Thursday, July 14, 2011

My First Guest

Since I'm such a crappy blogger lately....

Hi Internet. There has been a change in your regularly scheduled programing :) I'm Sarah and I am one of Rachelle's friends. Rachelle has been too busy with life to post, and I got tired of checking this blog every.day for a new post, so I decided to offer a guest post so no one else (like me, with no life) has to sit around and wait for Rachelle to stop having so much darn fun with her life so she can post.


I am also a chiropractor (we met in chiropractic school, and no, this post will not go into detail of how we met, that story has been officially retired per Rachelle's request), a full-time working mom of two wonderful kids (Jacob, 3.75 years old and Chloe, 4 months) and a wife to Rob, the person that officiated at Rachelle and Jim's wedding (if you were there, you may remember the handsome guy with the jokes at the front of the room). Nice to meet you!


When deciding what to write, I thought about what she usually posts here, and my thoughts went immediately to my first (no wait--family first) second third fourth love, the piece of furniture in my kitchen. It's a newish addition to our kitchen, and I am IN LOVE. Coincidentally, there is a fun story behind my acquisition of it: My mother has been in real estate for over 20 years. She has moved up the food chain through years of top-sales, and is now the real estate manager of an office. The mortgage broker that works in her office had a rental home on the beach here in Connecticut (where I live) but she was selling it. The furniture in the house was beautiful, and I had my eye on this piece for a while. When I heard she was looking to liquidate everything in the house, I jumped on it! She offered it to me for $100 and I took it quicker than you can blink. It turned out her husband was moving some stuff to storage, so she even offered to bring it to my house for me in the back of the U-Haul, so I got delivery too :)


It fit like it was made for my kitchen. Previous to this we had what I lovingly referred to as the "Ugly Buffet" in it's place. Yes it was handed down from my great-Grandmother, Yes it was 1920's mahogany, but it had been treated badly by family that owned it before me, and it was U.g.l.y.



So now it was in my house--but what to fill it with?! The Ugly Buffet had previously been filled with Jacob's art supplies, so those transferred to the drawers of the new "piece" but the beautiful glass-door cabinets--what to put in there? I rummaged through my house and realized that I love blue stuff. The kitchen walls were already blue, and it turned out I had accumulated a lot of blue pottery. So I chose blue pottery and clear glass to fill it. I seriously love this thing.


So that’s all for now--I hope I entertained you as much as Rachelle usually entertains me!!!

Monday, July 4, 2011

Monday....

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

~Benjamin Franklin

Friday, July 1, 2011

Salad anyone?

I took garden pictures less than 2 weeks ago but never got around to posting them....


Everything was really starting the fill in nicely, with lots of flowers showing up on the tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and cucumbers.

We water it once a day, in the morning, and have applied organic plant food twice since we planted everything. After a little research, we decided on straw to hold in moisture instead of mulch which we have used in the past. Jim put lattice that we had from last year for the beans to climb. We also applied an organic garden dust twice after seeing noticing a lot of leaves had holes in them from little critters chewing on them. It seems to have taken care of the problem and keeping our fingers crossed....we seemed to have had no real issues with pests, deer, or disease.

This is what the garden looks like as of this morning. It's out of control how much things have shot up in the last ten days! We have tons & tons of baby tomatoes and cucumbers....

The cucumber vines were starting to take over the whole end of the bed and invade the tomatoes, so we constructed this pseudo lattice for the cucumbers out of a wood futon frame that we found in our neighbors trash (yes, we are trash pickers and proud of it!)

Lettuce, arugula, spinach, kale....I can't even eat enough salad these days!


And to think it started out looking like this only a month ago...


A Summer Update

The weather has been just perfect here lately. Breezy and cool at night. Warm & sunny with no humidity during the day. I guess I've just been too busy enjoying summer to sit inside and write about summer.....

For Father's Day my dad ventured onto a plane for the first time since 1970 when he was flying home from Vietnam, to spend a week at the Robinson Resort. We had a really great week lounging by the pool and tinkering around the house on little projects the way dads do. My dad also has the craziest repertoire of tales of days gone by of anyone I know. Jim and I think that he should write a novel....poverty, nomadic travels, knife wounds, war tales, women, drugs, dance parties, throw in a list of every job you can imagine and a even longer list of survived surgeries and near death experiences and you've got yourself a best seller. We loved having him and are already looking forward to his trip.

Papa and Elli 2009

After shipping Dad into the westward skies, Jim and I heading north for a weekend of nature. We usually try to get in at least two camping trips a year, but last year was just too crazy with the house remodeling and we didn't go at all. We skipped down Friday afternoon for Salt Springs Park. We've been there a few times before and really love the area. There are only 7-8 campsites that are nicely spaced out, so you don't feel like you're camping on top of another group. In fact on Friday night we were the only people there. There's a creek running right through the back edge of the campsites (where Sofee learned to swim a few years back) and plenty of great hiking. We got a little wet on Saturday morning but it cleared up and turned into a nice weekend. I love being forced into relaxing and enjoying a limited number of activities....during the rain we played a few rounds of Yahtzee and Rummy; during our breaks between hikes we took turns reading short stories out loud; and spent the evenings chatting endless by the fire, roasted marshmallows and enjoying pie iron pizza pies.

This week has been mostly work and a little play so far. Wednesday night we decided to head over to the Mann Center (an outdoor concert venue) for a performance by the Philadelphia orchestra. You can't beat $10 lawn seats and for orchestra concerts you're allowed to bring in any food and beverages you want. I whipped up a yogurt dip for some veggies and chips and topped gluten free cornbread with homemade fresh pesto, roasted red peppers, and grilled chicken for a delicious summer flatbread type sandwich. For dessert we had juicy red grapes. I love a simple picnic on a perfect summer night.

And that brings us to 4th of July weekend! We have no real plans, which I like best. I'm hoping for some nice weather for lounging by the pool. Any big plans for the weekend?