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Beauty Update – May

May 22, 2014 by Suzanne

It’s summer here.  Translation: I’m a walking sweat factory.

Or, as I prefer to think of it, “My thighs are so sexy, they can’t stop touching each other.”

My tendency in summer seems a little counter-intuitive to me.  I feel gross and sweaty and hot (temperature-wise, not rawr-wise) and uncomfortable most of the summer (which in Texas is basically May through September). But summer is when I most want to dress up or engage in traditional beauty regimens. I wear jewelry more often.  I give myself regular pedicures and paint my toenails.  I am more likely to style my hair.  I wear lipstick.

photo (3)I steal hair clips.  Oops.

I also – inexplicably – find myself more likely to exercise.  One might imagine that I would want to sit in front of a fan and do nothing, but no.  I do more Pilates.  I dance around the house more.  I am more likely to go to the gym.

I am also more likely to take on summer projects, like my Getting It Together series.  Apparently, it’s not enough that I discover my own beauty.  I need to surround myself with it.  This will be fun.

One thing that does make sense to me is that I tend to eat better.  I tend to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables – particularly if they can be eaten cold – and I eat less heavy food. I often lose weight in summer, not because I’m particularly trying to do so, but because I’m taking in healthier things and drinking more water.

I think the slower work schedule of summer slows me down enough that I remember to take care of myself.  Maybe that’s what all these seasonal habits tend to be.  I’m not running in three or four different directions at once.  I can take a break.

And taking a break is beautiful.

Join us at Amy Young’s Trusting Tuesdays to read how others are doing with their OneWord365 and add a post of your own!

Posted in Beauty, Seasons | 2 Comments »

Week 2 – The B Word

May 19, 2014 by Suzanne

Budgeting.

Ugh.

I hate budgeting.

But it must be done.

I will say from the top that I don’t need anything else in the apartment.  I do not need anything to complete this project.  In fact, I could get rid of a whole lot of things and still have everything I need to make the apartment clean and organized.

I could just wash my hands of this whole budgeting issue by making “buy nothing” one of the rules. The only problem is that, having met me, I know that I would break this rule, and without guidelines, I would break it hard, because I really love buying things.

I won’t know everything I want for each space until I am spending the week focusing on it, but here’s a small dose of what I have been pondering:

Entryway (includes all the odd space between the door and the living area):

  • Divider shelf to make a stacked display of the espresso cups
  • Small cabinet for liquor storage/bar paraphernalia (hello, garage sales, because I am not paying retail)
  • Books for CDs so I can get rid of all those hideous jewel cases

Living room and writing nook:

  • Sheets, inexpensive fabric – something to make curtains out of that 1) is not sheer and 3) matches or can be dyed to match (ish – doesn’t have to be exact)
  • Possibly dye

Kitchen:

  • Storage containers – leaning toward mason jars for most things but will need larger ones for multiple flours
  • Small shelves to maximize space in all the cabinets
  • Wooden slats to fix bottom drawer of chest of drawers and perhaps make slats for bakeware
  • Barring the ability to find inexpensive shelving, spice jars that will stack
  • Add to my Simple Additions collection (Pampered Chef plates, bowls, etc. – also, I’m a consultant, so if you see something you like, I can hook you up. /shameless plug)

Bedroom:

  • Under-the-bed storage
  • Storage chest for end of bed
  • Material to make curtains (or just buying curtains) for east window
  • Materials to make headboard

Bathroom:

  • Silver accessories – soap dispenser, trash can, etc.
  • Plum linens – six bath towels, two hand towels, shower curtain, bath mat(s)

That’s a long list already for a home that doesn’t really need anything.

This week, I am going to start pricing things and scouring garage sales and thrift stores.  Because here’s the kicker – I’m going to give myself a $300 limit.  For the whole summer.  And I’m anxious about even setting aside that much, because I really do not need anything at all.

I can buy almost everything secondhand on my list or make it myself.  I imagine the bulk of the money will be spent on the bathroom (because secondhand towels give me the icks), so I’m saving $150 for it (I have some coupons). That means that the other four areas have to average $35 apiece, with a $10 cushion.  I will have to be careful.  Because I have four huge windows in the living room/writing nook, and finding curtains for all four that either match or at least fit together in an artsy but not college-student-living-on-ramen kind of way for less than $35 is going to take a miracle (or a really fantastic estate sale).

