Easy Weeknight Lettuce Wraps

A few months ago, I was trying to use up all of the vegetables in our refrigerator before we went on vacation, and threw together some quick lettuce wraps. These have since become a staple meal for my husband and I, and seem to make an appearance at our dinner table every week. The filling cooks up pretty quickly and leaves us both feeling satisfied, even in one of those "hungry for nothing in particular" moods. The best part? It is really simple to make, and tastes like you put in a lot more effort than it actually takes to prepare these! Another bonus - it is easy to modify this recipe to fit into different diets and taste preferences. In my family, there are people on many different diets - Whole30, vegetarian, paleo, gluten-free, etc. You name it, and at any given moment, there's someone at the table who is on that diet. It's nearly impossible to plan a fun, easy meal that can cater to every single diet for every single person, but this recipe makes it easy to modify the meal for those diets. Not eating meat? No problem! Chop up some additional mushrooms and use that instead of the turkey meat. Hate onions? Don't use them! (Disclaimer - I would say that if you dislike vegetables in general, this is probably not the recipe for you!) I've made a few different versions of these, substituting different ingredients or adding different things in, but it always tastes great. The version that I'm posting is my favorite version, so if you change things up, let me know what worked and what didn't work for you! The coconut aminos give the entire recipe a sweet, yet savory flavor. It's typically marketed as a great substitute for soy sauce, but…

My First Thanksgiving Without My Brother

Tomorrow we'll celebrate Thanksgiving, and I've had a hard time coming up with many things to be thankful for this year. Losing my sibling, my only sibling, has thrown off the balance of my life in more ways than I could have ever imagined. There is a nuance of grief in my daily routine, and most people, even those close to me, are not privy to my everyday sadness. This isn't the first holiday season that my family has experienced an unexpected loss, and I know it won't be the last. Experience, unfortunately, doesn't make this particular undertaking any easier. Three years ago, I lost both of my grandfathers and one of my uncles within three months. My family was hit month after month after month with new grief, and there was no alleviation of the constant emotional weight of the year. By the end of the year, I think most of us had checked out emotionally. As emotional as that year was, no grief could have adequately prepared me for losing my brother. The thought of celebrating and enjoying a big family get together without him feels so wrong. There is a very strong part of me that wants to curl up in a ball and avoid all social situations, but at the same time, I want to be able to live a normal life without allowing grief to overtake every element of every day. I think that, especially throughout the first year of a major loss, it's important to create new traditions and to break from the normal routine of the yearly celebration. It's also equally important to listen to your own emotional needs and to be gentle with yourself and others grieving around you. This year, we are starting our Thanksgiving by running a 5K with a…

The Pursuit of Passion: How My Love of Writing Became My Career

Right now, I'm sitting in one of our local coffee shops, sipping a lavender-vanilla latte while John plays guitar with a small group at the front. The mix of soft folksy music and indoor Christmas lights make the whole place feel dreamy and warm, and it's moments like this where I feel like I'm living in some sort of daydream. Earlier today, I went to lunch with an old friend of mine. It was never a surprise to me (or anyone around her) that she became a teacher. In middle school, when I was trying to skip the "work" part of homework, she lectured me and proceeded to walk through every single problem on our math homework with me. While I hopped around from activity to activity, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, she always had a clear direction. I've always been envious of people like that. It's rare for someone to find their passion while they are so young, but it does happen. However, I'm still trying to figure out what the word "passion" means to me. As much as I enjoy a lot of my hobbies, I wouldn't necessarily call most of them a "passion." To me, a passion is something that is constantly on your mind. You walk around town and notice things that relate to that thing, you find yourself wondering if you could change something to make that thing better overall, and you fall asleep dreaming about that one thing. You aren't born with your passions. These are things that are carefully cultivated and grown within you over the years. You have to choose what you pursue, but you aren't necessarily going to be good at it from the beginning. One hobby that has turned into a genuine passion…

