My Darling Days

Date Night: Campfire love

A few Saturday evenings ago, Zac & I had no plans. We took advantage of having nothing on the calendar, amongst a busy summer & had a low key night, checking "have a campfire date night" off my summer list!

It was a quintessential summer evening: a warm breeze, a colorful sunset, & a blazing campfire complete with s'mores. We watched fireflies swoop through the air & star-gazed, reminiscing old times & feeling thankful for how blessed we are to have each other (and Gracie Lou)!

Bare feet & belly scratches

Pile o' Sperrys.

The perfect coals for roasting mallows.

Music by Mr. Bryan, to set the mood.

Cheers, friends -- may you be lucky enough to have a date night campfire sometime soon!

Happy Sunday.

Outdoor entertaining tips -- I love the water balloon one!

I want her closet. And her hair.

Adding "make homemade soap" to my To Do List after reading this.

Copper is totally trending right now, and I think this side table is darling!

Wonder if I could pull off this simple chignon? I think I have too much hair for it, but I love the style!

Make: Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Pretty darn quick here, we're going have an over abundance of zucchini from our garden, so I've been scouring the web for yummy zucchini recipes. Recipes in which you actually have no idea zucchini is a major ingredient in, because frankly, I am not a major fan of zucchini, but my husband is.

However, I love baking with zucchini, and basically, this recipe had me at "double chocolate".

This double chocolate zucchini bread by Sally is unreal. It's SO good -- full of moisture & flavor & you have NO idea if you didn't bake it, that it contains a cup & a half of zucchini.

I did just a few things differently than the original recipe -- I only had regular vanilla yogurt on hand, not Greek. I didn't have instant coffee or espresso powder, so I left that out, & I used organic cacao powder.

My slight variations didn't matter one bit -- this bread was still incredible.

Pin it. Bookmark it. Print it off. Do whatever it is that you do.

Bottom line, make this recipe ASAP. You will not be disappointed!

#gardenlife: an update.

It’s been just over 1 month since we planted our garden, and good news! We didn’t fail, (yet)! In fact, I can’t believe how much it grew in such a short time. See my first garden post, here.

Most of our plants are flourishing & it’s so fun to watch their progress. We did have to replant our cucumbers & zucchini because OUR DOG ATE the original plants, but we’re back in business. In fact, we picked our first zucchini yesterday & I promptly made this zucchini bread… it’s delicious – I’ll share more on that later this week.

Take a look, at how our garden grows:

This gardening thing really is fun… Zac & I care for the garden together (though admittedly, him more than me), and I love seeing our work pay off. It’s also SO nice to be able to go the backyard & pick an onion, or cut some lettuce for supper.

Happy gardening, friends!

Impromptu backyard picnic

The older I get, the more I realize that sometimes the best times in life aren't planned. This is something that I need to remind myself of more often, since I am a major planner...

I have a tendency to over-analyze, over-prepare, & want every last detail to be picture perfect.
But you know what?
Forget expectations.
Just enjoy. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy your company. And cherish the memories.

All that to say that I unexpectedly got to pick my favorite kiddos (my niece & nephew) up from daycare the other day & decided that we needed to take supper outside because it was way too nice to stay indoors.

Enjoy, scenes from our totally spontaneous, unplanned, backyard picnic: