HAPPY FRIDAY + HAPPY WEEKEND!

coming home to a clean kitchen at the end of a road trip is like finding a golden unicorn at the end of a rainbow. right??

Two-thirds of the Holbrooks are in Portland this weekend! My baby brother gets home from his mission on Tuesday, and we're all here to meet him at the airport at 9AM with a welcome home banner the size of obnoxious and, hopefully, to let the cousins bash around all over themselves all weekend and manage not to break any bones. 

The other Holbrook third has classes to teach (and chickens to feed, lol, sorry dude!), so we had to leave him at home. We miss him to oodles already.

A few things for the weekend? I mean, we may as well. 

This girl performing Eminem's Lose Yourself in ASL is amazing. Reminds me of Napoleon Dynamite, in all the best ways.

What if Harry Potter were actually a boy with a mental illness? And Hogwarts was a mental institution? I mean, this one will mess with your brain. 

TED talks that just might save your relationships.

La-loved this piece on how to spend time alone in New York.

The Puma Index. Hysterical.

Finally, my friends at ACCOMPANY just refreshed their site for the fall and it is perfectly perfect, and chock full of incredibly beautiful pieces made by women artisans all over the globe, all with an added dose of goodness + philanthropy with every purchase. I get excited every time a new boutique collection rolls out, but the Black, White, and Bold this time! The hat! The pochette! The embroidered bag!! Nailed it, nailed it, nailed it.

My sister is doing my lashes for me tomorrow so, you know, lookout world! Can't nothing stop a woman with big ass lashes. ;)

Have a good weekend! Over + out!

DON'T MISS IT, DON'T EVEN BE LATE

The county fair is always a good idea. That's just logic. I asked Huck a bit ago if he'd like to concur and help me write this post and he said no, so that's as far as this paragraph is going to get.

But I will say this! When we decided Brandon should accept his new teaching position and I was still working through how I felt about it, I did think to myself, "OMG, THE FAIRS!!!" and it perked me up quite a bit. We get two county fairs out here plus a rodeo in Lewiston that I never remember to go to, and slowly perusing award winning quilts and blue ribbon canned peaches is kind of the ultimate for me. 

Last weekend was the Latah County fair, the weekend before that was the Palouse Empire fair, and now I present unto you, a post about it! For posterity. 

Here guys. This is the Palouse Empire fair parking lot. ☟

Just so you can appreciate what we're working with here.

The Palouse Empire fair is charming as the day is long. And then there's a rodeo! It's over in Colfax, on the other side of the Idaho / Washington border. The Latah County fair is a little bit on the ickier side and maybe don't eat the corndogs, but that's what gives it its own kind of magic, if you ask me. It's in Moscow, right here in the middle of town, and it turns the whole place into crazy. Every evening the entire town shows up. The Moose bugling competition this year was epic. 

And now, pictures! 

Look at that pose! Look at those feet!!!

Death grip!!!!

Huck here is King of the Barf Rides. Oh the kid has no fear. We got him a wrist band on Saturday morning and this kid rode and rode and rode those rides till the cows came home. (No the cows stayed in their exhibit stalls.) I managed to live through exactly one ride. Just one!! I am such a wimp. Frankly it was the scariest one, too. The ferris wheel. 

He takes this very seriously.

On a scale of one to ten I'm at about a two-hundred-level scared right here. ☝︎

And then the rodeo! 

The rodeo wins. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDON!!

For you dear Beeblies, on this, your 38th birthday: 

THIRTY-EIGHT THINGS I LOVE ABOUT YOU

01 / your beautiful smile

02 / the way your eyes crinkle at the corners

03 / that you are the best father in the world to our baby

04 / the way you sings off keyyyyyy

05 / your cute little butt

06 / how responsible you are and how hard you work to take care of our family 

07 / the way you look when you're grading exams (hot!!!!)

08 / your collection of dude bracelets from college (wear one tonight?)

09 / when you and huck laugh together at cartoons in your matching donkey wheeze chuckles

10 / how kind you are to others

11 / how consistently conservative you are, you right-wing weirdo! ;)

12 / i have always loved your slanted little penmanship

13 / you write the most beautiful notes in birthday + anniversary cards - always the poet in tax attorney's clothing

14 / the way you look with huck on your shoulders. sexayyyyy

15 / how goofy you get around babies!!!

16 / your beautiful arm hair ;)

17 / your freckles! like copper rain smatters.

