seth & jess: the blog

New Office Space

So, online courses are fine and dandy, but half the job is finding a place to sit down and and actually DO the work. With the exception of a few rainy days last week, I am loving and making good use of my current work space:

The picture doesn’t do it justice. I had to use my computer camera because I don’t know where the real camera is, but it has some happy flowers (pansies in the yellow flower pot, upper right), lots of sun in the morning with a delightful umbrella to provide shade, as well as a rocking bench that makes reading long articles much more fun. The fresh air, natural light are really good, too, and although certain times of day require a bit of bug-repellent or sunscreen, it makes for a relaxing yet practical and effective work space. Especially when everyone else is gone for the day! I already have dreams and plans of how I can recreate this wonderful space when we get back to Washington, weather permitting of course.

Off to get a little more work done. I can’t wait until August when I get a real summer break, even if it’s only for 2 weeks.

Drink lots of water, wear sunscreen and have fun!

Teamwork!

We were commissioned to build a raised bed for my mom while we are in town. We started last weekend, between rainstorms, by leveling out the area and getting things ready. We had to wait a few days until the weather improved and boy did mother nature pull through for us! It’s has been gorgeous all day long! We braved the crowds at Home Depot, and with our list in hand we selected our cedar boards. After tackling the puzzle of fitting  four 8 ft. long boards into our little 2 door hatchback we were ready to go!

Bada-bing bada-boom… raised bed!

It was so fun to accomplish such a task especially on such a beautiful day!  Now we’re imagining all the yummy things that will grow in there: carrots, squash, lettuce and more! If we get really ambitious, we might level out the ground next to the bed and try adding a bench and an arch. Or maybe we’ll just focus on the garden for now!

Relaxin’

The wind is intense today so the pool and a hike are likely out. As a result, we are relaxing indoors and planning a little outing for later on. So, I thought I’d do a little posting because I don’t get time to do it that often! Below are a few of the things that I’m enjoying right now:

New Favorite Hairstyle compliments of the current Real Simple issue. And let me tell you, it IS real simple. I’ve been sporting it every day since I read the article. My favorite top. Light-weight, comfy and $3… thanks Target! Loving the grill! We have a grill on the deck of our studio here and we’ve been grilling a little bit of everything. Cilantro Lime Chicken is in store for tonight’s taco salad! LOST Season Finale. I hesitated to admit this, but we’ve watched the entire series since December on Hulu just so that we could watch the season finale in all of it’s glory! It’s our only show that we follow so I don’t know what we’ll do after tonight, but we are super pumped to see how it all goes down, cuz we know it’s going down big tonight!

Off to enjoy some lunch and do a bit more relaxing!

Vacation!

So, we are here in Palm Springs! We got in yesterday afternoon and to be honest, it is exactly what we hoped for! The heat is wonderful, especially after the last few dreary days in Greeley, packing and thunderstorms, and the storms that we had to drive through to get here.

Last night we took a few pictures from the patio of our apartment. Turns out that we took almost identical photos! We didn’t realize it until we put them onto the computer and could see what the other person had done.

So we played around with photoshop and each put our own spin on the photo to make them stand apart a little bit. Here are the results:

photos taken with Olympus E-520 in the evening as the sun went down

Off to enjoy the sun! And don’t worry, we won’t blog too much, I just had to get on here to do some homework and thought I’d take a fun little detour to update you all. Farewell!

Jazz Recital CD

Having some “time off” for spring break means I can get caught up on some projects I’ve been working on for a while. This past weekend I finished mixing my CD and have been working on the label and case insert.

Today I finally got my tracks posted on the web. Visitors to my website should be able to listen to and download the individual tracks. Simply click on the “music” link in the navigation pane.

Clicking play will let you listen through the whole album. If you want to jump to a specific track, click on the track name and choose a new track from the list.

I really like the functionality of this new site and hope to use it for more media distribution in the future.

Birthday Bash!

After a relaxing morning of breakfast in bed and playing with my new juicer, we headed out for a birthday latte and afternoon at the bookstore. I was inspired by this blog to create a list of things that i want to do this year. The items on this list are both hopes and goals, but also just random things that bring me joy that I want to encourage myself to do more frequently. By the end of the evening I had already checked a few off, including using out beautiful bundt pan to bake my valencia orange birthday cake (as seen in the photo below). It was wonderfully fresh and the citrus flavor was a perfect match for the blueberry and lavendar sorbet.

And now that the birthday fun is over, we’re back to the busy world of two graduate students…

26@26

Happy March!

Almost there

Last week I played my Graduate Recital at UNC. With that out of the way I noticed that Jess and I have only two and a half months of school left! I know the time will just fly by so hopefully we can enjoy our time here while it lasts.

Jess acted as recording engineer for my recital and getting all the sound equipment out of the closet reminded us how fun it is to record things!

Here is a little Valentine tune that Jess recorded last night:

Everybody – from the CD Everybody by Ingrid Michaelson

Fajita!!There’s a high of at least 89 everyday this week, but we won’t let it stop us from eating well! Fajitas with locally grown pepper and onion tastes sooooo good!

Jess is finishing up her first three classes this week and gearing up for the next three while Seth is busy with homework and working at the library. While Study dates at Starbucks are fun, we are looking forward to a little weekend away in Wyoming for the 4th of July! Although to be honest… I’m guessing there will be a few books tagging along too!

Hope you’re staying cool in the summer heat!

Blessings,

Seth and Jess

Mmmm…. scones!

We tried a new gluten-free scone recipe today from The Joy of Cooking.
They turned out very light and fluffy.
Orange Crasin Scones

(Of course the Martha Blue Mixer helped a lot and makes the process much more fun; thanks WCPC!)
We also hit the Greeley Farmers’ Market where we got some fresh onions, lettuce and a tomato plant.
Then it was off to the the Recycling Center and Grocery Store.
And while we tried to pretend that we had nothing more to do than sit around and eat scones and sip tea…
we now have to face the reality of homework.
So it’s off to the library or some good ol’ fashioned studying!
But before we go, here is a sneak peek of the kitchen!
Thanks to some lovely friends from WCPC  we were able to outfit our walls with a little Martha Blue too!
And I must admit that while it is quite pretty to look at, it is also rather practical!
More pictures to come, hopefully. Seth’s old camera and the one on my computer seem to be doing the job for now.
Happy weekend!

Photos!

I finally got around to posting up some wedding photos on our website!

Visit sethandjess.com to check them out!

the happy couple

the happy couple