the giraffe life

Vanilla is one of my favorite smells and flavors. So much so, that whenever I bake, I double the amount of vanilla the recipe calls for. A few years ago I read Make the Bread, Buy the Butter , a book about which foods are worth it to make from scratch at home, and which foods you should just buy ready made (an excellent book - well worth the read). The author made her own vanilla extract and blew my mind! I was shocked to find out there are only two ingredients.  So I made my first batch of vanilla that week, using vanilla beans from amazon.com and cheap vodka. Delicious! (And much cheaper than $12 for the 1/4 cup or 60 mL bottles they sell at the grocery story.) I'm on the last dregs of that original batch so I made more over the weekend. Now, to wait patiently for 3 months! :) Basically, you cut 8-10 vanilla beans down the center and scrape the insides into the jar. Throw in the bean pods and 1 1/2 to 2 cups vodka. The vodka will still be clear when you first pou...

I keep a big pile of blankets out all winter so Mr. G and I can layer up as needed when we're on the couch. Dottie enjoys sleeping on my lap, so she'll crawl under the blankets when she lays with me. And this is what happened when she was finished with snuggling. I love those eyes! linking up for wordless Wednesday

I was a late adopter of cell phones in general - by the time I bought my first one in 2006, I was the only person in my circle of friends and family who didn't have one (excluding kids much younger than me). So it comes at no surprise that I'm way behind the trend on smartphones too.  But I don't mind being different so it's all good. :)  If you've been reading for a while, you may remember my post last year about my thoughts on  buying a smartphone and switching to Republic Wireless . Well, spoiler alert: I finally took the plunge and bought one (you may have already guessed that from the title of this post haha).  The biggest factor for me was the money saved. Since I first got a cell phone, I've always had the cheapest basic plan I could find. I was paying between $42-45 for 500 minutes and unlimited texts, plus taxes and fees, for a nice round total of about $50 a month. That's $600 a year for my cell phone service (no cost for phones because I a...

Dar is running a Reading Down the House challenge to encourage people to read the books in their homes. I stopped buying books 2 years ago, but I found An Invisible Thread while cleaning last month so I was able to join in the fun. :) An Invisible Thread is the story of two New Yorkers: Laura, a sales executive, and Maurice, a young boy. They meet one day when Maurice is begging on the street and Laura stops and invites him to lunch. They continue to meet for meals once a week and their relationship grows stronger. Eventually Laura introduces Maurice to her family, invites him over to her apartment, and starts to pack him school lunches. Laura tries to help Maurice in other ways, too - she washes his clothes, takes him around the city, meets with his teacher, brings him to holiday celebrations with her family.  As the book progresses, you learn more about Laura's childhood and Maurice's life. Their relationship has some rough patches, and the writing won't make you s...

Ladies' Home Journal recently featured an article on Tiny Homes , about 3 different families living in small spaces. The average American home is 2,400 square feet (223 square meters) as of 2010 ( source ), while the homes featured in this article were 128 sq ft (12 sq m), 960 sq ft (89 sq m), and 336 sq ft (31 sq m). average size of an American home through the years The families ranged in size from a married couple to a married couple with 2 kids, and for the most part, they were happy with their decision to downsize and live in smaller digs. While I think the two super small homes are a little extreme, a family of four living in a 960 square foot home sounds doable. The most important thing is that the house be well designed for that scenario.  Mr. G and I lived in a house that was just under 1100 square feet and had ample space. Every room had a good size closet, the kitchen cabinets went right up to the ceiling, and there was no wasted space in the floor plan . . b...

Spotted at the doctor's office. Very pretty, but I'm not a fan of walking underneath them! linking up for wordless Wednesday

Soup is one of my favorite foods (alongside rice) and such a versatile food that I never get sick of it. So I'm always on the look out for new soup recipes or ideas. (One I'm not sure I have the gumption to try -  cold soup . Have you had it?) Enter this Chickpeas & Dumplings soup  by Kiersten.  my small first helping - it smelled strongly of thyme and I wasn't sure I'd like it! It's the vegetarian version of Chicken & Dumplings soup, one of my top 5 favorites. We had almost all the ingredients on hand, so I made this the day she posted it. It was amazing! Even Mr. G, who was pretty certain he didn't like dumplings, loved this soup. The first picture is when I had just dropped in the dumplings. Second picture is 20 minutes of simmering later. So cool! I made a few small changes to the recipe: left out the chickpeas because we didn't have any in the pantry (thought about substituting edamame in their place, but the soup was hear...

