When I was growing up and we would go out of town, my parents always put one of these guys on our lamps. And all I remember about them was being totally frustrated when we got home and I would try to turn on a lamp! I could somehow never figure out how to switch it from being on the timer to just working like a regular socket. (Obviously you can just unplug it, and plug the lamp back into the wall, but that cowed me, for whatever reason.)

Fast forward to my married life. Andy and I have so far lived in fairly small apartments, and they’ve also been on the top floor. As such, we found that we didn’t really need to turn our heat on in the winter, because we would get ambient heat from the floors below us, and were well insulated by apartments around us. We would just use a space heater to get whatever room we were in up to a comfortable temperature. But at night it would sometimes get a little cold, so he devised a plan to put what I always thought of as a lamp timer on a space heater to have it come on periodically. It works!

We’ve discovered that the appliance timer can also help my basic Crockpot work more like a more expensive programmable model. This is really useful for recipes that say it should only cook for, say, 3 hours. I can set all the ingredients up before I leave for work but then set the timer to turn the crockpot on at a certain time and shut off at a certain time so that I don’t have to worry about my recipe drying out or burning.

My one piece of advice is to remind you that, if you do this, you have to leave the appliance switched to “on” so that once the timer starts emitting electricity it will function. It’s not like I know this from experience or anything…

I’m linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at WeAreThatFamily.com!

Two Saturdays ago, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop called Rails Girls. According to Wikipedia, Rails is a “an open source full-stack web application framework for the Ruby programming language.” Right. In practice, the day was intended as a whirlwind introduction to coding and as a way to gather together women who are all interested in being part of the ever-burgeoning web development world.

Computer programming is not something I think I ever would have been interested in or even aware of were it not for Andy. I took two intro-level computer science classes in college to fulfill my math requirements (ahem ahem). They were interesting enough, but I think I mostly excelled in them because there was a lot of memorization and regurgitation of information that had been taught in classroom lectures. As far as the actual coding, I figured it out, but I had a lot of help.

And yet when I learned that Rails Girls was hosting a session in Atlanta, I found myself interested. So, I signed up and was selected, along with about 30 other women. We were all there for a variety of reasons, though it seemed that I was one of the few (if not the only) there mostly for the heck of it. Several were in school for computer science and wanted to experiment with web technologies. Others are currently developers in another language but wanted to broaden their horizons. Some were hobbyist coders, and still others worked in tech-related fields and thought that a working knowledge of programming would be beneficial to their advancement. All that to say that I felt like I was starting at much closer to “zero” than most of the other attendees, so when my coach simply said, “Go,” instructing us to dive into the tutorials I was a little dismayed. The tutorials made it easy enough to follow along, and I ended up with a mostly working app (bumps in the road aside), but I didn’t feel like I got a good sense of the basics.

I’ve had some good conversations with Andy since then, and thankfully I’m not feeling disheartened. I don’t really know where programming might fit into my day-to-day life. I’m not sure it’s something I want to pursue as a personal hobby (though I’m going to give it a bit more time before I make that call), and I certainly don’t see it becoming my career. But as the wife of someone for whom programming is his bread and butter, his career, his hobby, and his passion, I think it’s important for me to keep trying. Perhaps it will prove to be something we can do together, and if nothing else, being more conversant in the language he speaks (so to speak), will certainly enrich our interactions with each other.

It was easy to feel intimidated at Rails Girls, especially during the showcase portion of the day where attendees got to show what they had worked on. As I said, I got through the very basic tutorial offered by Rails Girls. But some people had finished that before LUNCH and had then gone on to create completely new apps using things like GPS locations, Twitter feeds, and all kinds of things that seemed so, so complicated to me. But the entire purpose of Rails Girls is to level the playing field somewhat, and show women that they can be part of the tech world. Though I don’t envision myself moving that direction, it was encouraging to be around a group of motivated women. One of the presenters was a woman who works at the same company my husband does, and she talked about crying in her car during her lunch break when she first started working full time as a programmer, because she felt so inferior to all the men around her. She had a lightbulb moment at DragonCon, of all places, when she listened to a panel of highly intelligent, highly educated women say that they all felt that same way. And so she decided to choose confidence. She decided to look those men in the eye and tell them when she thought they were doing something wrong in their development. And she stopped crying in her car. That felt like a rallying cry to me. Because whether you want to be a programmer or not, what woman couldn’t do with a dose of confidence?

