Author: Sarah

Scones for brunching

~ Sarah ~ 1 Comment

Well friends, I made up for the prior weekend’s purposeful antisocial agenda by emerging from my cocoon as a full-fledged social butterfly this weekend. Celebrating a friend’s birthday at The Foundry, treating Lydia’s cousin to a one-night version of the Dallas Experience (drinks overlooking the skyline at NYLO followed by late-night early morning Velvet Taco), hot dogs behind home plate at a Rangers game, North Park shopping and a Teavana splurge followed by Rusty Tacos with a visiting Fort Worth friend, Sunday brunch with Lydia and our loverly friends…whew.

I’ve also recently become a tad addicted to Instagram as of late so you can even see the discrepancy for yourselves.

Last weekend:

jennifer lawrence vogue

This weekend:

the foundry - chicken scratch dallas

the rangers ballpark in arlington

flowers

strawberries and cream scones

Which leads me to the below recipe, found at Sarah Bakes Gluten Free Treats. It was pretty delicious while, like all things gluten-free/vegan baking, pretty trial and error. For example, I subbed Bob’s Red Mill baking flour for her flour blend in an effort to be financially and time efficient (read: cheap and lazy). This led to more of a cupcake-like batter consistency than cookie-like, resulting in a first round of very flat, wide wanna-be “scones.” Using only about 2/3’s of the called for coconut milk and adding in a little more flour definitely helped the next time around!

gluten free vegan strawberries n’ cream scones

  • 1 3/4 cups Sarah’s gluten free flour blend (Or in my case, Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose baking flour)
  • 1/2 cup organic cane sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 5 tablespoons Earth Balance vegan butter, chilled
  • 1/2 cup So Delicious unsweetened vanilla coconut milk (For me: 1/3 cup)
  • 1 cup fresh strawberries, diced (Even more is better!)
vanilla glaze
  • 1 cup organic powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons So Delicious barista style coconut milk french vanilla coffee creamer

They ended up being a pretty big brunch success, and testing two batches means I get to start my mornings all week long with baked sweetness I can actually eat. We also enjoyed White Peach Gin Fizz cocktails, which fit my gin phase and peach craving quite nicely. So nicely in fact, that I forgot to take a picture in all the excitement of actually drinking them so you’ll just have to take my word for it or try the recipe out for yourselves…

Fall, finally

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

This post might also be aptly titled, “Blogging, finally.”

I know, it’s been quite the hiatus at Finding Tiffany’s. But can you blame us when the first day of September was like, yesterday?! ….We’re two weeks in, you say? Well then. It was a pretty speedy two weeks is all I’ll say about that.

Anyways, it must have been quite awhile, because one day I’m sweating up a storm at Lakewood Brewing Company and the next I’m driving to work clutching my travel mug of Yogi tea with the heat on, craving apple crisp and dreaming of reading curled under blankets on my couch, “fireplace” lit.

I’m pretty sure the ‘low’ that day was 80 degrees.

Okay, so maybe it’s not 100% fall yet in Texas, but I’m more than willing to look the other way if it means I get more of this:

caramel-pear-pie

easy-chai-tea

black-leather-jacket

obaz-fall-tights

anthro-boots

apricot-pie

It’s not all deliciousness, clothing and recurring imagined chilliness though. It’s also now officially and frustratingly dark during my normal morning workout hours. I’m pretty bitter about this.

Wanted: Workout buddy so I don’t have to worry about getting jumped in my friendly, idyllic neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. Any takers?

It’s all happening

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

Istanbul - Hagia Sophia

We had a plan.

After sharing my unfounded but very real passion for Istanbul with my now roommate, we made a pact to make the trip at the end of our lease together – a last hurrah for us in a way, and if things kept on the path they seemed to be, perhaps even a last hurrah for my ‘single’ self.

Partly in hopes of rationing the voice in my head that said things like too far, too expensive, too different, I tried to be responsible. I plotted vacation days on my calendar. I spent hours researching the best credit card for miles (Chase Sapphire Preferred, by the way) then actually got it this time. I steered clear of city research to avoid getting too excited too soon or worse, let down.

Istanbul Streets

Then out of the blue, I got a text: “I can go to Istanbul!!! Let’s GO”

The five (or ten) that followed were filled with dates, exclamation points, summer sale prices and more than our fair share of smiley face variations. One quick trip to Starbucks later we had researched plane tickets and the roommate was literally bouncing off the chair to hit “purchase” when that voice came back again with “reasons”…what if it uses all of my vacation days, what if it costs too much without all my bonus miles, what if it disrupts my dietary needs/issues?

I’m a pretty impulsive traveler by nature, so all this hesitation was so unlike me. For example, my first ticket to New York was purchased on a whim immediately upon opening a travel deal email and without a second thought toward where we’d sleep…and it turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life!

