Online Shoppers Anonymous

Hi I'm Rachel and I have an addiction. I got hooked to online shopping about 4 months ago. I mean I've tried it before, but I am seriously addicted. Sometimes I can quit cold turkey-just totally ignore my favorite sites for days-but when school gets rough and my brain gets fried and I'm anxious for a payday, I get the jitters and I just can't stop my fingers from ticking and clicking their way to my favorite online escape.

This is something like what my "bottomless wallet, in my dreams" shopping list might look like, or maybe your Christmas list if you had endless funds to spend on your Rachie baby. This is by no means an all-inclusive, complete list, it merely contains a few of the things I keep my eye on the most: handbags and shoes, shoes, shoes!

From top left:
Steve Madden 'Intyce' boot, nordstrom.com

Coconuts 'Virginia' boot, piperlime.com

Grey-tly Appreciated boot, modcloth.com

Naughty Monkey 'Pen Cognac Antic Brush Off', overstock.com

Lane 'Wild Hearts', overstock.com

Whiskey fold rugged boots, shopruche.com

Cole Haan 'Maria Sharipova', nordstrom.com

Guess, 'Rumala' boots, nordstrom.com

Trailblazer boots, modcloth.com

From top left:

French Connection Lace flats, overstock.com
Fergie 'Gravity' flats, nordstrom.com
Beverly Feldman 'Flashy' flats, nordstrom.com
Steve Madden 'Tuxxedo' flats, zappos.com
Flowerbed Flats, modcloth.com
Sam Edelman 'Irina' flats, nordstrom.com
Budding Romance heels, modcloth.com
BCBGirls pointy toe flats, overstock.com
Grey studded pointy heels, shopruche.com

From top left:
Dolce Vita 'Flash' bootie, nordstrom.com
Mauv-ie Night Heel, modcloth.com
(do I even need to identify??) Christian Louboutin Platform pump, bergdorfgoodman.com
Kelsi Dagger 'Rosabella' bootie, piperlime.com
Jimmy Choo mesh bootie, nordstrom.com
Michael Antonio 'McKey' booties, piperlime.com
Venti expresso heels, modcloth.com
Jagged little heel, modcloth.com
Pink Studio 'Valonia' t-strap heels, shopruche.com


*For the judgmental few-in case you are wondering, you need not fear that I am not collapsing into materialism and filling my head full of covetous desires- lately I've gone quite a bit without shopping online, with only a dabble here and there. I still usually fritter away most of my spare time with Jeffrey.

Shane-you could call online shopping another one of my "coping mechanisms" :)

HALLOWEEN!!

Halloween-my favorite holiday! I love carving pumpkins, and making Halloween doughnuts, and bobbing for apples, and making caramel apples, and playing the pumkpin toss game, and listening to creepy Halloween music, and Halloween carnivals, AND....dressing up!

Dress-up and I have had a long love affair; I could pull together one awesome outfit before I could even talk.

{Halloweens past}

Jeffrey likes dressing up too-his preference is a toga. I'm trying to help him branch out:

If you are needing last minute, clever costume ideas, check out this site dedicated to the delightful dressed-up holiday of Halloween.

Old Favorites

One of my guilty pleasures is to stockpile recipes. I may have acquired this knack from my Mama, who has a conglomerate of old recipe books, recipe index cards, and recipes scribbled on scrap pieces of paper. However, one of my all time favorite foods generally needs no recipe card, it’s easy and quick to fix, and oh so satisfying. I am talking about oatmeal. Those warm, softened and slightly nutty oats combine their goodness with raisins and there you have it- my first food love. If you don’t believe me, there are multiple pictures of plump little Rachel munching up oatmeal with raisins, as if a child this large needed to munch anything:

Here are some variations of my old stand-by favorite:

Gingerbread Apple Oatmeal

Scant ¼ C. of homemade or homestyle applesauce (the homemade, or at least homestyle kind, is so hearty and is much more flavor rich than the store bought kind)

1 T. Gingerbread coffee creamer

2 packets of Splenda, or if you prefer, ½-1 tsp. Brown sugar

A bowl of your favorite oatmeal (I stud mine with raisins)

Mix all together and feel free to adjust to your taste preference. I love this oatmeal blend-it’s so flavorful and so surprisingly delicious.

Pear and Walnut Oatmeal

1 cored and sliced ripe pear (I like Bartlett pears)

1-2 T. walnuts (or pecans)

Sugar or sweetener to taste

1 T Half-and-Half

A bowl of your favorite oatmeal

Toast the walnuts at 400 Fahrenheit until just toasty. Mix together all ingredients. This recipe is so tasty because the pears soak up some of the warmth of the oatmeal and soften, and the nuts adds a joyful crunch.

