Five Things on Friday 11/13

-one- We moved into our new place on November 1st and have no been able to have our internet hooked up yet. Yesterday we finally had an appointment to have it set up and guess what?! No show. So we are now on day 13 with no internet. I know that this is not an actual problem and that it has actually helped us settle our new home much more quickly but I do feel a little like we've regressed into the dark ages :)

-two- We got our first Blue Apron box yesterday! I used a discount code from NPR and got three meals for $39.95. It's obviously more expensive than if you just grocery shopped yourself but less expensive than going out to eat. They ship all of the ingredients to your door, portioned out, with all of the recipes and you just have to get cooking. I love cooking and this is a way for me to try recipes I wouldn't think of myself. Here's what we got:

Chicken Khao Soi Soup

Lentil Bolognese

Crispy Cod and Spiced Couscous with Acorn Squash

-three- We have a dining room for the first time and we have had so much fun putting it together. I'm going to write a whole post on how we scored an amazing farmhouse table and bench for a totally affordable price. But overstock.com has been great for finding chairs.

We got two of these chairs for the ends of the table for only $155.00

And we got four of these metal chairs for one side for only $75.00! We'll have a wooden bench on the other side of the table.

-four- This week Cody started working part time at a brand new brewery in Minneapolis. He has been studying to become a cicerone (fancy name for a beer expert) and recently passed the first step as a Certified Beer Server. While he's still working full time in politics, this is a really enjoyable thing to do on the side and a great way to earn some extra money for all of our upcoming travels. They opened their doors for the first time on Wednesday and I went in for a beer and to check it out last night. The taproom is amazing and it looks like it will be so much fun!

-five- Sunday is our first anniversary! I can't for a weekend of celebrations!

Linking up here and here for Friday!

Moving Tips for Lazy People

We moved this last weekend and Cody and I both on several occasions shouted "I hate moving!!" Luckily, we don't plan to do it again any time soon. (Well, last year we weren't planning to move this year so we'll see what happens). Moving can be a great opportunity to get organized and downsize your number of belongings. But I think that's much more necessary if you've been in your home for a long time and have way too many things. We have only been in our place a year and we don't have much stuff. In fact, if we hadn't gotten wedding gifts last fall, we'd have almost nothing. Many of these tips don't work if you're hiring movers. They have rules about how things need to be packed. We rented a UHaul and Cody and his friend Ryan moved everything. We know that once we have a house, doing everything ourselves won't be as feasible. So I guess these are moving tips for cheap people, too.

source

• Sell as many things as you can. If you sell it you don't have to move it. Better yet, make the buyers pick it up from your place. We sold our giant bookcase, a sound system, and two chairs. We also made a couple hundred bucks! If you're going to buy new things, wait until after you've moved.

• Minimize the amount of actual packing you have to do. 

• Leave all of your clothes on the hangers. This can get tricky if they start falling off while moving. So then you can just slip a garbage bag over the clothes and strings around the top of the hanger. We put all of our hanging clothes in my car instead of the truck. But then we could just lift them out, then into the new closets.

• Leave all of your other clothes in the drawers. They can remove the drawers from the dressers and just carry them into the truck, full of already folded clothes.

• Pad breakables with clothing to maximize packing space and kill two birds with one stone.

• Pack spices/other foods in slow cooker or baking pans.

• Wrap things like picture frames and larger art in blankets and tape it up.

• Eat all of your food. We put any food we were moving into coolers. But I didn't do any grocery shopping for about 10 days before we moved so that we were forced to finish things.

• Throw things away. If you can't sell it, chuck it. If you don't you're just going to have to move it again next time when you inevitably don't use it again.

• One more tip for the cheap people: Don't buy boxes. They're expensive. We've shared some with friends, gotten some from liquor stores, and I've gotten them from work (paper boxes from the copy room). You can also buy and resell moving materials on Craigslist.

We're almost settled in so I can't wait to post some pictures of the new place!

A Little Inspiration

When I'm scrolling through Instagram and I see something that inspires me I always screen shot it. Over time I've collected quite a few so I need to purge my iphone photo library. Here are some of my favorites:


For encouragement:

For inspiration:

On marriage:

On self love:

On principle:

On teaching:

On running:

And just for laughs: