Back, Sort Of

We made it back from Portland late last night or I guess rather incredibly early this morning, 3AM! When we bought our tickets for our trip we hadn't moved up to the mountain yet, so we got them for the airport we normally fly out of out here, Philadelphia (which is actually two hours away from where Will's parents live, ugh). So we had to drive the five hours back to Delaware, then the next day drove two hours up to the airport, not that an airport is closer to us on the mountain. But as the lovely Nicole says it's kind of the trade off for living in such a pretty place, which is actually a small price to pay, if you ask me.

Anyways we are headed back to our little mountain home today, but I wanted to let you know I should start posting regularly again soon, with lots of fun Portland related posts! Because we had an amazing time and got to hang out with some of my favorite people in the whole world!

Yeah we take silly backyard photos, because we are that cool! 

Hope everyone had a great week while I was away!

x's and o's

Oh and please keep your fingers crossed that our watering system went off without a hitch! We will know by tonight, and I am sure I will keep everyone update via twitter and instagram (@littleladylittlecity).

Portland

Hey all, I just wanted to give you a quick update and let you know that I'm in Portland for the next week or so, hence my lack of updates. But I should have plenty of fun posts when I get back! Have a great week everyone!

x's and o's

Sunday Snapshot #18

I was maybe six or seven when this picture was taken somewhere in Illinois . If I remember correctly we were driving along the highway when we saw this sign, which happens to be the last name of some family friends. So we pulled over to take a picture of us next to it. I remember being so incredibly embarrassed because of all the cars driving past staring at us. My mom and brother on the other hand seem to be pretty darn excited haha. 

And did you guys notice my absolutely wonderful purple on purple outfit, I was ahead of my time hahaha! 

x's and o's

And on a side note holy cow guys! Over a hundred followers! Thank you so much this is really all kinds of exciting! Glad to have you all on my little adventure, and I hope to get to know all of you a little better as we go on. Thank you again.

Wedding Insperation

Ok can we talk about one of my favorite things to think about for our wedding. The cake and pies we are planning to serve! I mean come on what could seriously be funner to think about? Hehe. I know we want to do mostly pies at our wedding with maybe one little cake for us to cut. We are pretty darn lucky that up here on the mountain we are surrounded by apple trees as well as blackberry bushes. It makes it easy to choose, and of course it doesn't hurt that we absolutely love apple and blackberry pies! 

Will kind of makes fun of me because when it comes to yummy food for everyone to eat I kind of go overboard! As of right now out guest count is 50 people with probably not too many more to be added and the amount of food and deserts I want to have is kind of ridiculous haha! But I figure whatever is left over people can join us up on the mountain the next day and help us finish it off. I mean everyone is pretty much coming from the opposite ends of the country so might as well make a huge weekend event out of the whole thing. 

Ok onto some yummy looking deserts! All the sources lead you back to the recipes, just in case this post gives you the urge to try one of these guys out for yourself! 

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Poppy seed cake with mascarpone frosting and strawberries! Talk about yummy! I've made this guy a couple of times already now and it has always been such a big hit! The cake itself is not very sweet so with the frosting and strawberries you don't feel like your teeth are rotting out of you head, a good thing for sure! I think this is the guy we are going to make if we decide to have a cake to cut. 

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Apple pie is an Ellexson family tradition. My dad has always been notorious for going out to dinner and just ordering a piece of apple pie! It's pretty darn ridiculous, because you look at the man and would think he is a super healthy eater, haha! I absolutely love them made with Granny Smith apples, because they you get that sweet and tart thing going on and it is wonderful! We have a couple different varieties of apples up here, with some very yummy green tart ones!! 

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My beloved rhubarb pie! I would absolutely love to use rhubarb that I have grown, but if you read my last post, that might not be happening. I still have faith in my plant, so maybe! But either way there will be rhubarb pie, I demand it :)

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Ok so I've never tried an Apple Toffee Galette before, but it kind of looks super yummy! Not sure if I would do that for the wedding, but maybe for the rehearsal dinner or the post wedding day brunch instead. I mean it's not like we are going to have a shortage of apples or anything. 

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Blackberry cobbler! Ok if for some truly bizarre reason you haven't ever tried this absolutely wonderful treat, then seriously do yourself a favor and go get all the ingredients and make it right now! I have a feeling you won't be disappointed! 

We are doing barbecue for the wedding so I think all of these deserts will be perfectly complementary. I'm super excited about having my bride's ladies up here helping me with all the desert preparation. I think we are going to have a pretty fun time. Hopefully we will have a working kitchen by then cause otherwise we will be back at someones house in DC and transporting them hahaha!  

What are some of your favorite pies? Or what did you end up having at your wedding?

