How were everyone’s weekends? Mine was great.

Mornings spent at the farmers’ market choosing the freshest produce for the upcoming week’s dinners. Afternoons spent eating the sweetest, juiciest plums and cherries you can ever imagine. Evenings spent making delicious pasta sauce with summer squash and vine-ripened tomatoes from the gardens of friends, and sinking my teeth into the sweetest corn on the cob I’ve ever eaten. Nights spent drinking wine and making plans — real plans, this time — about our future(s). This is the first weekend I have truly appreciated this season and all it has to offer — I felt rich with fresh food and good conversation and I hardly even minded the smothering heat.

This weekend I felt full from the food, full from being surrounded by my closest friends, and full from the excitement that the future holds.

Have you ever had a moment where something was said or something happened and suddenly in that instant, you could see your whole future laid out in front of you? Suddenly everything seemed to fall into line, the final puzzle piece was put in its place, and you realized that everything seemed to have been pointing you to this path even though you hadn’t discovered it until now? Well, I had that moment this weekend and since then I have not been able to stop thinking about it, daydreaming about what is to come. I feel so full and complete realizing that everything I’ve wanted out of life might actually happen, both big and little, important and trite. I’m being vague here on purpose — there are many unknowns and nothing is really definite yet, and besides I want to savor the excitement myself a bit first. I will share more in time.

I hope this post is not too cheesy, but really, right now I’m just happy.

I had a little trouble cutting it. So I stood and ate the extra with a spoon, right out of the rind.

Have any of you read the blog Habit? It’s one of my ongoing favorites. Each month, a select group of women post a daily image and a thought, in thirty words or less, to go with it. This month they opened up a Flickr group for everyone to participate in. I’ve been so inspired by this lately that I’ve decided to undertake a sort of personal Habit, both in the Flickr group and here on this blog.

I’ve wanted to take this blog in a more personal direction for a while but it’s hard to steer that way. I feel I’ve nothing of interest to say, and yet I am most inspired by blogs such as him + her, nataliecreates, Sweet Fine Day, coriandersea, and the like, and I always wish I had something like that for myself. But it’s hard to steer this blog when everything I write seems to come out in Saleslady Speak (seriously, when did I develop that?) and, though I do love sharing recipes and DIY projects and the like, none of it feels totally genuine.

There’s a lot in my life to appreciate and a lot I’d love to share besides food and DIY. And I think starting a Habit-esque thing here, to capture moments from my days, would be a good way to do that. I contemplated creating a separate Blogger account for this but decided against it because I really want to keep everything in one place.

I’m by no means saying that I’m going to stop posting recipes or showing you my various household projects. I definitely love sharing those things here, but I’m just going to try to do it from a more personal angle from now on, and those might not be the main focus of the blog anymore. Imagine the amount of posts about food I make now (i.e. about one-two posts per week) interspersed with other things throughout the rest of the week: that’s what I’m aiming for.

The other day at Ikea, I had somewhat of a breakthrough. I was there to buy new bedsheets, my heart set on dark blue to complement both of my duvets/bedspreads (one being a multicolor vine pattern and one being a green and yellow vintage floral pattern). While walking through their showroom, though, the bedroom setup I was most drawn to was one that had mixes of rich greys, taupes, creams, puttys, sands, champagnes, and just a few pops of color here and there. And it occurred to me that, while I love looking at all kinds of design, I think my personal style is fresh and airy warm neutrals. (And this was nailed home once more when later that day I bought a new nail polish at Sally’s, in a color called “coffee break” which you can see here.) It’s a huge relief to me to finally have this nailed down because up until this point I had been almost flailing trying to find my own style, trying to work in elements of what I loved from things I’ve seen, but every time I went into Ikea or any other home shop, I would feel overwhelmed and stressed and overloaded, and I’d come away empty handed because I couldn’t seem to find anything that worked. But now I know, and I trust: Neutrals. Warm. Airy. Clean. Comfy.

(And if you’re wondering, I ended up with the VILA sheets in the taupe color [listed as "light brown" on the website but in reality they are much more taupe-y].)

So anyway, back to the mood board. I’m moving back in to my real apartment in just a few weeks (HOORAY! MY OWN BEDROOM!) and having honed in on my decorating style, I feel like I can stop flailing trying to decorate my space. But being that I can’t actually go there and decorate just yet, and because I’m a planner at heart, I’m spending all my free time on Polyvore as a sort of bedroom “fitting room” — y’know, try it before you make any commitments. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

New Bedroom Mood Board by YellowistheColor on Polyvore.com

(Another score for the neutrals team: check out how nicely this mood board compliments my blog’s color scheme! I can’t believe I had never noticed this trend before…)

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The heat wave seems to have finally broken, and I’m back in my usual spirits (mostly, anyway). Please, summer, don’t ever get that hot again!

Jason and I were doing our weekly shopping yesterday when we found that blueberries were on sale, buy one get one free. I thought it would be the usual little 4″x4″ square things that you usually see, the ones that you can finish up entirely in one sitting just by eating them raw — but no, it was the 2lb tubs that were on sale. I looked at him and said “You wanna make pie?”

He said, “Yes.”

That’s why I love him.

So we cheated and bought frozen pie crust (hey, I don’t have a pastry cutter or a food processor, alright?) and at the checkout the girl said, “Making a pie, I take it?”

Yes. We were. I was excited. Jason was probably excited. We decided to make it the next morning because it was too dark that evening when we got back to take photos (you see, I plan my meals around this blog).

The reason I was so excited about this pie was because I was determined for it not to fail like my first, and only other, pie attempt (rhubarb pie back in May — it tasted alright but was the most hideous thing you’ve ever seen, and went bad rather quickly). I figured, this time I know the theory, I know generally how pies work, and I’m not attempting this with graham cracker crust — it’s gotta go right.

And it did. Mostly. It tastes divine and looks pretty dang cute and all but the problem arises when you try to cut it. The insides didn’t really thicken much — so they just sorta pour out like (delicious, albeit messy) blueberry soup. This is my fault, I think. You see, when I was reading up on pies back when I made my rhubarb pie, I discovered that there are two schools of thought in piemaking: the Mixers and the Sprinklers. The Mixers say that you should always mix the fruit and the flour/sugar before filling the pie crust, and the Sprinklers say that you should put the fruit into the crust first and then sprinkle the flour/sugar over top of the fruit — the juices from the fruit and the humidity inside the pie will cause the flour and sugar to dissolve and cook down into the pie. From my highly scientific research (reading eHow and the comments on AllRecipes), it seemed that Mixers were novices and Sprinklers were the professionals, so I decided to be a Sprinkler. This worked reasonably well with that rhubarb pie: the whole thing gelled very nicely and was evenly sweetened. But I don’t think it worked quite as well with this blueberry pie, because, while the top layer of berries is nice and gelatinous, the bottom half of it generally turns to soup and falls apart, and is less sweet than I’d like. So, if you decide to follow this recipe, be a Mixer. Even if you’re a Sprinkler at heart.

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