Things I’m Loving | Cake Over Steak

Things I’m Loving: End of 2017 Wrap-Up

January 10, 2018 20 Comments

Hi, friends. Let’s catch up. 2017 was a YEAR, am I right? As we neared the end of 2016 and I was doing my super-planning for the blog, I made a conscious decision to slow down in 2017. It turns out that maintaining an illustrated food blog as a “side hustle” while being employed full time, having a social life, keeping up with family time and friendships, traveling, taking care of myself and allowing for some time to relax, etc. is HARD. I don’t know why it took 3-4 years of blogging to figure this out, but it did. I made a point to cut down on the number of posts I was doing in an attempt to make a blogging schedule I could actually keep. (Spoiler alert: I failed.) It turns out I had to slow down EVEN MORE for various reasons. I was planning to do these “Things I’m Loving” posts seasonally, but I haven’t done one since March 2017. A handful of recipes didn’t make it to the blog this year either. But don’t fret – all that and more should hopefully be comin at ya in 2018 (but still at a pretty slow pace because #life). [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: Winter 2017

March 3, 2017 18 Comments

How are you guys doin? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been STRESSED. With everything that’s been going on in this world, I feel at least a little bit crazy all the time. I’m even starting to think that the stress from our current political climate is at least partly to blame for my chronic eczema. It’s no fun. But then I have days where I wake up feeling mostly normal and calm, and so I feel guilty for not being a hot mess. Then I have to remind myself that it’s good to let that part of my brain shut down sometimes. You know why? It’s EXHAUSTING to feel this way all the time. I think we need to find that middle ground where we don’t normalize everything and become complacent, but we also don’t go off the deep end. And that’s why I think self-care is more important than ever these days. For me, self-care looks like getting plenty of sleep, sticking to my exercise routine and trying to eat a healthy diet as much as possible. Recently, I’ve had a lot of family members come round. And as there were a lot of kids, we’d start singing family songs, which we would all get involved in. This brought back so many memories. I feel like staying in contact with family and friends counts for self care too. There are times when you do feel alone, so it is always nice when you can interact with the people closest to you. Still on the topic of self care, I also listen to a ton of political podcasts because being informed makes me feel like I have some sense of control. I included a lot of political podcasts on this list, but two new favorites are The Daily (by The New York Times) and Pod Save America. [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: November + December 2016

December 30, 2016 12 Comments

Have we ever been so excited to start a new year? I know I’m not the only one ready to say “boy bye” to 2016. The year 2017 feels like a fresh beacon of hope with its newness, and I know I’m ready to start fresh. Back in June I decided to put the month of January aside for taking a break and recharging my batteries (aka I’m a super-planner), so I’ve been looking forward to that month for many reasons. I’m planning to squeeze out one more blog post in January, but then I’m taking the rest of the month “off” to work on a site redesign (fingers crossed it all works out), have some down time and basically Marie Kondo my entire life. I’m really excited about it. And true to typical Sara fashion, I have the bulk of 2017 planned out for the blog and I’m excited to share all of that with you as well. There will be lots of fun recipes, cookbook reviews (as per usual), and a new fun blog series if all goes well. [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: September + October 2016, Plus Some DC Favorites

November 15, 2016 28 Comments

I started writing this post last week before we learned the results of our presidential election. In my draft I had written “celebrating – election … ??” Even though I hoped with every fiber of my millennial female being that we would elect a smart, competent woman as our next president, part of me was worried. I woke up on Wednesday morning to the news and I cried. I cried for so many reasons, which have been hard to understand myself, and even harder for some of us to explain to other people not coming from our perspective. (“Our” meaning people who were sobbing on Wednesday and beyond.) I’ve gone through all the stages of grief, some more than once, and I think I’ve rewritten this paragraph at each one. I’m sad and I’m disheartened, but I’m trying to move forward in this stage of acceptance with the hope of good things to come and a greater understanding of why we ended up here. [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: July + August 2016

September 1, 2016 20 Comments

As I was working on this post I looked back to see what I had published since the last Things I’m Loving post, and I was surprised to see that I’ve only published two other blog posts within that time frame (my Minneapolis recap and my orange cinnamon rolls.) I find that hilarious because I feel like I’ve been doing so much work for the blog in the last few months – it just doesn’t always show up in the form of consistent blog posts. It’s such a perfect example of this “slow blogging lifestyle” I’ve been embracing, which I talked about more in depth in a recent episode of the Chopped Podcast. I love chatting about blogging-related topics like that, so I had a blast talking to Marly about my thoughts on the subject. [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: May + June 2016

