Happy Birthday to me!

Yesteday I celebrated my (mumble-mumble)th birthday.  DH took the day off and we drove to Galveston and played tourist for the day.  We toured the Ocean Star offshore drilling rig and museum (very interesting), Elissa (a lovingly restored tall ship), had some lunch, strolled along The Strand, and then toured Bishop's Palace.  Oh!  ...and almost forgot, we drove around to see the sculptures carved into what was left of trees that were lost during Hurricane Ike.

If you want info on any of these sites:

Galveston attractions

Galveston Tree Sculptures

Despite the heat, we enjoyed our day trip.  I didn't take many pictures but got one of some of the pelicans we saw:

There are lots of pelicans around there...there's even a little island nearby named Pelican Island.

Touring Bishop's Palace was a real treat.  The size, various rooms, gorgeous woodwork and stained glass throughout.  There's even a small chapel there with exquisite stained glass windows.  Here is an example:

There's also a "conservatory" where the woman who lived there kept and grew many of her fern collection.  It was a wonderful room with lots of natural light.  Stitcher that I am...I thought it would make a great stitching room.

On our ongoing culinary adventures:

Last weekend we watched Martha Stewart spatchcock and grill a chicken.  Spatchcock is an interesting enough word that we thought we should try it.  Basically you remove either the backbone or the breastbone so you can flatten out the chicken to be able to grill it evenly.  You weight it down with bricks while it's grilling.  It was pretty tasty...and a pretty easy way to prepare chicken.

(The green stuff is from the mixed herb marinade.)

During the week I saw an interesting pasta dish from Real Simple magazine so we tried it.  We really enjoyed this one and will be making it again.

Pasta recipe
Finally, I'm still busily model stitching.  I took off a little time to work on my LHN Country Christmas:

Happy stitching!!!

Rainy Days and Fridays...and some family news

We've been in a drought so are welcoming the rain we've been having this week...I even welcomed it when I got caught during the last 3/4 mile of my morning walk without my umbrella yesterday.  You can almost hear the plants, grass, and trees sighing from this nice "drink".

I'm plugging right along on the model but took a little time out  to work on another of LHN Country Christmas, this time for me to keep:

I tried a new recipe that I found via Pinterest:  Raspberry Lemonade Bars:

OMG!  This recipe is a keeper!  It's the perfect thing to take to a summer potluck/picnic...and it's a good thing we had Rook where I shared them that night or I would have eaten the whole pan of them.  Here's a link to the recipe:

Raspberry Lemonade Bars


Now that the immediate family knows, I can share that our DD is now engaged.  She and her fiance have been together for a while and we'd already started thinking of him as a son-in-law but soon it will be official.  They're very good for one another and we're very excited about it.

Happy stitching!

Friday ramblings

It's another hot, humid week in Gulf Coast Texas and life goes on.  In addition to the heat/humidity we've been "blessed" with a fresh "hatching" of mosquitoes....which makes my morning walks SO pleasant (not!).  I had a check-up this week and the doc is pleased about my walking and the yoga.  I feel a lot better for exercising so I can't complain.

I took another brief break from model stitching to stitch up a little piece for an exchange...LHN's Country Christmas.  It's on its way but, of course, I like it so much that I'll be stitching another to keep for myself.

The model is a big one but it's coming right along.  It's a great design.

I'm also in RR where we're stitching hearts from the CHS design "Friendship Sampler".  The second one arrived yesterday so I'll be working on that too.

I've been debating myself for a long time about whether I'd like a laptop or a tablet...and whether or not I even needed either.  Since my birthday's coming up, I finally decided that I want an iPad (some of my family has Apple products and this would be our only Apple device, so far, anyway).  It arrived late Wednesday afternoon and already I'm wondering how I lived before I had it.  lol!  I've already downloaded a couple of apps (synced to my Kindle and Netflix accounts) and have ideas for different ways to use it in the future.  I still can't say I actually NEEDED it but when you're as old as I am, having a "toy" isn't such a bad thing.  We plan to Skype with our DS in Denmark this weekend so, since he doesn't have an Apple product, probably download Skype to my iPad.

No culinary adventures to share this week but I plan on baking some raspberry lemon squares that I found on Pinterest.  We're going out to play Rook tonight so it's a good excuse to bake something.

The saga of the garage repairs continues.  It's been like torturous having this work done bc what should have taken 2-3 days max is now almost finishing up the second week.  They come and work a couple of hours and then leave....and either I have to be here to open the garage door or leave with it open and unattended while I'm out.  Ugh!!!  I will be SO glad when this is finished!

I finished reading "Defending Jacob" (what a heartbreaking story!) and then got back to reading "Flags of Our Fathers" and finished it last night.  Now I want to watch John Wayne's "Sands of Iwo Jima".

DH plans an upcoming business trip to Boston and invited me to come along.  Since I've never been there, I decided to go.  Luckily we just happened to talk about this when there was a good sale on air fare.  Unfortunately I've been told that there are no LNS' there but I have a feeling there's plenty other things to do so it's all good.

Happy stitching!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!  I'm forever grateful to all who have served to keep us free. I hope everyone enjoys celebrating with family and friends.

I'm still model stitching but spent a little stitching time finishing LHN's All Is Calm.  I think I'll leave off the buttons but could change my mind sometime in the future.

On the food front, I tried a new (to me) recipe for a peach pie last week.  DH had bought some really good peaches from Central Market.  It was so good that I made another peach pie yesterday.

I'm still walking 5 mornings a week.  It's really getting hot but it feels so good to get some exercise.  The track I walk at the community college straddles 2 small cities and I chuckled the first time I saw these signs along the path:

We're also in the middle of getting some repairs done to the support for the bricks in front of our garage.  It seems the original builder miscalculated the load (or just wanted to cheap out) so we were starting to have some sagging.  It's not a "fun" project, let alone the expense but it will be good to have it done.  Next project, hopefully, will be some work on 2 bathrooms.

Happy stitching!