Homemade Italian Seasoning Mix

I’ve recently started making my own herb mixes, as the premade items are expensive at the store, and often include salt. I would rather add my own salt to taste, and I find making my own mix is fun and it gives me more freedom with flavors. Its easy, too! I recommend making the seasoning mix in a small bowl the first time before putting into an empty leftover spice container so you can create your seasoning to taste. Keep a piece of paper handy – simply write down the ingredients you added, and keep it somewhere on hand. The next time you make the seasoning mix, add the ingredients to the empty spice container and shake to combine. It couldn’t be any easier!

This week I decided to make a basic Italian Seasoning mix, leaving out what some would consider integral ingredients (sage, thyme).  I wanted to be able to use it for different uses, so I kept it simple and I’ll add other herbs as I see fit depending on the recipe.

Homemade Italian Seasoning

1 tablespoon dried basil (from my mom’s garden)

1 tablespoon marjoram

1 tablespoon garlic powder (trying to get use out of a grungy old container)

1 tablespoon oregano

1 tablespoon parsley

1. Add each ingredient, stir to combine.

2. Transfer to an empty spice container. And you're done!

Missing Vacation

J and I were on a month long trip to Poland and the Czech Republic, and then we promptly started the most "real life" activity I've ever had...full time rotation positions to finish off our last year of schooling.  The 50 hour/week position at the hospital has been a wonderful learning experience so far, but it leaves little time for indulging in fun activities, like blogging!  Eventually, J and I will figure out what we want to do here, on our little corner of the internet. But today, I have a moment to reminisce about what I'm missing most right now.

Big, open town squares, people watching, bottles of wine and sunsets. Hopefully another night like this one is just around the corner...

Flowers and studying

All we've been doing this week is studying, and taking finals. Seeing all the beautiful flowers blooming in my parents yard and on our walks to school have been our saving grace. Soon this will be over and we'll be able to enjoy much more!

Greeting Card Books

When J and I started dating, we were living a few hours apart. We would leave each other notes in our travel bags, or on the kitchen counter when someone was staying home. Instead of shoving the notes into a shoebox, I decided to DIY another Pinterest item I had seen: hole-punched bound books of greeting cards! I had started with our notes, and now have another bound book of our greeting cards, and then a newly started wedding-related book. I think its the easiest way to keep them all in the same place, and its easy to thumb through and remember all the memories. I highly recommend it for those of us that can't help but want to keep every little lovenote!

Don't be so serious!

As much as I am so excited we are having a destination wedding and I know it will work out perfectly for us in the end, during the first few months I struggled a lot with disappointment. I'll be honest: there were a lot of tears. I was expecting some family and friends to take the news badly, for some guests not be able to come, and to have some disappointments once in awhile. However, what I wasn't prepared for is people to tell me their (very strong!) opinions without me even really asking for it. I wasn't prepared for a lot of negativity, and sadly, a lot of judgment.

When I announced my engagement to my school friends, everyone was surprised but very happy for me and J. But once we began discussing our potential destinations, there was a lot of judgment. "You mean you're not going to invite everyone from school?" got brought up a lot. At first my response was easy: politely state we're having an intimate wedding with immediate family and close friends. When we started getting involved in our actual wedding planning, I was surprised at how "honest" (aka mean) some of my classmates came off. People let me know that I was crazy, that I was sacrificing my real wants, that I was rushing into planning and that I was making bad decisions. To put it nicely, I was shocked.

I don't have the thickest skin, and these comments stung me deeply. Its not that I expected everyone to understand our decision, but I was not expecting so much negativity. And this broke my heart! My wedding (and its planning) is meant to be a happy time, for excitement and happy thoughts. Instead, I found myself consistently surrounded by negative nellies.

So J and I made some decisions: smile politely at people who were expressing their opinions to us, and do the best to not let it get to us. Essentially: don't take everything so seriously! We did a lot of hand squeezing and eye contact trying to get through awkward moments, and at the end of the day we got through it. There will be more comments and more disappointment, but the key is to remember at the end of the day, we're getting married and it will be beautiful. And it will start the rest of our life just as we want to. What disappointment have you struggled with during your wedding process?

We Are Nerds

Its true. J and I are both incredibly nerdy. We both wear glasses, play video games, read comics and love science. So its no surprise that we've recently fallen in love with a very nerdy hobby: geocaching.

From the Geocaching website: GEOCACHING is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online."

Essentially, you can look up these geocaches on the website (or on an app on your phone: more on that later) and they give you the exact coordinates of the location of the cache. You can then enter them into a handheld GPS and it'll take you to the spot of the cache. You steathly grab it, sign your name, and put it back where you found it! There are some extras, like little treasures left behind, or trackable devices you can take to move from cache to cache. And I realize as I am writing this, it sounds silly.

But so far, for us it has been nothing but a ridiculously fun hobby. We've found some new spots that we love in Chicago (like the Cancer Survivors Garden near Millennium Park) and we've had some fun swearing over trying to find what we're looking for. We've introduced J's brother to the game, and now him and his friends are hooked, too!

Overseas geocaching is much more popular, so we want wait to grab some while in Poland and Prague. And we can't wait to make a 30 day streak happen sometime soon!

What's a random nerdy hobby that you love?

Teal, greens, blue and gold

We are not having traditional wedding "colors," and we are certainly not trying to make anything match according to color. This was an attempt to make my life easier, especially because I'm drawn to colors that are hard to replicate - like teal, or turquoise. Since I'm planning my wedding from afar, I knew some details would get lost in translation so from the start I wanted to keep things simple, but doing a more "color range" rather than two or three distinct colors. This way I'll be asking the venue to keep things simple with white, and we'll be bringing in the colors in different ways.

These have been my color inspirations, which are palettes of blue and turquoise, with ivory, champagne and antique gold. I'm still unsure of what color the bridesmaid dresses will be, but I'm not obsessed with pinning down any of these colors exactly. I'm happy with the darkest teal, to the lightest seafoam and everything in between. Really I just want things to look beachy without being too cheesy, classic, a bit whimsical and elegant.

This is what started it all - Yuzen Pool by the Paper Source. We plan on incorporating this into our invitations and our save the dates by using the "pool" color on white invitations. The color looks a bit muddled here but it is much cleaner, softer and vibrant in person.

This popped up recently on Ruffled, and I love the colors here. These are a bit more matchy-matchy, and I certainly didn't chose an aqua wedding dress, but I love the color combinations.

I have been half-tempted to repaint the condo after seeing this print from Cocoa and Hearts - its actually an art piece and if it wasn't so expensive, I would have to purchase it for our future home. I love the antiqued finish to the gold and the different blue and green tones. (Psst: even if you hate these colors, check our her site because her art is amazing!)

This is the beachy color I always think of first - the sea glass you find down by the waterside. This was feature in Better Homes and Gardens as indoor house colors, and if we ever get a home by the beach this will be my palette.

So there is my inspiration so far. Do you think I'm being realistic by letting all the colors be included? Do you prefer to have a more specific color palette?