Turkish Coffee in Istanbul

One week later, though, it was clear: the only thing holding me back from Istanbul was me. With the green light from my work and bank, there really was no reason NOT to hit purchase…so we did.

That’s right – I’ll be spending an entire week in ISTANBUL in just 5 weeks! We also timed it perfectly to squeeze out a weekend in New York beforehand.

Pamukkale Turkey

Seriously.

If you’ve been following Finding Tiffany’s for awhile, my wanderlust is no secret. It’s also no secret that I’ve been obsessing over both Istanbul and New York, specifically, for quite some time now. I’m literally going on my ideal trip, accomplishing my latest major life-travel goal.

I’m not exactly sure when I allowed the aforementioned fear to creep in, but I realize now why it did. It’s kinda a scary thing when you accomplish what you thought was a huge goal much sooner than you expected. Yeah there’s always the fear of being disappointed after all the hype, but really it’s more the wide-open realization…Now what?

In the words of my coworker: “Now you need a bigger goal.”

Istanbul Bridge Europe to Asia, East and West

Fanning the flame

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

work life balance

Hello again, loverly readers! It’s quite convenient how Lydia and I seem to take turns being inspired, regular posters..completely unplanned, I assure you, but it’s nice to know that while I was over here being a combination of busy, unmotivated and just plain exhausted, you had plenty of witty anecdotes at your fingertips.

Don’t get too excited, I’m still busy, unmotivated and exhausted, but I felt I should share a little bit of where I’ve been (mentally) lately…at work.

Once while on our way to a client meeting, my boss talked to me about how to avoid getting burned out and shared a story about a time she realized she was. At the time, I was firmly in the denial phase about my stress load, so I mentally filed her guidance under “Truly helpful for the distant future” and stacked “Reasons I’m completely fine” on top despite my overwhelming to do list, weekly chest tightening spasms and most-likely-related health issues/sudden onset of allergies.

See, I’ve always been super self-motivated – working hard, getting (over) involved and looking for leadership positions are activities I actually do enjoy just for me, not for a resume or to fulfill someone else’s idea of ‘success’. But I’m realizing what helped all those commitments and responsibilities seem more manageable was the fact that they all had a definitive end date: assignment deadline, event date, summer, graduation…the exhausting thing about ‘real life’ work (and life) commitments and responsibilities is the recent revelation that there really is no set end date. I will one day hopefully, finally complete fall planning only to realize I’m already woefully behind on 2014’s marketing strategy.

I’ve read this relearning of stress management is normal for us young professionals. In the grand scheme of things, we’re still relatively new at navigating this whole career, work-life balance thing. We’re figuring out what we’re good at and where we fit in the working world, whether that is finding a career path, company or something to pay the monthly car payment.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of taking off for world travels/volunteering or even just up and moving somewhere new…but I can’t help but value my career, job security and financial stability a little bit more when I reach the “Complete Purchase” button on my itinerary. Even though it looks like I won’t be taking off for a foreign country for an extended amount of time or having a spare day until mid-September to even think about taking a vacation, I clearly need to find some way to dial-back a notch in my day-to-day.

A Huffington Post article shared tips from thought leaders for maximizing your twenties, including this one: “Burnout is not a badge of honor. Don’t try to do it all, focus on the 5% you’re great at and delegate the rest!”

So this week I’m embracing delegation along with some old-fashioned hard work in the hopes that my typed, two-page to do list (unfortunately not a exaggeration) can make its way down to a much more manageable one.

…In the meantime, you can also find me surfing ZapTravel.com in the hopes of landing an affordable getaway.

Keeping up with the times

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

time time is now quoteWhile some blogging days I like to just sit down and see what comes out, I can’t deny the fact that ultimately, I’m a planner at heart. So all week long I’ve planned to rant reflect about how absurdly fast this past month disappeared and look ahead to the current one. It’s a testament to just how fast last month really did go by in that I didn’t even realize until just now that my to do list has read all week: “Saturday: July Beginning blog post.”

…Yeah.

Given my apparent obliviousness to the entire month of July, I decided to explore this phenomenon a little further, which a Brain Pickings article deems ‘mind time.’ Titled Why time slows down when we’re afraid, speeds up as we age, and gets warped on vacation, the article presents some interesting theories for our perception and memory of time.

When I was eight, for example, I remember long summer and weekend days spent building houses in the woods behind my best friend’s house, scavenging for cool sticks and empty bottles to ‘decorate’ our houses, being quite sure we were the very first to discover a creek there, feeling so dangerous for secretly swimming in it…and yes, this PG definition of ‘dangerous’ did persist throughout much of my life to probably my parents’ relief, but that’s a different blog post.