Also, check out this chocolate chip cookie oatmeal recipe, this recipe for cherry and tangerine oatmeal, and these pumpkin pie oatmeal and simple pumpkin oatmeal recipes.

Autumn

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.”
-Stanley Horowitz

Fall is my absolute favorite season. There are so many reasons to love autumn (one being the word "Autumn"-what a pleasure to say!), but here are a few of my most beloved aspects of autumn:

Flavors-aromatic spices, crisp apples, apple cider, cinnamon sugar, pumpkin, butternut squash, and spiced doughnuts
Hazelnut cream and Mocha Candles masking my apartment with a cozy smell
Leaves-beautiful on the trees and crunchy under my feet
Crispness of the air
The colors!!
Clothes-sweaters, layers, boots, mittens, slippers
Halloween
My birthday
The smell of the air

Weekend Mirths

This weekend was much too fleeting, probably because we were so busy.
Some highlights:

• Cleaning house- this is actually a highlight in my book because there are few things so enjoyable to me as a clean house. I love how it just feels, not to mention looks.


• Going to the grocery store and picking the most perfect pumpkins-almost already too cute to carve.


• Renting "I Am Legend" and watching Jeffrey get up and jump/dance around at the really intense parts


• Sharing Sunday dinner and a Sunday evening chat with our buddy buddies, the Coons'


• Getting a new Kitchenaid mixer from my mama (an early Christmas present)! I couldn't help but break it right out of the box and put it to work. "What did I make with it?" you might ask, well let me tell you:

Some really, really tasty chocolate chip cookies which may conclude my search for a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe (go-to, because I'm convinced there are just too many recipes and too many taste variables to have a "best ever" chocolate chip cookie. But don't get me wrong, these are darn good.) Cookie recipe here.

Down home biscuits. I didn't really believe that the Kitchenaid could cut butter into flour like my Jeffrey can, but oh, it did. I served these up with some honey butter:

Recipe for 2-4

2 T. butter

1 T. honey (maybe even a bit more, I like a relatively even honey to butter ratio)

Whip, whip, whip

Sweet potato, potato, and carrot mash-but I have made this before and I prefer this mash without just potatoes and carrots. It is seriously so good. The sweetness of the carrots and flavor of the sweet potatoes blend seamlessly. It is so much better than mashed potatoes. Love love love. The original recipe is here, but this is what I like to do:

Recipe for 2

Wash, peel and halve 1 large sweet potato, and 3 large carrots (carrots take a long time to roast, so to make sure nothing gets burned, I cut off the skinny skinny bottoms of the carrots and didn't roast them)

Place in a baking dish and roast in a 375 Fahrenheit oven for about 45 minutes, or until tender and a fork slides through carrots and sweet potatoes easily.

Put carrots and sweet potatoes in Kitchenaid and turn mixer speed to 4-this will give them a rough mash. If you don't have a Kitchenaid, you can use a potato masher (the hand-held kind) or even a fork. Next, whip the mash together with 2 T. butter and 2-4 T. half and half. I used a blender for this and it was a bit tricky and time consuming, and I wish I had a food processor...

When they are all blended together and nice and creamy...go ahead, enjoy them!

This weekend I also got in some non-textbook reading. I'm dabbling in "The Five People You Meet in Heaven"-so far, pretty good. It's interesting and has some great one-liners packed with insight, and I'm intrigued about the ending.

Jeffrey spent most of his weekend writing a program for his computer programming class. It's fun homework to him and mind-blowing to me. He really is quite good at, which is no surprise when he explains that it is all about problem solving- he is really good at problem solving. Trust me. I know.

photo courtesy of allrecipes.com

Of Snarlows and Marshmallows

{roasting mallows in Provo Canyon. My niece heard us calling them s'mores and marshmallows, so she created her own word, "snarlow"}

{the ginormous mallows we roasted in the canyon}

It is no small secret that I LOVE S'MORES, mostly for the marshmallows. For my birthday, my Mama got me this awesome contraption that makes it possible to make s'mores in the microwave without getting a balloon-sized marshmallow that turns into a rock. It's fabulous!

Jeffrey got me a marshmallow of a different sort for my birthday....

{me and my marshmallow!}{My marshmallow compared to Jeffrey's standard-sized laptop}

A new netbook! It's so sweet and light and adorable and I love it so! It works out perfectly for me, since on campus all I ever really need is to get online and do some word processing now then, and it doesn't break my back. This means I can carry it in my beloved Melie Bianco bag (another birthday present from darling Jeffrey boy).

