five things Friday: photo-a-day edition

This month I've been doing two different photo-a-day challenges on Instagram. I can't say I've fit it in every day, but between the two, I'll definitely come up with 31 photos. Both were a fun way to record moments in everyday life and exercise a little creativity at the same time - here are 5 favorites from each challenge and their corresponding captions:

Style Me March challenge from Hilary at Dean St. Society

 

double duty photo: smile + bright lips | 2 patterns I love lately - floral & leopard print | fresh (from an afternoon outdoors) face | neutrals, head to toe | new favorite color combo, belted

March Photo a Day challenge from Chantelle at Fat Mum Slim

 

5 pm: still a few hours of work left to do - but that playing hooky in the sun was so worth it | a sign (of the can't-resist variety) | sunglasses (lots of use lately!) | Peter's sleep schedule is all wonky after the month on nights - seeing the bedside a little early these days | feet (treat)

pin to present, round 4

A little something different for this installment of turning a pin into reality: making use of one of the many fabulous color inspirations I've pinned - in another blog makeover.

inspiration photo by Sarah Rhoads Photographers as seen on Style Me Pretty | repinned from Meg
 

This year I've been going to dinner outings and book clubs with the Resident Spouse Association, a support/social group for fellow residency spouses and a ready-made place to find new friends in a new city, plus ones who completely understand the craziness of this stage of life.

The person who used to host a website for the group moved away, so they started a blog in its place - and I got to personalize it from the generic template. We didn't have any kind of logo, so I started by finding a free-use silhouette of the Cincinnati skyline to create an identity, but then I was stumped about where to go with colors... And that's where the pinspiration came in. I love the colors in this photo, fun and vibrant but not too girly (which I sometimes have a tendency toward), plus two of them are in the hospitals' logos so quite fitting!

weekend: success

I'm back a little late from the weekend - since returning from the weekend ended up involving a drive back from Michigan... But I'm happy to report that our weekend day off priority list was a success. We did it all, plus Peter arrived home early enough on Friday night that we had time to do takeout and a movie (J. Edgar - very interesting). We had a nice day together and are just imagining all the mundane weekend activities we can do when Peter has both days off next weekend.

 breakfast date (we both ordered the usual)

 supply gathering for an afternoon of yard work

Then after our Saturday off, Peter went back to work on Sunday, and I headed north to attend the visitation/funeral for my mom's uncle. It was a sad time, but it was good to be there with my family and to remember someone I was lucky to call a relative. This obituary says it all beautifully - and I think is inspiration for how to live and be remembered.

The trip also meant I got to enjoy some other nice things with my family, including walking with my parents, sprawling on my mom's bed while she packed for spring break, and spending a night at my grandparents' (who spoiled me big time with dinner and breakfast out).

also visited my great grandma (my namesake) and grandpa's grave after the funeral

  breakfast at Jackie's with my grandparents, just like old times

five things Friday: day off edition

Peter is currently coming off a 20-day stretch with no full day off... And by the end of this week, I think we've both pretty much reached our breaking points. Everyone needs a day off of course, but people who work that many days in a row of getting up really early and working really long hours and having little to no personal time seriously need a day off more often than that. I come out much better in this scenario of course, having worked normal work-from-home person hours that leave plenty of time to enjoy book clubs, outings with friends, lots of sunshine and exercise, etc. in the past few weeks, but even though I've had plenty to entertain myself with, having a spouse gone that many hours gets quite wearing. And I start to get whiny about not getting to go out to dinner together and sit on patios in the warm weather like other people. And complain about having to be in charge of dog walking. Every. Day. (And write blog posts moaning and groaning about it all.)

  I'm not the only one who misses Peter when he has to work this much!

Thus we've been very much looking forward to this full Saturday off (sad to say it's back to the hospital bright and early on Sunday) and a chance to just do normal married people without kids Saturday things together. So this Friday, the top 5 priorities for our Saturday:

1. Sleeping in: not hard to do for someone who gets up well before 6 every day
2. Going out for breakfast: our most favorite day off activity
3. Taking walks with Ginger: it's more fun together - when Peter holds the leash!
4. Catching up on the DVR: it'll be comedy night around here with Modern Family and 30 Rock
5. Working on the yard: starting some spring cleanup, also more fun together

Happy weekend!

pin to present, round 3

After tackling a craft from my projects to make board and an outfit inspiration from my things to wear board, this time I moved on to a recipe from my food to eat board: Thai chicken tacos with peanut satay sauce.

inspiration photo & recipe: The Bikini Baker | my dinnertime recreation

I've actually been on a little bit of a roll lately with making new recipes (to which Peter happily replied he was on a roll of getting to eat good things - good answer), including butternut squash orzo and a chicken curry, but this one was my favorite to eat - and to make.

