Favorite Things in My Town: St. Louis

There’s a link party going on over at Centsational Girl and it sounded so fun, I decided to participate!

Here’s the deal: bloggers are encouraged to post their favorite things about the town they live in. I didn’t see St. Louis mentioned in the list of bloggers participating so I figured it was my duty to represent “the Lou”.

1. Location, Location, Location. While we’re not a coastal town, there’s something to be said for living in the heart of the Midwest. We’re a pretty big metropolis on our own, but we’re also close to other fun places to visit such as Chicago, Kansas City, Memphis, and Louisville. I don’t think I’d visit so many other towns if I wasn’t within driving distance of them.

2. Food. It’s no secret that I love to eat. And while other, much larger cities are known for their wide variety of restaurants, St. Louis is just one big eclectic buffet of restaurants and bars. Whatever you want, we’ve got it. We have a very large Italian population here so if you’re in the mood for cheese and carbs, visit one of our many Italian restaurants on “The Hill.” If you want to get all glammed up for a night on the town, visit downtown’s Washington Avenue (Or Wash Ave, as we call it). The Central West End features a variety of unique restaurants and bars. (Sub Zero is a really cool Vodka bar located there.) The Soulard area is just South of downtown and has a ton of pubs and restaurants too, but it’s more laid back than some of the other uppity parts of town. (I’ve been dying to go to the International Tap House, just haven’t made it there yet.) The Loop is a long strip of restaurants, bars, and shopping about 15 minutes from downtown. It’s more casual too and is a great place to catch performances of local bands. One of my favorite places is Blueberry Hill. It’s a good restaurant and bar on its own, but they have a room downstairs called The Duck Room that hosts some pretty good performers. Chuck Berry still plays there from time to time. Once you hit the county though, it’s chain restaurant paradise.  Us suburbanites apparently prefer to overpay for pre-packaged meals that are cooked for us and served on pretty plates. Guilty as charged!

3. The Zoo, Forest Park, and the Botanical Gardens. I don’t go there often enough, but after recently visiting the San Diego Zoo, I’ve learned to appreciate our own pride and joy just a little bit more. If only because what we offer is a Zoo that is completely FREE whereas the San Diego Zoo cost $40 PER PERSON. Yikes!  In addition, we have one of the world’s best Botanical Gardens that offers weekly FREE summer outdoor music concerts and plenty of other cool events year-round (I’m on the young friends council so this is probably a bit more top-of-mind than usual).  Forest Park is our city’s main park and it’s larger than NYC’s Central Park. It’s a gorgeous place that I don’t get to visit often enough, and is where the Zoo and our (also free) Art Museum are located.

While there are a ton of things I DON’T like about St. Louis, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

I know I have a few STL native readers, so what’s you’re favorite thing about our city?

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Proof that John Stamos reads my blog*

I’ve been going through some old blog posts, something I rarely do, but I’m planning to go a bit more public with this whole blog thing and wanted to make sure I haven’t said anything that could a) piss off anyone that knows me in real-life or b) get me fired.

Anyway, I found this old post from Feb. 2009 about all the celebs that have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. The first adopters were Ashton and Demi and I put out a public plea for them to sign-up every celebrity so we could put an end to all this paparazzi business.

So Ashton and Demi, get all your other famous friends on Twitter and let’s start a movement. If you can get Brangelina on Twitter, I will personally pledge to never buy another tabloid magazine again.

Other, non-A-list celebs on Twitter are probably noticing a slight boost in their suffering careers. Or at least keeping their names out there (yeah, I’m looking at you @freddurst and @mchammer). Some of my own personal faves: @elijahwood (my teen crush) and @davejmatthews. Now if only John Stamos would sign-up…

I forgot I ever made the John Stamos comment, but it appears John got the message and  my wishes came true.  I am henceforth holding myself solely responsible as the reason @JohnStamos finally joined “the Twitter.” I mean, that’s the only possible explanation! There’s no way he just woke up one morning and thought, “Ya know what? I think I’ll see what this Twitter thing is all about.” It’s WAY more likely that he got up, made a cup of coffee, and checked my blog, just like he does every morning, and decided to take my advice. He never comments, but that’s okay. I know he’s just shy.

*Alternately titled: Liz is Delusional

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What’s in a Name?

I sense a theme.

Handsome:

(Ryan Gosling)

Funny:

(RYAN Reynolds)

Talented:

(RYAN Tedder, from One Republic)

….