When it comes to spending money on my apartment this summer, I will remember two things:

  1. I will not consider the week a failure if I can’t find items that fit into my budget by the end of the week that the room is supposed to be “done.”  I will remember that the whole point of this project is that making a home is an on-going, ever-changing, organic process.  It is unreasonable to expect that it will be My Ultimate Living Environment by the end of the summer.
  2. Even though the work is going to be divided into areas, the shopping doesn’t have to be.  If I find inexpensive storage or great towels this week, I’m going to go ahead and buy them.  Particularly if they are on sale.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are going to be thrift afternoons, but I reserve the right to shop whenever I feel like it.  Also, garage sales happen on Saturdays, so that’s when I’ll be doing that.  I will also be scouring Denton’s Freecycle list more carefully (meaning, I’ll actually read the email instead of saying, “Ack! No!  No more stuff!” and deleting it without opening it).  And SCRAP just became my favorite store of the summer, because the next two Fridays are fabric sales, and I might find jars there that will serve my spice storage needs. I am actively planning to make out like a bandit.

Posted in Getting It Together | 3 Comments »

Keep – Week One in Review

May 19, 2014 by Suzanne

Today marks the end of Week One (Keep) of my Getting It Together summer project.

The Food:

The three planned recipes for the week were Mom’s chicken salad, black bean and pepper fajitas (vegan), and ratatouille (farmers’ market).  Two of the three actually happened.

Until very recently, I didn’t have a chicken salad recipe, because until very recently, I hated mayonnaise. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.  Apparently.  My brand new favorite way to make chicken salad is with rotisserie chicken – which is 1) almost as inexpensive, 2) far less disgusting, and 3) way less work than roasting my own – with grapes, apples, dried cranberries, celery, pepper, and two parts mayo to one part mustard.

For the vegans in the audience, this recipe is also delicious if you sub Vegenaise  for the mayo and chopped up Chik’n nuggets (I think they’re made by Boca?) for the chicken. This also makes the expensive faux chicken nuggets go further, which makes my bank account happy.

The chicken salad that I grew up eating, however, is simpler.  For my mom’s recipe, I used one chicken breast (baked and chopped into pieces), two boiled eggs, one half cup of mayo, and a couple of spoonfuls of mustard.  Mom usually seasons with just salt and pepper, but I added a little parsley, basil, and oregano. It’s not the healthiest meal, but I got five sandwiches out of it, making it one of the least expensive meals I’ve had in a while.  Throw a few carrot sticks or an apple on the side, and you have a nice lunch.

The vegan  recipe I managed was black bean and pepper fajitas. In a skillet, I sauteed some onions and garlic.  Then I added cumin, roasted red peppers, and black beans.  I let it all cook together for a while (about 15 minutes on medium low).  Then I spooned the mixture into some tortillas, spritzed it with lime juice, and that was it.  It could not have been easier. It was good the first time, but the leftovers – after everything had hung out and marinated in the fridge overnight – were amazing.

The ratatouille will have to wait for a week when I actually make it to the farmers’ market.  Turns out, it’s hard to get inspired by the farmers’ market when you don’t go.  Ahem.

I totally forgot about making bread.  I almost threw together some beer bread today, just so I could say that I made bread this week. But the plan was to make baguettes to go with the ratatouille…and neither of those things happened. I bought a day-old (i.e., half-price) loaf of sourdough at Ravelin.  That’s…not even close to the same thing, but at least I didn’t pay full price?

The Home:

I called this week Keep because “maintain” sounds so boring.  Maintaining is going about my workaday life, just slugging along.  It reeks of stagnation. Keep, on the other hand, sounds more nurturing.  I’m keeping a home.  I’m keeping my space livable.

photo (3) My cute coffee nook

You might be thinking, “What does it matter what you call it?  Just do it.” But that’s what I learned this week – it matters to me.  In fact, how I view this habit might just be the primary determinant of whether I keep doing it after summer’s over or go back to the way things have been.

