Color Me Crafty

Sometimes, usually between the hours of noon and five, I have the undeniable urge to be domestic--complete with visions of homemade petit fours and handmade Christmas stockings dancing through my head. While "Homemaker K" may last throughout the better part of my afternoon meetings, this feeling usually dissipates by the time I make it home at night. In fact, when RP walks through the door I’m usually watching Gossip Girl and eating cottage cheese in my gym clothes.

That said, now and then I find myself Michaels or Joann’s during the weekday lunch hour while creative inspiration still has me in its grasp.

Such was the case of the Halloween wreath.

I report the following not because it’s a marvelous work of festive brilliance, but because it represents something bigger than Halloween – the fact that I actually finished a creative project.

We’ll see now if the unfinished Christmas stockings currently lying on my coffee table will have the same fate. Wish me (and my fickle domestic side) luck.

Birthdays are for Lovers

Warning: The following photos may disturb you.

This week, RP was forced into a terrible realization:

He's married to a 29 year-old.



Notwithstanding my less-than graceful aging, RP was a great supporter of October the 6th. I woke on my birthday to a decorated house, care of RP:


I also found a beautifully-wrapped gift at dinner that night, care of Christmas wrapping paper and Independence Day ribbon:


Inside, however, was nothing to joke about: (he's good at jewelry)


Oh, but later that night, there were more gifts to come (note that the wrapping paper had been a four-pack, but then RP realized he needed something to wrap it with)


Of more exciting note, I received pearls and Cary Grant movies from my family, and Kate Spade china from the Price's. Color me spoiled.


The true birthday star was the black bean chocolate cake we made for the occasion. Legumes and erithrytol has never tasted so good (seriously, it was amazing):


Birthday weekend continued with a trip to Knott's Berry Farm on Saturday. After realizing there were no actual berries there, I quieted my disappointment and enjoyed a day of roller coasters and the realization that I really AM getting super old (read: motion sickness).


Birthday weekend ended with Peruvian lamb stew and seafood soup. Rick ate my mussel because my palette is not yet 29.


Here's to being "mature" (and slightly more wrinkly).

Price Family Expansion

As was illustrated in the events of last weekend, it's become apparent that I'm married to a tease.

I was skeptical when RP first suggested we pay a visit to the San Clemente animal shelter. I knew he loved dogs, but I also knew that he feared responsibility with terror that surpasses anything Hitchcock ever wrote.

Still, I held a hope in my little heart of hearts that RP was really taking me to the shelter in order to expand our little family.

As it turns out, there's very little sub-text when it comes to guys.

Even after I met Marley (I had big plans for a legal name change, lest acquaintances assume my only creative drive was cultivated from sappy Owen Wilson movies), RP's desire to remain an island of isolation didn't budge.


All of my moping about did little to sway his decision.

But fear not, readers, for RP realized that in my desperate plea for a puppy what I really needed was the addition of another living thing to our family.

That's when RP drove me to a nursery.



Meet Albert.

Plant and father are doing fine.

Fall.... in Love?

When RP and I met, we knew we were compatible when we discovered our mutual affection for that orange and gold season we call Autumn.

That said, our "mutual affection" tends to end with the changing of the leaves.

As it turns out, RP and I love the third month for very different reasons:

KP's favorites of Fall:

fashion
pumpkin baked into everything
proximity to Christmas
boots, boots, and boots

RP's favorites of Fall:

Football
College football
NFL
The Philadelphia Eagles

So this weekend, we celebrated Fall together, in each of our favorite ways:




I like to play the supportive wife by adding officially licensed sports brands to my hoodie collection. RP, on the other hand, is a gem and graciously eats my fall-flavored quick breads.

Guess marriage really IS all about compromise.

(Now if only we could get him interested in fall fashion.)

Return to Domesticity

Remember when I said that RP and I needed a wife?

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.

Good news: we have one.

Bad news: apparently it's me.

So, this weekend, after catching up on sleep and warmth from our frolic up north, I made my return to domesticity.

It started out with an exciting Friday night of the gym and the laundromat.

Warning: things got a little crazy.




