Author: iampotassium

Is Fall here yet?

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Hey! I hope you all had great weekends! In honor of the holiday weekend, I think I will be posting on Tuesday and Thursday this week instead of my usual MWF posts (maybe you’ll get a Friday post too… who knows). Anyway, today has some pictures from this weekend. On Saturday, Cobalt and I went up into the mountains to see if fall had arrived yet (yeahhhh… we’re getting a little tired of the hot Colorado summer days). We were checking out the aspen trees to see if they’d turned the gorgeous shade of yellow they turn in the fall. The results: sommmmeeeee aspen trees turned…

Bottom picture: on our journey, we found this random Ford hubcap so I decided to take some cool grungy shots too. :D

Anyway, Cobalt and I had a very productive weekend. Our apartment is starting to look like a real apartment! Yay!!!! Did you guys do anything fun?!

Run Ralphie, Run!

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Woooo this is shaping up to be an epic weekend here in Boulder. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our football season at the University of Colorado when we play the annual game against our rivals, Colorado State University. During half time for our home football games, our mascot Ralphie the buffalo, gets to run around on the football field! This picture is from Tuesday when my friend A and I took a break from science to watch them practice on the soccer field by our new science building.

Then on Sunday, President Obama will be back to visit the school as part of his campaigning tour (wooooo CO is a swing state!). Craziness. Too bad Cobalt and I will be working when they hand out the tickets… Though I did get to see him when he was at our school in April of this year…

Also, today A has her oral qualifying exam (scary 2 hour test where three professors ask you tons of questions to make sure you know the biochemistry and chemistry required to adequately do your PhD project. If you pass, you get to become an official PhD candidate) so wish her luck! I think she will do great! Go A!!! :)

I find the name ‘fascinator’ fascinating…

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It’s been almost a month sine we got married. How crazy is that?! Our apartment is still a total disaster though. Maybe this weekend we can finally get things together.

Anyway, for today’s post, I am going to talk about my veil/fascinator that my awesome friend The Chocolate Pudding made for me. I think it was about a year ago, TCP and I were looking at all the crafts at the Taste of Colorado festival and we found a booth dedicated to tiny hats with veils on them. We liked them but I knew I wanted some sort of birdcage veil/fascinator thingy for my wedding. TCP said she could try to make one for me and thus began our quest to make the best veil/fascinator ever!

In May, I got various types of fun French netting and a comb from Britex Fabrics in San Francisco. Then I ordered some pretty anenome flower clips off of Etsy to go with the netting. Due to life craziness, it wasn’t until the Tuesday before the T and I left to go to CA for the wedding that TCP and I had time to meet up and work on the concept of what the veil would look like. That is what that top picture is from (and yes… we were working on my veil/fascinator in a bookstore… points if you can guess the bookstore…)!

Fast forward to two days before the wedding. After the bachelorette/hen party, TCP brought over the almost finished veil/fascinator and I had a prewedding panic attack. The veil/fascinator looked great but I was freaking out so much that I wouldn’t like it that I couldn’t even decide if I liked it. TCP told me that she was just going to finish it and then I could decide on the wedding day whether or not I wanted to wear it.

Fast forward to the wedding day, I got to see the finished product and I fell in love with it. Originally, I was planning to keep the veil/fascinator on for the ceremony and pictures and then take it out and leave the flower clips in for the reception but I loved it too much to part with it… Yay! Thanks TCP for making pretty much the best veil/fascinator ever and thanks for putting up with a crazed Potassium while you did it. :)

And finally, a picture that I stole from my friend T from the reception (Thanks T…)

One more thing. My super awesome grad school friend PV is getting married this weekend to the lovely PD. So excited for you guys!!!! :)

And now the typical Q and A time. What did you do for your veil (if you are married)? Would you have a veil (if you’re not)? Tell me your thoughts on veils… Or tell me something different. Whatever you feel like doing is fine with me. :)

Green chiles are delicious

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Attempting to make chile rellanos last week. This was our first one and it is a little messy but it was still delicious… Don’t judge that cheesey fried chile goodness until you try it!

So it’s green chile season here in the southwest (I know Colorado isn’t very southwestern but you can still buy fresh Hatch green chiles here so it gets to be part of the southwest for the sake of this post) and all the stores are selling fresh Hatch green chiles (some of them will even roast the chiles for you!). Cobalt and I are ridiculously green chile starved most of the year so this month or so when green chiles come to Colorado is pretty special to us. We pretty much eat green chiles for the whole month. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is that we tried making chile rellanos on the other night and they turned out pretty tasty. Yay!

