So, last Friday.

Last Friday involved waking up at 4am, making my way to NYC, and arriving right on time for a very important appointment. After the business was out of the way, I met up with the legal drinking, freckle-faced, blue-eyed Sarah for a day of fun. Have you seen her pictures from Jamaica. wow.

So we ran around the city {literally}, did some shopping, and a bit of eating. We stopped in a bridal shop to sample the bridesmaid's dresses, and I think we found a winner! This picture doesn't do it, or Sarah, justice. We were trying to avoid being "helped", so the picture taking was done under the radar. She looked awesome! And we think it will look great on all of the ladies. The dress is a lovely yellow color, the fabric is cotton {perfect for summer}, and it has pockets!! We haven't made any final decisions, but this one is definitely in the running.


When the sun got too hot, we slipped into the nearest shady side-street for a bit of relief.


For two girls who like their cameras, we spent very little time taking pictures, but by the end of the day I become obsessed with the city's water tanks::


And, the icing on the cake was our 40 block walk/run back to the Indian Visa Office to pick up my passport because C and I are off to India in a couple of weeks!!
To say I'm excited is an understatement. I don't know what's more exciting, shopping in the markets, eating the food, or taking in the culture. While I'm busy frolicking through the streets of Hyderabad, C has a conference to attend. Those mathematicians, they sure pick great locations!

Happy Friday*

Wednesday Soundtrack

My new fav : Joe Purdy

Some days this song is the perfect soundtrack : Can't Get it Right Today.
He has another song that I really love, Meteor City, but unfortunately I couldn't find a video of that one. If you like this and want to here more, you can listen to ALL of his albums on his website!



Fortunately, Sarah and I knocked it out of the ballpark last Friday and got everything right. More on that tomorrow...

The one thing I haven't been able to get right? That header. I loved the spider web when it was small, but after the layout change, the web picture wasn't quite right. So for now, just a title.

Pick Your {Summer} Poison

If you've been keeping up with this blog over the years, you may have noticed that my last few summers have been spent in the Bay Area, where one never really experiences the heat of an East Coast summer. As a result, I never really warmed up before I would be hit with cool fall weather and then winter.

This summer? I've enjoyed every heat wave that has hit the east coast, and I'm now officially warm. So warm that some new beverages were required to make it through the day.





First up, for a refreshing breakfast or an afternoon jolt : Homemade Green Tea FrappeAfter you purchase the green tea powder, whipping this up is easy peasy.

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
1 banana
handful of ice
1 Tablespoon Matcha powder (I ordered this one from Amazon and it's not bad)
1 Tablespoon sugar

Throw all ingredients in the blender, whip it up, and enjoy!






Next up, for your evening on the deck : V8 and beer. yes.
Ingredients:
12 ounces beer (ETA: pictured is Magic Hat's summer brew, it contains beets, making it both beautiful and delicious!)
2 (or more) ounces v8
a few ice cubes
a few (or more) dashes of Tabasco, I prefer the green, milder variety

Mix it all together and thank me later.

Wednesday Soundtrack

Ok, well, I had another song I wanted to share today because it's a song I think of every time I munch on green foods in the summer... but I'll save it for next week, and keep you guessing. What could it be? hmmm.

I'm not sharing it because this video caught my eye for two reasons. 1. I really like the music and 2. I love those strings of lights. That's the type of lighting I want to replicate for the wedding. I think we can do it.

one, two... Three Decades!

Well, sorry for the slow down in posting. There's been nothing but fun sprinkled with a touch of work behind the scenes here.

The past week was filled up by a visit by C and the celebration of my birthday!

This was a big birthday, so we spent the weekend indulging and celebrating it to the fullest. A day at the beach, followed by dinner at Oleana. This is the type of place where you want to try everything on the menu. Luckily we went with some close friends, which meant more mouths for sharing and dishes for sampling. We started with their octopus salad {the secret to good octopus is taking the time to make it tender, and theirs definitely was}, worked our way through their menu and ended with their Baked Alaska {a first for me!}. If you'd like to see some of the secrets behind Oleana's food, check out Ana Sortun's cookbook, Spice.