Then came our series of social events:

• An appetizer party at my boss's house. I don't make appetizers, so I went with raspberry shortbread tarts.

• Football night with RP watching the cougs lose and eating an entire large pizza between the two of us.

• White-chocolate-popcorn-making-party with RP for our favorite 10 four-year-olds.

• A beach picnic with some of our favorite peeps, where I baked up a Texas sheet cake and pulled out some pulled pork (first time for everything). This little pot of yummy took only 15 hours to prepare.

Guess I've gone domestic. Go figure.

The Last Frontier

If RP got a second chance at life, I'm somewhat positive he'd come back as Meriwether Lewis (although I'd like to think he'd change his given name).

In fact, in the two and a half years I've known him, it's become rather obvious that RP's primary goal in life is to one day be the subject of a Jon Krakauer biography, despite his penchant for dabbling around in real estate for 10 - 12 hours a day.

Nowhere was this more apparent that in the ends of the earth -- notably, the state of Alaska.

RP first solicited my partnership in the venture by baiting me with promises of spectacular sites, all-you-can-eat salmon and blueberries, and the guarantee that Sarah Palin was no longer in-state.

So, celebrating a freebie day off work and six full months of marriage, RP and I headed to the arctic, wherein our great adventure began.

Our four days in the 49th state were eventful. So eventful, in fact, that I only changed my clothes once (some might call that unhygienic, but those people have never been to Alaska).

Highlights of the Price Family Half-Anniversary Trip include:

• Finding out the "bed and breakfast" RP booked for our first night in Anchorage was really a hide-a-bed in an old den in the home of a Hungarian woman named Ilona. We might have slept well had it not been for the accusing stares of the multiple ceramic gnomes at home on her every shelf, or the tick-tocking of not one, not two (or three or four) but FIVE clocks marking the passing time in our room (can you say cookoo?)
  

• A morning spent atop a glacier (or as our Kiwi guide called it, a "glah - see - er"). I effectively learned how to hike wearing crampons and how not to fall into a crevasse, all while reassuring RP that no, he didn't need a guide and he could do all of this all by his big-boy self.

• Getting outfitted at Sportsman's Warehouse (and entering one for the first time) in wading boots and fishing gloves and joining RP in the river for a Alaskan fishing venture. Fish count officially remains: RP - 1/ KP - 1 (if you're counting the dying salmon I stuck my hook in by hand).

• Eating salmon, halibut, and caribou in Talkeetna (while silently praying said caribou hadn't once frequented the north pole or had the ability to fly).

• A backpacking trip up to Crow's Pass, where I made RP sing Christmas carols to ward away bears (everyone knows they're godless marauding killing machines), and surviving a night and two days on Zone bars,Trader Joe's peanuts, and wild salmon-berries. This is also when I learned that being an REI rat for the past two months certainly paid off. In the 30-something degree wind/rain, camped next to another Alaskan glacier, I was toasty warm in my 800-fill bag.
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Eating sourdough pancakes in Girdwood upon returning from the pass (oh. my. delish.).
  

• Arriving in Seward having not bathed (or changed) in three days, only to find that our Bed and Breakfast bathroom was out of hot water. My sorrow was exceeding. Luckily, the warmth returned like Sarah Palin to an electoral race before I could pity myself for too long.

• RP fishing in the early morning rain and bringing back a salmon, which he grilled up for us to snack on all day.
  
• Combing Seward gift shops for a Christmas ornament and a "present" for me to take home. As luck would have it, we found both (I'm terribly good at finding myself presents that I'll appreciate).
  

• Killing time until our 1 am return flight out of Anchorage by hanging out anywhere that was open on Labor Day (seriously, the place shuts down like its nuclear war). We settled on a cultural variety of Irish Pubs, the newest X-Men movie, Subway, and the local Wal-Mart.
  
  
  

• RP walking into AND using the women's restroom completely aloof to his creeper status until he left the stall to find a young girl gaping at him while washing her hands.

• Spotting Alaskan wildlife via a wildlife refuge and a moose crossing the street in Anchorage.
  
  

• Stepping off the plane in Long Beach and getting warm for the first time in 5 days.
  

Thanks for the memories, AK.