Some things I learned this week:

  • Fifteen minutes hardly feels like any time at all.  I was surprised by how quickly it went by every day. The daily fifteen minutes in the kitchen was usually over by the time supper had finished cooking, so that didn’t seem like a big deal either.
  • I can do a lot in fifteen minutes.  I wanted to see if such a small amount of time would make any difference, and I also wanted to avoid getting burned out on my first week, so I stuck to the time limit pretty rigidly for this first round.  After only a quarter of an hour in every major area in the apartment, it looks ten times better than it did last week. I definitely cleaned up more than I messed up.
  • I don’t feel like I’ve spent any time cleaning this week.  This is the big one.  I am very protective of my schedule. If something seems like it’s going to take a lot of time, particularly long-term, I’m unlikely to stick to it. This even translates to people. The first sign that I’m really into a guy? When I don’t mind that he takes up a lot of my free time. So it’s important for a new habit to fit easily into the schedule without upsetting my daily flow.
  • In reality, I have spent a lot of time cleaning this week.  I have spent a collective three hours cleaning and organizing, which is about two and a half hours more than I usually spend.  But dividing the time up in a day-to-day process takes away the feeling that it’s some grand imposition, and that’s going to be what makes this new habit stick.

Overall, I am pleased with the week.  Now onto Week Two.

Posted in Food, Getting It Together, Vegan | 5 Comments »

Coffee Shop Road Trip – A Somber Reminder

May 16, 2014 by Suzanne

Wednesday, I went to visit The Book Carriage in Roanoke, Texas.  This is one of my favorite small bookstores.  It is located on Oak Street, which is a great place to spend the day.  There are restaurants and thrift stores and kitsch stores.  Also, there is a shop that has delicious pie.

But I digress.

The Book Carriage has a local authors section, and they will order me anything I want if they don’t have it in stock.

Also, they’re just really cute:

photo

I love The Book Carriage.

One of the things I look forward to is having a cup of coffee while I shop.  Their in-house coffee bar serves basic espresso drinks. They have a La Marzocco espresso machine (or La Mar, as I like to call it).  There’s a picture of it on their website (go ahead and look.  I’ll wait). It’s a work of art.  It also makes a damn fine cup of espresso.  I make flirty eyes with it every time I go in.  I’ve even invited it to come home with me, but so far, it has ignored my advances.

Wednesday, I made the short drive to Roanoke to visit The Book Carriage and Coffee Shop. I really needed a cup of coffee.  I had been at work all day, and then I drove to Roanoke in early rush hour traffic.  People are dumb, especially on two-lane roads. But it was all going to be worth it when I arrived and ordered my Americano with a dash of caramel syrup.

Alas, it was not meant to be.

I walked in, and I heard someone greet me from the second floor.

“Hello!  How can I help you?”

“I’m fine – I’m just looking.”

“Okay, then.  Let us know if you need anything!”

I started toward the coffee bar, and then I stopped, paralyzed with disbelief.

It wasn’t open.

There were no pastries in the pastry box.  The lights were out behind the bar.  La Mar was there, but it was quiet and still.

I felt a little lightheaded as I stumbled toward the books to look around.  As the shock subsided, I came to terms with the fact that I was not going to get my Americano that afternoon. I picked up several books off the shelf and read their covers, but my heart wasn’t in it.  I had lost the will to browse.  I found Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life because I had just finished it, and I loved it, and I needed to hold something I loved.  So I clutched it to my heart and made my way to the checkout table.

You might be thinking, “Why didn’t you ask about the coffee bar?” And I thought about asking.  I did.  But then I decided against it, because I wasn’t sure I could be trusted to respond in a calm and rational manner if they told me the unthinkable – that the coffee bar was closed permanently.  I might have actually cried in the store.  That might seem like an overreaction to you, but you just don’t understand how much I love (and desperately needed) this coffee.

I have had a couple of days to calm down, so today I made the call.

“Hi, this is The Book Carriage.  How may I help you?”

“I was wondering if your coffee shop was open the same hours as the rest of the store.”

(See how I did that?  Calm.  Simple.  Not “I WENT THERE AND YOU FAILED TO GIVE ME COFFEE! WHY DO YOU HATE ME AND ALL GOOD THINGS?!??!?!”  So it’s good that I waited.)

“We no longer have a coffee shop in house.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Well, thank you.”

Even two days later, this made me tear up.

It’s not that I can’t get good coffee elsewhere.  I have a perfectly delicious cup of coffee sitting in front of me right now.