Hope everyone is having a lovely Saturday so far.

x's and o's

One Day I Will Laugh

Oh yesterday, what to say about yesterday? Yesterday and I were not the greatest of friends that is for sure. The day started off pretty well, and by the middle of the day I had already driven down the mountain three separate times. Let me remind you it's 20-30 minute drive both ways! And it really didn't help that our road is all torn up because of some crazy rain we had the other day. I had to drive to another town to pick something up that was a hour away, ugh. And on top of that I got slammed with work the night before and wasn't able to do any of it until after 5, which wasn't fun at all because I was ready for the day to be over at that point! I worked till around 10:30 where I could just take no more and then headed up to bed. I was hoping to be super restful, unfortunately not. I kept getting weird texts and phone calls from some crazy looking number that I later discovered was a Chinese number! I shall be calling Verizon today and having them block any number from China as I know no one there. Thankfully it's a new day, and hopefully one filled with less stress and driving.

You know I think I can laugh about those texts now because they were really bizarre. They went from talking about having dinner with colleagues to a large shipment of something, and then they later wanted the quantity to be reduced, to a car being here (or I guess rather there) now. Maybe I unwittingly have found out about some secret spy plans or something, haha. I didn't text back because I knew it wasn't a US number, so I wonder if they think the person they were trying to text is just being a real jerk? Oh I hope not, I would feel bad because, well, I'm silly like that haha.

And on an unrelated note it seems like our greenhouse watering system is going to work out wonderfully, yay! I was also so excited to hear about how all of your little plants are doing. I've seriously had so much fun growing all of these little guys from seeds! So far I haven't had too many casualties, just some sweet basil, and my beloved rhubarb. I am pretty devastated about that, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's just a really, really slow grower (I think I'm officially in the denial stage). I might just have to go and buy myself a grown rhubarb plant and replace my not growing seed. You guys won't judge right? 

And speaking of plants, our flowers have started to pop up in our flower bed! Eeee! I am pretty darn excited about these guys, because I know they are going to make our little cabin look pretty darn adorable once they all start to bloom! 

I must say I did a pretty great job of pouring the seed in a straight row.

Well thanks so much for bearing with me rants in that first paragraph, seriously I'm so happy that day is over and done with! Hope everyone is have a wonderful day. 

x's and o's

Feeling Accomplished

Today was another very long day working hard on the house. We poured the cement footers in the holes for the cisterns (you can see us working on one of the holes in my last post). The plan for tomorrow is to get them all built with the cinder blocks and then pour some more cement on Friday. Man I'm already so tired from all this work, I'll probably be about ready to keel over by the end of the week, hehe. 

Anyways as I mentioned before (or at least I think I did) Will and I are going to be going to Portland, OR next week to visit some friends, which means we had to figure out a way to keep our greenhouse all watered while we are gone. I would be so devastated if we came back to a dead greenhouse, I mean I grew it all from seeds! Keeping them watered isn't the easiest of tasks when your house doesn't have running water yet, haha. But I can happily report that we came up with a little system that we think is going to work wonderfully! 

We also have a timer system that is not in the picture that we will be using to turn the pump off and on. Haha it kind of looks like a little bit of a disaster doesn't it? But hey if it works right :)

We will place all the potted plants on the ground under the misters. 

After a little testing out our little system it seems like the misters were a great way to go. They give nice coverage to our little greenhouse without over saturating any one plant. The way it works is that we will set the timer to turn on our little pump everyday at a specific time, which will then pump the water out of the blue jug and push it into the misters. Creating a delightful little light shower for our plants. Fingers crossed that this system goes off without a hitch because I'm sure we will be needing to use it over and over.

I can hardly wait till our plants start producing some yummy veggies! How are all your plants doing?

x's and o's

I Ache

Will's parents have come up to help with the house and the last couple of days we've been working pretty hard. I seriously don't think I have ever been this achy in my entire life.  It's really sad my hands are actually killing me while I type this haha.

We got a load of drywall delivered the other day but unfortunately the fork lift couldn't fit in the house or garage so they just dropped it off outside, which meant Will and I had to move the drywall inside ourselves. As you can imagine it was not that fun, but we successfully got it done. Then yesterday Will and I spent the day cleaning up the holes we dug for the water tanks. And I got to use a pickax for the first time, and let me tell you something, those suckers are heavy after the twentieth swing or so, haha! I have absolutely no upper body strength, but maybe this will help remedy that. Today I think we will continue working on the holes for the tanks, and hopefully we can get it all poured tomorrow! 

Anyways I made a short little time-lapse video of some of the work we did. 

Ok now it is time to get back to work and get this thing built! Or at at least slightly habitable by October for the wedding :)

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far! 

x's and o's