The article points out that the reason days seemed so long when I was eight is because at that point, that year was a whopping 1/8 of my entire life. Now my years make up comparatively less and less of my entire life, making them feel shorter and faster with every passing day, month and year.

For me, all this does is emphasize how important it really is to be making the most of every moment I can…and it’s probably a little hard to be practicing living in the present if I don’t even know when that is. August is bringing plenty of notable things my way, too:

My first pizza in four months. My homemade (ish) attempt at a gluten-free, vegan pizza to be exact.

A housewarming party! I love hosting all my favorite people under one roof, so in addition to being a great incentive to finish all our DIY projects and stock our bar cart, enjoying the place with friends and family will be the final touch to really making our house a home.

New ‘neighbors’. The aforementioned best friend and I have maintained a long distance friendship since I was nine years old. She just accepted a job in the DFW area, though, so we will finally get to see what spending time together is like minus the plane ticket or multiple hour car ride.

What are you looking forward to this month?

UPDATE: I just read Lydia’s post about August’s surprising arrival…after publishing my own. Somebody needs to tell this time to slow down! Who’s with me?

Focusing on the weekend

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nice weekend

When life’s ends start feeling a little harder to keep tied together and work me is feeling extremely overloaded, I fall into a pattern of wishing away the week and pushing all my hopes for crossing off personal to do’s to the weekend. This might be a great coping mechanism for some work-life balance if I actually used my weekends to do those things…but majority of the time, my weekends look more like an exercise in laziness and procrastination to make up for all the work-related drive and productivity. Essentially, I crash.

Don’t get me wrong, my weekends start with Super Yoga Palace and include plenty of fun with as many of my favorite people as I can get, so it’s not like I’m completely useless. But those pesky life administration tasks like responding to my jury duty request and returning the Walmart goods that have been sitting in my room for over a month just don’t seem as important when I actually have time to do them. Case in point, my house.

My roommate and I came into the new place with a lot of big ideas and quite a clear vision for the welcoming, stylish place we would create. Somewhere along the way we reached a “liveable enough” stage, though, and never quite got around to some of the more ambitious projects that include making a bar cart, turning a ridiculously heavy wrought iron table top into wall decor and hemming curtains.

DIY is just not naturally in my DNA, even though I love the idea of it. But after another gratifying yoga practice followed by a delicious brunch at Sundown at Granada and seeing Girl Most Likely with my sister, I’m ready to branch out a little and turn on the focus. My reward? A long overdue housewarming party next month!

While I’m figuring out the difference between flat and satin paint, I highly encourage you to watch this clip from Girl Most Likely. The movie had its pros and cons overall, but this scene alone is a strong candidate for the ‘best things I have ever seen’ list. You’re welcome.

 

Chicago, finally

~ Sarah ~ 1 Comment

I know you’ve all been doing absolutely nothing besides wait for me to post the long-promised pictures from Chicago, so I’m happy to tell you…the wait is over.

In all seriousness, I do feel badly for leading you on for so long. I also hope you do have many better things to do, but if you’re looking to escape from a particularly stressful work day or kill time waiting in line or traffic, I’m happy to oblige with the below stream of photos. (Except the traffic part. Do what I don’t and put. down. the phone.)

My week off work for the Wisconsin wedding and Chicago visit was 100% the re-energizing, fulfilling, fun, relaxing and all those other awesome adjectives that vacations are supposed to be. One major takeaway was the revelation that Madison, WI is quite the cool city with a Portland/Austin vibe: adorable painted houses, two lakes, bike-friendly, focus on local food and businesses, lots of live music and probably more. Who knew? I would completely go back, if only to participate in the (genius) Brunch & Bike event.

As for Chicago, we didn’t make it to a Cubs game, but we did do everything else I hoped for and more including a sunset architecture boat tour through the city, Second City improv show, Hot Doug’s for a real Chicago hot dog, drinking coffee and checking out record shops and bookstores through Wicker Park / Bucktown (the “hipster” neighborhoods, can’t you tell?), a leisurely walk through Lincoln Park and the beach and rooftop swims at our downtown place.

I also found my favorite place in all of Chicago, a cafe called Fabcakes where I enjoyed the most delicious lavendar latte and vegan and gluten-free oatmeal cookies. It wasn’t until after making insta-friends with the lovely people behind the counter and going back for seconds that I saw it – the neighboring restaurant’s hugely printed name next to the cafe’s shaded outdoor patio, “Prosecco.” If that’s not a sign of perfection, I don’t know what is.

school grounds coffee WIwisconsin flowerswisconsin school grounds coffeemadison sourdough bakerymadison sourdough bakery breadWicker Park Bucktown ChicagoView from our downtown Chicago apartmentDowntown Chicago BuildingsLake Street Chicago RiverChicago River architecture boat tourChicago architecture boat tourChicago Skyline at NightSprinkles ATM Chicago - My first dessert of 2013!Chicago BeanWrigley Field and Chicago CubsFabcakes Chicago PatioProsecco Chicago RestaurantChicago Beach and BikesChicago - Lake Michigan

These are my confessions

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

facing fear quote

Are you hearing Usher in your head now, too? You’re welcome.

