Whew, what a year it’s been (and continues to be). Not only was I wrapped up in planning my own wedding, but I’m also in a close friend’s wedding in less than a month, and I transitioned into a new position at work a couple months ago. The good news is, my new position requires more creativity (yay!) and less actual writing, which means I may be more inclined to update the old blog (we’ll see).
As everyone is WELL aware, fall leading into the holiday season is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE (in fact, I usually resume blogging this time of year, only to drop off once the winter doldrums hit and I lose the will to live – ha.) And autumn weekends – forget about it. Absolute bliss. I even actively enjoy cleaning my house this time of year – everything feels so fresh and crisp.
I thought it would be fun to take you through a typical fall weekend day around here. Here goes:
Sunday, 10 AM: Wake up slow (and late!) Jeffrey will have gotten up hours ago (Grooby doesn’t allow him to sleep in, but won’t accept me as a substitute…DARN) and will most likely have run out to Dunkin Donuts for morning coffee and possibly a bite to eat. We have a coffee setup at home (a pretty great one, actually – the Ninja Coffee Bar is dope as hell), but he’s hopelessly addicted to Dunkin’s blueberry coffee syrup (gross). He always picks something up for me…sometimes he’ll come upstairs to ask me what I want, sometimes he surprises me. My typical order is a plain macchiato, but today he just brought me a black coffee – I have my pumpkin spice creamer in the fridge, and I’ve been requesting plain black coffee to add it to (of course, I could just make it myself – but I mean, he’s going out anyway, right?) No Dunkin food today, so I scarf down some greek yogurt while catching up on my weekly blog reading. Jeff has cereal.
12 PM: I remember I have some bloody mary mix in the fridge that I picked up last weekend on the way home from a bridal shower – score! I enjoy a bloody – with bleu cheese stuffed olives I have left over from beer school at Whole Foods – while messing around online – I’m on the hunt for a hex wine rack (like this one) and some new glassware.
12:30 PM: Contemplate going for a run. It’s a nice temperature outside (under 80, which is pretty cool around here for mid-September), but it looks like it might rain. I don’t want to get caught in a downpour, so I decide to wait to see what the weather does (excuses!) I decide to do some reading instead – I’m currently reading The Good Girl. It’s pretty decent so far, but I just finished The Girl on the Train (I know, I’m super late to the party on that one), so pretty much anything is going to pale in comparison and I’m having trouble staying focused. I can’t wait for the movie version of The Girl on the Train to come out!
1:00 PM: I decide to get started with some cleaning/organizing. Yesterday we took a trip to Crate & Barrel to pick up some gifts we received from the wedding – since we did a honeymoon registry, it was up to us to either pick up any physical gifts that our guests had purchased or have them shipped. All the better – it gave me an excuse to poke around Crate & Barrel’s gorgeous Thanksgiving displays and pick up a few additional essentials. I unpacked everything yesterday, but our kitchen could use some re-organizing. I also throw our sheets and duvet cover into the washer and do the vacuuming.
3:30 PM: House clean, fall-scented candles lit; I hop into the shower (unless I’m going somewhere, I tend to shower around mid-day on the weekend – this way, if I get all grimy cleaning or decide to do something active outside, I don’t feel like I need to shower a second time).
4:30 PM: After my shower, I have some time to kill before I need to get started on dinner. I join Jeffrey on the couch to watch some football and mess around on my phone. I couldn’t care less about the sport, but the sounds of football this time of year make everything feel even more cozy (ask me again in January how I feel about football – and Jeff is only a fair weather fan).
5:45 PM: I decide to get started on dinner. Tonight, we’re having eggplant rollatini. I realize that I forgot to buy…well, the eggplant. To remedy this, I run up the street to the Food Lion to grab a few of the purple veggies. A year ago, I would’ve made my own marinara, but I’ve since discovered Rao’s arrabbiata sauce and now I’m hopelessly addicted. It’s so good, I’d seriously eat the stuff with a spoon like soup. It’s a little pricey at around 8 bucks a jar, but it makes anything you put it on taste like it came straight out of the most authentic Italian kitchen you can imagine. SO worth it. While I cook, I pour myself a glass of wine and put on a podcast – in anticipation of the Gilmore Girls reboot coming out in November (eeeeeeekkk!!!!), I’ve been listening to the Gilmore Guys podcast. I adore cooking, especially on lazy Sunday evenings – I love to take my time, relax, and listen to a good podcast or some music while the kitchen fills with delicious smells. That’s what home feels like to me. Usually Jeff will appear in the kitchen at some point during the process, and he’ll take a seat at the island and read quietly while I cook and listen to my podcast. This is what it’s all about, if you ask me. (And sometimes I’ll be making some way over-complicated opus of a recipe that doesn’t even end up tasting as good as something way easier and the kitchen will be a huge mess and I’ll be ready to pull the hair out of my head and Jeff will come in and try to have a conversation with me over the podcast while I’m trying to do 5 things at once and I’ll want to throw the bottle of wine at his head and jump out the window. It’s about balance.)
7:15 PM: Dinner is ready. Jeff and I typically eat at the kitchen island, with Grooby either watching pitifully from the floor, or sitting up on the stool opposite me like a fluffy white little human. We probably shouldn’t let him do that, but…it’s just so damn cute.
8:00 PM: After the dinner mess has been cleaned up (I clean as I cook, so usually all that’s left is to rinse our dinner plates and load them into the dishwasher, and clean off whatever pan I’ve served dinner from. Since I’m always the one to cook, Jeff cleans up after dinner. It’s a pretty great deal, if you ask me), Jeff and I retire to the living room to watch some TV before bed. We still use an actual TiVo (we’re too attached to stop, even though it’d be cheaper to just use a DVR from Verizon), and it was literally completely full after we returned from our honeymoon. This gives Jeff a legit panic attack, so we’ve been working to clear it out. Pretty much all we have left at this point is a bunch of @Midnights (which, luckily, was on a hiatus for part of the time we were gone – Chris Hardwick got married exactly a week before us!), which is good, because fall TV is about to resume. I’m super pumped for New Girl and SNL to come back, and I can’t wait to check out the new show This is Us – it looks like it might be a good candidate to fill the void that Parenthood left in my sad, empty soul.
10:00 PM: Bedtime! Although I live for weekends and am sad to see another one go, I actually don’t mind going back to work on Monday – it’s a bizarre feeling for me, because I’ve historically hated most jobs I’ve had.
There you have it – Sundays are typically less eventful than Saturdays – I tend to get anything major that needs to be done out of the way on Saturday, so I can have Sunday to straight chill. Weekdays are pretty routine – Gym (ideally), work, home, take Grooby for a walk or go for a run depending on whether or not I actually made it to the gym that morning, dinner, TV, bed. Repeat. What do your weeks look like?
Sweat the Small Stuff 
One thought on “Autumn Weekends”