Saturday was celebrated with a very classy gigantic chocolate banana cupcake.

And Sunday we treated ourselves to dinner at Ten Tables in JP. Realizing that our time is almost up in Boston, it was fun to finally visit some of the restaurants that we hadn't made time for before.

Both restaurants rely upon local farms/farmers for their fresh veggies, and they adjust their menus accordingly. From our experience they both had fantastic and really knowledgeable sommeliers/bartenders. At Oleana we took the sommelier's suggestion and had a great bottle of white wine {if only I could remember the name}, and at Ten Tables we both ordered the "Flight of 3" cocktails ~ three cocktails decided upon by the bartender. We considered this "research" for our wedding cocktails!

I'm about halfway through Julia Child's My Life in France, so after all of that reading about her exploration of food, it was really a lot of fun to go out for one delicious and exciting meal after another!

And the grey yarn above? The hexagon afghan is growing::

Unfortunately, I'll run out of grey before it gets to the size I want, so I'm mulling over my options. I think I'll either look for some more grey to match or keep the inner rectangle of hexagons grey and switch to another color for the bordering rows.

Summer Soundtrack

What I'm listening to today.

Wednesday Soundtrack

Is there any other song that fits the weather right now?

Song ~ Summertime
Artist ~ Janis Joplin



I finished reading Help last night, laying in bed next to my huge open window with the fan pointed directly at me. There was really no better way to finish a book that takes place in Mississippi, with their steamy summers, warm winters, and nights sleeping out on the screened porch. So perfect.

Some wool...

you know, to keep things real.

First ~ Pamela, asked about the pattern for these booties that I made back in October. The pattern is called Saartje's Booties. If you go back my post with the booties, and click on the name of the pattern, a pdf will be downloaded directly to your computer. Hope that helps!

Second ~ (and I'm a little late with this one) Kristi (KnitorDie on Ravelry) owns Eleganza Yarns in Frederick, MD. They offer free classes on Sundays, called Sunday Sojourns, where they pick one pattern and help the attendees work through that pattern together. How awesome is that? I know that knitting is a business for so many, but I love it when a shop offers a free class to teach new knitters, or old knitters, new tricks. I found out about the classes because they used my lamb washcloth pattern last week, double awesome! If you're in the Frederick area, check them out.

And finally, knitting shmitting. On with the crocheting!

I have bits and bobs of yarn that was starting to pile up, and I've been wanting to turn it into an afghan. I started knitting one about a year ago, but it just wasn't inspiring me. THEN I saw this, and I was in heaven.
Lucky for me, I had an old grey poncho; one of my first "real" knitting projects from a pattern... And what a pattern it was. Knit a square, add a simple seam, and bam! you have a poncho. Unfortunately (or fortunately, given your taste in fashion) I never wore it. FORTUNATELY it's so easy to take apart one seam and a rectangle of knitting! It came undone in no time flat and I had the grey I needed for these hexagons! If you're interested in doing this, I have to say, Attic 24's instructions are so simple.

This is my first foray into crocheting a whole project, and I think it's going to turn out much better than the poncho.

Wedding Inspiration Part I

Yellow and Grey.

Yes, I said it, it's throwing some people off, but I think they make an awesome jumping off point for the wedding colors. Especially for an outside wedding, with a background of green (green grass, green leaves, green weeds, green house... and now a green barn!).

That said, they aren't the final colors. C and I are taking a little trip to India this August, so I'm waiting to be inundated with the bright colors and fabrics of India before making my final color decisions. Plus, I'm hoping we'll find some great fabrics there that we'll want to incorporate into the main decorations.

In the meantime, here are some yellow and grey weddings that I find particularly inspiring:
Wedding 1
Wedding 2
Wedding 3
Wedding 4

And if you want to be smothered in all things wedding, I've started a temporary list of wedding links to the left. Speaking of the left, how do you like the new layout? I still have to fix the picture at the top...