Razorblades and Haikus This is a small collection of the most adorable photos Jordan and I have taken together. Some of these are from St. Louis, some from Kansas City, and still others are from Austin. While I'm usually the one snapping photos (evidenced by this very website), Jordan is really amazing at remembering to take photos. She also has a really great eye. So credit definitely goes to her for having taken most of these. Hopefully I'll find some other equally adorable photos in the collection. I'll be sure to add them in here when I do.

Jackbox Champ'd Up Characters Claire's friends, Kitty and Wade, introduced Claire and I to a new Jackbox game they play called "Champ'd Up". You basically get prompted to draw a character that meets certain criteria (on your phone so that they remain hidden) and then the characters battle one another. As Wade is actually an artist, his characters were pretty impressive, but I held my own. I'd never played it before and it was a pretty damn funny game.

Searching for a Dresser at IKEA We really needed some kind of dresser for the house on Iowa Ave. I went and purchased one shortly after we got back from Christmas in Kansas City. Unfortunately the dresser was just left in the house never to be seen again.

Strawberry Banana Oatmeal Sourdough This was a concoction that I had the idea for. While it's difficult to put fresh berries inside of sourdough (given the additional water content and the 500 degree oven involved), it occurred to me that I could probably get freeze-dried fruits and berries, mix them into the dough, and then the steam and heat would rehydrate them to make them seem fresh. I made two different versions. One where I mixed everything into the proofing dough and another where I only mixed half into the proofing dough and then the other half into a laminating process after the proofing. Both came out pretty amazingly, but for the sake of simplicity, I'd suggest just mixing them into the original proofing dough. It seemed to work just as well.

Strapping Atti to my EKG Since I was gifted an EKG for Christmas (or pre-Christmas, really), but never really had many opportunities to play with it, I've recently been working to figure out the inner workings of it a little better. As Rachel is a nurse, she was able to help me to understand some of the nuances a little bit better and of course was also a willing volunteer. While playing with it, I got curious if they use the same EKGs on animals and after some quick Google searching, it turns out that they do. The leads are just configured a little differently. So we did some research and figured out specifically which leads are used for dogs and where they're specifically attached. While we got some basic readings from the machine, we couldn't get a consistent heart rhythm on Atti and figured that it had to do with her thick fur. I should note that Atti was a surprisingly calm patient. One of Rachel's sisters is a veterinarian and so she is going to ask her what we're doing wrong, but I'm determined to see Atti's heart rhythm now.

Installing Claire's Birdhouses Oh what a joyous activity it was finally installing these birdhouses. After spending about 6 weeks (on and off) building these things for Claire, I was finally able to get them installed in the very trees that I spent so much time clearing out back in January. Claire did a bunch of research on what bluebirds prefer for their habitat and so we found six trees that fit the criteria as best we could. We borrowed a ladder from her friends Geoff and Ashleigh and I scurried up the trees to get them all installed. Just three 3" screws on each one and they should hang up there for many, many years to come.

Snowy Night in Weaverville After Rachel and I watched Kitty and Wade's cat and dog for a week, they wanted to take us out to a delicious dinner in town. Unfortunately, Rachel wound up having to head back home for work and so they wound up taking out me and Claire instead. It doubled as a multi-birthday outing since both of our birthdays are within a month of one another. There wound up being a huge snowstorm that came through and so we got to enjoy the snowfall while sipping down a number of cocktails. I also finally managed to track down the Eastern Screech Owl that we had been hearing for awhile (and that Claire has apparently been hearing for the past year).

Bagels and Infusions I'd been wanting to try my hand at turning a sourdough recipe into bagels. A recent cinnamon raisin proofing that I did happened not to rise quite as much as I'd expected it to (likely due to an extra helping of cinnamon and about 40g too few of raising) and so I thought I'd use this one. It worked like a charm and while the bagels weren't much to look at, they were absolutely delicious. Meanwhile, Claire and I picked a huge bundle of Red Buds and Grape Hyacinth and used them to infuse a variety of vodkas. The Grape Hyacinth, in particular, is a natural pH indicator and so it's a hoot to mix it with something acidic.

Atti's New Bed Bobby has a fuzzy bed that he loves to lounge around in. Since Atti has been hanging out with him for the past while, she's taken a liking to it and so Claire bought her a brand new one. It turned out to be quite a bit smaller than what she thought, but Atti seems to have taken an equal liking to it.

Painter's Greenhouse After spending the morning at the Never Ending Flower Farm, we took a ride way out east to checkout the Painter's Greenhouse too. It's definitely one of the cooler nurseries that I've ever seen. The entire place was just draped in the greenery from all of the hanging ferns.