Making new recipes can kind of stress me out, trying to follow all the steps and time everything right, but these tacos were really easy. Even better, you can make the peanut sauce and the slaw ahead of time (actually I just used a package of broccoli slaw instead, even easier), so you don't have to worry about coordinating their assembly and cooking the chicken at the same time. This is also handy since Peter's arrival time can be a bit unpredictable (and late) - I like to eat a freshly cooked dinner when he does get home but don't like to spend a lot of time cooking it. With everything prepped ahead of time, it was just about 8 minutes of cooking; he barely had time to change out of his scrubs before dinner was served. And it was tasty!

skirt weather

I used to wear skirts to the office all the time, but now that I work from home and freeze all winter in spite of my layers of jeans + fleece blankets, sadly they are relegated to summer wear only. But right now it's acting like summer outside big time, which is turning things up to 75 degrees or more inside. Indoor skirt weather and lower gas bills are two things I love, and I've been putting them to good use this week...

Last summer this was a bit of a splurge, but as my one new skirt for the season, I knew it would be worth it - it probably made bi-weekly appearances while the weather was warm enough, so I'd say it scores an "excellent" rating on the cost-per-wear scale. And it'll still be my go-to skirt for this summer.

skirt & shirt: J. Crew; flats: Target

But I couldn't resist a steal-of-a-deal on a new one: $5.76! These skirts are still full price in stores, but I came across one marked "online return" on the clearance rack, I think because it is a petite size. It'll score its own "excellent" right quick.

 skirt: Target; shirt: J. Crew; flats: Old Navy

lately: books

I'm now part of three book groups, though my travels over the last couple of months have meant missing two of them per month - but this month I made it to all three, and here's a little recap of what we've been reading. I enjoyed all three, which had some interesting similarities, but the third was my favorite story to just read...

1. The True Memoirs of Little K: A Novel is about a Russian ballerina who is also mistress to the last tsar. As an old woman exiled in Paris, she tells the story of her life in Russia and how it intertwines with the imperial family and their downfall in the revolution. It took a while to get into because (a) I don't know a ton about this period of Russian history, so names and places were a bit unfamiliar, and (b) the character really was quite annoying at first. By the end I did like the book; Little K's scheming and conniving to get the royal family's attention at the beginning of the book just feels shallow and immature, but by the end it's interesting to see how she tries to use those same characteristics to save her family during the revolution in spite of their imperial connections.

2. I wrote a little about The Madonnas of Leningrad earlier, since I read it on our vacation back in January. It was interesting to discuss it within a couple days of Little K though, since both take place in St. Petersburg (renamed Leningrad by WWII when this one takes place), depict living their during war, discuss in lovely detail the cultural scene (ballet/art), and are told as the elderly women look back on their lives. It was interesting to see some of the same names and places pop up in both books and to compare the city and how the different classes of people fare under the tsar in the first with the city after the revolution in this book.

3. The House at Tyneford is yet another told by a woman looking back at her life and is also mainly set during WWII - but it centers on a Jewish girl who is sent to work as a maid in an English manor house to escape Austria. I'd seen this book as advertised for people who enjoy Downton Abbey, and though it's set 20ish years later, it did have similar upstairs/downstairs storylines and similar themes of the friction between traditional ways and modern times (and war times), the downturn of the English estate, and class structure/belonging. I liked the added element of the main character being a foreigner - who actually was more equal class to the manor family in her Vienna life, but not once she moves to England. The story and cast of characters is not quite so epic as Downton, but if you need a fix, or just an enjoyable book to sit down and read, I recommend it... (Another book along these lines is Kate Morton's The House at Riverton [title very much along the same lines], but Tyneford was much better.)

five things Friday: mad about March edition

I recently saw a commercial that claimed "you can never have too much March" (in relation to NCAA basketball). Though I might call May or June a more favorite month, I can get on board with that right now. Here are 5 exciting things about mid-March:

1. March Madness: there's nothing like a bracket pool - I'm in one with extended family and with work colleagues - to get me excited about college basketball. I admit to showing little to no interest (aside from being employed by a Big 10 institution) in it any other time, and confess to making many of my picks based on words (Gonzaga) and team names (Crimson Tide) that strike my fancy, but around here we print out our brackets and keep them on the coffee table for handy reference - and I even find myself watching games when Peter's not around and biting my nails at those buzzer-beaters.

