i can't stop this story

Partly because I want to be just like Elsie Larson at A Beautiful Mess and partly because I enjoy scavenging for items on the cheap, we do a lot of DIY ‘round these parts. Home decor, art, recipes - boom. I’m down with that. The initial itch begins when I stumble upon a super-cute website run by a ridiculously crafty person (who also happens to be a semi-professional photographer). The seed gets planted deep within my brain’s Adorablus Maximus Cortex and I start to obsess. I think about how ‘even I could do that,’ and scheme for ways to get Devin involved. His handyman skillz come in, well, handy. We gather materials, which often includes trips to thrift stores and / or roadside stops. In the end, even though we’re usually happy with the way our DIY projects turn out, it’s always trickier than what was alluded to on the original site. Either a step is left out or not fully explained, the crafter had access to materials or tools that most normal people don’t or the professional-grade photos are over-flattering and not truly representative of what you’ll end up with. That’s why I’m here. The non-crafter’s crafty person, just like you. If I can do it, trust me - you can. If I can’t do it, hopefully it’ll save you the trouble and provide some laughs. Nothing is better than seeing someone’s goals and projects turn into something akin to a kindergarten macaroni project! It’ll be the normal person’s take on #CraftyTruths.

Starting off with a bang, I’ll go ahead and preface it with this: Unlike what I mentioned above - where sometimes it’s the original post that leads you down the wrong path - this one was all me. This should give you a pretty clear picture of my base level of craftiness.

Homemade peanut butter dog biscuits. Right? Yum. This has to be, by far, the easiest recipe - for dog OR human - I’ve ever made. My final product didn’t look quite as appetizing as the photos I typically see of homemade dog treats (see below), but most of the issues I ran into were my own fault. On another note, I like knowing exactly what went into them - no shady by-products or ingredients with 20+ letters. 

 

I think I could get there though. I’d love to get a dog bone cookie cutter and try another, more diverse recipe next time. Like this one from Jun Blog.

Here’s the recipe I followed from Dog Treat Kitchen:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup peanut butter, chunky or smooth
• 1 1/4 cups hot water

Recommended equipment:

• Stand mixer
• Cookie sheets
• Cooling rack

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350° F.
• Mix dry ingredients together.
• Mix in the peanut butter and hot water. You may need to add more flour if the dough is too sticky.
• Knead the dough well.
• Roll out the dough into 1/4” thickness and cut into shapes with dog cookie cutters.
• Note - This recipe doesn’t call for it, but I put an egg wash (one egg whisked with a fork and then brushed on with a pastry brush) on the treats before I baked them. It gives them a nice sheen once they’re baked. Here’s how they look before baking.
• Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet for 40 minutes. Turn off the oven and let them cool overnight.
• If you and your dog can’t wait that long, cool them completely on a wire rack before serving.
• After: The cookies get very hard, just the way dogs like them!

One cool thing about this recipe: I had everything it called for on hand. Just a few common ingredients are needed. If you ever do any general, human-type baking, chances are you will have everything you need, too. Plus, you can add in basically anything that’d be good for your pup. Our favorite pet food guy, Jeffery at The Feed Bag here in Seattle, suggested we add in egg white, quinoa and flax in our next batch. 

At this point, things are still going quite well. See how pretty the oats and flour look together?! The recipe says to mix the ingredients and then flatten the dough, rolling pin style. Unfortunately, I don’t have any cookie cutters, so instead I rolled little balls (traditional-like). 

 

That seemed like an easy alternative option. That’s what I thought before I fully realized the consistency of the dough. Utterly paste-like. Thick, gooey and wet. It was like quicksand, really. 

 

At one point, so much of the dough was sticking to my hands that I physically couldn’t roll it into balls. I used my mixing spoon to gloop the contents from my hands and start over. 

 

My last big mistake, I wanted these little fellas to look like actual peanut butter cookies. I forgot to make the cross hatch fork marks in the dough BEFORE baking (doh!), so I tried to do them as soon as they came out of the oven. That ended up not going well, and the peanut butter cookie aesthetic didn’t really work out for me. Come to think of it, with the consistency of the dough, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to do the cross hatch marks before baking.

Final product?! They looked an awful lot like crunchy peanut butter no bake cookies. This is definitely something I could do again, and do much better. But, at the end of the day, with a simple and tasty list of doggie-approved ingredients - it’s really hard to mess up. Jersey and Diego definitely didn’t seem to mind. Non-crafters, fear not, you can definitely do this.

Walking / Transportation
Dallas-Fort Worth is spread out, with a total area of 9,286 square miles covering 12 counties. Dallas proper has a total area of nearly 400 land-locked square miles. The city of Seattle has a total area of 184.5 square miles, and 83.9 miles (or over 41%) of that area is made up of water.

