2 Things @ Once

Saturday 3 p.m.: Heading Home ... Or Maybe to Alaska

Saturday 3 p.m.: Feasting on Samples at Whole Foods

Goat cheese wrapped in bacon on little toasts. Bake in a 425 oven for 5-10 minutes, til slightly crispy. Suitable as a meal, I'd say.

Saturday 3 p.m. ~

NaBloPoMo, Day 14

I'm getting together a batch of photos to use for Moo Cards. Thought I'd spin through some older photos--these from my trip to the Tetons in 2003--and see if there were any keepers.

Saturday 3 p.m.: Apple Pie

NaBloPoMo, Day 8

My sister Jenny doesn't do a whole lot of cooking but when Fall rolls around, she gets out the rolling pin and becomes an apple pie baking machine. If they didn't take so long to make, she'd probably bake a pie every weekend. And who am I to complain? With Michigan apples fresh from the Farmer's Market and a kick-ass flaky crust, these pies are fabulous.

Yesterday was the final Farmer's Market of the season, which I missed because I was attending H1N1-flu-shot-a-palooza over at the local high school. Jen picked up a big sack of apples--spies are her preferred pie apple--and I got home in time to help her whip up a batch of cinnomony apples and a couple of crusts. No surprise, it was delicious.

Saturday 3 p.m. ~ Art on the Walls

NaBloPoMo, Day 1

It's November (November!!?!) and masochistic bloggers know what that means--it's National Blog Posting Month!

Oh, heck, why not? But I'll blog every day just for one month, got it? That's it. And I'm warning you now, this month may be a little heavy on the photograph posts, since I'm up to my neck in digital images. Every free moment this weekend has been spent consolidating my digital image library onto one large external hard drive. It's a project that will carry me well into the week, as I transfer, organize and tag nearly 10,000 images dating back to 2006. If I really want to kill myself, I could drag out the CDs I have with images dating back another few years, shots taken with my very first digital camera, a 3 megapixel Sony Powershot. I just might do that; there are some photos from the Tetons I wouldn't mind seeing again and improving upon with some more advanced digital darkroom techniques.

The weekend was good, the high point of which was my good friend Annie's 50th birthday celebration. A dozen of us gathered at one long table in the private upstairs room at the always delicious Campagnola; an interesting and diverse collection of friends representing all five decades of Annie's life. She's the first of my close band of friends to make the leap into the next half century and I can safely say, if every celebration is this fun and filled with this much laughter, I look forward to us all hitting the mark.

And finally, to the real subject of this post, what I was doing at 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon--hanging pictures. Yep, whacking nails into the freshly painted walls. Nothing acts as a better impetus to clean your house than the sudden prospect of friends coming over for a pre-birthday gathering. And that major task I've been putting off--hanging the art back up on the walls--what better time to do that too?

This finishing touch to our home redo project really sets off the color in the room. The walls and the artwork (mostly photographs) look great together. The wall color really sets off the art and the art now pops off the wall, as opposed to getting lost in the drab white of before. I'm thrilled with the way it looks. A few pieces returned to their original locations, most everything else we changed up and I'm really happy with the way everything seemed to come together and fall into place.

Saturday 3 p.m.: Dry Dock

Down at the dry dock, unloading everything from the sailboat so it can winter in the warehouse, wrapped in plastic. It's amazing how they stuff boats in there, with mere inches to spare.

Saturday 3 p.m. ~ Flu Shot!

Saturday 3 p.m. ~ Sriracha Popcorn

I had a little leftover Sriracha ginger butter so I threw it on my bowl of popcorn. I proclaim it delicious.

Saturday 3 p.m.: Time for Mums

Planted the mums I bought this morning at the Farmers Market.

Saturday 3 p.m. ~ Anticipating My Least Favorite Household Chore

Sealing the kitchen counter tops. Pietra cardosa is gorgeous but every so often it requires a toxic amount of TLC.