It’s just that…I feel like I failed them.  I didn’t go there often enough or send enough people their way, and now they’re closed.  I don’ t even know if lack of patronage was why they closed, so my guilt might be misguided.  Perhaps the people who ran it came into a lot of money and decided to travel the world rather than run a coffee shop.  I hope something like that happened.

But I suppose that’s not very likely.  The good coffee on Oak Street is gone.

Support your local shops.  They don’t have the backing of a corporation.  They’re all on their own.  If we love them, we have to make sure they stay in business.  We can help by frequenting the shop and hooking them up with a little free advertising.

I know that I alone cannot save a shop.  But I have a Facebook.  I have a Twitter.  If I have a good experience with a coffee shop (or bookstore…or restaurant…etc.), I can show how adorable it is on Instagram.  I can blog about it. And then maybe more people will go and have a good experience, and they will tell their friends.

At some point this summer, I will take a morning or afternoon off work and go scouting for new coffee in the Roanoke/Argyle vicinity.  I know there are some great places in Keller and Southlake, but if I can find one closer to my bookstore, that would be ideal. I am also keeping an eye out for an email from The Book Carriage just in case they decide to auction La Mar off for charity or something. La Mar would look gorgeous in my kitchen.  That would take a little of the sting out of it.

But right now, I am sad.

Posted in Coffee Shop Road Trip | Leave a Comment »

Badger

May 16, 2014 by Suzanne

I loved this boy once.

We were close.  And we both knew that the love between us was uneven.  We both knew that I loved him more than he loved me. We knew that one day this would bite us. But it seemed a shame to cut ties and run – to ruin everything over my silly little broken heart.

When he started spending less time with me and more time with the woman who would become his wife, I didn’t handle it graciously.

Heh.  That’s putting it mildly.

I acted like a lunatic.

I was angry and scared, because I realized that I had this whole life planned that wasn’t going to happen. I understood how badgers feel when they get caught in a trap, and they know they’re never getting out alive, but they refuse to lie still and die.  They fight it until they’re dead.

So I fought.  I pleaded. I argued. I was manipulative and vicious. I refused to be her friend (even though she’s a perfectly nice person), and I refused to listen to anyone who tried to smooth things over (even though they were only trying to help).

I wrote a multiple-page letter detailing why he would be better off with me.

For the first time in my life, I was proud of something I had written, and not because someone else told me that it was good.  There were no pretty bows to tie up the loose ends. No healthy conclusion reached, no lesson learned, no silver lining on the rain cloud. It was just opening a vein and bleeding on the pages.

For the first time in my life, I did not betray myself in order to keep the peace.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a writer.

And when he read my letter – the very soul of me, poured out in ink and tears – and put steel in his gaze as he responded simply, “No,” I asked to have it back.

The letter – and the heart it represented – didn’t belong to him anymore.

There are very few moments in my life that I can point to and say, “That one – that’s the moment it happened,” but that curt “No,” is one of them.  In that moment, the boy who saw me more clearly than anyone had ever seen me before lost his right to do so.

Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and handle things differently.  I would be calmer and more reasonable.  I would behave sensibly, with wisdom beyond my years. I would bear the torture of not being chosen with dignity. I would protect the mutual part of the love between us that was our friendship. Of course, this part of me, knowing the boy wouldn’t really love me back, would be too petrified of falling in love with him to get close enough to have that amazing friendship in the first place.  I would advise others against acting like a lunatic.

Part of me is sorry.

Another part of me, however, understands the badger.  The badger wanted what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to say so. The badger fought, because she had a right to be happy. The badger argued, because she could not fathom how anyone graced with her love could possibly turn it down.  The badger is actually grateful to the boy for standing up for what he wanted and for the cruel way he did it – for that shining moment of asshattery that made everything so clear.  But being grateful doesn’t mean that the badger can abide such foolishness.

Another part of me is the badger, and the badger’s not sorry.

Because she got free.

And she got out alive.

(This was an aftermath of a Story Sessions Write-In.  You should join us.)

Posted in Hope, Story Sessions, Writing | 2 Comments »

Getting It Together – The Plan

May 13, 2014 by Suzanne

Now that I’ve established why I’ve taken on this project, now here’s the how.

