Greenthumb update

Just a happy little update on how the daffodils are coming along!

Vespa's mud bath

Every now and then, Vespa enjoys a good meal of worm and bug in the great outdoors. Sometimes, she's a lucky pup and happens upon a worm or slug that has found its way to the middle of the driveway at an inopportune time... when the concrete decides to dry. It is then that the earthworm or slug will eventually wither and wilt and dry and become tough. Chewy. A premium, all-natural pup chewie. And Vespa just loves them. And I love them because they're small enough to be chewed and swallowed in one piece without being a terrifying choking hazard.

It was one beautiful, sunny day last week when I decided to open the sliding glass back doors and allow Vespa to explore her turf "on her own" for a while. I was scrubbing a sink load of dishes and pots and pans and cookie sheets at the sink and could watch her through the window, just in case she decided to chase after any pesky roaming neighborhood cats.

After about 30 minutes of freedom, I decided to grab the camera and see what I found Vespa up to on her outdoor explorations. Mostly, she'll be treeing a squirrel or sniffing at pinecones and sticks. But on this day Vespa was into something much more interesting! She had discovered a bug that was flopping around in a muddy puddle right in the middle of the back yard. And, what do we do when we discover a bug? We roll around on it. We rub all over it. We especially get it around our neck and behind our ears... you know... so we can savor it, and save a little of it for later. It dries especially well when suspended behind a loose-fitting collar, in case anyone was curious.

Here she is, sniffing the air and assessing the situation before delving into the muddy puddle of grossness:

Oh, she was caught rolling in the mud and she knew it was gonna get her into biiiiiiiiig trouble. She immediately started her Trail-of-Tears-Death-Row-walk-of-shame up to the back deck for immediate scolding and stern talking-to. But wait a sec. Squirrel? Oh, yeah. Trouble.

Reporting for punishment with mud on the feet. Yuk!

It was so incredibly hilarious how she thought she was in trouble for rubbing on the bug in the mud. I usually freak out and yell in a freakishly loud and high-pitched voice because the thought of rolling on bugs to catch them on her neck just grosses me out! But this time I was just hysterical with laughter because she wouldn't look at me. At all. She completely avoided eye contact at all costs!

Tail down, ears back, eyes turned away: the only way to take on verbal abuse/punishment from Momma.

Squirrel??!!??? Oh yeah, I'm in trouble. Better stay here.

She still didn't make eye contact here! She just looked right past me and up into the sky. Which made me even more hysterical with laughter because of these squinty little eyes! How cuuuuuuute!!!

After a few minutes of consoling and petting on Vespa, she came around to realize that she actually wasn't in trouble. We decided to lie out on the back deck for about 10 minutes in the warm sun like turtles before calling it an afternoon and heading inside for a cleansing bath.

Playing catch up

Since I've fallen far behind in any way of updating this blog, and since I'm emptying many valuable (and many useless) pictures from my camera's memory card, I decided to load some of them here. This is what we've been up to since... uh, about December:

It was juuuuust dark enough so that I got to look at this beautiful courthouse every day when I left work from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day.

We got to decorate our first home for Christmas with a real tree, cranberry garland, plenty of colorful ornaments from friends and family, and the illuminated star topper we've had since our first Christmas as husband and wife. My favorite Christmas decoration was this pair of sweet papier mache gold leaf reindeer I purchased for $15 total at Michael's.

We treated our niece Katie Anne with a box full of dress-up playtime clothes. No matter its blurriness and color off-ness and light problems, this is my absolute favorite picture of Katie Anne. She's blurry because she's twirling. Her little foot is turned sideways like she's about to tip over, and the chef's hat is about to swallow her whole! She looks soooo happy, and that's why I love it!

I sewed my first-ever purse from a pattern. It's pieces of fabric sewn together and then quilted. And I did it all on my very own! It is Vespa's weekender tote and we fill it with her food and water and toys (and my knitting projects) for the road when we drive up to Cartersville for weekends with family.

