Well, hi.

It’s September, but it’s EARLY September, so a picture of the last few ripe days of summer is what’s gonna be happening right now.

Okay, buckle up and grab a drink! Is it a cozy PSL keeping your warm on your couch? Is it a cold agua fresca to cool you down while you soak up the sun? Could be either! Depends on the day! Because it’s that magical time of year known as September.

Firstly, I think it’s worth acknowledging that I have fallen out of rhythm with these posts this summer. I love these posts so much. Let me explain the drought.

I did a series of posts in March, April, and May called the Quarantine Reports – basically a documentation of what time at home was looking like for us during the stay at home order. Oh my gosh. Remember the emotional train wreck that was quarantine? LOL.

And after the stay at home order ended, and people started emerging from their homes again, and life semi-returned to a tiny fraction of normal, I had planned to do a few coffee date posts but then, well, there was this one big thing that I was struggling with talking around:

Baby on Board

There was, and is, a baby on board over here!

And that’s one reason why it’s been hard to talk like a normal person in both the quarantine reports and in the coffee date post. It was a really, really rough time during the first trimester, for so many reasons including the nausea that was overtaking my life, and that was the thing that I was trying to say without saying in a lot of those quarantine reports.

I had planned to make this baby girl public via coffee date post sometime in May/June, but wow. The cycle of bad, hard, horrifying, heartbreaking news has been kind of nonstop both here in Minneapolis and worldwide for the last few months, hasn’t it? Not to mention social media and the internet in general being just kind of a dumpster fire of hurt, tension, and hatred. Other things in our world and in our online communities have been more pressing. There never felt like a right time to celebrate.

But now is the right time, I think, and it sort of has to be, because she’s going be here in October!

We are so excited to welcome another little girl to our family. ♡

Being Outside is Everything

This summer has been the summer of the DECK LIFE.

It’s one of the few places we feel comfortable being with people, hanging out socially, and not needing to SUPER worry about Covid thanks to the top-notch filtration system of the great outdoors.

This summer we replaced our two-person patio table with a party-size table and chairs for the deck – perfect for holding mountains of tacos, chips, and jugs of agua fresca and seating our friends.

And this fall we added to the deck collection: a fire table! and a projector! for outdoor movies and s’mores!

Listen, if we aren’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future, we are definitely putting all our eggs into the deck life basket.

Anyone else living it up in the outdoor spaces this summer / fall? Anyone else afraid for what their social life (or lack of social life) will look like come winter? 

Vacation

Okay, I just said we weren’t going anywhere but we DID recently take a little drive down the Great River Road to Lake Pepin where we stayed in an adorable Airbnb for a few days right on the lake. River? Lake. It’s kind of both. 

We had only been to Lake Pepin one other time (way back here) and this time, being right on the water, truly felt like we might just be in the Caribbean even though we were only about an hour from home. 

I read three books in three days (toddler-free life is just so very… open) and we had lots of pie, cheese and crackers, olives, root beer, you know, the things of summer and pregnancy. 

Have you been able to getaway this summer? Anyone else feeling restless and wanting hop a plane for some adventuring?

Home Sweet Home

In what will either go down as a great idea or a terrible disaster, we’ve decided to do a few home projects in the last few weeks before baby. 

The thinking here: because of both Covid and having a newborn, we are going to be at home essentially for the next 6 months straight. There are no upcoming trips for us, there are no outings, this is a very home-centric time in our lives. So let’s make those updates we’ve been talking about so we can feel like this is a place that makes us really happy and cozy until we start to re-emerge, right? 

Right? 

We are hiring everything out because we know ourselves and we know that what we can do right now is Toddler Life and Food / Technology Life. There is zero DIY skill here, so we’re leaving it to other people to help us make this happen.

And *mostly* what is happening is paint. Kitchen, living area, fireplace, laundry room, etc. There will be a new backsplash. There will be an office makeover. There will be wallpaper in the bathroom. There will be a closet refresh to include some built-in storage which will magically make us super organized, right? There will be a few nice new things and a few key pieces of Craigslist furniture and none of this will be stressful. Thanks, bye.

Just Where Things Are At

This post sums up how I’ve felt about showing up in online spaces lately. It can be hard to get it just right. There will always be mistakes made, things misunderstood, or things disagreed upon because we are human. Brené Brown talks about not showing up to be right, but showing up to get it right. And I really feel that and appreciate that. And also, more and more, I feel like social media and the internet and my habits with both doesn’t always feel healthy. I feel the desire or maybe the need to pull back. To focus on what’s real and what’s right here.

I love doing this. I love doing this with you. I love making recipes, sharing them, and co-creating little moments of delicious joy with you in our very real, very precious lives.

I also feel tender and overwhelmed, by the internet and the news and the State Of Things.

I feel protective of my baby who is actually a big girl now. I feel a deep desire to be with her, working through our real life stuff, while we wait for cookies to come out of the oven. I feel anxious about how I will spread my time even thinner with another little human on the way.

I feel determined and purposeful in my work to bring you these little joys in the form of food. But I also feel soft. And slow. And content. Not ambitious and not striving.

I think I’ve come to the realization that I’m now playing a different game than I was in 2009 when I started Pinch of Yum. The game I’m playing now isn’t about followers, traffic, growth, and reach – doing all the things and doing them well. It’s about real people and real life. My real life, your real life, our real families and friends, our real hearts, and how food can be a thread that ties all of that together.

Life is always in transition, and this season – the next few months – is no exception. I will be preparing for maternity leave, and preparing to scale back for a while. You will be preparing for whatever is coming in your life and family, and we’ll just take it all as it comes, right? 

I don’t have a point I’m trying to make here other than to just say, hi, this is me, and this is where I am at these days.

And maybe you can find yourself in that as well. ♡

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Thanks for being here with me. Thanks for shining your light into the internet and into your real life places.

September, we’re ready for ya.

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