That said, a lot of people near downtown Seattle judge distance by how many blocks away something is or how many minutes it’ll take to walk there. When we first moved, it was a tad mind-blowing to us that no one described distance by how many miles away or how long it would take (by car) to get there. 

From First Hill (our neighborhood), there are 3 restaurants / bars within 4 blocks - it takes 10 minutes or less to walk to any of them. Back home in North Texas, there is no walking to a bar. Or, at least, that was my experience (although I never lived in downtown Dallas). Our favorite local bar in the Dallas area was the Flying Saucer in Addison, which was 20-30 miles from our place in Denton. 58% of Seattle residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above, while only 12% of Dallas residents have a Walk Score of 70 or above. First Hill has a walk score of 94%. The negative with having such a rockin’ walk score is that there are always a ton of places you could go and spend money… making it easier to spend more than you really should.

Ah, and cars. If you don’t have a car in North Texas, it means you probably don’t have enough money to own and/or maintain a car. There’s a certain stigma to it. In Seattle, you’re smarter than everyone else if you can manage not to burden yourself with a car. They’re a pain to keep in the city (see parking below), they’re expensive, and more times than not, walking or riding a bus will get you where you want to go faster.

Lastly, parking is a luxury not a right in Seattle: not all apartments come with designated off-street parking for their residents (including ours). If that option is available, apartment complexes usually charge their own residents an additional $100-$200 per month for a spot in the parking garage that’s beneath their feet. I lived in a handful of apartments in Texas, and every one came with a designated, usually covered, always FREE parking spot. It’s ‘cause there’s so much space in Texas!



 

So, I’ve been working on this post on-and-off, here-and-there since June! I’m still not quite finished, but I’ve decided to break it into several smaller posts (instead of one monster post). So, June. June. It was a big month, signifying many anniversaries and milestones. 

+6/6/11 was our one year anniversary as a married couple
+6/18/11 marked our first full year as Seattle residents
+6/23/11 was my one year anniversary as a full-time employee at my job

I remember pulling into Seattle in June 2010; Devin and I had been married for shy two weeks, we’d spent 4 full days on the road - traveling through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen (I’m taking to you, Utah & Wyoming). We were crammed into the cab of a truck with our two 60 lb. dogs and everything we owned, praying that the money we’d received from our wedding guests would buy us enough gas to land in Seattle (it did, THANK YOU ALL!). 

And after all that driving, we finally made it. We have a 23 second clip filed away - of the day we arrived in Seattle, put the keys in the door of our apartment for the first time. We’d rented it sight unseen, only viewing website photos and doing many, many “street views” on Google Maps. It was our first glimpse into our new lives as Seattleites. About 5 minutes after the video was taken, I was in tears, calling my mom and telling her I was almost 100% sure our apartment was leaning. Turns out, it is leaning because we’re on a mega-hill, but once our stuff was unpacked, it did start feeling like home.

You can watch that video clip here.

In the last year, we’ve learned a lot about this city, this city we love very much. We’ve also observed some differences between Seattle and Dallas / Texas - socially, culturally and otherwise. I thought it’d be fun to recap some of those.

So, here we go — Enjoy!

#1) Hospitality / “Seattle Freeze”
Sweet, sweet Southern Hospitality. It’s true that Texans are more accommodating, helpful and are, in general, more welcoming than people in Seattle. In Texas, it’s not uncommon to say hi or strike up a conversation with a stranger. After 5 minutes, it’s not uncommon for that ‘stranger’ to become a ‘friend’. And after 10 minutes, shoot, you’ve exchanged life stories.

Although most Seattleites are polite, it seems to be more on their terms. If it works for them, if it’s something they’d like to do … If not, you’ll know pretty quick.

Devin and I do happen across the “Seattle Freeze” on occasion- someone who doesn’t smile back, acknowledge that you’ve said hello or care to take notice of another human being in their general vicinity. It’s a phenomenon that Urban Dictionary defines as “a phrase that describes a local public consensus that states the city of Seattle and/or its outlying suburbs are generally not friendly, introverted, socially aloof, clickish or strictly divided through its social classes, thus making the city/area difficult to make social connections in on all levels”. Is it real? Fake? Imagined? The Seattle Freeze debate was just talked about this week on the SeattlePI’s “Big Seattle” blog: The Seattle Freeze: Real or all in your head?

Texans are perhaps overly nice, until you give them a reason not to be. Then they’ll put a boot in yer ass. Some (not all) Seattlelites, especially at the beginning, can be a tad stand-offish and a bit hesitant to let anyone else into their social circle. They make you work for their good graces.

BOTTOM LINE: We’ve made some incredible friends in Seattle, and overall, people here are kind. People generally become MORE friendly the longer you know them. Texans aren’t as protective of their social circles and are usually eager to meet and get to know new people. That’s kinda part of what Texans are known for, it’s our thing. ;) And I think that’s really neat.