….

…

JACKPOT! All of the above.

(My Ryan)

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Love is…

…Playing the same song on repeat and singing in unison just as loud on the 50th play as on the first one.

…Dancing in the kitchen. Start with a slow sway then break out the booty-shakin’.

…Sharing a glass of wine (or five) because both of you are too lazy to get another glass.

…Listening to your spouse spout off about celebrity gossip. Surprisingly, tonight it wasn’t me.

…Working together on a project – a REAL work project – and supporting each other when someone kicks ass on their part.

…A healthy debate about what the “moves like Jagger” really look like. Complete with demonstrations.

…Curling up in bed with an old episode of 30 Rock and laughing at all the same parts.

“Oh this has gotta be the good life.”

 

 

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It’s August. Let’s talk about Halloween.

Anyone that follows me on Pinterest already knows I have a pretty unhealthy obsession with that site.

And anyone that knows me offline probably knows that I’m also a big fan of Halloween. Not in an unhealthy way like I assume someone like Marilyn Manson is, but in a let’s-make-chili-and-smores-and-display-an-excessive-amount-of-orange-colored-things. So it only stands to reason that my Pinterest boards are overwhelmed with all things pumpkin. And ghosts. CUTE ghosts, to be specific. Here’s just an example of 1/3 of what’s on my Halloween Pinterest board.

Cute, no?

So I’m doing something I haven’t done since my wedding. I’m planning a party IN ADVANCE! I may even do really cool invitations, the best of which I’ve seen designed by Brooklyn Limestone.

Is anyone else as obsessed with this holiday as I am? Do you do anything cool to celebrate? What about costume ideas? Themes? Anyone? Bueller?

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Routines

The word I hear most often – even more than “amazing” and “awesome” and “like” – is BUSY. Everyone is busy. Busy with work. Busy with social lives. Busy with volunteer projects. Busy with planning events. Busy with chores. Busy with school. Busy with…life. We’re no different. There are never enough hours in the day. Every morning we hit the snooze button at least three times and swear we’ll go to bed earlier tonight. Coffee is a necessity and even when we try to make lists, the list just gets longer at thrice the speed of anything getting crossed off.

Despite my textbook-Gemini behavior, I am a creature of habit. I thrive on routine. That doesn’t mean I actually follow routine, but it’s something I aspire to do almost every day. In our relationship, the hubs is the night owl and I’m the morning person. By night owl I mean if left to our own devices, he would stay up until 2am and sleep until noon whereas I naturally wake around 8:30 am and pass out around 11pm. Obviously this doesn’t mean much of anything since we both have to get up around 7am for work, which is too early for the both of us.

These last few weeks have been especially rough on the sleep schedule. I’m not sure why exactly but as people that are used to getting roughly 8 hours a night, we’ve been cutting ourselves short – even on the weekends – and have only managed around 6 1/2 to 7 hours a night. Doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but we’re on day number 16 or so of this and it’s wearing us down.

The other day during a quick lunch-time phone call, the hubs said he’d like to get into a routine. He admires those people that get up and get dressed with time to spare to enjoy a cup of coffee, some fresh fruit for breakfast, and the morning paper. I’m pretty sure he’s thinking of the show “Leave it to Beaver” because I don’t know anyone that actually does this, but it’s his dream so I just go with it. He vows to start shutting off the computer at 9pm, maybe watch a little TV to take his mind off of work, and go to bed at a reasonable 10 pm so we can wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the early morn. As someone who’s been begging him to try this routine for YEARS (and always responded to with a scoff) I was beyond thrilled to hear this change of tune.

I came home that night and fixed a healthy dinner of mashed cauliflower, cucumber salad and chicken strips (okay, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad). While I was doing this, he took down the ramp from when the in-laws visited two weeks ago and showered. Then he did a few things on the laptop before we decided a drive to Dairy Queen would be a nice way to enjoy the evening and the gorgeous weather we seem to have brought back with us from San Diego. (BTW, DQ flavor of the month is Nutter Butter. Get it. You won’t be disappointed. Unless you hate peanut butter. Which, there’s probably something wrong with you. Like you better be deathly allergic because no one normal hates peanut butter.) Once we got home, we popped in a movie and enjoyed our mini-blizzards. Everything was moving along according to our new & improved schedule! Around 10:15 pm, I figured it was about time to turn things off and head to bed. Except somewhere in the last few minutes during a bathroom run or a drink refill, I had lost my husband. I left the movie running since I could tell he wasn’t all that into it (the new Arthur, in case you were wondering) and waited another 15 minutes. At this point, I knew he wasn’t in the bathroom and a hunch told me I knew where I could find him: firmly planted in the office in front of his laptop. I said something along the lines of, “Hey I thought you weren’t going to get on there anymore tonight. It’s bed time!” but the glow of the laptop screen had apparently seized him and my words just fluttered over his head with barely a nod of recognition.

