It's October but I'm talking about September. Because September was nuts! There were many moments in the past month when I had zero idea what month I was in (August, maybe?) and then realized it was basically October. WHAT. My body seems to know these things better than my brain sometimes. Even though it could have been February for all I knew, I'm craving all things pumpkin, warm soups and braised meats, plus all the scarves and ankle boots. Bring it on, fall! I'm ready for you.

Fun things that happened this month: I wrote a guest post for A Couple Cooks about health and fitness, one of my favorite topics besides food. I love cake but I also love my HIIT workouts (thank goodness). Over there I shared about my health and fitness journey and then offered some of my personal tips for developing a healthy, active lifestyle. I also had two fun collaboration posts on the blog this month: A double-doozy of boozy beer waffles with Kelsey from Appeasing a Food Geek, and then an epic whiskey-tasting party post with Laura from Roam + Golightly, where I shared recipes for bourbon cookie dough shots and a sparkling whiskey cocktail. I also FINALLY got out part two of my honeymoon recap, this time about St. Malo, France. In that one I also shared my personal recipe for the famous French butter pastry called "kouign amann." So basically this month was all about pastries and booze. How fitting. Here are some other things I've been loving:

MAKING

Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Nutella Buttercream - Back at the beginning of the month our dear friends Becky and Kevin (or as we like to call them, Kevvy and Beckin) got married. (Congrats guys!) They had asked some friends and family members to help supply some cakes for the dessert table, and I was one of them. I gave Becky some options about what I was thinking of making, and she made the smart choice of having me make chocolate cupcakes with the salted Nutella buttercream from The Fauxmartha. I had made this frosting before for my bestie's bachelorette party cake, so I knew it was awesome. Making it the second time around just cemented it in my mind as one of the best frostings you'll ever have. I went a little lighter on the salt in the frosting this time than I might have because I topped the cupcakes with some flaky vanilla salt. (SOLID MOVE.) The cupcakes disappeared like hotcakes at the wedding.

It's rare these days that I make something for the sake of just making it, rather than recipe-testing for the blog or a cookbook. So it felt fantastic to just make these cupcakes the day before their wedding, knowing that they were going to be for a celebration and enjoyed by lots of people. No note-taking, no photo shoot (although I did have fun Instagramming them), no blog post planned afterwards. Even though I love this blog and it's my life, sometimes I miss the days of making something simply because you want to. So these cupcakes may have been for her wedding, but it felt more like when I used to bake before the blog, just for the fun of it. Thank you, Becky, for asking this favor of me! It was a pleasure to contribute to your wedding in this way (even though they almost melted before we finished walking to the chapel ...)

ENJOYING

Prints in My Apartment - Robert and I are really bad at housekeeping and home improvement kinds of things. That type of task tends to live on my to-do list for months, being shuffled around and pushed off time and time again. Items like "frame and hang up prints" will take several months to be crossed off. (I'm serious.) It's pretty sad. But we recently crossed that one off the list! Oh, the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders.

I think almost a year ago was when I gathered the F-word prints that I wanted to hang by my computer. They crack me up because I'm not much of a swearer, so I think it's hilarious that I now have two F-word prints hanging up as inspiration. (Sorry, Mom.) The one on the left is by Tyler Feder (available on Etsy), which I actually heard about a long time ago on the Joy the Baker Podcast. The one on the right was a free digital download from Cocorrina.

The other ones we hung up were three gorgeous baby animal illustrations. Robert bought me those for my birthday back in June. These beauties are by Amy Hamilton and available on Society6. I found them on there a while ago and showed them to Robert, who also loved them. He bought and framed the raccoon and deer ones for me, but couldn't decide on a third so he gave me a third frame that was empty and told me to pick the last one. I chose the wolf, which might be my favorite. It was a hard decision, though. All of her work is so beautiful.

READING

WomanCode - So you'll never guess, but I heard about this on The Lively Show podcast! Yep, like most things I get obsessed with, this is a result of my podcast-listening habit. I'd have to agree with Jess (the podcast host) that EVERY WOMAN should listen to the episode about this book. It's all about optimizing your life to be in sync with your cycle and hormones, and I find it to be soooo fascinating. I've had some random health issues pop up in the last several months that seem to be a direct result of stress and a lack of sleep, and this book has helped to bring all of that into perspective for me. It's a wealth of knowledge, and I'm learning so much about the body and how our lifestyle choices affect its ability to work properly in so many ways. I can see myself coming back to this book many times in the future as a guide.

The Glass Kitchen - My BFF Abbey passed this book along to me because she thought I would enjoy it. Well, you were right, Abbey! I LOVED IT. I was sick the other weekend, which totally sucked because I was supposed to attend a fun blogger event in Philly. We actually got more than halfway to Philly before I realized I was too sick to go and then we turned around and went back home. The good thing that came out of this was I allowed myself to really CHILL that weekend, and I read almost this entire book. It centers around a young woman who has this magical "knowing" power, having to do with food and knowing exactly what people need before they even know it themselves. It's set in NYC and Texas, and it's filled with fun family drama and a steamy romance. I couldn't put it down.

Illustration at top created with Photoshop.
Prints of my illustrations (plus other products with my work on them) are available in my Society6 shop.
All photos are from my Instagram account (@sara_cornelius_).