm on Friday evening. 

I happened to be in downtown DC at the time and not only witnessed a funnel cloud of newspapers, dust, and popcorn (not a real tornado obviously, just an annoying wind thing) and a ridiculous frog squelcher of a rain storm, but I was standing in it. 

Soaked.

Great times.

Eventually it ended and on Saturday we all started picking up the pieces. We had tons of branches and leaves down in my complex and so many people didn't have power (and still don't have it) it's crazy. I'm pretty sure that we are in worse condition than last summer when the hurricane hit. That was basically a day long storm, Friday night's storm lasted two hours at most.

huge tree branches fell everywhere!

People were pretty much acting like the apocalypse was happening. Grocery stores (at least the ones with power) were cleared out and gas stations were (and some still are) completely depleted of their gas supplies...

Which made this super scary... 

Super scary. Never want to see that again!

 Yes. That is my car's distance to empty meter. I actually had about an eighth of a tank, but when I last got gas, I foolishly only put about a gallon in because I thought I could get it cheaper elsewhere.

Big Mistake!

After trying to get gas at two separate stations (which were completely out of gas) I ended up having to wait in line with all the people who were fearing the worst (no gas ever again) and the people who were silly like me, for about 20 minutes. Then, I paid about 20 cents more than I had paid earlier because the only gas left was super duper premium.

I think I've learned my lesson.

But at least I have power and internet, which is more than many, and my car didn't get damaged by falling branches or anything. Too bad my window fell out again, otherwise I would have come out completely unscathed.

Maybe next time.

Adventures in Wine Country

No. I didn't go to California this weekend (although that would have been really cool)... rather I went to  a winery in the country... get it?

Sorry, that wasn't even funny.

Anyway, my friend and I decided to get out of the city yesterday and go check out a not-so-local winery wayyyy out in Delaphplane, VA (about 1.5 hours from DC) called Cobbler Mountain Cellars. She had purchased a groupon a while back and had been planning to use it with her friend that's a boy, but he backed out at the last minute and I got to go instead! The deal included free tastings, two full glasses of wine, and $12 off the purchase of a bottle, plus, you got to keep your tasting glass.

Wine tasting table set-up outside the winery.
There was also a cool tasting area inside.

The drive wasn't too bad once you got out of the city and off I-66, which is annoying and trafficky at the best of times. But it was super nice after that—complete with cow pastures, trees galore, and lots of long, winding, super narrow, gravel roads... it felt like being back at home!

The view from the porch of Cobbler Mountain

We got a tiny bit lost and the GPS took us a slightly roundabout way, but once we found the place we were pretty charmed. Their website has this slightly ridiculous poem which I will not post here, but you can get to through the link, which supposedly explains their story, but in my opinion is just a little over the top. Almost as silly, but slightly more explanatory is the story on their Facebook page which states...

Cobbler Mountain—home to the "Little Winery That Could"—is where the fairies live in big poplar trees, children run barefoot to Thumb Run Creek and stories of the wise Grandfathers and kind Grandmothers are shared around the Grand Fire Circle at the foot of the forest. A legendary dreamer, Grandfather McCarthy, discovered Big Cobbler Mountain in 1959. His love of creatures and exploring has been preserved and passed down to his children and grandchildren. Come hike a wooded trail. Open a bottle of imagination. Sip handcrafted wines with the makers. Find a little fantasy under the old apple tree. Who knows who you will meet along the way?

Charming, huh? Anyway, it's a super cute little woodsy area and their wine was pretty good too. My favorite was definitely the chardonnay. It was delicious.

Best. Glass. of Wine. Ever.

On the winery porch.

After we we had tasted all the wine we could, we headed out in search of somewhere for lunch. We were originally planning to go to some pub that the winery people recommended, but we were starving, so we decided to stop at a little gem called Old Salem Cafe (and sports bar). We partly picked it because it was the first place we came to, and partly because of the huge sign outside that proclaimed, "Bikers Welcome!"