I joined my first-ever knitting swap. It was a scarf swap, and the girl I was knitting for loves the color blue. She also lives in Portugal!!!! My knitting work has gone international now.  :)

In addition to the Barcalounger we purchased for Carlton, I've been slowly-but-surely settling into our home. I've bought little somethings here and there for hanging on the wall and accessorizing and furnishing the house. Our TV is now up off the floor, as are all the electronics associated with it! Like, up on a TV stand! And we've got some artwork and mirrors and sconces (like this one above) hanging on the walls. Slowly but surely, we're making it prettier.

I got my fingernails dirty the weekend of Valentine's Day. I planted about a million daffodil bulbs from Papa, and about a thousand bulbs from Vicki. Here's hoping I don't disappoint anyone!

Two weeks later, that's what we saw!

And as of this morning, we're rockin' these cute little bubbles of something colorful at the very tips of many of the pointy, leafy plants! (I'll keep you filled in as we make more progress!)

We have dinner parties here at the house on a regular basis! About once a month (or every six weeks or so, depending on whose turn it is) a group of 6-10 folks show up and I get to feed them. This was our latest gathering, a smaller group. We capped off the night with a game of poker and a homemade cheesecake topped with fresh whipped cream. Cool fact: The tall, blurry guy sitting next to Carlton (and his wife in red next to him) used to own our house!

I was reeeeeeeeeeally sick about a week ago. I vomited so violently that I burst all sorts of tiny little blood vessels around my eyes and all over my face. Looked like Carlton had beaten me after a couple of days! Feeling much better, thanks for your well wishes everyone!

And finally, our house is VERY ready for Spring to arrive. I hung these big, full ferns just a few days ago and they're loving it up there in the breeze. All we need for the front of the house now is a UGA flag for that flag holder. Oh, and to actually attach our 2-1-3 house numbers underneath the porch light. Oh, and of course, to plant the rest of those potted plants Vicki brought us!!!  :)

Make memories

I had written a very touching pretty-much-novel that related to this link, but I somehow hit a combination of two keys on this ill-forsaken laptop and deleted the entire thing. I just don't have it in me to repeat what I had already written, and I'd prefer to knit tonight instead of cry big, fat tears. So, please read the beautiful blog entry at this link and do one more thing for me: if you've still got her, be sure to make as many memories with, about, and of your grandmother as you can... because there can never be enough memories of a grandmother and her grandbabies.


Aaaaaaaaain't!

Out with the old, in with the... old?

When we moved into our sweet little green house with its wet yard and antique air-leaking sliding glass back doors and half-a-kitchen worth of cabinetry (love ya housey, I'm just stating the facts here), one of the projects we put near the top of our list was sort of a minor facelift for the interior.

While it was perfectly fine with us that every single doorknob in the house didn't match, and while it didn't bother us that all the doorknobs were brass (the light fixtures or kitchen hardware are that oil-rubbed bronze or brushed steel, but a doorknob is a doorknob), it really did bother us that the knobs were original to the house, which was built in 1986, and many of them were badly corroded. The brass had corroded off some of the doorknobs, and that made them look rather gross. And what made it even worse for me was that the nastiest-looking one was on the hallway bathroom door, the bathroom that everybody uses when they visit, and we use on a daily basis. Yuk! "Welcome to my home. Please, make yourself comfortable. Enjoy yourself. And, please, caress our disgusting doorknob. But before you do, be sure to wash up and dry your hands on the monogrammed hand towels! Then touch the nasty doorknob."

So, Carlton and I went to Lowe's and to Home Depot. We priced out the number of doorknobs that were in the house, putting into thought the number of closet doors (no locks), as well as bathroom and bedroom doors (locks, please!). It was outrageous how much money it was going to cost us just to replace this hardware... I tried to suppress the amount from my memory, but I think it was going to be about $400! Just for doorknobs. I would rather have more kitchen cabinets for that, thankyouverymuch!

