Archive | July, 2013

A weekend of awesome.

9 Jul

I’m going to tell you about my weekend.

It was wonderful.

I cleaned.  I strangely love cleaning on a day off.  It helps me feel productive and less guilty for the rest of my time at home spent … not cleaning.

I read.  I finished Insurgent [the second novel in the trilogy by Veronica Roth] and picked up a few books that I’ve been nursing along for a couple months now.

I picked strawberries.  It’s just not quite summer if I don’t pick strawberries.  I drove to just south of Faribault and picked eight pounds of delicious, red strawberries with bright green leaves.  I’d forgotten what a far cry locally picked berries are from the store-bought ones.  What am I doing with eight pounds of strawberries?  Eating them.

photo-105

I quilted.  I finished the top of a banana baby quilt, sandwiched it, and then started in on the gumdrop quilt I told you about in my last post.  I just couldn’t wait and happened to have all of the supplies on hand.  I’ve been cutting and fusing and cutting and fusing lots in the last few days while watching Arrested Development.

I went shopping with Paige.  We met up at the outlet mall and shopped a bit.  I picked up a few needed items for my kayak trip.  [Headlamp?  Check.  Sleeping bag?  Check.  Wilderness wash?  Check.]

It was such a great weekend of all of my favorite things.  Up next is the second day of day camp tomorrow at Red Oak Grove – also one of my favorite things!  We’ll just erase the tense council meeting from last night from my mind and pretend only favorite things exist.

Friday Favorites.

5 Jul

After a week hiatus, I’m back.  And I must say – three day weekends are my favorite.  It’s nice to have a holiday that falls on a Thursday and not a Monday because that means three days off for this person who has to work on Sundays.  Also my favorites –

Feedly.  Normally, many of my Friday Favorites would come from the blogs I follow on google reader.  Google reader met its planned demise on July 1st.  Google shut it down.  On June 30, I made the dreaded switch to another feed reader, Feedly.  And I love it.  Almost more than the dead google reader.

This summer veggie tortellini looks super yummy.

When you eat with a knife and fork, do you cut and switch?  This story is about the ways Americans eat … and why we should change.  I find this whole idea fascinating.  It comes on the tail end of finishing David Lebovitz’s book about living in Paris, in which he talks about how once the French start eating a meal, they never put their knife down.

I had no plans yesterday for the Fourth, which was really okay.  I did miss my Bananas, the people with whom I spent so many Fourth of July’s, having so much fun.  While missing them, I spent the day cleaning, washing furniture slipcovers, and quilting, all of which were really okay.  I dived back into a baby quilt that needs to be done soon and spent time thumbing through quilting books I had just checked out from the library.  It’s in one of those books that I fell in love –

photo-102

I want to make this quilt.  It’s primarily scraps and so simply awesome.  Think it would make a cute baby quilt?

Speaking of babies, have I shared with you this photo of a baby in a crocheted Cabbage Patch wig/hat?  There is nothing more adorable.

Recommended reads.

3 Jul

I read for about six hours last night.

 I read through dinner.  I read as Mabel and I went for a walk.  [One of the many joys of a kindle – very easy to read and walk.]  I read past my bedtime.

A couple days ago, a friend posted on Instagram a photo of two books.  Her caption was something like, 950 pages in two days.  I got excited.  I love books like that.  The kind you fly through and the kind that you can’t stop thinking about.  The kind – when you have to do other stuff like, uh, work – that infiltrate your mind so all you think about is when you can start reading that next chapter.

Yeah.  These are those books.  It’s the Divergent series by Veronica Roth.  It’s very Hunger Games-esque young adult fiction.  Only two of the three are currently released.  They’re by no means new to the scene either.  Both New York Times bestsellers, I’ve somehow missed them until now.  As of 12:45 this morning, I’m about halfway through the second one.  I’ll finish it tonight.  Then I have to wait until October.  October.

Sometimes I feel a little weird, getting sucked so deeply into books written for teens.  But then I don’t care.  Books are books.  And I love a book you can’t put down.

Highly recommended, folks.  But probably best to read when you have a free weekend.  [I was going to wait until this long weekend to read them.  But then I didn’t.]

Newer Entries →