Speaking of the southwest, Cobalt and I ventured down to New Mexico this weekend for a baby shower for a good friend and to see his family (and friends who didn’t get to come to our wedding). It was a very short trip but it was nice none the less. My new mother in law and I spent a good few hours watching a bunch of Friends episodes. Awesome. :)

Finally, today marks the official first day of my fifth year of grad school. Whew… We’re gettin’ up there! Still all that remains is for me to get some results to write my thesis about (and maybe publish some papers along the way… you know how these things go…). Everyone please think some awesome thoughts that my research works out so I can be starting to wrap things up by the end of this year! Yay science… :-/

Anyone have an epic weekend? Does anyone love green chiles as much as we do? Is there a food that’s special to the place you grew up in/a place you’ve lived?

The Book of Mormon and Tacos!

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Well on Wednesday night this week, Cobalt and I got to continue our tradition of seeing a musical every year. Last year we saw Next to Normal and two years ago, Cobalt didn’t live here yet so I saw Legally Blonde with my friend C. Legally Blonde is very silly and Next to Normal is very serious so if we continued with this pattern, the musical this year needed to be a funny one. So we went to see Book of Mormon. We were apparently quite lucky to get tickets because it is only here for two weeks and it sold out in a few hours. Luckily for us, back in March I got the e-mail from the Denver Center for Performing Arts saying that the tickets for the Book of Mormon were on sale and Cobalt and I were able to maneuver through the epically slow and overpopulated website and get tickets! Yay!
We started out our evening in Denver by meeting up with our friends J and K for tacos at Pinche Tacos. This restaurant sells ritzy street tacos, which I’ll admit is a bit odd for someone like me who grew up eating actual Mexican street tacos. They were very good though and it was kind of like sushi happy hour where you get a list of all the possible tacos and their various prices (ranging from $2.95 to $4.50 each) and you just check off the ones you want. Cobalt and I each tried four different tacos. Yum. Here’s a picture of our awesome friends pre tacos…

Then we headed to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts for the show. We got there pretty much in time to find our seats before the show but I snapped a few pictures first….

When we bought our tickets, we were in such a rush to actually get tickets that we settled for the ones in the balcony. We had never sat there before but it was kind of neat. You are waaaaaay up in the rafters and your seats are so high off the floor of the balcony that there is a little bar for you to put your feet on – it got a bit uncomfortable in my fancy wedge sandals though… I wish I had worn flats. Anyway, the show! It was funny but also terrible in that South Park kind of way that I am sure many of you are familiar with. Sitting in the balcony, we had a great view of the stage which made it awesome to watch all the dance numbers. The songs were very typical Broadway type songs… except there was more than once where the F bomb was dropped in the middle of some happy musical number… which was kind of startling at first even though we expected it. All in all, I think it made for a very amusing evening and I am glad we got to go. :)

Anyone have a favorite musical? I think my favorite is Wicked… or the Phantom of the Opera (my first musical ever…). Or a recommendation for next year’s “serious” musical? OR Anyone doing something amazing this weekend? :D

Nine Lies and a Truth -or- Fortune Cookies and other Fun Wedding Stuff

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Lots of fun in this post. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. First, the fortunes. So in case you are just tuning in to the “Recap of Potassium and Cobalt’s Wedding” Series, let me remind you that for our wedding, we made felt fortune cookies as our favors (pattern is here). The fortune cookies were prominantly featured on the blog mostly because Cobalt and I couldn’t decide what to put on the fortunes. We actually figured out the back first (It said: “Lucky numbers: 8 4 12”) and then finally, one day while visiting Cobalt’s family, we cranked out 10 possible fortunes: facts about Cobalt and me. Nine of them are complete lies and one of them is a very silly truth. Cobalt typed them all up to make them actually look like fortunes (he picked an amazing font and they printed out really great) and then Cobalt and the T stuffed each fortune cookie with one of the fortunes before the T and I set off to CA. All this work was put in…. and then we forgot to put the fortunes out for our guests…….

I think what actually happened was that it was a bit windy when the caterers were setting up the tables so they didn’t want to put the fortunes out and have them all blow away. In the end, it was Cobalt and me running around during the dancing part of the reception handing out fortunes (it was kind of funny…) and we ended up with a lot left (as you can see from that picture). Anyway, I am sure you are all interested in reading the fortune options (even if you received your very own fortune cookie at our wedding!) so without further ado, here they are:

9 lies and a truth

  • While living in Albuquerque, Potassium & Cobalt were featured in “Breaking Bad.” They were in plain sight.
  • To recreate the day they met, Potassium & Cobalt are honeymooning in the belly of a whale.
  • Potassium was impressed with Cobalt’s uncanny ability to sing like a capaberra.
  • Cobalt was impressed with Potassium’s uncanny ability to crochet 50 chickens in an hour.
  • Cobalt and Potassium are secret agents. They appreciate your discretion.
  • Cobalt and Potassium have a pet dinosaur named ‘Sinatra.’ ‘Dino” was already taken.
  • Potassium and Cobalt accidentally spilled yogurt on President Obama when he last visited Boulder.
  • Potassium and Cobalt once went to Amarillo, TX just to try on big hats.
  • The understudy for the groom is Nathan Fillion. If you see him, let us know.
  • The understudy for the bride is Amy Adams. You won’t see her. She is hidden.

