Rest-of-summer bucket list.

Let's not talk about the months since I last posted, or the fact that a summer bucket list is best crafted before summer is half over (which, no, ugh, it can't be), or how quickly spring and summer pass when you no longer have a "summer break" and summer really only happens on the weekends, with weekdays being the same as always (just maybe still daylight when you fall asleep.)

Let's just talk about how friggin' amazing the rest of the summer is going to be.

Things to Do Before Labor Day:

• Spend an entire "pool day" at the in-laws'. (Reading trashy magazines / drinking margaritas or PBR at the same time optional, but highly encouraged.)
• Pick peaches.
• Can pickles.
• Go hiking in the local greenbelt.
• Go to Rita's for ice cream.
• Play mini-golf (and I play to win.)
• Make boozy popsicles.
• Go to a flea market.
• Clean out the house.
• Make a salad with vegetables from my garden.
• Make a summer mix tape.
• Spend an evening making crafts.
• Take lots of pictures.
• Go to a local museum.
• Go to a real farmer's market.
• Have a date night downtown (local or one of the two nearby big cities!)
• Register for language classes at the community college (I loved Arabic in college, but I've always wanted to learn Polish too!)
•  Go to a concert.
• Go antiquing.
• Watch the sunrise.
• Make macarons.
• Learn to do a cartwheel (goal in progress, three years and counting.)
• Start a paper journal / scrapbook.

 What are you guys up to this summer? It's ridiculous, how fast it's going, right? Ugh, summer! Stop and stay. Forever.

(A friend and I did go strawberry picking. We've managed that, so far, and jam-making.)

Changes, the vagaries of aging, and basil buttercream: my new obsessions.

So! You may have noticed a rather dramatic change to this blog, if you are one of the 4-5 people who have read it on a semi-regular basis. Changes include: a new title, all former posts erased, a format overhaul. Basically the only thing that has stayed the same, guys, is my hatred for feta cheese; I feel pretty comfortable saying you can continue to rely on that for the long haul.

What happened is, my friend had a blog, one that featured many adorable pictures of her little family. Then all of a sudden, right about the time I published my last post, she found another adorable blog - written entirely in Portuguese - also featuring many adorable pictures of her little family. Yes, of her little family.

So that's a pretty huge cautionary tale, and I grew terrified of ever using a first initial on this blog ever again, let alone publishing a photo of an actual human being in my life. I quit writing entirely for fear one of you guys would be totally creepy.

However! A big catalyst in the other direction is the fact that I have a) finally finished graduate school and b) not had much luck finding a job, as of this moment. So I sort of need something to pass the time. LUCKY YOU. So anyway, yes! Welcome back to my life, readers.

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In other astonishing news, I turned thirty on Friday. No! I'm still having some issues with this. I am not a person to get too worked up about age, but I am having some strong feelings about no longer being a twenty-something. Mostly, they involve my deepening wrinkles and increasingly frequent gray hairs.

To combat these emotions, I took a pretty solid break from carb avoidance to bake a chocolate cake with basil buttercream, a recipe I have been obsessing over for the past two months. It turned out AMAZINGLY, if I do say so myself. I am not going to recopy the recipe I used here - instead, feel free to follow the impeccable directions and drool over the gorgeous pictures here on the Vanilla Bean blog, like I did.

But I will close with a super hip Instagram of my warming basil as a consolation prize for your having to click over for the recipe.

So artsy.