Anyways, I’m only the prologue + 20 pages deep into The Power of Habit, but so far the book’s anecdotes about how the brain works are fascinating. The author is pretty authoritative (unintended but interesting word connection there) about how with proper understanding, we can actually take control over our “bad’ habits, cravings and compulsions and rewrite them with “good” ones.

This seems like a rather lofty claim, but I’m definitely willing to see where this goes since my good habits could use a little more help in the actually being habitual department. My bad habits on the other hand are much more frequent house-guests, and I’m starting to get a little tired of their prolonged visits. I am chronically late. I (mostly) accidentally interrupt people. I forget painfully obvious, everyday things like filling up my gas tank (despite seeing the warning light) and returning Redbox rentals. I eat tortilla chips until I literally feel sick.

And then there are all the other ones far too embarrassing for public sharing, although the frightening possibility that someone will one day see all these private, bad habits firsthand grows increasingly real with every single summer weekend, as my boyfriend and I attend yet another wedding. Something about looking at these completely unique yet equally happy couples makes the whole (future) idea of marriage just a little more tangible as a real (future) option….in the future. But it’s not all romantic self-reflection. It’s a scary thing, being known. What if it’s embarrassing? What if that person doesn’t like some things about me? Heck even writing this blog is scary because people I actually know are starting to read it, and I have more than one self-inflicted scar from my teenage Xanga days.

This fear has led to more than one completely irrational overreaction in the form of fierce independence:

Caring Boyfriend, as I sass a digital kiosk for my own technical difficulties: “You seem frustrated.”

Me: “Don’t tell me how to feel, I am a perfectly capable adult who can manage my own emotions!!”

Oh yeah, that happened. (Note to self: the quickest way to not sound like an adult is to snottily assert I am one.)

Lydia’s recent post talked about embracing the scariness of change, and I for one am inspired. I’ll be over here embracing the scariness one self-deprecating story at a time, along with some change, too, if The Power of Habit is right. One can only hope this will happen before I’m caught in a dark kitchen with the freezer open and licking ice cream off my hands, right out of the carton.

Yup, that happened, too.

Word of the day: cozy

~ Sarah ~ Leave a comment

pug in the rain cozy stylish blankets cozy sweater allergy free gluten free vegan blondie recipe friends and teaThe combination of rain and Monday equals late starts, lethal traffic and even later arrivals. Add the mountain of catch-up-from-vacation work I still have in front of me with a dash of lethargy from too much fun and food (obviously I lead quite the deprived life), and you have a recipe for seemingly insurmountable odds and the kind of insufferable self-pity that can only be had by someone (me) who really doesn’t actually have a whole lot to complain about in the grand scheme of things.

But some days, I think it’s okay to acknowledge when the world feels like it’s winning more than usual and you just need a piece or five of chocolate already.

I promise Chicago pictures are on their way…In the meantime, I’m going with a favorite mood-boosting tactic of mine – visualizing my perfect day right now a la the images above. How would you like to be spending your Monday?

 

Fun, sun and fourth

~ Sarah ~ 2 Comments

fourth of july sparklersfourth of july recipesred white and blue pool partyfourth of july style

Happy Fourth of July!

While I’m fully aware that next to no one is online and blog-reading today, I couldn’t help but share a little of the day with you all before I set out for an afternoon of pool-side and rooftop celebrations, followed by a wedding at an idyllic-sounding bed & breakfast in Wisconsin and a couple days reveling in the joys of tall buildings and public transportation in Chicago. I started 2013 with the commitment to finally get myself up to Chicago, which is also around the time I decided to cut out added sugar / desserts for a multitude of health / lifestyle reasons I’ve talked about before. Next week not only will I be able to cross Chicago of my resolutions list, but I will also be treating myself to my first real dessert (fruit doesn’t count) of 2013…a Sprinkles cupcake, naturally, circa their cupcake ATM.

It’s a big week.

But for right now, I’m just soaking up all things Fourth of July. The combination of the sunny outdoors, pools, friends, hot dogs and fireworks makes this holiday pretty much unbeatable in my mind. Like everyone probably does with their favorite holiday, I hype it up a lot, but it really never disappoints.

My new royal blue sundress? Drying.

Beer and prosecco? Chilling.

Now if I could just get my hands on some sparklers, I’d say this day is complete. Have a great holiday, everybody!