The taquitos, sandwich fixins, and cereal made it into the grocery cart on purpose.  I like them.  They are delicious and convenient, and making them doesn’t heat up the whole house.  As much as I would love for every meal to be a slow food treasure, I have two jobs and two manuscripts to finish by the end of the year.  So for me, a stash of emergency taquitos in the freezer is a vital part of a workable meal plan.

I just don’t want it to be the only plan.

This summer, getting it together means eating well and eating healthier without breaking the bank.  Specifically, it looks like this:

1. Baking two loaves of bread a week – one to eat and one to share or freeze.

2. Making at least three big (i.e., at least two servings of leftovers) meals a week:

  • One meal from my childhood – a little shout-out to Mom
  • One meal inspired by what I find that week at the farmers’ market
  • One meal that’s vegan (because I have not forgotten you, New Year’s Resolution)

Each week, I will post what I make and share a few recipes with you.

Getting it together also means getting my apartment in order.  With the help of Apartment Therapy (both the book and the website) and Unstuff Your Life, and of course, my mother, who is the loudest of the voices in my head, I have divided the process into twelve weeks.

This week, I will be initiating the daily maintenance schedule that I will continue throughout the twelve weeks (and hopefully forevermore). The schedule requires a mere 30 minutes a day, which is about 25 more per day than I currently average in a week.  The first fifteen minutes will focus on a specific area of the apartment, and the last fifteen minutes will be spent cleaning the kitchen.  The schedule is as follows:

  • Monday – entryway
  • Tuesday – living room
  • Wednesday – writing nook
  • Thursday – bathroom
  • Friday – kitchen (the whole 30 minutes)
  • Saturday – bedroom
  • Sunday – wherever needed

The majority of the remaining weeks will be spent deep-cleaning and organizing a specific area of the apartment:

  • Week 2 – The B Word – Budgeting for the project
  • Week 3 – Welcome – the entryway and kitchen table
  • Week 4 – Sustain – the kitchen
  • Week 5 – Entertain – the living room
  • Week 6 – Create – the writing nook
  • Week 7 – Wash- the bathroom
  • Week 8 – Stash – laundry closet and craft storage
  • Week 9 – Adorn – bedroom closet
  • Week 10 – Rest – bedroom
  • Week 11 – Reflect – review project and look ahead
  • Week 12 – Celebrate – party!

Every Sunday, I will post a list of specific goals for the week and maybe – MAYBE – a before picture. By the end of the week, I will post a progress report.

Like I said on Sunday, I am not my mother. She doesn’t bake her own bread, and I don’t grow my own vegetables.  I’m also lactose-intolerant and eat less meat than my parents do, so I reserve the right to adjust her recipes to fit my needs and tastes. And until I can afford to hire a full-time housekeeper (which, for the record, is one of the first things I’m doing if I should ever become inexplicably and grotesquely wealthy), my kitchen floor will probably never stay clean enough for anyone to eat off it.

And I’m okay with that.

But I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to be more like my mother.  I enjoyed living in a clean house, and I enjoyed the homey atmosphere created by the smell of a home-cooked meal.  I want my life to be more like that, and this summer I am going to make it so.

 

Posted in Food, Getting It Together, Resolutions, Vegan | 5 Comments »

Getting It Together – The Need

May 12, 2014 by Suzanne

Yesterday, I announced my summer project – to get my diet and home in order.

First, let’s discuss the meal situation.

This past week was Finals Week at one job and Closedown Week (with a side order of Re-Opening Day on Saturday) at the other. Translation: last week was a six-day work week, because no amount of planning will make the busiest week of the year fit into five days.

A little bit of planning, however, could have improved the week’s grocery haul:

photo

I do have to give myself some credit.  Last year, this picture would have been a loaf of sandwich bread and a jar of peanut butter surrounded by empty takeout containers and Whataburger bags.  This year’s week of sandwiches, taquitos, and cereal might be only marginally healthier (hey – at least it wasn’t soda and deep-fried onion rings), but it was a lot less expensive.  So progress has been made.

In addition to the week of tornado-esque frenzy at work, I had two social engagements to which I brought food, which accounts for the artisan breads and the second box of taquitos, because I didn’t have time to make them from scratch.

However.

Making my own bread doesn’t actually require that much hands-on time.  It just requires planning ahead.  And I can make six loaves of fancy bread for the price of one of the artisan loaves that I bought.

