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!!!