Riding in Cars with Books – My Five Favorite Audiobooks

When my husband and I were dating, one of the first things I noticed in his apartment was this gorgeous bookshelf sitting in the back corner, filled completely with hardbacks worn with love. He had copies of books like Understanding Physics by Isaac Asimov, War and Peace, and almost every Dostoyevsky book that has been translated into English. Even as a bookworm with an English degree, I was intimidated by his mountain of literature. As much as I love to read, it takes me so long to actually sit down to finish a book. I typically have a stack of books on my bedside table that are all in various stages of completion. (Currently- East of Eden, The Casual Vacancy, and a book about blogging that my sister-in-law lent to me.) I think the biggest issue, for me personally, is that I just don't make enough time for reading. I try to fit it in right at bedtime, but more often that not, I fall asleep before I finish a chapter. However, in the last few months I have read, or more accurately, listened to more books than I had in all four years of college. I started listening to audiobooks when I was working full-time, on days where my workload was slow, or while I was doing my weekly data-entry work. Now, I guess you could say that I've become a bit of an audiobook-addict. I have found a lot of times when listening to a book is preferable to even music. If I'm running on the treadmill, cleaning the house, or driving for over fifteen minutes, I am most likely listening to an audiobook. Monotonous tasks are always more enjoyable if you don't have to fully concentrate on them, am I right? My husband and I share an Audible account now,…

Living Life on Purpose

My husband and I recently took a vacation with his family to Virginia. We hiked every day, walked small town streets in the misty rain, and played board games with his family. There is something truly magical about getting away to a place where you can breathe clean air and allow nature to be the soundtrack for a long hike. It's such a simple thing - put the phone in the backpack and immerse yourself in the world around you. How often do we really, truly immerse ourselves in the here and now? At the beginning of the year, we attended a church service about setting goals for the new year. The message was focused on choosing a word or phrase that would be used to encapsulate desires and help set the tone for the year to come, rather than setting specific New Year's Resolutions. After much deliberation, we decided to move forward in 2017 with "Intentional" as our Word of the Year. Living with "intention" means something different to everyone, and it has become a trendy buzzword in the blogging community. At the core of the sentiment is this: Live on purpose. I believe that Living on Purpose is a great answer to the over-scheduled, over-stressed lifestyle that so many people live. We fall into routines, and accidentally end up watching seven hours of Netflix when we have a spare moment to ourselves. Living on Purpose is all about focusing your energy on the things that are important to YOU as an individual, because different things are important to different people. It is important to try to remove some of the "excess" that gets in the way of focusing on those things, and to really focus on only one thing at a time. There's a great Ron Swanson quote from Parks & Rec: “Never half-ass…

My Brother, Travis

I have taken a long hiatus from writing in order to reflect on some personal events in my life. I am ready to get back to writing, but I believe that the intention of my blog may be changing from what I had in mind when I first started writing. I am not sure how those changes will take effect, and I am not going to plan anything at this time. I will just write when I feel like writing. My only brother, Travis Sebastian, passed away on January 6th, 2017. He was 20. When my mom called that morning, hysterical, to tell me what had happened, I almost laughed; it seemed so incredibly absurd. I had seen him the day before. He was right there, in his room, giving me a hug and telling me that he loved me. He wasn't gone. He was right there, right where I left him. How could he be gone? My husband drove me to my parents house while I went back and forth between moments of intense pain and nothing at all. I was certain there was a mistake. The first few weeks felt entirely surreal. "Surely," I thought, "This is all an elaborate trick. This is not real. There has been some mistake." But day in and day out, I am still waiting for a punchline that will never come. I want more than anything to reach out into the abyss and find him. I want to see him in the everyday, to know that he's okay. Life feels like a dream, and when I sleep, I see him and it feels like that is real. I wake up, and he's gone again. I feel suspended in emotional limbo, never fully settled in one particular emotion. Happy moments are tinged with…

October is Halfway Through!

Like most sane people, I love the crisp weather that Autumn brings. It's a relief from the humidity and heat, and those of us who haven't quite shed all of our extra insulation can rejoice and relax in layers and over-sized sweaters. I've always loved the month of October in particular. This is likely in part because October starts with my birthday and ends with Halloween, but there's something more about the entire month that I really love. In October, the fall has truly taken over. The trees turn color, the weather is cooler, and the air hints at weekend bonfires. There's sense of unspoken camaraderie; people are brought together by Friday Night Football, Homecomings, and Fall Carnivals. Even with this though, there's always that small, spooky feeling in October. With graveyards popping up in neighbor's yards, haunted house tours in local historical districts, and pumpkin patches in every abandoned parking lot, there's a whole lot of Halloween all at once, and we only get one month for it! Lately, one of the main conversation topics in my house has been, "What will we be for Halloween?" This will be our third Halloween together. Our first year, we went all out. I was a retro Red Riding Hood (complete with Victory Rolls), John was the big bad wolf, and we went trick-or-treating with his youngest sister. The corporate-appropriate version of my 2014 Halloween costume. My office did not have any Halloween festivities, but my marketing team decided to wear watered down versions of our costumes as Halloween was on a Friday. And later with the red cape + John as the Big Bad Wolf. By this point, my Victory Rolls were beginning to fall; I really should have used hairspray! Last year, we had planned on dressing up as Leslie Knope & Ben Wyatt,…