Also, did you notice something missing from the picture?  Vegetables.  The only vegetables you see are the red onion and the jar of roasted peppers, and they only made the list because they were part of the recipe for cheesy bread that I took to Supper Club.  It’s springtime in Texas.  We have fresh vegetables coming out our ears down here.  But they didn’t make it on my list because I didn’t have a plan.

Second, let’s discuss the apartment situation.

I have to pat myself on the back for my work ethic.  My grades were finalized by Wednesday, allowing me to give my full attention to the residence hall when it needed attention the most.  I did not procrastinate at work.

Unfortunately, since cleaning is how I procrastinate, it kind of fell by the wayside last week.

Who am I kidding?  It has been making its home on the wayside for quite some time now.  It’s looking at wayside schools and searching for wayside jobs.

My apartment is a wreck.  If you saw a picture of how it looks right now, you might cry.  I’ll give you a minor example.

This is the cleanest, most organized corner of my home at this moment:

photo (1)

Keeping a home clean and organized has never been a skill I’ve possessed.  Don’t get me wrong – I prefer a clean, organized home.  I just hate doing the work it takes to keep it that way.  And because I hate doing it, I put it off (unless I’m putting off doing something I dread more, like grading), which ultimately makes it into a gargantuan, daunting job.

But because I grew up in my mother’s house, I know it doesn’t have to get to that point.  I know that I can have the home I want by deep cleaning two or three times a year if I will commit to maintaining it the rest of the year.  And that’s a habit I want to create this summer.

Posted in Getting It Together | 1 Comment »

Getting It Together – The Back Story

May 12, 2014 by Suzanne

This message is brought to you by my mother.

Growing up, we had three square meals a day, and most of them were at home. Driving through for burgers and eating out were special treats that might have happened once or twice a month.  If we had cookies, they were homemade. Even when she worked full-time, we had hot, balanced meals on the table.

She also kept an immaculate house.  At one of my birthday parties, we sat on the kitchen floor to have our cake.  One of my friends dropped a bite on the floor, as small children are wont to do. When she picked it up and tried to hand it to her mom, her mom said, “Just eat it.”  Then her mom laughed and turned to my mom.  “This is probably the only kitchen floor I’d let my daughter eat off of.”

I am not my mother.

I know that she had help.  She and Dad split the domestic responsibilities pretty evenly, and she made it clear to my sister and me that we were expected to pull our own age-appropriate weight.  The flipside is that she had three other people in the house making messes and requiring sustenance.  Show of hands – how many of you know that toddlers (or twelve-year-olds, for that matter) make way more of a mess than they clean up? So while she had more help than I do, she also had a lot more to do.

I know that it is possible to have a full-time job, a clean house, and a healthy, affordable diet, and it is possible to have all of that and still have time to read, watch TV, and have a social life.  I know it’s possible, because I spent the first eighteen years of my life watching my mother do it. I also know, having been brought up by this superwoman, how to do it.

On this Mother’s Day, I honor what Mom modeled and taught me.  Today, I start my three-month series on getting it together.

Tomorrow, I will post the need, and Tuesday, I will lay out the plan.

Wish me luck!

Posted in Getting It Together | 4 Comments »

Summer Begins

May 10, 2014 by Suzanne

My summer began today.

The weather has been telling me it’s summer for about a week now.  But today is move-in day for Summer Housing, so this is the first day my mind can wrap itself around summer.

I am moving to my other building this summer.  This makes me happy for several reasons.

Reason #1:  Every time I walk into Santa Fe, I hear Christian Bale singing in my head:

Reason #2: Summer Housing means I get to continue working with college students instead of working with the often younger patrons of Summer Conferences. I might make a cameo appearance at some of the bigger conferences, but most of my summer will be spent working my regular job. I get to fit this summer instead of feeling like a fish out of water. Happy.

Reason #3: We have a new friend in the Santa Fe lobby.

photo

We haven’t decided on a name yet.  Josephine, maybe.  Or Smokey (because of the fireplace.  Obviously.).

Reason #4: It’s so cool over here, temperature-wise.  It’s pretty cool in my other building, too.  But summer tundra, here I come!

Reason #5: Debbie and I have the summer to spruce up the Santa Fe desk and to see what it needs so that it can be more functional in the fall than it has been.

