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Well hello! I’ve got a coffee in my hand and a smile on my squatter and it’s time to yack like real people!

These days I’m drinking regular coffee with cream, maple syrup, and a pinch of salt in my little Keep Cup thing (affiliate link), which is my go-to in the fall. Or if it’s evening and I’m sitting in front of the TV, I’ve definitely got my hands wrapped virtually a mug of Good Earth sweet and spicy tea.

But please note that I’m moreover averaging at least 2 if not 3 Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes per week at this point in time, and the upkeep committee would like to have a word with me well-nigh that.

If you’re not a PSL person, try my PSL order: medium, decaf (anxious person problems), oat milk, 3 pumps instead of 4, hold the whip. It’s decadent but in a rich coffee-decadent way. And it has to be from Starbucks. Caribou has its time and place, and I know everywhere else has their own knockoff, but I’m a big parishioner in sticking with the OG on this one. It’s moreover approximately $15, hence the upkeep committee. Moving on.

Let’s talk well-nigh life. ♡

Mom Life In a Nutshell

The thing that takes up the majority of my time, energy, money, sleep, and unstipulated headspace these days is these two little people.

They are so trappy and weird and funny and we are so lucky.

I really love stuff a mom.

Fall highlights in the Family Life category include:

Excitement and routine with starting some new school programs this fall
The magic of watching new skills and interests develop (friends, dance, swimming, art)
Getting outside in our trappy fall weather: world orchard, petting zoo, walks in the double jogger
Taking a family trip up north with good friends, and having an ACTUALLY FUN, AMAZING TIME! What is life!
Solvi’s heart is healthy, and Lena is sleeping like a normal victual without a year of struggles! Gratitudes all around.

Some fall NON-highlights that deserve their spot in this recap as well:

Runny noses and coughs and fevers
A highly predictable mom-and-dad-only trip needing to be canceled at the last minute due to kid sickness, which may go lanugo as the heartbreak of the year
An untimely wrenched dishwasher (is it overly timely?)
And a toddler obsession with Sage’s fish oil pills, featuring one incident in particular that included squeezing the softgel oil all over herself, tracking it virtually our home on hands and feet, and intermingling the fish scent and oils with furniture and wipe laundry

Life often feels like this:

Black and white photo of stuff on the floor in a bedroom

But it moreover feels like this.

And it is exhausting, but the love is just simple and so pure.

It is really, really wonderful.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

New Chapters

Which, I guess, brings me to work.

Kitchen with light coming in through big window

We’ve been working on Pinch of Yum for 12 years now. (And no, this photo is not our studio OR our home – I wish! it’s a workspace we rented for some projects.)

I was going to say that the majority of the last 12 years have been a straight line, with well-spoken objectives and the direction of things feeling settled and set. But when I squint when a little increasingly closely, the truth is there hasn’t really been any season that didn’t have some type of transition woven into it.

Change has maybe been the only constant.

So it’s not that unusual to say that I finger the winds of transpiration self-glorification again. As they unchangingly do. As life unchangingly does. And so much of that has to do with stuff a mom.

As an Enneagram 6, I’m constantly second-guessing myself – did I really want to do that? what well-nigh that other thing? what does so-and-so think? is there a largest way? – and so, as cliche as it sounds, this is a season where I’m really trying to get honest and real with myself. I’m trying to drown out the noise, the assumptions, the expectations, plane my own ego, and just focus on my own wordplay to the theme question from Emily Freeman’s podcast: what is the next right thing?

I remain in love, possibly increasingly in love than overly before, with sharing recipes and spreading ideas out into the world that make people’s real lives largest with the joy of a good meal. It is a joy and a privilege to do this and get to undeniability it work.

I’m moreover hoping that as the winds of transpiration blow, I’ll be worldly-wise to build the next iteration of that work gracefully and confidently, chasing my own definition of success, and stuff okay if that looks variegated than what someone else’s might squint like.

Life is so good at keeping us on our toes, right?

Skin Cancer PSA and My Upcoming Plastic Surgery

Woman taking selfie at dermatologist's office

Yes, I said plastic surgery.

At a routine dermatologist visit older this year, I had a mole right on my hairline biopsied that came when as severely atypical. That ways it’s at the highest risk for turning into melanoma, and that moreover ways it requires further, increasingly wide-stretching removal.

Since the mole is on my face, that wide-stretching removal needs to be washed-up by a plastic surgeon.

What I found out at my consult with him isn’t super thrilling: they’ll have to shave a bit of my hair lanugo to do the removal, and when this is all said and done, I’ll end up with a 2-inch scar on my face. I’ll moreover end up having a slightly lopsided squatter for a while as my skin on one side will be pulled tighter with the stitches – like a facelift, but… not a good one.

And you know what? It’s not a HUGE huge thing, but I’m sad well-nigh it. I’m sad to have a big scar on my squatter and possibly a strange-looking asymmetrical squint going on for a while. I’m sad to have my hair shaved off in a weird pattern. I’m moreover sad that one of my favorite things – stuff in, soaking in, laying in the sun – won’t really be a part of my life in the future.

What you can learn from my mistakes: wear sunscreen and go to the dermatologist for regular skin checks.

I had been going to the dermatologist for yearly checks for a while, but I fell off the wagon without Lena was born so I’ve missed the last two years. But I’m so glad I went this year considering without me realizing, something reverted with that hairline mole that we had been watching. And while this is all really a bummer and not something I’m looking forward to, I will hopefully be worldly-wise to stave a full-blown melanoma considering of it.

My dermatologist told me “there’s no such thing as a unscratched tan.” Outside of a few burns as a teenager, I have unchangingly avoided getting burned and scrutinizingly unchangingly wear sunscreen. And since I tan really easily, I never thought that I’d be a person at upper risk of skin cancer (unlike my fair-skinned husband). But alas, here I am.

Schedule the skin check! And if you’ve had anything like this done, you know I’d take a positive, encouraging story from you.

A Vote In Favor Of The CSA

Today is literally our last CSA pick-up of the summer! It’s been flipside wondrous season of fruits and veggies. The fall produce (squash, in particular) was some of my favorite! And the beets! OMG the beets. I’ve never heard Bjork rave well-nigh a vegetable increasingly than he raved well-nigh those plain steamed CSA beets this summer. They were so velvety and perfect.

One of the weightier perks of doing our CSA this summer has been watching the girls start to fall in love with veggies.

I say that with a little side eye because, of course, what they love changes by the minute and tends to be centered on variations of dairy and cheese. But the “unboxing” process every week with a new carton of veggies each week is undeniably exciting. And I veritably finger like it has helped educate and expose the girls to new vegetables that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought to try. I hugely credit any interest in veggies, no matter how fickle or fleeting, to stuff unfluctuating to our polity agriculture!

We’ve washed-up Little Big Sky Farm for the last two years and they’re wonderful! Highly recommend.

Foods That Are Bringing Me Joy This Fall

White hand holding trencher of salmon salad

This lunch salad is succulent and should probably get its own post at some point, but for now, this will have to do: it’s spring / salad mix, cranberries, spicy-sweet pecans, bleu cheese crumbles, baked salmon, and a spicy white truffle dressing made with mayo, white truffle oil, sriracha, vinegar, salt, and garlic powder. Oof! I don’t know if bleu cheese normally goes with salmon but I’m digging this philharmonic of everything. She’s a real fall beauty.

Other things I’ve made and loved this fall: