guy's stitch fix review

The wife's annual conference is coming up, and instead of shopping for a few new outfits she signed up for stitch fix. Well, guess who signed up off her referral so she could use additional credits? You guessed it, me. What the hell, I thought, maybe I'll get something to wear to an interview.

Now while I'm usually quicker to post about the DIY pizzas we're eating while she's away, or the project I got the kids to help out on, turns out my stitch fit experience wasn't awful. I wasn't crazy about anything in the initial shipment but if you're curious and don't mind paying for an article or two you might not absolutely need, it's worth a shot.

Especially when you don't know how to describe your style. For the past five years, my style has been "stuff I'd be okay getting throw up on" vs "9-5 business casual" with the occasional unfortunate overlap. Throw in my love of flannel, up-coming interviews, and clothes I can wear in the shop and that's a pretty muddy picture. So I didn't know quite what to expect when I opened my box.

Nice patterned shirt! Unfortunately a bit snug.

Happily, I loved the shirt that was in there at first glance. That had me really excited to see how everything went, but my top pick ended up a bit snug. There was also a henley, which I don't really like, a pair of khakis, a crew-neck sweater, and two pairs of socks. Everything besides the first shirt fit fine. The shirt was a slim fit, which I actually prefer, but this one was a bit smaller that I could wear. Not enough to make me change my style profile though. 

Instead of purchasing you can also try to exchange, but unfortunately my top choice was not available. Ultimately I ended up having to decide between the khakis and the socks. I hate henleys, and I'm waiting until I get a raise or a new job to buy a new ND crew-neck so that was out.

That's quite a range of affordability. Pretty reasonable though.

Price was a factor, and I felt silly using my styling credit to buy a $12 pair of socks. So I went with the pants, and they're fine. They're work-appropriate at least. Not overly stylish but a functional article of clothing. That's enough for me to try the process again in a few months.

In the end I'd give it a thumbs up. It's not as fun as digging through a bargain outlet to come up with something, but it's also more pleasant than going to a department store. I liked it enough to try again using their every two months option, and look forward to what they pull together this winter.

Hmmmmm. Not a bad start I guess.

There seems to be a little bit of self-doubt creeping into these titles lately. Titles are important, maybe I should spend a little more thought on them.

My doctorate classes started last and I'm still interviewing, but I sneaked some time to get some paint on the bigger of the two canvases. I'm not quite sure about the results. I had been sketching on my surface to come up with some ideas, and I thought I had hit upon a color scheme and layout I really liked.

One of many digital sketches before putting paint to canvas.

However, getting it on canvas wasn't quite matching up.

I like it better here, actually. It's growing on me.

Actually, doing this made me realize even more the positives I get out of painting. The only picture I took until I was done with the first draft of the painting was the one of my supplies ready to go, including my DIY plastic and plywood palet:

Each time I had a chance to paint I would think "okay, don't forget to get a few progress pic." And then I promptly forgot each time. When I was painting, painting was the only thing on my mind. Looking back on it, that's pretty amazing. I clearly need to paint more.

I really like specific portions of this painting though, this is one.

Both for my sanity, and the quality of my work. I'm still working on this one though. I feel like there's something salvageable somewhere on this canvas, I just have to find it.

Those might not be baking apples!

When did this turn into a baking blog?

With the muffins a success, I put together an entire pie this weekend. I've used the apples off our tree before, but not for something so apple-heavy. Unfortunately I wasn't too thrilled with the results.

Things got off to a great start though. I was able to pick a number of apples that came right off the tree. The kids helped too so we had some not-so-great looking ones to start with. Not everyone made it into the pie.

This is the recipe I've used since the wife and I have been together, so it's going on 18 years at this point. But this pie came out unbelievably sweet. It makes my teeth hurt to eat a big slice.

Looks good, tastes so-so.

Not that I stopped eating it. I've been slowly chipping away at it since Friday night, and it's almost gone. They have good texture within the pie, so at least they held up well to the actual baking. But the flavor profile is WAY too sweet, even with a healthy amount of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove in there. All its done is put me in the mood for more apple stuff though, so expect some apple cake pictures after we go apple picking in the next few weeks.

baking with our own apples

This week has not been great. Kids waking up too early and then going to bed just in time to be late to school, shitty commute traffic, not hearing back from interviews I thought I did pretty well at, and losses from the Cubs, Bears, and Irish all had me looking for a fall pick me up. Instead of going crazy I decided to bake some comfort food to try and make the back half of this week a little more bearable.