I’ve always said I wasn’t good at math. No one ever told me I wasn’t good at math. In fact, I mostly made A’s in math because I worked hard. But it was just easier to say I wasn’t good at it and not risk looking foolish if I failed than to own the fact that I was actually pretty competent. Sure, math may not come naturally to me as it does to some people, but I managed to learn it. And I think that’s what Rails Girls wants to express: you can learn to program if you put your mind to it, and you can succeed in a male-dominated field. So for all my uncertainty, the message of Rails Girls is pretty awesome, and I’m glad I got to take part in it!

Have you ever tried something completely new without being sure where it might fit into your life?

If you’re a woman in Atlanta and interested in learning to code, check out the newly-organized Rails Girls meetup or the PyLadies. The developer community is pretty awesome–everyone we’ve met has been super friendly and welcoming! And if you don’t live in Atlanta, check and see if there’s a Rails Girls near you!

Have you heard of AmazonBasics? I hadn’t either until gadgets from it started showing up in my apartment! Often the little auxiliary bits that go along with various technologies are the most frustrating. Phone chargers are so easily left behind in hotel rooms, etc. I remember one time I stepped on my phone charger and my mom was so frustrated with me because we had to buy yet another one! Every time I’ve gotten a new phone, I’ve been left with any array of chargers and phone chargers that aren’t compatible with my new device and are worthless to anyone else unless they happen to have that precise thing.

According to their website, “AmazonBasics are high-quality electronics products that deliver the best price on reliable, state-of-the-art electronics.” So what that means is that you can find accessories for your name-brand electronics at non-name-brand prices. And they work! We bought me an AmazonBasics iPhone charging cable because my Apple-branded one was fraying near the USB plug, and it’s holding up great.

So far, the AmazonBasics items we use include:

• the aforementioned iPhone cable
• Andy's iPhone 5 case (which they were actually offering earlier than some other case-making companies)
• rechargeable batteries
• a stylus for Andy's iPad
• a keyboard for our desktop computer

This is totally not an ad (though the links above are my Amazon Affiliate links). I just think it’s really cool that there’s a more affordable option for things that we all need. Sometimes you really just do need the BASIC version of fill-in-the-blank, and you don’t need it to be pretty or stylish. These are all things that get a lot of wear and tear, and it’s great that by purchasing this version you can worry less about beating things up.

Have you discovered any surprising sources that make necessary objects more affordable?

I’m linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at WeAreThatFamily.com!

I recently wrote about the difficulty of making friends as an adult. One of the most poignant remarks to me was that of the woman who said she has friends who fill different niches in her social calendar. Well, I recently decided, with the prodding of some friends, to start a book club, a la Gretchen Rubin! While I don’t miss school, whenever I start talking books with someone I realize that I DO miss the camaraderie of the shared reading experience and the meeting of minds that can occur when you talk about a story you’ve both consumed.

I was thoughtful about selecting who to invite. I purposefully picked people that I didn’t know all that well, but in whom I had sensed some kindred spirit. I invited the friend with whom I originally came up with the idea (of course), and she invited a co-worker, who invited her sister! I messaged 3 acquaintances from church, and one gleefully responded that she had been looking for a book club but hadn’t found the right one to join. And I sent an email to the wives/girlfriends/fiancees of Andy’s coworkers, and two decided to join. So a motely crew of seven ladies who love to read emerged!

I Googled a few things like, “how to start a book club” and browsed the lists of suggestions. It took us quite a while to find a date to gather for our first meeting, and I wanted to be prepared! A secondary inspiration to the love of books that led me to start the club is my love of entertaining and feeding people, so the answer to the age-old group gathering questions of “Will there be food?” was for me a resounding, “Yes!” I want the group to have a casual, girls’-night out kind of feel when we meet each month, and food and wine are musts for that in my book (no pun intended).

Only three ended up able to come on Thursday, but we were armed with lists of book suggestions. Since it was a small group, we took a somewhat informal approach. We each read our lists, and a few of us vetoed books we had either already read or just immediately thought would not be a good fit for our group. I expected to do some blind voting on selections, but it ended up not being difficult to pick three books to get us going. Most of our books fell into the categories of historical fiction, current fiction, and “pop” nonfiction. I felt encouraged that I had created a meeting of like minds by the fact that not one but TWO books showed up on multiple lists.

The three of us enjoyed a lovely dinner and downed an entire bottle of wine. As we discussed our book suggestions, the conversation ranged from job satisfaction to marriage to other books to travel….there was no awkward introductory time even though we were veritable strangers. When they left I was overcome with a sense of gratitude for these women coming into my life and feeling SO excited for our group to continue meeting and sharing meals, books, and our lives.