Ahh, Valentine's Day, the day of love and chocolate. Do you celebrate in your neck of the woods?  This is one of my favorite holidays, especially when I was still in school (kids in the US traditionally give valentines to everyone in their class, so it's almost like Halloween in terms of candy consumption, but with far less walking and no costume worries). Even as I got older, I was never upset about not having a date on Valentine's Day because I knew I'd be getting candy from other sources. Obviously I had my priorities in order. ;) Mr. G and I planned to celebrate Valentine's Day by shoveling the driveway together and then going out to lunch. (He gets off work at 6am and I "earned" Friday off by working long hours on Wednesday and Thursday.) But since he was up before me, he made me breakfast: eggs and toast, yum! Then we did our shoveling as planned and hit the road for lunch at Bahama Breeze. Why Bahama Breeze? Because I had a gift card from Chr...

I bought new brown flats last month (they look black in this picture because I couldn't get my camera setting to cooperate). My old brown shoes had a crack in the sole that would allow water to seep in slowly, so that about a half hour after walking on a wet surface, my sock would start to feel damp. (And I'd be confused.) Eventually I figured it out and decided to only wear brown on dry days, haha. So when I saw these on clearance, I couldn't resist. They're comfortable and cute, plus I enjoy being able to wear my brown corduroys whenever it strikes my fancy ;) linking up for wordless Wednesday

Sadie Nardini Since committing to my November goal of attending yoga classes, I've been making an effort to attend yoga class twice a week. I've been fairly successful. ( Going to classes really works for me because the order and types of poses changes slightly each time, keeping me interested, and I like having it on my schedule. Then exercise just becomes part of my routine. Plus other people in the class ask if I’ll be there, where I was if I miss, etc. and they keep me accountable. Yoga DVDs are my best friend for a week or two; after that I slowly start to get sick of them.) But this fall my one yoga teacher went through some rough patches with family issues and scheduling conflicts, and cancelled class more often than not. Unfortunately, at the end of January, she decided to nix her night class altogether, meaning I've dropped down to one class a week. Besides being bummed about the fact that this instructor wasn't teaching anymore (she's great), I don...

Have you played the Great Language Game ? It's been making its way around the internets lately and I finally gave it a try yesterday. You listen to a clip of one of 80 languages and given 2 - 5 language choices, try to make the match. I'm terrible! My best score was 500, which translates to 10 correct answers and 3 incorrect ones (after which you run out of "lives"). I got more of them through process of elimination than by actually recognizing the language. And side note: I took four years of German classes and can identify it easily, so of course I wasn't presented with any German clips. grumble grumble. :) I want to hear your score if you try! 

Definitely not what I was expecting to see in the garage . . . linking up for wordless Wednesday

My great-grandmother passed away last week. As you can probably imagine, that stirred up plenty of emotions. My memories of her are happy ones (zoo trips, Christmas celebrations, telling stories of her kids' antics when they were little) and her funeral was the cheeriest one I've ever attended. She lived a long, full life, and always seemed content. But it's still sad to know she's gone. I saw this illustration over the weekend and loved it immediately. Unexpected deaths are a good reminder in that way. We all have just one precious life to decide how to live. Image drawn by  Simini Blocker for goodreads. 

For a month that's normally pretty laid back and slow moving (compared to December, anyway), this January's been lightning fast. I didn't set any month-long goals for January, so all these updates are for my 2014 goals , some of which I haven't begun to tackle so they aren't mentioned. First up is the extra $2k toward the mortgage. We're at $570 so far. Yay! Another goal I made progress on was reading 50 books this year (works out to about one per week). I actually read 8 books in January. What?!  I can thank the snow for this - there were several weekend days when I stayed home because of the weather (if I don't have to drive in it, I don't!). I also had a couple days off from work because of snow, plus Martin Luther King day off (he was a very influential leader and civil rights activist). Much of that time was spent reading. A cozy couch + warm blanket + good book = happiness! Out of these 8, I'd heartily recommend: These is my Words...