I already had a can of pumpkin open from other baking, so to make sure I got the most out of what was around I grabbed two apples off our tree to whip up some pumpkin apple streudel muffins. Sounds like more work than it actually is.

The apples are starting to drop off the tree so I'm hoping these are in fact, ready to use. I still have no clue what kind of apples they are but the look fine.

So, what we're working with here:

2.5 cups flour
1 cup sugar
pumpkin pie spice
1 cup pumpkin
2 large eggs
3 tbps half & half
1 cup chopped apples

cover with crumb topping
1 tbps butter
1 cup sugar
2 tbps flour

30 minutes later at 375 and you get:

Hopefully these can tide me over until we really go apple picking. Although it sounds like I'm going to get some additional baking time this weekend to use up some more of our apples. Fingers crossed. 

Garden progress

One thing I meant to keep track of was how the garden turned out once things were planted in our planter box. But summer got away from me, and here it is September. Just about time to pick some apples. But before we do, no time like the present to go over our growths this summer.

We had some moderate success with our garden. We planted carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins in the big planter, along with trying to keep active care of the apple tree. Plus we had basil and mint in small planters on the deck.

On the ground vs up the vine trellis.

Carrot starting to show

Best way possible to spend 4 months and save $2.

The mint and basil did fine, and recovered nicely after fading early in the summer. But far and away the big winner were our cucumbers. I'm not a fan, personally, but the kids dig them and we got some really fresh tasting ones out of the garden this year. Just the smell of freshly chopped cucumbers in the kitchen made the experience worthwhile.

The biggest bummer so far has been the pumpkins: I know they take longer but I think we should have at least seen one gourd starting if we were going to have a real pumpkin by October. I thought we had enough bees flying around that we wouldn't have to pollinate by hand. I guess I was wrong. We could have over-watered too, based on the vines struggling. So disappointed.

Eh, pumpkin vines not lookin' so hot.

Anyway, this was surprisingly fun. I hated gardening as a kid b/c it just felt like fancy yardwork, and we didn't do too great at our city plot back in the day, but I think we're going to extend the boxes to grow more next year. I'm still optimistic about getting a better batch of apples this year too, although I'd feel better about it if I could identify what kind of apples they are and when they should technically get picked. We'll still go apple picking of course, but with these on-hand not using them just feels like such a waste. More pies for me!

Just in time for football season

This feels like the end of a pretty productive summer. I got a few good projects in, and even though let the lawn lapse a little (I only mowed the backyard once all season), things are in decent shape around the house right now.

Minus not finishing a painting or two, the big and small projects turned out like they should. I was really happy with how my helmet stands turned out earlier this summer, but looking at the photos of my ND helmet on it something was missing. I couldn't tell what it was until I realized it was the missing decal above the facemask.

A real helmet for sale.

My old helmet. Not quite the same.

It never bothered me before, partly b/c this wasn't an official helmet. When I was a senior I knew an equipment manager for the football team. This was when they were still spending the Fridays before games painting the helmets gold, and I just happened to have access to a few old helmets I had around, so I convinced him to bring them in with him and get painted. One for him, one for my roommate, and one for me. So it's not an official ND helmet, but it's about as official as an unofficial helmet could be.

It's always gotten attention from any sports fan that's seen it since then, and various people have even been impressed enough to offer to buy it off me to no avail. At this point I kind of love it more since I conned my way into it vs shelling out to buy a real one. Because of that, not having the decal never really bothered me but looking at the pics, I wondered if I could find some online.

Of course you can find them online, and even if they're not a perfect fit, since I'm still breaking even on this deal anyway, why not pay $6 for some decals and see if they fit. So that's what I did, and they do, in fact, look pretty great.

And while the missing decals didn't bother me, the yellow face mask always has. And if I'm spending money on decals, why not break out the leftover primer again to take care of that?

Huh. That might explain why the helmet is so small.

So many coats of grey at this point.

Looks good back on the stand though.

Even with my unsteady hand this thing is truly display ready, which is good b/c it's too small to fit my huge head and this is as much use as it's going to get. But it looks good back on the stand, and with football season starting this felt like a good project to get wrapped up as summer winds down. Now if only either of my teams could look competitive this year that would be a bonus. I have the feeling it's going to be a long fall.