2. Restaurant week: twice a year restaurants in Cincinnati put together special tasting menus at a special price, and I find it a great excuse to try out new restaurants, especially as several of them are on the Cincinnati Magazine top 10 list we're working our way through. That's tonight's dinner plans!

3. Match Day: Today is the day that 4th year medical students across the country find out which residency program they've matched into. I can't believe it's been 2 years since Peter's (I said the same last year). It's a super exciting and nerve-wracking day that starts with a whole range of possible places you might end up and ends with finally knowing. It's funny to think about how these things in life just work out - we could have ended up in a bunch of different cities, and I was excited about the possibilities of several of them, but by now I can't imagine having ended up somewhere else, being in a different house, not knowing the new people we've met or having Ginger. That's what I would say to my nervous self of two years ago and the people going through it today: it all works out.

4. First day of spring: I've probably professed my love of spring and gushed over t.he lovely weather we've been having plenty of times lately, so I'll leave it at that...

5. Daylight saving: the later sunrise kind of threw off my schedule for a few days (and nobody likes losing that hour of sleep the night of), but the light in the evenings is worth it. Peter, who leaves the house well before it's light, actually gets to see some daylight these days on his drive home, and it makes waiting to be able to have dinner until 7:30 or so when he comes home feel much more normal. I like it.

everybody, everywear: going green

This month's theme for Everybody, Everywear: green. The timing makes sense for St. Patrick's day, I suppose, but I just like it for sporting my minty green weekend manicure and this recent green TJ Maxx find... I don't normally go for tops of this cut, but the vibrant color hooked me, despite the somewhat boxy shape and sheerness (the $15 price tag didn't hurt either). With my favorite seasonal scarf, it's the perfect weight and cheerful color for a sunny, no-jacket-required kind of spring day.

blouse: TJ Maxx; jeans: Loft; scarf: F21; wedges: Target; nails: Essie Mint Candy Apple

this weekend...

 

mint candy apple | next pin to present, involving actual pins

vacuum-wary | fresh sheets

book in bed | book over breakfast

bucket of weeds | good night for grilling

• There was plenty of girl time: book club, brunch and a little shopping, some craft time, and an evening at home with a new nail color and Netflix. (While poor Peter worked 27ish hours - and was thankful for at least having that "spring forward," which suddenly made his night a little shorter. Except that it really just evens out the extra hour he was stuck with when he was on call for the end of daylight saving time back in November.)

• Ginger and I did Saturday chores (okay, she wasn't that much help. And was the cause of most of the floor dirtiness).

• I did a fair bit of reading, after remembering that I had about 2 days and 300 pages before my next book group's meeting...

• And we made good use of the incredibly nice Sunday afternoon weather plus that extra daylight hour to start a little yard cleanup (it turns out weeds enjoy growing during mild winters as much as my daffodils do!) and then produce a nice dinner after an evening walk with Ginger.

five things Friday: blog fun edition

The blog revamp (and the nice comments - thanks!) earlier this week gave me some new-found energy for the whole enterprise, so it seemed fitting to wrap up the week with five other blog ideas and events that got me feeling enthusiastic...