Living in the Music

We moved into our new house about two months ago. We've been slowly, slowly hanging pictures and rearranging furniture. I'm sure that eventually everything will be just right; and inevitably, at that exact moment, we will have some sort of life-changing event that suddenly puts a dent in our plans. (Isn't that the way life works?) For now, I have a favorite wall. See wall: Because my husband is a musician, we've ended up collecting a lot of instruments over the years. One of my favorite things about this wall is how accessible everything is. John plays guitar much more now that everything is within reach 24/7, and I've been messing around with my guitar a lot more often. I love listening to John play guitar, and I love that this wall has helped bring music into our home. TIP: If you (or your child) are learning an instrument, do everything you can to make that instrument as accessible as possible! Keep it out of its case. If the guitar goes back in the case, it's less likely to be played and more likely to be passed over. My favorite instrument up on the wall is the Luna ukulele. John and I bought it together when we went to Austin a month into dating. We got stuck in a lot of traffic on our drive home, so we pulled the ukulele out and made up songs about being stuck on the highway.  

How I Met My Husband

John and I have had a "whirlwind romance" of sorts. The timing of our meeting wasn't perfect on paper, but it was the perfect time for us. We met on September 12, 2014, and were married exactly one year later.  This week, John and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! - How We Met - In 2014, I was working at a tech company that was building a new website. My boss and I were heading the project, and we had been interviewing outside companies and web developers to see if we could find the right fit for our needs. In September, my boss and I were introduced to a small, local company, that would eventually be the company we hired for the project. On our second meeting with the company, they brought in one of their developers (John). We had several projects going on that day, so I was not supposed to be in this particular meeting. My boss ended up bringing me in to the meeting after about an hour because the developer was asking some higher-level questions about the web server. When I walked into the room, seeing John for the first time, my first thought was, "Dang, this guy is cute!" So I sat next to him, ready to answer any and all of his questions. We ended up talking through the project for about three more hours, and I gave him my business card at the end of the meeting. I never expected to hear from him or see him again, except possibly for project meetings. The meeting had been on a Friday, and the following Monday I received a friend request from John on Facebook. I nervously debated whether or not to accept it, texting friends for advice and consulting my employee handbook about the…

Gone to the Dogs

The very best part of working from home is getting to have my dogs with me all day, but some days, they are more distraction than help. Today, I spent the majority of the day taking care of my mini-schnauzer mix, Lucy. She has some sort of stomach bug, and she's pretty pitiful when she's sick. All day, Lucy has been right by my feet (normal Lucy behavior), but she keeps sighing and passing me long, mournful glances (not normal Lucy behavior). My corgi-mix, Sophie, couldn't understand why Lucy didn't want to play today, and has made several failed attempts to get Lucy to chase her or play tug-of-war. I hope her sickness passes soon. In the meantime, here are some pictures of my dogs! Both of our dogs came from an amazing rescue shelter called Operation Kindness. The shelter is the largest no-kill shelter in North Texas. They pull animals from high-kill shelters to give them a better chance, and they are funded fully by generous volunteers and donors. Go check them out! Lucy November 2015: four months old, first picture. Five months old. Always by my side.    July 2016. Sophie February 2016: Six months old, first picture, hogging all the toys. Puppucino-stache. Mid-yawn. July 2016. Lucy & Sophie = Best Friends   This picture is from when we first got Sophie. She is so tiny in comparison to Lucy here, but they are only 25 days apart in age!   Tug-of-War.   Car rides are life. Last day in our rental house, July 2016. Happy zen days in our new backyard, August 2016.