Jay Leathergoods

I had the honor of setting up a booth of my leathergoods a few weeks ago. I was in a space with about 15 other makers, free wine and appetizers, and lots of lovely people. It was the first time I've shown off my stuff so I was super excited. Also extraordinarily nervous. I wore the apron my mom made me with pockets to stow money and ordered a credit card payment method, but had no idea if anyone would buy anything. Mostly I was excited to see what people thought and to have a reason to finish all my projects.

The night though went SUPER well! I had lots of customers, coworkers came down, friends came down and took me to drinks after to celebrate. There were tons of people milling about and they said such kind things about my work. It was so cool to see them showing off what they'd bought to other people as the night went on and hearing their comments. I couldn't have asked for it to go better.

Lots of people have asked if I sell online, I haven't quite gotten that fancy yet. I do however have an Instagram @jayleathergoods and an email jayleathergoods@gmail.com that I accept orders through!

Plus my friend's shop, Urban Earth, sells a small selection of my creations :)

6th Annual Campsgiving

We embarked on our 6th Campsgiving trip this year! I think this is our favorite tradition. This year we headed to Colorado. We flew into Denver and grabbed a car to head to Golden Gate Canyon State park where we had a cozy cabin waiting for us. We were afraid of the temperature being super low like it was a few years ago, when we froze in a yurt, but it turned out to be high 60's the whole time we were there!

Thanksgiving morning we headed out to a little 4 mile hike. We couldn't fly with our snowshoes, too big, but we did bring our spikes. They made it super easy to ascend the hill and the snow was low so it worked out perfectly. We wandered around the Estes park hike for a few hours, took in some sweeping views until the sun started to fade.

Headed back to our cabin to start the Thanksgiving feast. I accidentally got sweet potatoes instead of red potatoes but they still mashed up into a delicious mashed potato. We had smoked turkey with gravy, roasted garlic mashed sweet potatoes, sausage stuffing, and roasted Brussel sprouts with leeks. The trick is to get it all done at the same time and the fact that we're doing it over a fire makes it a little stressful but we did pretty good this year. It was all super tasty and we had enough left for a sausage stuffing leftover dinner the next night, our favorite part.

because I love looking back
campsgiving 5
campsgiving 4
campsgiving 3
campsgiving 2
campsgiving 1

Friend Visit!!!

One of my childhood friends, as in our parents were friends in college and we've gone on a week long camping vacation almost every year together, came up from California to visit this past weekend. It was so much fun, we met some of his other friends that also live in Seattle now to so it turned out to be a really great weekend, even if I was the only girl. They are all engineer-ish types so Joshua fit in fine, every once in a while I said something intelligent, the rest of the time not so much.

It was so good to see Brian and to get to hang out with someone that knows me so well and doesn't judge me for being who I am, it something only knowing someone or growing up with someone can do sometimes and it was really refreshing and relaxing. Also I'd like to say that I beat him at Settlers of Catan :)

We went to a bar with an arcade and then to a carnival game place down on the pier and went to dinner where they dumped large bowls full of seafood onto your tablecloth. They gave everyone a bib and a wood mallet and just pretty much said have at it. If you know me at all this is not something I handle well, all the seafood and animal parts just laying about. But I tried a tiny bit of the crab and got through it pretty well. When I was getting grossed out I just played with the tatoos I won from the carnival. At one point it led to me tatooing bread, so now you know that's possible, yay!

On Sunday we took Brian and a friend, Sudeep, hiking I'll post those photos next!

Ballet Class

I danced when I was little (like grade school little) but in middle school I was told I had to choose between dance and soccer. I was a very big tomboy and obviously chose soccer. But I've still always loved dance. I've always wanted to go back. I started talking to Joshua about it and he encouraged me to find a way to do it. Lo and behold I found an adult only ballet studio 4 blocks from our apartment AND they were reasonably priced. So I signed up! Now I have 8 weeks of very beginning ballet (haha aka I know nothing class)

I've been to 3 so far and I LOVE IT! It is so fun! There is a live pianist!!!, wood floors, ballet bars, mirrors and I bought a pair of ballet slippers (did you know you have to sew the elastic on yourself?!)
My teacher is really great, she uses all the french words and really kicks our butts with holding out poses and keeping them until she corrects everyone. It has turned out to be a really good workout and something that I've come to treasure every week.

Hubs just keeps calling me his Ballerina Wife and asking me to show him things I've learned. He always starts laughing though because he says I have the most giddy smile on my face everytime I show him things.
I'm so happy he pushed me to do it! Being married has really shown us that we also need our own activities. If I could I think I'd call in sick every day to spend all my time with him but in reality that's probably not healthy, since we've both started adding in things where I do things with a friend everyother week, he plays online with his friends every Tues, I have ballet Wed, etc it has really made it more fun to come back together and get to tell each other about our experiences and show each other new things. For the first year we were kind of sad every time we had to do something apart but now we are learning it can bring us closer too.

Plus that means every wednesday hubs is in charge of dinner. And boy does he impress-

portabello mushroom & pepper fajitas and sparkling juice :)

Peach Cupcakes & Apples to Apples

Josh and I went to a small group BBQ on Wednesday and it was such an answered prayer. We met a bunch of young married post college couples.

#1 they loved my cupcakes (which means I already liked them)
#2 I mentioned Josh and I liked to ride bikes and one girl (with gusto and excitement that I normally use for things that scares people) yelled WE RIDE BIKES TOO. (which I loved) So we even found active bike friends
#3 One of the girls said she was surprised Josh isn't awkward since he's an engineer- I gave him up and said that he was but that he also thought it was funny to be awkward just to watch people squirm. Then another guy said he liked to do that too and then proved it further along in the night.
#4 They all gave us their phone numbers without us asking, one girl even said if we do something fun to invite her and she'll come (so I'm taking that as she means she'll actually hang out with us :)
#5 We could laugh and joke with people that got us, made fun of us, and some live near the best gelato place that Josh and I bike to a lot so we can call them when we go and have friends.

So I didn't say what the list was - sorry- I think it was just me being so excited to have met some really great active our-aged people in Seattle and that was just some of the great parts of the night.
Josh and I have really been struggling with how we make friends here and how to make sure that we don't attack new people we meet with the sole intention of wanting them to like us so they'll be our friends. We've prayed about it a lot together and last night God just threw an amazing blessing at us. We're so so thankful. I know He can be subtle and wait but it is really nice sometimes when He just throws it at you. And I really hope that we stay conscious of that.
We were walking to our door and Josh started to talk and then stopped because someone passed us-  I asked what? He replied am going to exurte my excitement by dancing but I want him to pass first (funny hubs)
O and we were invited back!
So thank you for your prayers for us and I just wanted to share this because sometimes it feels hard and like you're pretty alone and we were starting to feel really down about finding a support system out here and how to connect without just wanting something but instead by sharing ourselves with others.
I apologize I know this is a little scattered but it follows how our thought process haha.

We're thinking of and missing you all. Happy 3 day weekend planning!

Josh teases me that this is turning into a food blog, 

but my peach cupcakes just made us friends 

(I'm joking!) 
 but seriously they were good- Peach Cupcake with brown sugar frosting recipe- didn't love her frosting with the cream cheese didn't suit them well enough. I'd make a regular brown sugar frosting next time. I like cupcakes where the icing just suites the cake not decides it wants to compete, but maybe that's just me.