1. I couldn't let the other blog go untouched after this makeover - so I made a few quick changes for a bit of a new look there too. (Now to get back to actually posting there.) 

image generated at DeGraeve.com

4. Also on the subject of blog makeovers, in the process I learned about this color palette generator tool via Creature Comforts. You can take an image like this one of marbled paper (from Paper Mojo) and it spits out the colors.

images from Sweetie Pie Style

3. Jackie of Sweetie Pie Style has a great series called On the Hunt, in which she tracks down items that people are searching for - and since my very favorite gold flats are about to bite the dust, she helped me out with some options for a new pair. Check it out if you too want to walk in flats of gold...

images from Engineered Style | New Balance

4. Jenni celebrated her one-year anniversary at Engineered Style, and I was a lucky winner of the celebratory giveaway: a $50 gift card to the Fort Worth Running Company - especially exciting because I was building a bit of a running gear wishlist as I've started training for another half-marathon this spring. Jenni was so sweet to play personal shopper and text me pictures from the store, and I'm excited for my snazzy new workout capris we picked out to arrive!

image from Dean Street Society

5. Finally, another fun photo-a-day challenge I found (plus a new to me blog that I've been enjoying: Bow Ties & Bettys): Style Me March. I've done a few so far (see them on Instagram).

pin to present

Next up in the category of challenging myself to follow through:

The internet is a place of many wonderful things, and I could sit all day enjoying and admiring (or worse, wistfully viewing, making personal comparisons with) other people's blogs and pinning new inspirations - and sometimes in all of that I forget to do. So my challenge to myself, to stimulate creativity and pleasure and to live in the now, rather than in the "I'll pin that idea to do someday," is to post once per week an inspiration that I've made, cooked, worn.

For my first installment, I wore an outfit inspired by this one from Kendi Everyday that I pinned ages ago. It's such a simple, classic outfit and so easy to put together that I don't know why I didn't follow through on this one until now. I felt stylish and super comfortable all day and was quite pleased that the weather cooperated (67 degrees!) for showing a little ankle...

  inspiration photo: Kendi Everyday | pinned by me

my photo: shirt: Loft; button down: Crewcuts outlet; jeans and shoes: Target; necklace and watch: gifts

 

 

sharing at

in residence

After spending the first month of 2012 blabbing on about The Happiness Project and all the things it was going to inspire me to implement in life... I decided it was time to finally get on that. I'm starting with follow through (how apt) - and one way to increase satisfaction/happiness in this category is to tackle to do list items that make me feel guilty or stressed each time I remember that I really should take care of them.

A major task that has been on my nagging to do list for months: a blog makeover. It's been time for a new look and a new title better reflecting our current life - and better representing me - but that requires thinking. And making decisions. And attempting to conquer web design things that alternately terrify and greatly frustrate me.

Finally, though, after a week of brainstorming with my mom and then a week of fiddling with buttons and fonts, I'm ready to introduce In Residence. Obviously it reflects that we've moved on from the medical school to the residency phase, but it also reflects my new work-from-home life, my longstanding homebody-ness, and my status as everything from chef and housekeeper in residence to book critic and fashionista in residence around here (somebody's got to take care of business - and pleasure! - while the other somebody is busy working so much).

The days can sometimes feel long while Peter's off at the hospital, but I try to appreciate the things we do get to do together even more, and I try to make the most of the time I have during this stage to be independent, pursue my interests, make new friends, and enjoy our current city. That's what I've been blogging about all along, but now it'll all be a little nicer looking and better titled and organized.

Thanks for reading along!

five things Friday: welcome March edition

Who can believe it's March already?! Time flies a little fast some times - but five reasons that I am happy to see the beginning of this month:

1. New rotation: Peter's now done with the month of working the night shift, which means exciting things like going to bed at the same time for the first time in a month, eating freshly cooked dinners (together!) rather than microwaved leftovers, and going out for frozen yogurt on a weeknight (because we can).


2. Personal space: Along with the above - in February I moved my grooming into the main floor bathroom during the week to accommodate Peter's daytime sleep schedule, but the bathroom hardly accommodated me... Glad to have all my stuff in its proper place again and be able to get ready in the morning without constantly dropping things in the sink.

3. Spring: it's pretty much been the mildest winter ever, which actually makes me even more excited for the upcoming first day of spring. Fresh air, flowers (that's one of my daffodils above), lightweight jackets, birds chirping - so lovely.

4. The March issue: my favorite Cincinnati Magazine issue of the year has arrived - the where to eat issue. We've been working on trying all the restaurants on the top 10 list from last year's issue, which have for the most part been fabulous. And I've got some delicious date nights to plan now based on this year's revised list...

5. Fun challenges: I saw this photo-a-day challenge in February but thought I'd wait for a fresh month to start - a fun way to mark the month and exercise a little creativity with everyday life. Today's prompt was fruit, which is fitting as a big bowl of berries has been my favorite snack all week.