beautiful snow adventures

Over the weekend, Ben and I took a miniature getaway into the snow-covered landscape of central PA--just what I needed after a superstressful week!

When I say snow-covered I mean the highway runs four feet below the surface of the surrounding snowfields, with a plowed snow dike bordering the roads.

We made a stop at a little winery 

They gave us delicious wine to taste and let us explore

It was so gorgeous and magical in the snow

[please excuse weird wind hair]

[and taped broken sunglasses]

The original buildings were over 200 years old and dripping with icicles

I absolutely LOVE Pennsylvania stone. So pretty!

I love adventures with Ben even more.  Everything is mysteriously more fun when he is around :)

more snow, busy week

[the sky is not blue today, it is white, but this picture is pretty]

The reason I never post during the week anymore:

My weeks are so terribly front loaded and I always race around in a panic Mondays through Wednesdays trying not to get overwhelmed with everything I need to get done.

I usually end up spending lots of unproductive time because I don't know what I should attack first and then I feel even worse about life.

Right now I'm trying to put together the rough beginnings of my thesis proposal and it is SUPER intimidating for some reason! Definitely unneccessary. I'm trying to convince myself that it should be fun because it is something I am interested in, and that I am totally capable of this!! But I still psych myself out.

This morning I am still really stressed out and all I want to do is bake and cook delicious recipes on my mental back-burner like Eggplant Mousakka and Morrocan flatbreads.

I just need to BREATHE and hang in there until tomorrow!

snow weekend

I woke up on Saturday to find myself living in a cozy snowcave!

[view out my lowerlevel window]

We got lucky here in town and only received 14" of snow...although since we were on the edge of the blizzard it varied a lot in the area, some neighboring towns got a lot more.

It's been gorgeously sunny every day since though, so the roads are already clear and dry.  Ready and waiting for the next dumping that comes tomorrow! Ridiculous.

[snow campus]

I really like winter sunsets, the colors are so delicate and thin but the snow makes the world glow

p.s. Ben is having fun in Baltimore; it is basically a

(fun) natural disaster zone because they have no real snow removal infrastructure in the city and got twice as much snow as we did up here! It's a good time to be a teacher...snowdays indefinitely???

[Ben's car-yeah...obviously we didn't see each other this weekend!]