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Archives for May 2019

Introducing: The Never-Ending To-Do List

Written by Cassie · May 30, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

The Never-Ending To-Do List | cassierauk.com
Living Room Redo | cassierauk.com

Six or so years ago, my husband and I moved from our little house in town to a larger 150 odd-year-old house in the country.  The house is the one that I grew up in and I am the 5th generation of my family to live there.

That is both wonderful and horrible.

Assuming that you had a childhood and family that you like, going back to your home is comforting.  You already know that the bathroom door sticks when it gets humid and that the fourth step on the back stairs creaks so loud it can wake the dead.  But there can also be a lot of baggage of the “you can’t get rid of that (ugly and falling apart) hutch because your great-great grandma stored her china in it”  variety. 

Otherwise known as familial guilt.

That is on top of the normal ‘fixing up old house problems’.  The floors are not level, the wiring may or may not be a fire hazard, the drafty windows . . . 

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

When I initially set up this space for a website, one of the first pages I added was a house to do list.  I use lists as a brain dump, especially when I am stressed and since our ongoing home remodel is such a large part of my life, I figured it would find it’s way on here in some type of capacity no matter what I wrote about.

And since we are hanging out regularly now, I thought I would share it with you.

Curious about what we have planned for our old farmhouse?  Click the picture below.

The Never-Ending To-Do List | cassierauk.com

What do you think?  What would you add? Or remove?

PS. We are not carpenters, nor do we particularly like to DIY everything.  So don’t expect regular updates on the fantastic projects or accomplishments that we have made.  We are just normal people, with jobs, friends, and Netflix to watch.


Filed Under: house + home

A Birthday Benediction

Written by Cassie · May 28, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

donut with candle, pink frosting and sprinkles

On May 26th, I turned 37 years old.

It was a quiet day.

Jesse was working so I had the house to myself.  Sometimes on Sunday morning, I like to head to the coffee shop with my laptop for a chai and a few productive hours, but today I decided to stay home.  I drug a chair outside to our new (yet to be finished) patio area with a cup of coffee and enjoyed the sunshine.

I tend to get a little navel-gazey on my birthday and this year was no exception.  This time around I decided to lean into it, instead of feeling ashamed of being self-centered.   Don’t feel ashamed about self-reflection, friends, it is the only way to grow.

So I spent the day thinking, reading and daydreaming. I also watched a fair amount of Battlestar Galactica and ate a bunch of cheese.

Do I have everything figured out?  Of course not.

I am alright with that? You bet your ass.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems.  I hope your day is full of thinking, reading, and daydreaming.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Filed Under: life + happiness, VIP

4 Cheap and Fun Things to do with your 3 Day Weekend

Written by Cassie · May 23, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

4 Cheap and Fun Things to do with your 3 Day Weekend | cassierauk.com

Happy almost Memorial Day to my US-based friends!  Do you have fun weekend plans?  A family or neighborhood potluck?  Or maybe a camping trip?

Or maybe you are like me and rolled up on this weekend without making any plans whatsoever?

Do not fear, here are some cheap and fun things to do over the next three days!

4 Cheap and Fun Things to do with your 3 Day Weekend | cassierauk.com

Take a Staycation

Homebodies rejoice!!  Use your three day weekend to say home and veg.  Have a movie marathon and eat pizza on the living room floor.   Have a bonfire in your backyard and roast marshmallows.  Then sleep under the stars.

If you are feeling a bit more ambitious KonMari your pantry or garage.  Repaint your bathroom or plant a garden. 

Learn something new

This may not be the cool thing to say but these three days are the perfect time to learn something new (or at least start the journey) or polish an existing skill.  Check out Udemy, Open Culture, and Coursera for cheap and free classes.  LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) and The Great Courses offer subscription-based classes.

Pro-tip: Many libraries offer free access to LinkedIn Learning as part of their services when you have a library card.  So get thee to the library!

Be a tourist in your own town.

I think I originally got this idea from Gretchen Rubin and I am shocked at how much it can change the perspective on your community, no matter the size.  Check out that new store or restaurant.  Bonus points for going to a community event that you have never checked to before.

Take a road trip.

There is probably a little known state, national park or a strange roadside attraction of some kind within reasonable driving distance of where you live.  Pack a picnic lunch and grab your overnight bag and check it out.

Over the years Jesse and I have checked out The House on the Rock (It is really something special and if you are in the neighborhood you should check it out) and Effigy Mounds National Monument (and it is now one of my favorite places) and took a family trip to Niagara Cave.

Not sure where to go?  Use the Google to find your state’s parks (chances are there are a bunch you have not heard of) or head to the National Park Service site to search by state.  If you are looking for something a bit more on the strange side Roadside American and Atlas Obscura may be able to help.

4 Cheap and Fun Things to do with your 3 Day Weekend | cassierauk.com

Filed Under: out + about

What is saving my life right now

Written by Cassie · May 21, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

pineapple

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through a link and buy something, I get a small commission and it doesn’t cost you any extra. Awesome, right?!

pineapple

Spring means one thing in the midwest – mud.  And also dirty piles of melting snow.

So two things, spring means two things!

It is not my favorite time of year, the weather is volatile, and the cabin fever is high.  And right now, I am so close to being able to plant a few veggies, and I can taste it. So I am doing everything I can to keep my sanity.

Keeping track of the things that are saving my life throughout the year was something that I picked up as an exercise of self-reflection as an avid reader of Anne’s blog.  It is easy to remember what is driving you crazy but to pick out the little things that are saving you take a bit more thought.

Here a few of the simple, everyday things from my list.

what is saving my life right now | cassierauk.com

Kickapoo Coffee

I picked up a coffee grinder during the holiday sales and used that as an excuse to upgrade our coffee.  The world of coffee (and coffee snobbery) opens up to when you start grinding your own beans.  I have even started going down the pour-over road, but that is a discussion for another time.

Kickapoo Coffee is a Wisconson based company (and that makes it local for me) that focuses on great tasting coffee and fairness to farmers.  They are also the country’s only solar-powered roastery.

I usually pick my beans up at my local coffee shop, but you can order it online and they also have coffee subscriptions!

Grocery Pick-up

My go-to local grocer finally offers a grocery pick-up.  It has been a game changer for me.

I sit down with my notebook for meal planning, my cookbooks, and my Pinterest boards.  As I choose the recipes that I am planning on making for the upcoming week I add the ingredients to my cart on the grocery store website.  All I need to do then is choose the date and time of pickup, and check out.

They require a 4 hour lead time and charge $5 for the service.  And it is so worth it.

The Calm App

I am going to be straight with you, mediation is weird.  But it helps.  It helps so much.

I read Dan Harris’s book 10% Happier a few years ago, but it didn’t really sink in until late last fall.  I was so stressed out (because of the day job) I just wanted to cry.  After reading a couple more stress management books and some google searching I came across the Calm app.

Right out of the gate I loved the soothing tones of narrator Tamara Levitt’s voice.  I also fell in love hard with their Sleep Stories, where they have a variety of narrators tell you soothing tales for you to fall asleep to.  You can download the app and try a few of their beginning series out for free.

Toby

At any given time I have anywhere between 10 and a million tabs open.  That might be a bit of a stretch, but not by much.  Toby is a chrome (and Firefox) extension that helps you index your open browser tabs.

That might be one of the nerdiest sentences that I have ever typed.

Check out the Toby website and watch the video and you will see what I mean.

What is saving your life right now?  Let me know in the comments!


Filed Under: life + happiness, VIP

How Blue Apron got me out of my cooking rut

Written by Cassie · May 16, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

How Blue Apron got me out of a cooking rut || cassierauk.com
How Blue Apron got me out of a cooking rut || cassierauk.com

In May of last year, I gave myself a birthday present.  I gifted myself a subscription to Blue Apron.

I went through a phase a few years back where I was going to make all meals from scratch.  No short cuts.  I am an adult with no children but I still have a demanding job, a home to take care of, hobbies, friends and a husband.  There is never enough time and I burned myself out.  Hard.

I came home from a really, really long and stressful work day and the meal that was on deck for that night would have taken more effort that I was prepared to give.  I think I ended up talking my dad into buying me a cheeseburger that night. There were tears.

Later on, I reassessed and gave myself some grace on the 100% home-cooked front. (This is why I keep a small stack of pizzas in the deep freeze at all times.)

Even with that grace, I was in food a rut.  I hated everything that I had been making and was ready to try something new.  So I figured why not give one of those new-fangled meal kit delivery services a try.   It was either that or burning my kitchen to the ground, so I patted myself for being a grownup about things for a change.

Over the next few months, I made delicious things like Beef Shwarma Bowls, Koren-style Beef, Sheet Pan Miso Salmon, and The Gouda Wife Burger.

Even the meals that I got that were not amazing were still good.  Not a pooper in the bunch.

My Blue Apron recipes taught me about new ingredients (hello, capers!), new techniques (fish in parchment), made me realize the deliciousness of simplicity (roasted broccoli with olive oil, salt, and pepper is my jam).

A few months in, I remembered that simple ingredients, when prepared correctly, are amazing.

How Blue Apron got me out of a cooking rut || cassierauk.com

images by Blue Apron

If you are considering giving Blue Apron, or any meal kit delivery service, a try here are a few things you should know:

The limited options help with analysis paralysis.

The worst part of meal planning is trying to figure out what you are going to make for a week.  The Signature 2-person plan has eight choices.  The 4-person and Weight Watchers plan have fewer.  For the most part, that is plenty and if none of them sound good, you can skip a week.  No muss, no fuss.

Recipes are balanced, healthy, and low calorie.

The meals are designed by chefs so they are healthy meals with lots of veggies.  The calories of most of the meals that I got were less than 700 calories.  There were a few of the grain bowls that were around 450, while still being very satisfying.  It was super easy for me to control portions while working toward losing weight.

It is super, super convent.

All you need to do is log on to the website or use the app, choose your meals, and they show up on your doorstep.  If you forget to make selections, Blue Apron conveniently (or not) chooses for you.  Is an epic snowstorm slowing down your shipment? They let you know.  Is a holiday going to mess up your delivery date? They reschedule it for you.   It is just that simple.

The service is not perfect, however.

The cost is not necessarily cheaper than meal planning and purchasing your own groceries.  Whether or not Blue Apron is cheaper depends on where you get your groceries and how often you eat out.  I live in Minnesota and purchase my groceries at a fairly standard midlevel grocery.  We also have a freezer full of meat, so Blue Apron was not cheaper per meal on a purely cost basis.

When you add the time spent meal planning and my much shorter and less frequent trips to the grocery store on top of the cost of buying less food, it might very well be cheaper.  I didn’t do the math, but my time is very valuable.  Because I am amazing (wink!).

Also – there is so much packaging.  For one meal you may have chicken, rice, and vegetables all in separate baggies, then another baggie full of condiments, vinegar, butter, and cheeses all wrapped up in their own plastic cocoons.  And that is not counting the box, insulated liner, and gel ice packs.  They do have detailed instructions on how to recycle everything, but it is still a lot of waste.

Are you in a cooking rut or need someone to do the heavy lifting?  Maybe you should give a meal kit service a try!

PS. I want to be completely candid with you – I canceled my Blue Apron plan early this year.  Nothing against the company or the service.  Jesse and I were looking for ways to cut costs and I canceled most of my subscriptions.

Also, I am not an affiliate for Blue Apron.  I just loved the shit out of it.


Filed Under: food + drink, VIP

5 tips for the newbie gardener

Written by Cassie · May 14, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

flowers in blue pot
5 tips for the newbie gardener | cassierauk.com

There is something beautiful to the thought of growing your own food, isn’t there?

I picture myself wandering around a lovely, well-maintained garden plucking perfect veggies from the vine.  All of them going into my beautiful garden hod.  I am also wearing a beautiful sun hat.

The reality is more dirty, buggy, sweaty than that.   And I look like an asshole in those floppy hats.  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.  I bet you look great in those hats.

Growing your own food, on a small scale, is something that everyone can do.  But it can also be frustrating and expensive for a newbie and that is a nasty combination.

Here are a few tips for someone new to the gardening world:

Choose your location and try to keep your plants as close to the kitchen as possible.  Or at the least the door you use the most.  I have a bad habit of trying to tuck gardens into out of the way places.  So as soon as the spring excitement has worn off, I forget that they are there and it ends up being a weedy mess.

Also, pick a spot with as much sun as possible.

You don’t have to dig up a new spot in the yard.  Put a windowbox full of salad greens on your front porch and a pot of tomatoes on your patio.  Tuck pea and bean plants in the beds along your house with your perennials.  Veggie plants are just as lovely as flowers.

Start with something simple.  Set yourself up for success by choosing something easy right out of the gate.  Check out this list of 10 easy plants for beginners.  There is something for everyone

Only grow a couple of things. It is super easy to get dazzled by the seed catalogs or but the selections at the local greenhouse but try to stick to a few things your first time around.  A big garden is great, but they are also LOTS of work.

Grow food you actually want to eat. If you don’t like radishes.  Don’t grow them.   You will never get to experience the joy of growing your own food if you don’t ever want to eat.  Or even worse, if you force yourself to eat it.

Growing food does not have to be hard, all’s it takes is a few plants, a sunny patch of land, and some water.  The key is to keep it simple.

Now is the time to go get your plants and get your hands in the dirt!

PS Science says that getting dirty makes you happier!

5 tips for the newbie gardener | cassierauk.com

Filed Under: house + home

Grandma’s Cherry Coffee Cake

Written by Cassie · May 9, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

Grandma's Coffee Cake | CassieRauk.com
Grandma's Coffee Cake | CassieRauk

A few months ago I was digging through my pantry looking for some inspiration.  A work potluck was coming up and I need what I call ‘a church lady’ recipe.  Something that is easy, fast, and with broad appeal.  The kinds of things that people bring to church potlucks or put in a Church cookbook.

I opened up a cabinet to dig one of those church cookbooks that I have been gifted by the older women in my life since I turned 16. That is when I spotted, high on the top shelf, the little plastic container where my mom kept her recipe cards.

It was stashed up there years ago when in a flurry of combining my kitchen gear with my mom’s I was jamming stuff in whatever corner or shelf would hold it.  I think I also put it on a shelf out of site because looking at her neat, tidy cursive brought tears to my eyes.

I pulled it out and started thumbing through the cards inside, about 10 cards in I came across the recipe for my Grandma Becker’s Cherry Coffee Cake.

Grandma's Cherry Coffee Cake | cassierauk.com

This coffee cake totally slipped my mind.

How this happened is beyond me, since Mom made it all the time and my younger sister, Stacy, was OBSESSED with it.

I did enjoy this coffee cake but I had a strong dislike of cherries so I would do the thing that annoying children do everywhere – pick them all out (and complain loudly while doing it).

But it was just the thing I was looking for: easy, fast, broad appeal.  And it didn’t any of those weird things you can sometimes find in old recipes.   Like the time I was looking through a cookbook from the 70s that had powdered MSG in the ingredient list.

It also helped that my dislike of cherries has softened over the years.

Grandma's Coffee Cake | CassieRauk.com
Print Recipe

Grandma’s Cherry Coffee Cake

This simple recipe for cherry coffee will be a hit with your family!
Prep Time15 mins
Cook Time30 mins
Total Time45 mins
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Keyword: coffee cake
Servings: 12

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup canola oil (I use grapeseed)
  • 1 can cherry pie filling
  • 2 tbsp sugar (for topping)
  • 1 tsp cinnamon (for topping)

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350; Butter 9 x13 pan, set aside.
  • Place all ingredients (besides the pie filling) in the bowl of your mixer; beat until smooth.
  • Put about 3/4 of batter in the buttered pan. Spread evenly, using an offset spatula.
  • Spread the cherry pie filling on top of the batter. Place spoonfuls of the leftover batter on the pie filling. Spring the sugar and cinnamon mixture on top.
  • Place in the preheated oven, until set and a knife inserted in the center of the pan comes out clean.

Filed Under: food + drink

a new day

Written by Cassie · May 7, 2019 · This blog generates income via ads · This post may contain affiliate links

No one ends up exactly where they planned to, do they?

I wasn’t one of those girls who planned her wedding, picked out the names of her future children and decorated the fantasy house.

My husband I and did have some plans, though, when we got engaged.  We were going to buy some land from my folks, build a small-ish house, have a kid or two and be happy.

Instead – my mom died of breast cancer 3 months before our wedding,  Jesse and I signed a contract for deed for my family’s farm, my dad continued to live in the house, with us, as he struggled to get on his feet in this new life without his wife, we found that children would be impossible without expensive fertility treatments or expensive adoption, and recently my dad died suddenly the day after his 67th birthday.

So, things aren’t going as we planned.  But you know what?  Things are OK.

a new day | cassierauk.com


 

Filed Under: life + happiness

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Howdy, I’m Cassie

Rural Gal. INTJ. Voracious Reader. 8w9. Enthusiastic Eater. Questioner. My sarcasm is on point and I am loud for no reason at all.
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