Spring Catch-Up - Girl Scouts

Today, I am stuck in the house because my car is at the dealership for a tune-up.  Nothing to do but continue to clean and blog.  This is the last Tuesday of school, but I'm not going to panic.  I am determined to enjoy summer.  

Even though we had our last official troop meeting a couple of weeks ago, Girl Scouts is still not quite over.  On Saturday, the girls got together to swim and make ice cream sundaes, which was really fun.

They gave Jill, Michelle, and I each a mug with our painting on it...so cool.  

On Friday, they are presenting the school with a big canvas copy of the painting, and then we have a trip to the fire station planned near the end of the month.  Then, I think we're DONE done. Until September.  I love Girl Scouts, but I could use a little break.  Just a little one.

OK, heading upstairs to tackle the office.  Woo-hoo!

Spring Catch-Up - Visitors

Well, the whole downstairs is now in pretty good shape.  A definite improvement.  And not only have I accomplished the Big Tidy-Up, but I have also caught up on a few other things - making appointments, responding to emails, updating my calendar, etc.

So, back to the blog!

We've had lots of visitors this spring.  Jeff was here in April, and in May, Kev's mom and dad came to spend Memorial Day weekend.  We went to Magnolia's for dinner (above) (shrimp and grits!).  And I don't know what was happening below, but it looks like fun.  (Thanks to Papa for the pictures!)

Kev and his dad played guitars and did some recording, and Mimi and I took Daphne shopping for some new summer clothes.

The next weekend, my parents came to visit and celebrate somebody's upcoming birthday (more on that later)!

It's always fun to have visitors, and always hard when they have to go.  

Both weekends were really nice weather-wise, and there was a lot of sitting on the porch.  Sitting on the porch is one of the best things about the spring, and it has been happening a lot lately.  Definitely seems like more than last year. 

So, hooray for houseguests and porches!

One quick funny thing.  My dad had these Nikes that he wore the whole time he was here.  They sqeaked.  With every single step.  It was like Squidward was here, walking around...squeak squeak squeak.  Finally, I googled something like "new nike shoes squeak" and I'll be damned if a youTube video didn't turn up with a way to fix it.  All it took was a little Gold Bond Powder up under the insole, and the squeak was gone.  The internet is awesome.

OK...more catching up coming soon, but now it's time for the bus.  Four more days of school.

Spring Catch-Up - Work

Ah...I feel better.  I had some lunch and tidied up the TV room so that I can sit in there and knit without being stressed out quite as much by the clutter.  

And, speaking of knitting, I guess this would be a good time to talk about work.  Because, this spring, I have spent a lot of time either teaching or working at the Finch.  It is seriously the best job ever.

Sometimes, I have a sidekick:

Sometimes, I have the whole place all to myself:

And sometimes, I am there, knitting with people I like:

Someday, I will actually finish this project.  It's still not done, even though I've finished teaching the class.

I have new classes coming up this summer.

Cabling:

A sweater:

And one kids' class:  Screen-printing!

I am so excited about all of these classes and projects.  I am really lucky that I ended up getting to work at my favorite place in town.  

Now...what to clean next?  I am totally on a roll!

Spring Catch-Up - Food

After all this Spring Busy-ness, not only am I behind on blogging, but my house is also a disaster.  So, I decided that this is how it's gonna go: 

Clean a room, blog a blog, clean a room, blog a blog, and so on until the house is clean and I am all caught up on here.  I just cleaned the kitchen, so it seems appropriate to post about food.  

This spring, there has been a lot of grilling, including corn (above) and fish for tacos (below).

There have been opportunities to use things from the garden, including the sage below, which we fried and put on some butternut squash raviolis from Wegmans.

There have been MANY visits to the farmer's market, where my favorites are local goat cheese, maple syrup from Purcellville (who knew?!), honey greek yogurt from a local dairy, and donuts the size of your head:

I got this awesome cookbook at the library and used farmers market eggs in a recipe in there for oeuf cocotte, which is basically a baked egg with whatever "mix-ins" you want (this had the farmers market goat cheese and some tarragon from the garden).

You can't have May without strawberry shortcake.

Mimi came to visit and showed us how to make monkey bread.

These are called Disco Fries (below).  They are from the Churchkey in NW D.C.  Crispy fries, covered in melty cheese and sausage gravy.  Awesomeness in a bowl.  Plain evil, but so so good.

