2015.

hey! happy new year to you! here is my recap of 2015. it was an awesome year!! i take so many photos, every day, all the time, which is what makes this post possible :)  xo

january

2015 began with a crisp winter's walk in our neighborhood on new year's day.  i started getting into photographing the food that i would make. pete's 27th birthday was spent pouring bronze and completing his 2nd bronze casting class.  we started finding more art and fun things to hang around our new house and make it more cozy.  pete and i went on a winter hike with lauren and levi at lake 22.

february

i insisted on busting out the wooden heart light pete and i had made for tobin and dave's wedding photo booth and having dinner in the backyard on valentine's day.  i am so glad i did! because...just look how cute it looked!  i started getting more and more into cooking and baking this month, photographing the process, and writing my own recipes.  just when i thought i was going to quit using my blog altogether, i found a new use for it.

i must say that i think this podcast had a lot to do with me reviving my blog and continuing to be creative with something that really excites me -- food! my true love!!  jess's podcast was super inspiring to me and i couldn't get enough of it once i discovered it early on in the year! i listen to every episode no matter what the topic is.  i've actually learned a ton from this podcast.  it really opened my eyes to the possibilities that there are for creative ladies (& gents) like myself, and all sorts of topics and issues that i didn't necessarily know about already.  the main take away from each episode is that all those people listened to their gut instincts and used the resources around them to continue persevering on their passion projects/goals, working toward their personal version of success & achievement.  it's very interesting and inspiring.

it also introduced me to a lot of bloggers that i now follow online, and they continue to inspire me in different ways all the time!  i would definitely recommend this podcast if you're into self-motivation! i didn't even know i was into self-motivation, but turns out i am! and this one really inspired me.  thanks, jess :) you reached me just in the nick of time and got me out of a little slump.  i don't know what i would do with all my free time nowadays if i didn't have my blog to keep me creative.

march

more fun kitchen creations in the works this month.  pete and i took our friends up to lopez island for their first time.  we also continued to make our house a home, finding good uses for empty corners and updating our furniture situation here and there.

april

baby finn was born one day before his mama's birthday!  here's grandma michele with her sweet grandson.  i also made some tribute birthday pancakes for baby finn, alex, and the owen family who showed me the ways of chocolate pancakes :)  pete and i flipped all the grass in our front yard and planted a bunch of herbs and crawling ground cover plants.  its starting to grow in quite nicely now! and hardly any weeds!  the mint is growing like crazy and we've got way too much of it, though.  also, we took a weekend trip to camano island with some friends, where we saw a grey whale pass by the beach house! it was so cool!

may

may was a busy month of fun things!  first up, one of my fav eating/drinking holidays.  i made a semi-loco cinco display, just for pete and me!  then i jetted off to las vegas with my friends for lauren's bachelorette party.  we finished off the month with a 6-day roadtrip down the west coast in pete's volkswagen bus over memorial day weekend.  it was so much fun. then, summer came early and we were all hitting the beach before june.  in seattle, this is insanity.

june

my friend whitney and i took a stroll down memory lane and i channelled my inner-country girl at the shania twain concert.  ooooh yahhh.  shania is still a major babe.  just watch this. pete and i put our new-to-us canoe (from my parents) to use in lake union.  grillin' & chillin' and general summery goodness ensued.  we celebrated lauren at her luau bridal shower.  my company retreat in the snoqualmie area was another super fun time.  the guy with giant brownie tray is supposed to be kevin mccallister - he was on team 1990's for our decades themed retreat.  i started making homemade popsicles and everybody freaked out and thought i was a culinary genius. lolz.  pete and i experimented with growing garlic, and he stepped up his hop-growing game in our driveway.  he got quite a haul this year!  summer solstice was completely beautiful spent on the hill by our house.  we took a trip to a friend's cabin at hood canal.  so much fun!!! summer was in full swing.

july

4th of july spent on lopez island is always the best.  our sad little garlic bulbs taught us a lesson in growing garlic.  more popsicles.  my friend piper's birthday party in portland somehow became pizza-themed. because pizza. lauren and levi got married!!! pete's hops continued to flourish.