At 11:15 I turned off the bedside lamp and made one final plea to please come to bed. Sometime around midnight, there was mumbling and sheets moving.

And then Friday morning, at the bright and early hour of 7:30, he hit the snooze button thrice and rushed to work again.

/sigh

I guess we already have a routine.

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On Bloggy Things

I just spent the better part of my Friday night redesigning this blog. I spent about an hour tossing around new blog name ideas, of which I came up with none, and then another hour making a pretty new banner with actual pictures OF MY FACE so that there’s no mistake that yep, that’s my blog. I also bought one of those new fancy domain name thing-a-majigs so now you can just type in ButWillThereBeCake.com and get my purdy new blog. Annoyingly enough, I needed to add the “but” since someone else was using (or rather squatting) on the domain of my same blog name.

The hubs doesn’t approve of starting the blog domain with “but” but he’s also the one that suggested my blog name should be “Holy Shit I’m an Adult” and after realizing that it is a) available and b) kind of awesome, I decided I didn’t want profanity in my blog name regardless of how much of my vocabulary relies on profanity to express emotion. Which is to say, a lot.

Anyway, I still have some little things to take care of like changing the title fonts/colors to match and playing with widgets, but if you haven’t clicked over in awhile because you’re reading this in a reader, please do and let me know what you think so far.

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Home Sweet Home

I haven’t talked much about our failed plans of moving to North Carolina last year, other than it sucked and we were both pretty depressed and miserable. (I also went a little crazy.) It took a very long time for us to be okay again. To accept the fact that we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon and that St. Louis would be home for the foreseeable future. Don’t get me wrong, St. Louis is a great place to live and raise a family, but I was just…over it. And since my husband isn’t originally from here anyway, he’s always felt like St. Louis was just a temporary home for him. (If temporary equates to more than 10 years now…) It was a bitter pill to swallow. But then, the seasons changed, as seasons tend to do. We went to Maui and reconnected. It was like we were on our honeymoon all over again! But with even more sex! (Ha, that was meant to be funny. Sorry, mom.)

When we returned, our lives became busy, hectic things but every project that was overwhelming us was a project we were doing together. I focused on becoming the wife I wanted to be. The wife I used to be. Good things started happening. We’ve had some not so good things too, like this damn aircast boot that I’m still lugging around, but all in all, life is good. Crazy, busy, messy…but good.

The house continues to be a point of contention, however. Our not-so-great mortgage and plans of refinancing. And with the recent stock market drop and all the financial troubles plaguing our country, we hung our heads on Monday and said to each other, “Well, I guess it’ll be another five years in this house…” Then we returned to our regularly scheduled programming of busy and carried on with our week. Between work, and our side projects, attempting to fix actual dinners each night with side dishes and salad, it’s no surprise that the rest of the house has fallen by the wayside. Dog hair on the floor, dishes in the sink, dirty laundry in random piles and baskets throughout the house…we’re basically well-educated pigs. And when the house is in complete disarray, that’s usually when I hate it the most.

Except I didn’t. And I don’t. Even as I trudged up the stairs, stairs that have little tufts of dog hair tucked into each of the corners, I looked around at the dirty dishes piled in the sink, and the stacks of junk mail scattered about the counter, and the unpacked suitcase from our trip to San Diego last week still sitting on the couch…and then I thought, “I very well may raise children here.” And I smiled as a wave of relief swept over me. It wasn’t a thought tainted by disappointment. It wasn’t a feeling of dread or a long list of things we’d need to change in order to make this house a kid-friendly home. It was excitement and hope and dare I say it, happiness. (And no, I am not pregnant. Just happy to be happy about living here again.) It’s like Bob Marley said. Every little thing is gonna be alright.

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Almond Cake

Just a quick post to say that I tried another recipe found on Pinterest. This almond cake: http://pinterest.com/pin/82393860/

It is by far the best cake I’ve ever made. Ever.

My in-laws agree.

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