18 / i love it when you make dinner and it is this explosion of spices and flavors and how creative you get

19 / i love the children's stories you make up about huck

20 / i like it when you say "you're up!" at bedtime when you're finished reading to huck and huck is ready to snuggle with me (ultimate bedtime tag team)

21 / i love the way you talk with your hands, especially when you're driving

22 / i love how measured and calm and thoughtful you are, so long as things aren't hectic.

23 / i love how you freak out immediately when things get nutty, because it is the only time *i* get to be the calm and measured one, and sometimes that's fun

24 / i love the way you love our families. you are a wonderful son AND son-in-law, a great brother, a fantastic uncle, and a super solid brother-in-law

25 / i love to see how much my baby brother looks up to you

26 / i love how you drive suzy-q-two in her lower gears for maybe too long ;)

27 / i love all of the adventures you've taken me on! paris! venice! provo! lake oswego! brooklyn! idaho! brooklyn again!! idaho again!!!

28 / i love that crazy red beard

29 / and i love how handsome you look with your graying temples. cinnamon + sugar, baby

30 / i love the way you laugh, even at me :) especially at me! 

31 / i love our weird shared sense of humor. remember when we went to see napoleon dynamite in theatres and we laughed so hard we almost gave ourselves a hernia?

32 / i love the way everything you touch is so precise. that fence over on mountain view . . . your super sexy excel spreadsheets . . . 

33 / i love it when you triple check the tip after dinner

34 / and i love it that you are so generous with waiters. even really bad ones

35 / i love picturing you in high school, this super cool guy, all athletic and stuff. the coolest boy in high school married ME! what was he thinking??

36 / i love the way you take care of me and huck

37 / i love working on a second baby with you ;)

38 / i love that we have the rest of our lives to be together, to figure each other out, to get this marriage thing right, and then just when it's perfect i'll get alzheimer's and forget who you are

Taduh!! 

I'm grateful for you every stinking day, Professor Holbrook. Thanks for being born. I like this funny life we keep on bungling up together. :) 

Happy birthday, Noodles.

(With that, I officially declare Holbrook Birthday Season 2015 to be on like Donkey Kong. Hit it!)

NO, BUT AN ACTUAL REAL-LIFE FARM THIS TIME

I let myself get a little carried away with all my "farmhouse" yadda yadda yadda but the truth of it is, THIS is an actual farm. And it is a GLORY. 

A friend of ours invited us and a couple friends out to help make use of the season's garden haul at her parents' farm just south of town. Her dad is your classic Idaho wheat farmer, many many acres of dry wheat and lentils (I don't remember how many acres, but it's a lot), plus all the tractors, rigs, trucks and silos dreams are made of, oh gosh it was such a feast for the eyes, and then this little hobby garden he keeps out back, which is a funny term for it actually because this garden is BONKERS, considering it's just a hobby. The most intense thing I have ever witnessed. This year they've had a crazy good crop, and I felt so honored to get to help them thin it out. We rolled on up and were met by our friend's sister, who was out wearing overalls and a flannel shirt cutting down giant armfuls of sunflowers, it was pretty much hideously perfect. 

Hey a little bucolic eye candy for ya Tuesday? 

This is Aggie, sweetest old girl ever.  

We got enough tomatoes to can for the whole winter, plus pears for pear butter (pray for my pear butter skills, I'm not sure I have any), and giant bunches of sunflowers and dahlias and zinnias that I literally tossed haphazardly into my biggest pitchers as soon as I got home, and they just look perfect. They've been smiling at me ever since. 

These big puppies like it when you feed them cucumbers (who doesn't). 

Such attitudes on these guys! 

Spending the day in the garden like this made me think of my grandpa Dave. Oh I love my grandpa Dave. He has a garden out back in his home in Grants Pass, and wandering through it to pluck off a green been or two to snack on is always one of my favorite things to do when we visit. (And the gum carousel.) I feel like you can both see AND feel all the love he pours into that garden every day, just by looking at it, and it always reminds me that that same love has been poured into our family all these years, too. It was really sweet to think of him yesterday. 

And at the end, we had ourselves a little picnic.

Peanut butter and honey for the kids, open-faced mayo + tomato on wheat for the grownups. Just-picked basil from the back porch, heirloom tomatoes from the garden, plenty of Johnny's seasoning. Yes. 

I'm feeling lucky every day for the way things are turning out over here. New friendships made, old friendships rekindled. Life's a ride, man. And every now and then you get yourself some dang beautiful scenery. We are loving every second of it.

ps- your classic Idaho traffic jam.

GETTING BACK ON THE BIKE + OTHER THINGS OF THAT NATURE

I was telling a friend today that moving back to Idaho is like putting on an old coat. You know, you wore it once, you liked it a lot, you took it off, put it in storage . . . maybe some parts of it still fit and maybe other parts don't. You find things in the pockets, or maybe it still carries a certain smell from the last time you wore it, remnants and proofs from old lives past. Some of these things are great--who doesn't love finding a bonus tenner in their pocket that they didn't know they had!? But some are less fun to deal with and you decide to take it to the basement to give it a good go in the laundry. Spruce it up a bit, or take in the sleeves an inch.

You know, really everything in life comes back to homemaking in one way or another.

Or! Is moving back to Idaho like riding a bike? You can go for forever not doing it, but always the minute you get back on, you're pretty much convinced you're about to die immediately, just like before. ;) 

(Or is that just me?)

(Put me on a bike, I will envision my upcoming death and destruction in eight million variations.)

edit! oxfords are older madewell, these are similar! watch is fossil.

The only thing these pants need to truly never leave my body is the ability to self-clean. In NYC the kinds of mess you make on your jeans involve stepping in gutterwater up to your shin or dripping bagel schmear on your thigh on accident. These are not a daily thing; you can typically get three or four days' worth of wear before needing a wash (is that gross?). Out here I get dust marks on my hips from shutting jeep doors + brushing up against who even knows what in under two hours tops. It's dusty work, living in Idaho. We're on mud patrol. And anyway, why is my laundry room in the basement? It's cool down there (and yes I am referring to the temperature), but the narrow staircase to the bottom is positively life threatening. I am thinking here of Scarlett O'Hara. Only I am not pregnant. 

But I am carrying a laundry basket. 

Oh, did you know this was another outfit post? It is!

Preeeetty fancy!

Hey how many outfit posts a week is too many outfit posts a week?

... I'm asking for a friend.

KAMIAK BUTTE + THE MUDDY COLORS OF THE HARVEST

In June the wheat fields are green. The entire country out here is a perfect dream of rippling green waves, twinkling and glistening and glinting in the breeze. June in the Palouse is some kind of trick on the eyes. It's an emerald city every which way you turn.

And then comes August, and the wheat has turned gold, and the combines came out and the waves get razed down to nothing. The tires leave gaping tracks, blackened stubble smokes after the burn, and the gentle green waves are replaced with hill after muddy hill of browns and tans and blacks. And for just a quick minute, in the beginning of September, you have this magical week or so before the leaves on the trees turn gold to match.

It is romantic, and it is ugly, and it made for a killer hike in the rain last weekend. The drizzle (I hope) helped douse out some of the wildfires in the area. It definitely ushered in a hint of the coming cold weather. Done all my flannel be accounted for. Let's go for it, Idaho.

Kamiak Butte is about a 20 minute drive outside Pullman, and at the very tippy top of the 3 mile hike is this intensely insane view of what's left of the Palouse after the harvest, once the land has given all it's got. Empty and quiet, but still somehow beautiful. Maybe even more so.

I just think there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

My parents were there too! My mom killed it up that hike, I swear, that woman. SOMEDAY I will be able to keep up with her. Unlock my inner Stanger woman from its beast cage or whatever. Shrug emoji. 

Idaho has been a lot of good things so far, and a lot of itchy growing pains, too. Backwards growing pains? Sloughing off some of what the city added on. I like being a little more connected to the earth like this, a little more vulnerable to the rocks and rolls of everyday silly things. It's funny, even tucked away in vehicles and behind double paned windows like we are, with heaters cranking and all these layers happening, I still feel a million times more vulnerable out here than I did in the city. Idaho softens me up. And I'm not just talking about the inevitable suburb-10. ;) Whatever, bring that on too, Idaho! 

SEARS CATALOG

Huck made this adorable friend on the hike. Total Bridge to Terabithia type deal. We have since bumped into this family at the hardware store already. This small town junk. I don't know, what are you gonna do. 

And now that is the end of that. 

BOOM! Thank you, Idaho, for all this beautiful early autumn garbage. We'll take it and soak it up like there's no tomorrow. 

(Thank you also for all the falling-apart barns. I forgot how much I love those.)

Now it's really the end.