last night ROF was at his first detroit red wings (pre-season) hockey game with our good friend curt who is in town just to see lil ole us.  ROF is experiencing everything michigan and this, of course, was on the list.  he had a blast, of course.  but this meant i got to have a night to myself. an amy night…which i so appreciate.

don’t get me wrong, i love hanging with friends and especially with ROF.  and beat him at cards every night (my blog, i can dream if i want) but i treasure my time.  i’ve always had to have it.   some people don’t know what to do with themselves when they are alone.  i’m not one of those people.  here is a short list of some things i like to do in my time: 

play with photoshop

write blog posts

read one of a million books i downloaded

make fall soup and use my immersion blender

put in a woody allen dvd and half listen to it, rewind and replay

make the house smell good

punch carla bruni in pandora and turn it up

slow dance to french music with ruby

do my french lessons to get ready for paris

ponder paris

call my sister after 2 glasses of wine

call my mom after 3

make a collage of inspiring clippings

organize my purses

make playlists on spotify (made one for curt’s visit)

read, read, read

so last night

i snapped some photos of my house that i’ve kind of half-ass decorated for fall:

and made some awesome butternut squash soup and toasted oyster crackers.  i’m addicted – ADDICTED – to this spice & tea exchange store in downtown birmingham.  by the way, there is one in grapevine, texas too.  You can find it here.  for the person who likes to think they are all into cooking but really you just like watching a lot of barefoot contessa on the food network – this is the place for you!  they have the best spice mixtures in the world.

my butternut squash soup was as easy as steaming butternut squash that i bought already cubed at the store (worth the extra $2), cooking some onions in butter, adding really good zingerman’s chicken broth, the squash, the autumn harvest spice mix  which is a blend of maple syrup granules, cinnamon, sugar, garlic, onion, salt, allspice, ginger, cloves and melding all together.  then add some low-fat cream cheese.  go ahead. add the whole thing.

 at this point it doesn’t look very good.

but then you get out the immersion blender, work it good and it turns out like this:

all, in all, very good.  i also “made” some spiced up oyster crackers to go with it.  it was supposed to have bacon salt and chardonnay salt from the tea and spice exchange, but they were out.  so we made my own concoction of maple granules, hickory salt and worcester granules along with garlic, olive oil and lots of dillweed.  love dillweed.  

and now off to vinsetta with rof and curt and this wonderful, wonderful michigan weather!