Switching gears a little bit. I thought I could also talk briefly about my bridesmaids’ gifts. I got them each a necklace/earring set and… a stuffed Shark Banana. The shark bananas were a huuuuuge hit and all five of them plus mine showed up for the wedding (without any of us discussing this idea). We took some pictures of us pre ceremony and then our photographer found out and went to town with it. “Okay… have your banana shark kiss Potassium… okay make your banana shark a mustache… OHHHHHHH I SAW THAT! You dropped your banana shark on the ground! I am going to have to call BSPS – banana shark protection services…” It was a shark banana/bridesmaid/bride extravaganza. Can’t wait to see those pictures… But until then, here is a picture of all the Shark bananas in the bridal suite before the wedding started… :)

What is your favorite fortune? Any other requests for wedding Wednesday posts? I am kind of running out of topics…

K and Co necklaces!

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Probably some of the neatest gifts we received for our wedding actually had something to do with this blog. Two separate people thought we would like some K and Co jewelry! So you can see on the top we have his and hers Co and K necklaces and then on the bottom is one necklace with both K and Co on it. You guys are awesome! Makes me think you all enjoy reading this little blog and that makes me (and Cobalt!) feel pretty darn special. :)

In other news, Cobalt and I were pretty lazy this weekend. I had a crochet party with my friend J at the Boulder Farmer’s Market. We started making ewoks! For some reason mine is turning out a lot smaller than hers even though we used the same hooks, yarn, and pattern… :-/ I will have to post pictures when mine is done. Cobalt and I also caught up on our (always growing) list of movies to see in the theater. My favorite of the weekend was Beasts of the Southern Wild which is sad but also kind of amazing. I highly recommend it. The music is really good if you’re a music nerd like me. :) I think that’s all. Anyone do anything epic this weekend?

Kind of the best wedding cakes ever…

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But of course I’m biased…

So back in January, we met with our wonderful cake lady to talk about what we wanted on our wedding cake. She showed us the album of all the other cakes she’s made and then we sat down to get to work. The conversation went kind of like this:

A (our cake lady): “What are you guys thinking?”

Cobalt and me: “So… we have this cake topper of a skeleton bride and groom and also we really like sharks… what can we do with that?”

About a half an hour later the three of us had designed that super amazing cake up there: a shark bringing a skeleton bride and groom to the beach. We loved it and she loved it. She was already planning on how to make the beach look beachy – with seashells and seaweed. Also everything on this cake (minus the cake topper of course) is completely edible – from the sand to the shark’s teeth… Makes me happy to look at it. Also, it was delicious. The shark was chocolate (his fins are graham crackers) and the beach was lemon with raspberry filling (with real raspberries!!!). Plus she made us another shark cake to save for our anniversary (and it survived the trip back to CO!). Yum.

Speaking of awesome cakes, I also want to show you the amazing groom’s cake Cobalt’s mom made! It’s a red velvet armadillo cake (Steel Magnolias anyone?) and the armadillo is a ghostbuster (Cobalt’s favorite movie of all times). We loved it! Cobalt’s mom did such a good job on it… This cake went pretty fast too… I didn’t even get to try it. :(

Thanks to our friends K and J for taking these respective pictures (I’ve totally been stealing all of them because I didn’t have my own camera… seeing the cakes is what made me miss my camera most the whole day…)!

Also, don’t forget to tell me if there is anything in particular you want to hear about now that the wedding is over. I’m making a list of post topics. I know that people want to hear about the fortunes so don’t worry, that’s coming soon to a post near you! (Also we ended up with a lot of extra fortune cookies/fortunes so if you can’t wait for the post maybe you can get a fortune in the mail…)

Finally!
Tell me about your wedding cake! What did you have on it? Was it something you designed yourself or did you see it and just fall in love? If you’re not married, tell me what you would want on your wedding cake. :)

Geez with all this talk about cakes now I am hungry………

The App Wars!

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Today’s post is about a cool photography contest I heard about. Do you use Instagram (free!) or Hipstamatic ($1.99) on your smart phone? Then you can enter this contest!
It’s called The App Wars. Basically, you enter your favorite Instagram or Hipstamatic picture(s) to the App Wars website for $5 a picture. Then you are entered into a competition to win $1000! Both a Hipstamatic and an Instagram photo will win the grand prize. Plus the top 100 pictures from each app will be on display in a gallery in San Diego and all pictures submitted will be available in a book! The idea behind it is to promote cell phone photos as a form of art, which I think some of my regular photography readers would agree with. :)

I am super excited about this contest because I like playing with Instagram. When I wasn’t driving on our way back to Colorado last week, I was practicing taking epic Instagram pictures! Exciting… I like that it looks like the side mirror is on fire thanks to the sun’s reflection in this picture. :)