august

pete decided he was going to take this table (that we spent 7 months hand-painting each tile and built with our bare hands) to the DUMP! i was so sad.  he put two coats of clear varnish over the top, and the second coat didn't adhere properly to the first.  anything you'd put on the table would stick and it never fully dried! it was weird.  anyway, i was sad/in denial that he wanted to dump our handmade table of love. i took this pic in its memory.  home improvements continued with pete bashing a hole in our back porch! how convenient! pete harvested his 6 hop plants.  we celebrated ashleigh's birthday at birch bay.  i saw the craziest sunset of my life, right up the hill from our house.  sometimes i make foods that i think are too weird to share. this was a red beet + goat cheese toast with fried egg.  it tasted really good actually; just thought it might freak people out haha.

september

peter and i took a long overnight hike in the alpine lakes.  it was beautiful.  lauren and levi moved to our hood and we took em bowling and to eat the mysteriously good chinese food and chicken wings they have at the bowling alley.  pete and i went to our first volkswagen show, volksfest. 

october

ooooh one of my most favorite months.  we celebrated peter's dad's birthday at one of our favorite casual food joints, marination ma kai.  i got my hair cut. i went to new york city with whitney and had an awesome time eating as much as we possibly could.  my friends and i did classic halloween costumes in purple and gold for the halloween husky football game. i wore fake scars on my face and wanted to keep them on forever and look bad ass.

november

november was wonderful and beautiful.  I MET/HUGGED/HAD DINNER WITH DREW BARRYMORE. love love love love love love love. sometimes i forget about that, and as soon as i remember this night, i'm like....... HOOOOOLY SHIT! josie grossie for life. seattle is a downright gorgeous place to be in november.  peter and i celebrated 7 years together :)  i started hunkering down in hibernation mode. pizza socks & homemade pizza. and some healthier things, too.  work was cuhraaaaazy busy.  pete and i got away to lopez island again for some relaxation and sailing. i spent my first thanksgiving ever with peter's family:) apple cup football game in seattle. i moved my blog from blogger to squarespace. this was actually a pretty big undertaking. i am so happy with the change.

december

a ton of images here since december is fresh in my mind. we got a tall christmas tree. i took some photos of peter's brother's new line of planters he's been working on. we spent 4 days at mt. hood, snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding, and chilling. and [me] obsessing over the cuteness that is timberline lodge.  pete's dad retired after 28 years of working in civil engineering. pete and i threw a christmas party where i was gifted a selfie stick. lololz. many group selfies ensued. marisa and foster got engaged! they visited oodles of friends in seattle. we took this dorky self-timer photo of us holding christmassy props.  i got my best friend and her mom pillows printed of their beloved golden retrievers for christmas.  christmas happened, and my 28th birthday happened. my friend katy, my neighbor growing up, had her second baby on my birthday! welcome to earth, capri! i wish i had my own photo of you. ashleigh, jun, pete and i trekked out to snoqualmie for the day to bask in the glory of the beautiful snow. the last photo of pizza represents my birthday gift from whitney and ashleigh; we went to a delish pizza dinner and they surprised me with tickets to see amy schumer on new year's eve! 

2015, you were a great one!  welcome, 2016.

extra! extra!

features on social media

this little photo of our cheddar bus was featured on roadtrippers' instagram account and later featured in the top 10 by seattle met magazine for people's choice award in their fall instagram photo contest.

facebook:

pete and my valentine's day dinner set up featured on nello's sauce facebook page. hehe.

instagram:

my recipe for winter squash red thai curry was featured on feedfeed's website!  it now lives in their winter squash recipe feed archives if you're ever looking for inspiration with squash :)

personal instagram photos featured this year:

styling projects/marketing promotions at work, featured on evo.com & evo's instagram page:

qp

a tribute to my long, long hair.

those who know me, know that i had super duper long hair for a super duper long time.  i cut fourteen inches off my hair in october, and have been navigating the uncharted waters of life with "short" hair since.  

it was a huge change for me! i felt so connected to my long hair for such a long time.  but sometime in the last year, i just couldn't stop thinking that i wanted to chop it off.  i started saying it out loud to people MONTHS before i actually brought myself to cut it.  "i'm going to cut my hair, guys. guys, guess what? i'm going to get an actual real-person hair cut soon." some people would say, "WHAAAAT?!?!?!?" <<these are the folks who really know me.  most people would say, "ooookayyy, weirdo. it's just a hair cut."  

for anyone who has had very long hair or something about them that feels very much part of their identity, changing it is actually a really challenging thing to go through with!  i was super scared when i was driving to the appointment...like roll-down-the-window-and-breathe-deep level of nervousness.  so silly thinking back on that.  i really felt that my long hair was a huge part of who i was/am...it was with me for so many years.  the last time i had hair as short as it is now was probably 1998.  

in fact, up til recently (after 2 full months of being "short"-haired), i still identified as being a very long-haired person. i felt sort of like clayton bigsby from chappelle's show, the blind black white supremacist. ha!!  in a far, far more innocent way, obviously. that example is a bit extreme.  even now when i brush my hair, i expect there to be about a foot more of it once the brush hits the ends and i have to be like, "oh, right. that happened."

anyhoo, here are some pics of long-haired me below.  this post was actually really fun/funny/horrifying to put together.  i hope i don't embarrass anyone in my path.  i could have selected many, many more photos that i will omit (for my own sake!!).  i haven't looked back at college photos in quite some time.....there were some that i simply cannot believe exist.  it also helps me remember how fun/exciting/weird/awesome the last ten years have been.

its pretty appropriate that i happen to be writing this on the eve of my 28th birthday!  all these photos come from the last decade of my life.  so many good times with you, LONG HAIR!!! i loved you so.

if there's anything i've learned about myself in the last several years, it is that i do everything on my own time.  i'm pretty consistently 2-5 years behind any social trend or things that my peers are doing. its not that i don't notice whats going on around me, i just tend to take my time doing everything.  for the sake of the hair example, i remember right at the end or immediately after college, all my friends were chopping off their long hair into these fun and fresh looks. this is not to say that we all must do what all our peers are doing at the same time, there was just zero part of me that was interested in doing the same.  so the very long hair stayed for several more years.  i can apply this same theory to many, many other parts of my life right now. ;)

well some of these pics are really making me want to go back to greece and be all tan and stuff.

i'm loving all the cameos by so many various people in these photos... getting my hair caught in passersby sunglasses, sippin' water with natalie at a monastery... the usual!

THINGS I WILL MISS ABOUT HAVING LONG, LONG HAIR:

• BIG, MESSY BUNS!

• LONG BRAIDS!

• JUST LONG, LONG HAIR WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE HAVING LONG, LONG HAIR! (hair whipping party tricks are now a thing of the past. boohoo.)

THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME ABOUT HAVING SHORTER HAIR:

• THE CAR! sitting in the car is a MUCH better experience with short hair.  i would constantly have to lift my hair around and set it somewhere it wasn't in the way, it would get caught in my armpits & clothes, in the sunroof, out the window, in the door, stuck under the seatbelt, touch the roof if it was in a bun, all sorts of annoying things that drove me insane.
• WEARING SCARVES/HATS/DRESSES! just an observation that wearing scarves & beanies and wearing dresses is much less frustrating to me with short hair.  i feel like i was rapunzel having to literally lift my hair all the time and place it.  how strange.
• PERKY PONYTAILS! my classic high pony of long hair was always soo flat and heavy.  now its a perky little pony.
• BRUSHING/WASHING HAIR!  OMG OMG. this is quite the delight.  my friends know how much i despiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise getting ready and that i personally think it is a humongous waste of time. having curly hair has always been a big help in getting away with getting ready fast, but brushing it was a freaking nightmare on elm street.  don't even wanna go there.  NOW, i brush my hair like it aint no thang, washing is a breeze, combing is effortless, and straightening takes like 1/4 of the time it used to take.  curly is still an option, too! i was pretty afraid of having triangle-head when the gal cut my hair.  luckily it is shorter in the back and all curly triangle-head fears are no more.

so here's what it looks like nowadays!:

i desperately wish i could go back in time and clean this mirror.  how emburrrrrassing... 

woof. puhlease ignore.

and then i went to new york and had so much fun and whitney took a picture of me with ice cream.  and i should stop wearing this striped shirt so much i guess.

thank you, hair lady in my neighborhood who was awesome at cutting curly hair and for not making me feel nervous anymore! i feel like i lost a little part of me, but i was ready after psyching myself out and telling the universe for a whole year that i was going to cut it off, ha! i donated 2 ponytails to the pantene beautiful lengths program.  

qp