I don’t say this very often, but YAY FOR SUMMER!!!

Posted in Seasons, Work | Leave a Comment »

SambaLatte – Las Vegas, Nevada

May 10, 2014 by Suzanne

I am excited to host my first guest in our Coffee Shop Road Trip series. I “met” (i.e., on the Internet) Jennifer Seay in the Online Writing Community via Andilit.  I think you’ll enjoy reading about her coffee adventure in Las Vegas.

 

The assignment: Find a local coffee shop

The chosen target: SambaLatte Torrefazione in Las Vegas, Nevada at 750 S. Rampart Blvd. Suite 9, Las Vegas, Nevada 89145 (702) 272-2333

The verdict: I’m not going to find what I’m looking for in Las Vegas – a quiet place with posh seating – but this is not bad at all. Especially the croissant. Nom, nom, nom.

 

See, I’m a country girl that loves the city. To a point. What do I hate about the city? Traffic (not much of a problem here in Vegas unless you’re near the tourist corridor on a Friday night) and too many people (always a problem).

 

I have to admit, I’m not a coffee drinker on a regular basis. I drink tea. Green tea. Black tea. White tea. Mostly I drink Earl Grey. Sometimes Earl Grey Crème when I can find it. But, on this occasion I went for the, what I would term, froofy drink.

JenSeayLatteFull

A Nutella latte.

 

And it came with foam art that stayed through the entire cup. That’s probably a good thing, I wouldn’t know – this might be the first time I’ve ordered a latte. Which might explain why I’m typing so fast!

JenSeayLatte gone

Here’s the thing about this coffee. It wasn’t bitter. It tasted like coffee. Did it taste like Nutella? I don’t think so, but that’s probably good because I find Nutella to be quite sweet most of the time. As a side note, I haven’t experienced the burning in my stomach that I always experience after a coffee. (If you’d like to experience the effect of the coffee on my system, just read faster and faster until you sound like a chipmunk!) Whee! I probably shouldn’t drive like this…

 

Perhaps I shouldn’t have paired a sweet (but not terribly so), caffeinated drink with a chocolate croissant. A perfectly flaky, melt in your mouth, croissant with a touch of chocolate buried between the light, crispy layers. Did I say nom, nom, nom already?

 

SambaLatte is a local coffee shop that started here in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas. It now has a second location on Jones and Sunset (with a drive through) and they’re opening a location at the Monte Carlo casino resort very soon. So, if you’re in Vegas you can get SambaLatte coffee without leaving the glitz and glamour of the Strip. If it is important to you they source their beans from small and sustainable farmers from Brazil and around the globe. And they do seem to have a recycling program in place as well as using to-go cups made with a percentage of post consumer content.  I had my turbo boost … I mean, latte … as a dine-in so it came in a ceramic cup – no waste! Especially since, in my haste to get my dirty little paws on the croissant, I forgot to procure a napkin…

 

Once I finally got comfortable, the other people in the shop faded into the background – that fade was helped by the subdued music playing over the sound system. My best guess in regards to the music would be something Brazilian, but I didn’t ask. The shop has a second level, which was where I wanted to be so I could look out over the other people down below, but that seems to be a popular hangout so I ended up at a bar in the corner. Which worked out well enough. There were lots of places to plug in, which I would’ve used if I had brought my power adapter. Oh, and wi-fi. Good wi-fi, even – included with a purchase. Other than the upstairs area and the bar I sat at there were little tables with the tiny café chairs that are always less comfortable than one would hope, an area in the front with padded benches and a few tables outside in the sunlight. Today would’ve probably been a good day to choose the outside, but I didn’t want to take up a four-top as I was a single.

 

Looking back at the menu now, I may have to come back and try the tea. They have “Lavender Earl Grey” and something called “Eros” which is described as “Black tea with orange and vanilla”. And, almond croissants that were sold out when I arrived around 10:00. I do love a good almond croissant…

 

Jennifer grew up in the southeastern United States eating dirt and drinking goat’s milk. She wrote her first story when she was six years old titled “The Cats in the Carillon.” It was approximately 200 words and had three sequels. Her current piece is approximately 100,000 words and the main character is not a cat. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband and two furry editors. She burbles about her book, cats, and life at mercurialforte.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

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