While in DC, we also went to a tapas place called Estadio, where we got "pistachio encrusted quince, manchego, and chorizo" on a skewer.  A very weird combo, but surprisingly delicious, so later in the week, I made them at home.  My skewers have penguins.  Next time I get invited to a party, I am taking  these.

Finally, I decided to actually MAKE something that I pinned, so I went with this - good bread, brushed with olive oil and rubbed with garlic and toasted in the oven, then topped with mashed avocado, thinly sliced manchego, and crispy prosciutto.  So good. 

If I ever catch up on THIS blog, I will add some of the recipes for these things to the food blog, which is sadly neglected.

Now I'm hungry.  

Off to clean another room so I can blog another blog, but maybe I'll have an early lunch first...

Suddenly Summer

I don't know what happened.  Last time I blogged a blog, our peonies were still buds.

Now, they have bloomed and gone.

This was the last batch.  There were a few left on the bushes yesterday, but a storm came through last night and that was the end of that.

Today is the first day of the last week of school.  It's pretty much summer.  I walked Daphne and her friends to school today and it was muggy and soupy and very summer-like.  

I guess I got all caught up in the busy-ness of Spring, and didn't have time to blog.  Or maybe I just had a bad case of Spring Fever, and didn't MAKE time to blog.  Either way, I miss it, so I'm back at it again.  I will post a few very photo-intensive posts to try to get caught up.  A lot has happened over the past few weeks!  So stay tuned...

A Major Oversight!

How did I forget to mention that we went to Mother's Day brunch at Ford's Fish Shack, where I had my favorite thing in the whole world, the perfect food, a LOBSTER ROLL?  That I could leave that out just goes to show how awesome the rest of my day was, I guess.

LOSTER ROLL!  

The funniest thing was, we went early, for brunch, and instead of giving me a little bowl of melted butter for dipping, they accidentally gave me a little bowl of maple syrup.  The bowl was dark, so you couldn't really tell.  It was a little shocking, to say the least, when I took a bite of my syrupy dipped sandwich.  Syrup and lobster don't work together well.  Good thing I didn't pour it over my sandwich as I sometimes do.

Great Big Mother's Day of Awesomeness

Someone was excited about Mother's Day.  

Excited enough to wake up before 6:00 am and construct a Mother's Day tree so that there would be something to put the gifts under.

It was a very handmade Mother's Day.  In addition to the tree, Daphne made me a little paper flower garden and this ceramic German Shepherd, whom we have named Fritz.

Fritz came wrapped in custom hand-drawn Star Wars gift wrap:

And I got a handmade card:

Kev gave me The Gift of Vacation - we're all going to a cabin for a weekend in October.  I can not wait.

We spent a large part of the day on the porch.  We tried to go to a winery for a picnic, but they were all ridiculously crowded, so we had a picnic in the front yard instead.  It was way better.

I like Mother's Day.  I don't have to cook, and I get to hang out with my family, and everyone is extra nice to me.  Let's have Mother's Day more often!

So, Happy Mother's Day to my mom and all the other good moms out there who have the hardest but best job ever.  I hope you all had as much fun as I did.  Thanks, family!

The Week in Pictures

Kev was gone on work travel all last week, so Daphne and I were on our own.  I took care of the garden and taught my knitting class.

Daphne went to school and did homework.  We tried to make it more fun by doing it at the coffee shop.

We had a gluten free week.  Someone recommended this Rudi's bread.  It's pretty terrible.  But when it's toasted with a whole bunch of avocado and some salt on it, you can hardly tell it's gluten free.

I also made chili.  Kev doesn't really like my style of chili, but Daphne does, so we enjoyed it.  All Texas-ed up, with fritos and cheese.  There may or may not have been chili dogs later in the week.

The Girl Scouts made some planters for the entrance to the school, and then did a Relay for Life walk for cancer.  It was so hot, but the kids didn't complain.  We walked for Uncle Dennis.  Daphne did two miles.  She was a disaster when we got home.

But she cleans up real good.

Friday, she made a sign:

And Saturday, we celebrated Kev's return (YAY!!!!) with dinner out at the pho place.  Because I don't cook on Mother's Day weekend.

Daphne worked on her chopsticks skills.  

I had Vietnamese tilapia.  It was delicious.  Go figure.