They had the best onion rings ever there. The other highlight of the meal—the time the waitress asked me if I had just come from graduation... in June. In other words, she thought I had just graduated from high school. Typical.

The Old Salem Cafe.
Bikers welcome.

Time for Tea

One of the things I LOVE about pinterest is how many fun websites I find through it.

Take this one for instance. Time for Tea is a tumblr site dedicated to all things tea-themed, tea-inspired, and just plain tea. It's kind of awesome.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures...

via time for tea

via young wild & free

via knuffle bear bunni

via studio ampersand

via so feel the audio...

Feeling Lucky?

Everyone can use a little more luck in their lives and I'm hoping that my new "Lucky Bamboo" will bring a little extra luck to my life. 

According to the banner at IKEA, three bamboo stems will bring you happiness, five will bring health, and nine bring good fortune.

As I'm pretty healthy and I didn't have enough room for nine stems, I opted for the three stem happiness route. So far, I guess it's been working pretty well... I did get to see Prairie Home after all!

According to Feng Shui, Bamboo brings a peaceful and wise energy into the home by teaching you the ultimate wisdom: how to be flexible and hollow (aka open) on the inside, so that the spirit can freely flow and heal your being.

Sounds good to me!

An Evening in the Battlefields

Last weekend my brother graduated (yes, that's right graduated!) from Gettysburg. The evening before, my cousin and I took a drive through the battlefields for a little sunset tour. It was beautiful.

Here are just a few of the sunset/battlefieldscapes I took... 

I realize that many of you can't handle as many semi-repetitive versions of a sunset as I can, so to spare you, I've put the rest of the pictures after the break...

p.s. if you click on the pictures, they get bigger and you can see the sunsets in all their beautiful glory.

How Perfect Is This?

I was trolling around on pinterest this evening (because that's what I do to avoid going to sleep) and I found this poster. I think it's perfect... it speaks to me. haha

Source: brainpickings.org via Melissa on Pinterest

Snow Day!

It's snowing in Pennsylvania!

Are you jealous?

I would be.

Hooray For Pictures!

If there's one thing I hate, it's a blank wall. I don't know why, but it gives me agida. So, you can only imagine how much I've been wanting to fill the huge void above my bed for the past five months.

Horrible blank space...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I've finally done it. The void has been filled. Check it out.

The first thing I did was lay out all my frames on the floor and arrange them in a fun design. I've been wanting to put a "gallery wall" into the apartment somewhere, and figured that filling this huge expanse of empty wall was the perfect opportunity.

Then, I used a trick I've seen all over the internet recently where you cut pieces of paper to the size of each of your frames, which you then tape to the wall to make sure you actually like what you're doing before hammering in nails (drilling screws in my case) or using up command strips.

It's a good thing I did that because I hated the way all those frames looked up there. It was too cluttered, too big, and just plain overwhelming. I even re-arranged it a few times and took out some of the frames, but I could never quite make it look the way I was envisioning.

That's when I remembered the collage frame I had picked up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $3 because it was damaged (no glass). So, I scrapped my original idea, mocked-up the new frame, and put a few frames around it.

Much better. Although, still not quite what I was going for.

But I knew I liked the big frame, so I went ahead and hung that, so I could arrange the other ones around it more easily.

I went though several different arrangement options before I finally chose this. It may not be a gallery wall, but I love it anyway.

I was planning on hanging all the frames with command strips, but I read the box and it specifically says not to do that, due to the possibility of the strips loosing their stickyness, falling on your head while you're sleeping, and killing you. So, I opted for screws. Hopefully I'll have some help with the spackeling come move-out time... oh, mom?

The collage is absolutely my favorite part because it's got most of my favorite kitties. The other nice thing is that since these frames are all hung with screws, it will be easy to switch out the pictures if I get bored or new ones I like better come along.

clockwise from top: Sam, Frisk, Snickers, Skits