July 5, 2016 13 Comments

Summer has just arrived but it feels like it’s practically gone already. Don’t you hate that? They say time flies when you’re having fun, and I’ve definitely had some fun both on the blog and IRL in the last two months. We had margarita week here in the blog world where I shared my guava margaritas, there were sweet potato burrito lunch bowls for a meal on a budget, I talked about the wine pairing dinner I attended at a local restaurant, I ate a TON of pizza with friends in Philadelphia and told you all about it, and then to end it we had both ice cream week (salted pretzel ice cream with chocolate and peanut butter), and popsicle week (cucumber mint green tea popsicles). Holy crap! What says “summer” more than margaritas, pizza, ice cream and popsicles? We’ve got it all going on over here. I spent some time up in the Finger Lakes with my in-laws over Mother’s Day weekend, then a week at the beach with my family over my birthday, and I headed back to the beach over this holiday weekend with some friends. Our summers always get booked up so fast. But let’s get to what I’ve been loving, because I have A LOT to share with you: [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: March + April 2016

April 29, 2016 12 Comments

Since my last “Things I’m Loving” post went up, I only published two blog posts. (Remember how I cut these back to every other month so I could spend more time on my other content?) I’ve been embracing this idea of “slow blogging” where I focus on creating high quality content for this site, even if it takes me 3 weeks to finish a post, rather than just churning out content. The two posts to go out in the last month, my Quest for the Best: Chocolate Chip Cookies post and the recipe for My Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie, were planned before this blog even launched and had been brewing in the background for a solid two years before appearing on here. Now THAT is slow blogging. Thankfully you guys are amazing readers and have shown both of those posts a ton of love, which makes it all that much more worth it to me. THANK YOU. I spent several weeks just on the Quest for the Best post (I did 9 separate illustrations for that one), so the fact that you guys appreciated it as much as you did means a lot to me. That was an extreme example, so you should be hearing from me more frequently from here on out. But I figured I would mention it to give you guys a little peak behind the scenes. Here are some things I was loving throughout the last two months while working on those posts: [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: January + February 2016

March 4, 2016 14 Comments

Some of my loyal readers might be surprised to see that I’m doubling up on months for this “Things I’m Loving” post. Based on my reader survey and comments online, I know that a lot of you really look forward to these posts each month. However, I’ve decided to start doing them every other month instead of each one. But don’t worry; expect them to be double the fun and double the love since it will be two months packed into one post. This change will allow me to spend extra time focusing on my more “intense” posts, like a few that I’ve got brewing in the background here which I’m SO PUMPED to share with you. It will also hopefully allow me to just like, … you know … CHILL. I’m not always good at that, but I’m working on it. I’ve also got two of my besties getting married this year, so 2016 is about to fly by and I want to make sure I’m achieving some kind of balance in my life. So that’s the basic gist of why I’ve chosen to make this small change to my blogging schedule. [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: December 2015

January 2, 2016 14 Comments

We made it through 2015! It’s hard to believe. For me, 2014 was a year of wedding prep and craziness. As for 2015 … it felt more like a year of getting into my groove, both with this blog and in a fresh marriage, and also just kind of chilling out. I’m never very good at that, so I’m not sure how well I did in that department, but I might work on that even more in 2016. Maybe my focus word for 2016 should be “CHILL.” What do you think? [Read more…]

Things I’m Loving: November 2015

December 1, 2015 12 Comments

Thanksgiving is over, I’ve got Christmas music on full blast, and I can’t stop making chocolate chip cookies. It’s that time of year! I love it. I had some milestone posts this month, like my favorite pesto pasta recipe highlighting my CSA farm (a post I had been wanting to do for a LONG time – don’t forget to use my discount code if you want to sign up for their CSA!), a recap of my trip to Massachusetts to visit blog friends (plus an epic hot chocolate recipe), my TWO YEAR BLOGIVERSARY (!!!) with pie crust animal cookies, and I said goodbye to my #commute painting series (at least for a while). I visited Chicago at the beginning of the month for the BlogHer Food Conference, so I’ll have a travel recap post about that coming up really soon. November was another great month. Here are some things I’ve been loving: [Read more…]