In case you’re interested in reading along, our first three books are:

• Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (January)
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (February)
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (March)

We’ll be meeting on the third Thursday of the month (consistency seems like it will set us up for success), and whoever’s book selection we are reading will serve as the moderator. The selector is also willing to host if it makes her happy, or else I will continue to. We knew the holidays would get crazy, so we decided to skip December (especially since we only met in late November and our first book is quite long!). But I’m looking forward to having a communal book to read throughout the holidays, anticipating the sweet gathering that will take place at the end.

If you’re interested in starting a book club of your own, here are some of the Internet resources I perused as I was planning our first get-together:

• Oprah's Book Club Guide
• Real Simple's Book Club Checklist
• LitLovers.com How to Start a Book Club
• Book Club Recipes

Happy reading!

When fall comes around, I go pumpkin crazy. I’ve always loved the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure I ever thought about enjoying pumpkin outside of that one day a year until Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes came into my life. Now, I’m one of those people who gets excited when it’s featured on their menu again every year (though one of my coworkers reminded me that you can get whatever flavor drink you want at Starbucks all year round). Even though we don’t usually get much of a fall in the South, once the calendar hits September, I have pumpkin on the brain. When I realized I had a preposterous number of pumpkin recipes pinned, I decided to share them here. Here’s the final installment of 10 pumpkin recipes for your gustatory pleasure!

Well folks, after 10 weeks, we’ve made it to the crowning glory of the pumpkin recipes: pumpkin pie. I’ve usually used frozen pie crust (or, uh, my mom has made the crust) and followed the recipe on the side of the pumpkin can, so I decided to go wild and crazy for the sake of the blog this year and make the crust from scratch AND try out a different recipe. I turned again to my trusty Fannie Farmer and found that the filling didn’t deviate much from my usual recipe: pureed pumpkin (she probably assumes you’ve made your own), evaporated milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, a dash of salt. She does add half a cup of regular milk, which I’ve not seen before. That part’s easy: dump all the deliciousness in a bowl and whisk. Done. But the crust. Ah, the crust. I compared recipes from Fannie and Baking at Home but also remembered a post from the Pioneer Woman about her approach to pie crust. I looked it up and saw that she called it “The Perfect Pie Crust.” Well, how can I argue with that? It sounded simpler than either of the other two, plus it had what seemed to be a secret ingredient (vinegar?!), so I decided to go with it. I trust the Pioneer Woman. Plus she has a lot of pictures, which I thought might be helpful with something requiring as much finesse as a pie crust.

The Pioneer Woman swears by Crisco for a pie crust, so even though Fannie told me I could use butter, I decided to give it a shot.

Oh, Crisco. What are you? I am slightly terrified of you.

I bought a pastry blender just for this project. Isn’t it fun having excuses to buy new kitchen gadgets?

The instructions say to blend the Crisco into the flour until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. I was having so much fun with the pastry blender that I think I went a little bit too far, and it was already more like dough.

Add in the wet ingredients and stir gently. As with scones, you don’t want to work with it too much or it may get tough!

Shape the dough into 3 balls and place them each in a bag. Roll out the lumps a bit to make rolling easier later. Then let them chill in the freezer for 20 minutes or until you need them.

I was so impatient and anxious about rolling out the dough, but I forced myself to wait the full 20 minutes. Honestly, the dough wasn’t even really that cold after all that time! And then I worked with it so much that it was back to being pretty warm by the time I got it in something resembling, like, a circle.

There aren’t any pictures of the rolling and the placing into the pan, but let’s just say it was far from expert. I ended up balling the dough up and starting over several times. I think I needed more flour from the beginning. I eventually got it roughly big enough–I didn’t have much to flute at the edges, but I made it work.

While the dough was chilling, I mixed up the simple filling.

The filling didn’t quite all fit–maybe Fannie’s pie plate was a little deeper than mine, but it was lookin’ like a pie by the time I poured it in!

And, like the magic, on a cooking show, here’s the completed pie!

Success! The crown jewel of the Thanksgiving table, especially with a dollop of “real” whipped cream on top. Mmm, mmm, mmm good.

While the pie crust was not a breeze, it was not as scary as I had feared, and I won’t hesitate to do it again! Plus, now that I have a pretty green pie plate, I’m probably going to want to make pies all the time. Should that be my next blog series? ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday!