Category: Homebrewing

Some Life Updates

LaurenLeave a comment

Even though I write in this space pretty consistently, it still feels like some stuff gets skipped over.  Like how we booked a spontaneous trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras or how the other day, I put on my pajama pants and one of Joey’s socks fell out.  How long had it been there??  Okay, just kidding about that second one, but I wanted to take a moment to mention some larger life happenings that aren’t Oscar-related 🙂

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I honestly don’t know if I ever even mentioned it (HOW?), but after our first renovation venture went bust, we took some time to think, then decided to scale the project WAAAAY back and try again.  Sadly, the EXACT same thing happened.  After many reassurances that the budget we were very upfront and clear about was doable, we were given a number almost twice that.  We were so mad and disappointed and mostly, really ready to wash our hands of that design/build company, who obviously don’t know how to price projects.

I think we’ve mostly recovered again.  But since a renovation of any size apparently wasn’t in the cards, we decided to at least get ourselves a new garage (which was going to be part of the renovation).  One that actually fits Joey’s truck!  This also meant having to take down a few trees in our backyard, including this pretty big one that we’ve always loved.  It’s feeling very open and exposed back there now and it was honestly sadder than I expected to lose the trees, but hopefully when all is said and done, we’ll have a nice garage and we can forget the disappointing stuff that came before it.

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This little pup! ♥  For as cute as he is and as much as I love him, I have to say, his behavior is sometimes not the best.  Mainly, he’s suddenly nipping at me!  Like all the time.  I thought maybe it was a jealousy/protective thing — he is VERY attached to Joey — but he does it even when I’m home alone with him.  It seems to have something to do with my hands??  It is honestly so strange and confusing.  He will come sit in my lap, nudge my hand until I pet him and then when I do he tries to snap at me.  When I pull my hand away, he frantically nudges at my hand to pet him.  “What do you want from me??”  I’ve become very good at discerning when he’s “in a mood” so I’m not really taking it that seriously but it is sad when he’s looking so cuddly and cute and I just want to pet him!

In “good dog” news, we recently got Andi to stop sleeping in our bed and it has been life changing!  Every morning, Joey asks me how I slept and I say “REALLY GOOD!”  It was also surprisingly easy, considering we’d tried to lock him out of our room several times to disastrous effect.  Turns out he just needed a big blanket on the ground to burrow in, ha!

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And the last bit of news is that it’s official, we’re putting our homebrewing career to rest.  We’d been doing it so infrequently anyway and though Joey still drank our brew, I much MUCH preferred to drink something we bought.  Very proud of what we made but look, a professionally made beer just tastes way better.  Also that kegerator was taking up room in our small house.  Joey cleaned it up and took it all to the basement — he carried it by himself backwards down the stairs and it gave me next level anxiety — and that’s that.  It’s sad but it’s also not sad.  It didn’t really feel like part of who we were any more, plus we have plenty of other things we enjoy doing together.

Okay, that’s really it, you know everything about me now 😛

Weekend Things

Lauren1 Comment

Two nights out with friends, a trip to the Farmers’ Market, much Saturday relaxation, beer brewing on Sunday morning, seeing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with my mom and sister late Sunday afternoon and to cap it all off, Joey making me dinner.  So even though I think I was feeling sort of crabby on Saturday afternoon, I’ve all but permanently deleted that memory from my mind because the rest of the weekend was too good!

Oh and I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and only cried like five times 😛

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Friday afternoon, we met Hannah and Josh at Community for some happy hour action and oh my gosh, has a cuter baby dino ever existed??  I spend a lot of time thinking “Mason is growing so fast, where is the time going?!” but when I saw him sitting in the restaurant high chair, he looked positively teensy.  He can now do things like feed himself cereal pieces and pull himself up to standing!  Also, we ordered approximately a million plates of food and it was all really good.  We had to grab gelato up the street afterward, because there was no AC in the restaurant and it was SO HOT so we needed a way to cool off 🙂

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We woke up Saturday and headed straight to the Farmers’ Market and it was blissfully the opposite of what the last visit was like, THANK GOD.  We left caffeinated — first stop is ALWAYS Pig Train for nitro iced coffees! — and with peaches and thee fluffiest pita that I am so excited to try.

Not going to lie, much lounging happened during the rest of the day and it was perfectly wonderful.  We watched Ant-Man for the first time and I’ve gotta be honest, it was sorta dorky.  If Paul Rudd wasn’t in it, I probably would not have been interested.  Someone could have warned me about close up shots of ants!  I still have PTSD from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  

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I cracked open my “Melonilla” kombucha and I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever made!  I absolutely love the vanilla flavor and it’s perfectly carbonated.  Unlike the lime-ginger I made last week that I keep making Joey open for me because it’s explosively carbonated… Oh and we made a trip to our homebrew store for ingredients and got the trim and door painted on my little library.  Just needs to stencil work and it’s ready to go in the ground!

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We met Bobby and Becca at The Source later on for dinner at Comida.  That taco platter is a beaut and all of the tacos were good, but for me, the grilled taco still reigns supreme so I’m probably only ordering those from here on out!  Since we were so close to a handful of breweries, — but can you really be anyplace that’s NOT close to a handful of breweries these days? — we walked over to the Great Divide Barrel Bar for a beer.  There, we reminisced about how perfect the wedding was and I kept hearing myself say stuff like “I remember, at our wedding…” and felt like a real old married person.

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We woke up Sunday and, while Joey got our beer brewing, I made us pancakes and then we had like four hours to kill while we brewed.  I posted a few Sunday clips on my Instagram story and told Joey “it looks like I’ve done a million things today but I’ve really just done like 5 minutes of all of them!”  Those things being garden harvest/upkeep, black bean pressure cooking, reading, a little workout/yoga session and watching the OG Mamma Mia! because I needed to prep for sequel time later.  I was incredibly embarrassing dancing around to “Dancing Queen” but I can’t help it!  Also, that synth sound at the beginning of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” gives me life!

As for the sequel, as my mom said afterward, “it’s not a good movie but it’s so much fun!”  That fleet of ships carrying dancers performing “Dancing Queen” made me the happiest I’d ever been.  Also, Lily James is a knockout, Jessica Keenan Wynn is a dead ringer for Christine Baranski and I was very very thankful for far fewer musical numbers by the three, ahem old mature men.  Cher doesn’t have a huge role or much screen time but she is a LEGEND, so we should feel lucky any time she graces us with a performance.

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I came home to this stunning dinner that tasted even better than it looked and most importantly, didn’t involve me lifting a finger, except the one I used to swipe my credit card when I bought the salmon on my way home.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s nothing better than having a homemade dinner prepared for you!

What did you do this weekend?!