Rachel J's Bday

My girl Rachel's birthday is 4 days after Jeff's, and this was her 21st! AND she got to go to Vegas!! But on the real day of her birth she had some friends over to her new apartment to play our most beloved game...Catch Phrase! Rachel, Bre, and I are the dream team at Catch Phrase, and I'm pretty sure that Rach's team won alomst every game.

I offered to make her cake for the big day, and these little treats were the result:

Marshmallow Creme-Filled Caramel Cupcakes!

The Big 2-1!

Don’t worry all of those who may think my 21^st birthday passed by uneventfully, I had a marvelous “Since I can’t get drunk, come get high with me!” celebration inspired by the movie “UP”. I love this movie, and I love birthdays, so naturally the two came together to create a magnificent event. I had some of my besties over for mocktails and hors d’orves, cupcakes, and presents, then we headed off to see “UP” in the dollar theatre. I handed out balloons with big ol’ chocolate bars tied to the ribbons to weigh the balloons down. I took mine to the theatre and it almost escaped me during the movie and floated up into movie theatre oblivion, but luckily my bro-in-law Christian has PLRs (panther-like reflexes) and snatched it. It was a lovely day, and I was pleasantly surprised at how fun a simple celebration can be.

{delicious mocktails: pina colada, strawberry daiquiri, raspberrry lemonade}

{superb cupcakes: sugar cookie cupcakes with strawberry buttercream}

{delightful gifts}

All of these photos were taken by the lovely Chelise Vandegraaff. You can view her blog here.

23

23....going on 17
(I'm not being factious, that's a direct quote from the man himself)
Jeff's birthday was waaaay back in August, but it still deserves due attention.
We invited a few of his friends over-we actually had about 14 people in our tiny apartment-and threw him a dinosaur themed birthday celebration fit for a...23 year old? It was really fun.

One reason why I love my Jeffrey: he's so easy to please. My family has a tradition where every year for your birthday you are free to request whatever birthday dinner and dessert you would like. Jeff wanted the simplest dinner/dessert combo ever: Steak, baked potatos, carrot sticks, and a Cold Stone cake.

WARNING!!
If family home vidoes of people opening up presents and such are not your thing, this lovely family home video could be very boring for you. That being said, enjoy!

Musing: The Adventure of Rachel and Jeff

{not too intimidating, right?}

That's Rachel and Jeff as opposed to Jeff and Rachel because it was Rachel’s idea.

The adventure: to run the “Y” hike. . . .after lifting for an hour.

Bad plan. We made it second switchback, but only after this older lady saw us huffin an puffin on the side of the trail and said, “I’m a forty (somethin’) old lady and I can do it. You can do it it too!” I proceeded to explain that we had run up to this point (about the first switchback); her reply: “Oh. Slow the pace!” Insightful.

In life, I am not so good at pacing. I have a great tendency to expect much of myself, to want to be able to do everything within my reach all at once. It’s been something I’ve struggled with for most of my life, which my mother will attest to; she was always trying to keep me from leaping out onto overly-mountainous paths. The attempt at running up to the “Y” was a significant metaphor for my life, one which occurred to me as we jogged back down to the trailhead- all jell-o legs and noodle arms. I get so excited about something and set off on the trail with confidence. When I start to feel a strain I remain determined, but by the time I reach less than halfway my lungs are roasting and my legs are as logs. Disappointment sets in and I tear down the trail in the opposite direction. After this hike, Jeff actually said that when it comes to acting upon my own expectations, I am bipolar. Excited then depressed. Hot then cold. On then off.

So I’m working on it. I am trying to “chunk” my expectations. I keep a detailed planner with a to-do list for the day, focusing on priorities first and moving on down the line from there. I’m starting to feel like I can breathe again.

I also have a plan for that darned mountain. It involves farlicks.

School started. And it's going. We are actually almost half way through the semester now, which when I realized this I wonder where all our time has gone. Oh, I know!

1. School. I am on campus for 10-12 hours a day.
2. Work. Jeff works at 7am, so we get up at 6am, hurriedly get ready, and scarf up some breakfast before venturing into the morning chill.
3. I wish I could say "eating", or "sleeping", or "excessive fun-having nearing a dangerous amount" here, I mean, we do enough of each but not nearly enough. Hence I have taken up my old habit of baking on Sundays. It's my stress coping mechanism, and it makes everyone happy (Jeff a little less than most maybe, because he is the dishwasher). Come on over if you'd like some treats!