Then I remembered all of the great spray paints that are out there on the market. My parents recently spray painted all of the kitchen cabinet hardware in a house they own and rent out. My sister-in-law Katie spray painted some plastic outdoor play equipment for our niece Katie Anne this past summer. And they make some really nice spray paints these days! I even used one type of spray paint with sand in it to spray onto the side of a to-scale model house I constructed in my college design classes. It was a really realistic brick effect!

The spray paint we found was perfect for what we were looking for. All we needed to do was take off the hardware, line it all up, and spray away. And, at about $3.00 for a can of primer ("highly recommended") and $6.50 for a can of the finishing "hand-hammered bronze" effect (yup, it's even slightly textured!), how could we not give this a shot? $9.50 in a test run sure does beat $400 of replacing doorknobs, so why wouldn't we at least try it first? And, if the paint chips or peels or rubs off, all we're out is a few bucks, and at least we tried it out!

So, here's what we did. It was really quick and really easy. We started at about 4:00 in the afternoon. First, we found a good, flat space in the back yard (not hard to find around these parts!), laid out a heavy painting canvas, and laid out all of our doorknobs. Next, we sprayed them with primer. Let that dry, flipped them, sprayed the other side with primer. Let that dry, sprayed them with the first coat of the good stuff. Let that dry, flipped them, sprayed the other side with the good stuff. After that last round dried we brought them in because it was getting dark.

After the doorknobs dried and set overnight, we checked them out in fresh daylight the next morning. Of course, there were a couple of thin paint places here and there, so we touched them up with a little spritz and let them dry some more.

Installed, the doorknobs look brand new!!! If you weren't told that they didn't all match and that they were actually old grody corroded doorknobs from the 80's, you would never know they weren't brand spankin' new!

The rest of our snow

So, while our snow down here in Moultrie didn't last long, it was a really exciting event. While I know they're not weathermen, the girls I work with at the quilt shop claimed that it hasn't snowed down here in 15 years! Sadly, some time around 9:30 or 10:00 pm the snow started melting from the yards, rooftops, and even our back deck  But here's what we saw later on that night:

Here is Carlton at about 7:00 showing off the size of these massive "snowflakes" that were falling all around us! (Shhh, I didn't tell him, but there was also one stuck to the back of his head like Katie's terrifying crazy eye!)

And this is our back deck at about 7:00, right after the back of Carlton's head thawed out (don't look too hard, Vicki, but I think as of the time this picture was taken I have officially killed the precious rosemary tree) :

 And, finally, at 8:00 pm through the glass door:

Ditto!

Hey y'all, it's snowing way down here, too! All day it's been dripping and drizzling rain, but about 30 minutes ago the snowy/rainy mix started. And now we're pretty much reduced to gigantic, fat, icy snowflakes. I know, it's craziness!

Kids in the house that backs up to ours have been screaming and yelling and celebrating for the past 30 minutes which prompted me to look outside and see what the big fuss was all about. Well, as of 5:30, this is what the excitement is all for:

Here's the view from our front door:

...and from the back:

...and from under the kitchen table, obviously the only safe place from snow in all of the house:

A Recipe for Pretty Home Decoration

So, quite a few years ago my parents went on one of their fantastic vacations to Italy, and one of the souvenirs they brought back for me has yet to be used. It's just been folded up, in a pantry or drawer or closet or up on a shelf with the dishrags and towels.

Recently, I got the souvenir out of storage, ironed it, and began planning out a pretty new home decoration. Whatever you want to call this thing: fabric recipe-book, or fabric poster, or dishtowel... anything you wanna call it, I love its vibrant lemon-yellow, apple-green, and touch of scarlet red.

I picked up two packages from Target for $9.99, each of which contained four black 8x10 picture frames. ("$9.99 for four whole entire picture frames!?!?!??" I hear you say. "Sure, I was okay with that price!" I might answer. "Even though the frame is plastic, the window is actually glass so they don't look very cheap just hanging there on the wall." Woohoo for cheap plastic frames from Target!) I measured the window of the frame and cut down my cloth to fit inside the frame. Then, before I put the cut-to-fit-perfectly fabric into the frame, I rolled each piece individually to be sure there was no residual lint or fuzzies on it. Because this has been in storage for so many years, it had quite a bit of yuk on it.

Then I put each piece into a frame. I mentioned above that each piece was cut-to-fit-perfectly behind the glass because I didn't want any of the artwork or words to be chopped off or hidden by part of the frame itself. You'll see why in a minute.

Here are all six framed pieces, ready to go in their respective frames. See why I didn't want any of the pictures or words--especially down the middle--covered by the frame? I wanted to still be able to read this, if I ever go crazy and decide to make my own limoncello. I doubt it, but I still wouldn't put it past me either.

Next, I flipped each frame over and pried off the little cardboard stand-prop-thing. Because these are going to hang on the wall, I didn't want the stand-prop-thing to make any of them hang sideways or lopsided.

Eww, look at that naked wall and that pitiful little half of our Mason cabinet. (We're calling it the Mason cabinet because my sister's fiance's mom, Marsha Mason, sold it to me for just $40!!! The top part, including a built-in flour sifter, is currently in our carport amidst paint remover and rags, undergoing some Botox.)

Annnnnnd, voila! Instant pretty on my dining room wall. And a recipe to boot! Now I need to find some whimsical and eye-catching little dishes or saucers or plates or platters to hang on the wall on either side of the frames. What do you think?

London broil, Part I: The Marinade

There was a day last week when I woke up, sent Carlton off to work, walked Vespa, and turned to my little dish on the kitchen counter for a... GASP!!!... no clementines left for breakfast? Or, lunchtime's dessert? Or, my infamous 4:00-snack-break-that's-not-really-approved-but-chuckled-at-because-they-know-I-get-cranky-at-work-when-I-get-too-hungry snack? Or, my before bedtime dessert (hey, it keeps me away from that bag of Nestle chocolate chips on the baking shelf, okay!)? No clementines at all and I just couldn't believe it.

So, after a quick Lean Cuisine lunch in the shop I jetted out to Winn Dixie to grab a crate of my littleorangedearlybeloveds and head back on into work.

Once I got there, I snatched up a crate and saw that they were putting out fresh boneless, skinless chicken breasts on sale for buy-one-get-one-free. This is not a story of their adventures in being cooked.

This is the first part of the story of half of one of the two London broils I purchased for the same deal--buy-one-get-one-free. It's a good cut of beef. I remember my mom making a London broil every now-and-then when I was growing up, and it was always a good meal, served with mashed potatoes or baked potatoes or roasted potatoes. My mom's a meat-n-potatoes kinda girl, so that's how I'm used to eating. Can't complain about that! That's pretty much all Carlton will eat at all, so dinner tonight should be golden.

So, without anymore gabbing, here's Part I: The Marinade.

You'll need:

Dale's Seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, spicy mustard, sweet wine, and fresh garlic:

Peel the skins off of two or three cloves of garlic. I chose three, because I really like it.

Chop the garlic until you're happy with how small it is. I think I got a little carried away because I'm enjoying using my ceramic knife (thanks again, Daddy!). Then just dump the garlic into your dish.

Add in 1/4 cup of Dale's Seasoning, 1 tablespoon of the Worcestershire sauce, and 2 tablespoons of the spicy mustard:

The next step was supposed to be adding 1/4 cup of the sweet white wine. Ours was a homemade bottle of (apparently peachy) zinfandel and when I popped the cork, GA-ROSSSSSSS!!! There was no way I was going to marinade with this. Thanks for the gift, but um, no thanks. I grabbed honey instead. Add 1 tablespoon of honey to the marinading dish:

Whisk it all about. Like my action shot?

Plop in the beef. Wiggle it around to be sure the stuff really gets on there. Flip it over and wiggle it around some more. Seal it up tight and place it in the refrigerator until it's time to start dinner, hopefully for a few hours!

I'll be back around later tonight to share with you Part II: Cooking, Eating, and Loving the London Broil with some potatoes to boot! Hungry yet?