Date Night: Reading in Bed + Homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes

Date Nights, Life in Love  //  19th September 2012

For weeks we had it marked on our calendar.  It read “Pool Day!”  With summer quickly coming to an end we wanted to spend one more day enjoying summer while sitting at the pool, catching up on some of our favorite magazines, and holding each other tight. It was supposed to be a lazy date day before heading into a few of our busiest weeks yet this year. Well, apparently mother nature doesn’t follow our calendar and instead of sunshine and warm weather, it decided to rain. In protest, Liz put on her Sperry rain boots and went outside anyway.

So instead of our planned date night, we decided to embrace fall and the rainy weather, enjoy Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and cuddle up close while reading in bed.  Normally, we would walk down to Starbucks to get 2 grande Pumpkin Spice Lattes (we are pretty much BFFs with the staff now), but this time we decided to skip the walk and make our own.  The $10 we saved we donated to Thirst Relief International as part of our Liz and Ryan Mission Fundraiser.  Check out our post from earlier this morning to learn more!

So you may be thinking making your own Pumpkin Spice Latte is CRAZY!!! But in fact, it is really quite simple.  Because it is almost the fall and we love anything pumpkin we actually had a left over can of pumpkin in our cabinet.  Everything else needed were simple ingredients you probably already have at home too.  So enjoy the instructions below on how to create your very own Pumpkin Spice Lattes to drink while cuddling in bed with a good read!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 C Milk (We used whole, but 2%, skim, soy or almond should also work)
• 1 C extra strong coffee (or espresso if you have it)
• 3 or 4 tbsp canned or fresh pumpkin
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 1 tsp cinnamon plus extra to sprinkle on top
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg plus extra to sprinkle on top
• Whip Cream

If you happen to have Pumpkin Spice seasoning, you may substitute it for the cinnamon and nutmeg.

INSTRUCTIONS:
Step 1: Measure out two cups of milk and pour into a small sauce pan.  

Step 2: Add pumpkin, and sugar to milk and heat over medium high heat.  Whisk thoroughly  to combine ingredients.

Step 3: Prepare your coffee/espresso.

Step 4: Once the pumpkin milk mixture begins to steam, reduce heat to low, add vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Stir with whisk over low heat for 15 – 30 seconds.

Step 5: Pour pumpkin milk mixture into two coffee cups.  We transferred the mixture to a glass measuring cup with spout for easy pouring first.

Step 6: Add coffee/espresso, approximately 1/2 C each.

Step 7: Top with whip cream and sprinkle on cinnamon and nutmeg

That’s it!  Super simple!  We just so happened to have some left over pumpkin bread from our AMAZING friends Lauren and John to pair with our lattes. It definitely made for a super tasty treat.

Liz grabbed one of her favorite magazines, Real Simple, and I grabbed our iPad.  We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in bed, reading, listening to the rain outside, and pausing to soak in this AMAZING life!  Happy Date Night!!

 

Date Night – Letter Press and Pazo

Date Nights, Life in Love  //  5th September 2012

To say our lives have been busy over the last several months is an understatement.  Preparing to launch our new brand while also trying to balance all of the necessary work required to still run our business has made for some late nights.  I am sure you all have had similar experiences in your own lives where work and life just don’t seem to balance. It’s at those times we need to take one deep breath and no matter how hard, carve out just a little extra time for that someone special.  Grab a quick coffee, call a babysitter and go on a date.  And most importantly, don’t lose track of what are really the most important things in life.

A few months back, just as we were starting to get into one the busy wedding months of the year, and as we were still finalizing our new brand, we decided to do just that.  We

took a moment to pause life, and went on a super fun date.  One of the things we LOVE the most about our job, is being able to inspire other couples to also be spontaneous and  to make moments to soak each other in.  This was also why we started hosting Couple’s Date Nights with our AMAZING couples.  No matter how long you have been together, never stop dating.  So to continue to inspire you to go on fun dates, we have decided to document some of our most fun dates and share them on our blog.  In fact, we have actually created an entire category just for Date Nights!

For our very first featured date night, we headed out to the Baltimore Print Studio to meet up with our super fun friend Catherine (who we are totally jealous of right now because she is spending time in Italy for grad school as we speak!) to learn what goes into making your very own custom letter press.  Letter press stationary is playing a huge part in our rebranded collateral suite, (future post to come) so seeing how it is actual made was super exciting to us.  After taking turns spinning the giant letter press wheel, we headed out for a romantic dinner at one of our favorite Baltimore restaurants, Pazo!  We sipped on fancy martinis, enjoyed some amazing tapas and shared a super tasty flatbread.

Cheers to making time for more Date Nights and holding the one you love extra close!