pillow face

i love bedding.

my flowered-everything was looking pretty out of place at this house, so a month ago maybe, i took a trip to west elm and mix and matched a bunch of gray, black and white prints. was kind of pricey, but well worth it. 

not so fast

too sad to take a picture/don't really want to remember it, but both of my orchid flower buds turned pink, shriveled up and fell off in the last two days. so close! at least all of his plants outside are still alive. for the most part. ..thank goodness i'm not responsible for feeding the dogs.

incredible india

countdowns:

22 days until my 27th birthday

85 days until the election

87ish days until the boy returns to texas

95 days until we go to india 

31 days is how long we'll be there

2 days is how long we plan to spend in nepal visiting the o'sullivans

can you even waittt?!

orchid chronicles

you can't fully appreciate this picture because you didn't know how many topless bottles of ranch dressing and moldy jars of jelly and random expired foods there were in here, but this fridge has been completely girlified. there's yogurt. there are vegetables. there's peach butter. i'm not really good at thoroughly cleaning anything, but i think i might take everything out and give it a good scrub one weekend.

tonight i made smitten kitchen's bacon corn hash. it wasn't super labor intensive except for all of the chopping, but it did take a while, and it heat up the whole house. it was delicious though, and it's going to make excellent quiche filling with a little swiss cheese added.

i think it would be perfect for the fall. it would also be yummy turned into chowder. what qualifies as chowder, i wonder?

and let's all take a moment to ooh and aah at the fact that the orchids two new buds are just growing happily along and looking more and more like possible flowers every day.

travel bug

did i tell you i was going to NM to visit the boy for a couple days? i'm back in austin now, but it was such a nice trip after not seeing him for a month. here are a few of the pictures. 

eat you up

if you've seen how to lose a guy in 10 days, you'll remember the 'love fern'. it's a plant a girl gives a guy to see if he can keep it alive, signifying their relationship. 

the boy and i went on our first date the first week in february (he says it wasn't a date, but it was), so valentines came really quickly. he gave me a beautiful orchid. i was thrilled and also freaked out because i had killed one once before. 

it lived on my desk happily for a couple of weeks until each flower fell off, one by one. but i read online that if you just let it do that, if you can manage to keep it alive for another year, it'll die back and then bloom again.

i had the 'dying back' part down. after the flowers fell off, the spikes started to turn brown on the edges and work their way down, drying out and shriveling up.

while that was happening, new leaves started to sprout.

we ran into a minor orchid emergency when i left it in my 100+ degree car for 6 hours the day i attempted to move it from one office to another and forgot to take it out of the car. at that point, all of the leaves wilted and almost died.

the other day, i noticed a new spike growing just below where the old one had stopped turning brown.

and wooooo, look at those new buds! honestly, this ranks among my top 5 life accomplishments. did not think it could be done.

so what did i learn?
-misting it every day with a spray bottle is way easier than remembering to water it once a week, and it seems to like it
-they don't like to acclimate to new environments. it only sprouted a new leaf once i brought it home and left it in front of a sunny window with the blinds shut all day
-can't hurt to praise it for its new growth every time i walk past it

minks mango

this is the boy's puppy. her name is elephant because she's gray. i went along with it because her nickname was going to be ellie, but she doesn't answer to that because no one ever calls her that. i tried for a few weeks. 

  this is elephant's paw print on my laptop case.

these are our feet.

this is us at a going away party before i got turned into malibu barbie

it has been a busy weekend! glad to have some quiet time to read before bed.