Another month has gone by. Ahhhhhh!!!! Is it really September already? Geesh. These posts are always a fun way for me to look back on the past month as a whole, and it reminds me of how lucky I am. Usually something really fun has gone down in the past couple of weeks. August is no exception. Near the beginning of the month my blogging friend Kelsey (from Appeasing a Food Geek) visited for the weekend. We had so much fun. I took her to some of my favorite restaurants and we worked on a joint blog post about waffles together. That will be coming at you soon! Then I fulfilled a long-time blogging goal by writing an article for Food52. I shared my grandmother's hot milk cake recipe (shared on my site as the "Golden Milk Cake") as part of their Heirloom Recipes column. It was a nice feeling to be able to honor my grandmother in such a public way.

This has also been a month of celebration as Robert and I celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary. That year certainly flew right by us. We went on a weekend trip to the beach (which I talk about in more detail below), and the top layer of our wedding cake came out of my parents' freezer. (They couldn't be happier to have half of their freezer back so they can fill it with more ice cream.) I celebrated our anniversary on the blog with this fig pizza with goat cheese, pistachios and honey. I wish I was eating it right now. And, I FINALLY shared a recap of our honeymoon in Paris on the blog. Part 2 (featuring our visit to St. Malo, France) should be on the blog in a few weeks. So we've been doing a lot of reminiscing. While I'm happy that I didn't have to plan a wedding this year, I wouldn't have complained about having a similarly epic and beautiful party with all our friends and family again. I also wouldn't mind going on a honeymoon again. Why can't we do that every year? (Oh right, money .... ) Anywaaaayyyy here are some things I've been loving this month:

CELEBRATING

Our anniversary - Yep, we've got one year down! It's all downhill from here ... (Just kidding.) We spent the weekend of our anniversary chilling at the beach in Wildwood Crest, NJ. As we were preparing for this trip, I realized that we hardly ever go away for the weekend just the two of us. We travel a lot on weekends, but we're usually going to visit someone or going to an event. This weekend of pure beach relaxation was exactly what we needed. We spent as many daylight hours as possible just sitting by the ocean, soaking up the sun and reading our books. On Saturday evening we had a sunset picnic on the sand. That was all Robert's idea; he wanted to put together a picnic to mimic the one we had at Versailles on our honeymoon. (It was very sweet.) We also hit up some restaurants and even went out drinking and dancing in North Wildwood like two crazy kids. It was so much fun!

READING

The Royal We - I think I had this book on my Amazon wish list at one point, but I finally purchased it while listening to an interview on the Lively Show podcast with the two authors (which is definitely worth a listen). The book is a fictional story based on the royal romance of Will and Kate. I was reading this the whole time we were at the beach in Wildwood (and I was in heaven). I loved it. I was so sucked into it that at one point I went into a full-on crying fest on the beach. I'm glad I was wearing sunglasses because otherwise people would have thought I was pretty upset. (Although, I cry pretty easily from books ... and commercials ...) But anyway, it's a fun read and I highly recommend it.

FOLLOWING

Bevcooks on Snapchat - I was super late to jump on the Snapchat bandwagon, and I still don't totally understand it. But what made me really start to enjoy it was Bev from the blog Bev Cooks. YOU NEED TO FOLLOW HER (@bevcooks). Oh my gosh she is hilarious. She's already one of my favorite Instagrammers, and now she is my favorite snapper. (Is that what you call them?) Just go follow her right now. Please. I have to be careful about where I am when I watch her videos because I usually end up laughing out loud like a crazy person. I'm still working on my snapping game, but feel free to follow me on there as well (@sara_cornelius).

LISTENING

Oh Honey radio - This Pandora station has been my August soundtrack. Oh Honey is an indie folk/pop band from Brooklyn, and their sound is the kind that hooks me right away. I think I heard one of their songs on Songza and then immediately went to Pandora and started a station with them. It's just fun, easy listening with great harmonies and whatnot. Right now the station as a whole has been satisfying enough for me, but it's only a matter of time before I buy all their albums on iTunes.

SEEING

The Gilmore Guys - This podcast (all about the TV show Gilmore Girls) is one of my current favorites. Robert and I went to see one of their live shows in Philly recently and had a blast. We had front row tickets which was AWESOME, and we even got to meet the guys and talk to them briefly after the show. The hosts, Kevin and Demi, are two funny and sweet guys. Several months ago they had a call-in show for their podcast. Robert and I made it on after calling 74 times, and they remembered us from that episode. It was like catching up with old friends. If you're a fan of Gilmore Girls and you haven't checked out their podcast yet, you should get on it ASAP.

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