I may try to paint a nasty picture, but things really aren't so bad. We are both loving our majors and although we get blizzards of homework, at least we enjoy what we are learning. And everyday there is at least a snatch of time for the two of us to just be.

Summer Reminiscing

This is about 16 days late of the official end of summer, but we had such glorious days of the sunshine season that something simply must be said about it. We had quite the adventure on our way home from our wedding tour (the month-long vacation we took to get married and celebrate the blessed event with fam and friends). First, we flew back from North Carolina to Wisconsin, but only after a 4 hour delay in Raleigh, which put in Chicago at 12:11am...like 15 minutes after the last fligh to Minneapolis left in the night. You know what happens after you miss the last flight out, you and about 300 other people whose flights all got delayed? You spend a scary night in the airport on a cot. Yeah. It was an adventure to say the least. I shivered all night because I refused to use the blankets they distrubuted. You would too. Eventually we made it out of there, and once back in Wisconsin left Wisconsin that same day and set out for home sweet Utah.

Does this look like English to you? I didn't quite feel welcomed...

But we laughed so hard when we saw the dog in the "Cone of Shame"! We love UP!

When we got home, earwigs were waiting for us! It was gross. I couldn't sleep at night. I killed bugs like crazy. Then we fought back like men and Raided the entire apartment. Jeff says I went a bit crazy, but we haven't seen the devils since. Ha!

He really is sleeping. He is smiling because he loves camping :)

Our trip to Strawberry Reservoir for the 4th of July. Jeff taught me how to catch a fish and be a hick

We only caught these two fishies all day! And Jeff had to lure my fish in towards my hook. Lame. But at least I brought snacks (and it was still fun to be out with Jeffrey)

S'mores!!

Jeff's neck was getting burned. This was our solution

The rest of our buddies joined us for a yummy dinner of chicken terriyaki, watermelon, and peach cobbler!

This was Jeffrey's favorite dinner of the summer:

Lobster tails with sauteed spinach and tomatoes, and

baked potaoes. I also made this yumm-o herb butter

for dipping...soooo good!















Jeff's cousin Dave, a.k.a his twin, at his mission farewell. He's in Brazil now, go Dave!

Jeff's favorite summer date night was to go the very unpretentious Nickelcade. It kind of scares me when the first thing you see when you walk in is a huge vat of hand sanitizer, but hey, every game takes nickels, and it's suprisingly very fun.

This is Pioneer Day with my family. We went to Spanish Fork's little carnival, where Shaner got deep-fried oreos (!), Krista and I got corn dogs, and Steve and Jeff wanted to go somewhere else for burritos.

The day after Pioneer Day Shane, Chelise, Krista, Steve, Jeffrey and I went tandom bike riding down the Provo River Trail. It was SO fun! Especially when Jeff and I beat everyone else in the Tour de Provo, and when Krista and Steve got a flat tire.

Hey Lars-look! It's where the sidewalk ends!




I love my monster, he really is quite sweet.

During the summer, I came up with the idea of doing a "culture night" for our date on some weekends. So usually we'd pick a country, then I'd look up a signature food dish of that country and make it for dinner. We also tried getting books on the country that talked about the culture, and once I tried to get a documentary about one of the countries, but usually we jsut followed dinner up with a movie that was somehow connected to our themed night.

One weekend, Krista and the gang joined in the fun and we all went to Mexico together!

We had authentic (yes, the recipe and technique were provided by a Mexican, and yes, they are de-licious) burritos, roasted corn, and guacamole.

And I more my Latino dancer dress! Which, ironically, is from Italy...

In August my Mama paid us all a little visit, and in her honor we had a picnic and played bocce at Deer Creek Reservoir. We also had a pre-birthday party for Jeff, and one of the gifts my Mama got him was Yahtzee, which we of course played, and Krista shocked us all by getting not one, not two, but three Yahtzees!! It must have been my lucky sunglasses. I was too busy smashing bugs to roll a Yahtzee.

To cap off the summer, Jeff got some fish. I'm not a pet person, and pets in the house is a crime to me. And while fish seem pretty nondescript and unintrusive, even these I was a bit reluctant to share space with. I have to admit though, the fish are beautiful and Jeff takes really good-REALLY GOOD- care of them. And they don't even stink! Or make messes! And that's perfect for pleasing me.

When we first got the fish, Jeff watched them like a fat kid watches TV, seriously. He would get up in the morning and run to his tank. Evidence here:

There you have it! Some flavor from our summer! Don't you wish you were here?