november stuffs

november in palo alto is oh so lovely. the foliage finally pops and the weather is so dreamy (70ish with an occasional delicious blustery rainstorm) and the world just feels nice and cozy. we've been organizing our little home, eating comfort food for dinner (i trick the boy by making stuff healthy), cuddling a little too long on chilly mornings and then running through the crunchy-leafed streets of our neighborhood in the soft early light.

brittany gave us this gorgeous pie pan and an amazing pie cookbook for our wedding, so we got together last week and made sweet potato pie. i have to say, it was really delicious! november! pie!

brittany, michelle and i have re-started our weeknight downton abbey viewing parties at michelle's cozy house in menlo park. we get pretty into it (there were some tears this week) snuggled up on the couch.

the boy has been applying to hundreds (literally!) of jobs – it’s a quite extremely stressful time for a finishing phd student. the applications are being sent to employers all over the world, and we are excited to discover what the next chapter of our lives will look like.

we have been writing a lot of thank you notes! we have been seriously floored by people’s generosity and it seems pretty measly to just send a card! {we had these cards made by wedding paper divas – the gold envelopes are my favourite part!}

a couple of saturdays ago, we slept in a little (ahhhh!) and then made waffles in our fancy brand new waffle maker (speaking of wedding gifts). our breakfast was nicely accented by the flowers the boy brought home for me the night before and some napkins from our wedding :)

i've become totally obsessed with the pumpkin spice steamer at starbuck's - soy milk and no whip. there was a week in november when i had one literally every day. sooooo good!

we've been ordering a few things for our little home using gift cards from our wedding, and it's still pretty thrilling to open up packages together. our kitchenaid mixer came the other day and i was so giddy! and we created our inagural smoothie in our blendtec last night. it was perfect!

our thankful tree has filled up a bit! i was thinking we'd have quite a heavy laden tree by now...but we have been so busy! it's wonderful to take a few seconds every now and then though to think of something to add. we certainly have soooo much to be thankful for.

last saturday we went to the stanford-utah football game! i made chili for us before we biked to the stadium - because november! chili! football! there's just something about college football, isn't there? so much excitement in the air (although we were amused by seeing many stanford students with laptops and textbooks in the stands!). the game went to double overtime, which made it fun. we weren't really sure who we were cheering for! but we had a really great time. it was a beautiful day for football, and riding bikes to and from the stadium was so fun!

we leave tomorrow morning for a week in hawaii! we are spending four days on kauai (a delayed honeymoon) and then hopping over to maui on thanksgiving day morning to spend the holiday with my brother jonah and his family. we are soooooooooo excited. there will be a lack of blogging the next little while, but i'm excited to share photos of our trip! and then -- christmastime!!!!!!!!! i can hardly stand how excited i am to spend the holidays with my husband!