let's eat

Some nights dinner is a hit. And this night last week was one. It all started with an idea from Every Day Food. That's our go-to magazine for great dinner ideas and new recipes to try. Lukas picked out this rice with boiled egg and soy dressing. Except he mistook the green onions in the magazine picture for leeks. But since we had leeks already that's what we went with - a happy mistake.

We paired the rice dish with a little crunchy, almond chicken {minus the cheese} and a spinach salad with cranberries and toasted almonds. Yum! Each part tasty and they worked so well together.

Want a closer look? I'm sure you do...

And for dessert? Well, I know I did say that the strawberries deserve their own post but I've got to include them here. {as I type this I'm sipping a strawberry smoothie made by the master} Another win from EDF - frozen strawberry cream bars.

We don't eat like this every night. Not even most nights. Boy, but when we do... YUM!

stepping up

So, the other night I did a little teeny tiny bit of sewing after dinner. When the kitchen was all cleaned up I took a few minutes to do some mending for my dad {yay, we're seeing my parents this weekend} and then I busted out some fabric choices for Lukas. The goal was not too girly and with my fabric stash this was hard to get at. We settled on this Heather Ross print. And just a few minutes later - really not much longer than it took me to do the mending earlier - I had a new wrist strap for my brand new {to me} little camera. This little camera is quite impressive. While only slightly bigger and with a bit more heft than my previous camera, the images this new little guy produces are leaps and bounds more rewarding.

I remember when I bought my previous camera I clearly told Lukas, "Nah, I doubt I'll ever use manual controls. It's ok if the camera doesn't have them." And so I ended up with the Panasonic TZ5. And while it was serviceable for quite some time, the pictures I was able to get with it just didn't live up to Lukas's standards. Plus, noise reduction smeared the heck out of things and that was just yucky {but now I'm getting all technical on ya}.

So for my birthday {and every other gift giving holiday from here until I'm old and wrinkled} I got this new little number - the Panasonic GF1! And boy does it pack a punch. A big enough one that I may be slightly worried Lukas might want to steal it from me.

This little camera uses interchangeable lenses like Lukas's big fancy camera, but it's missing a few other big camera features to make it fit in this little body. I picked out the 20mm f/1.7 lens for its large aperture and pancakeness {yes, I can make up words}. Pancake lenses have a lower profile than your standard lens and are a great fit for a little camera like this where the point is to keep things small. And the 1.7 aperture is great for letting in lots of light. And light... is the most important part of taking a picture.

Boy, have I got a lot to learn! But I'm so excited to have a camera I can grow into. Happy photographing!

{p.s. Notice my pictures have gotten bigger? Well, I've decided to host them on Picasa Web instead of just uploading through the blogger interface. I'm liking the results much more.}

{summer} veggies

This has been the year of the asparagus. Each week it seems we've been eating at least one big bunch. I was bringing home a bunch each Wednesday from the little Farmer's Market by my work. "Little" might be an understatement, but they usually have just what I'm looking for even if they don't have several different options to choose from. I love taking a little break from work to walk over there. The sun is usually shinning and the wind is usually blowing. The standard combination for this side of the city.

The people selling the asparagus just have asparagus. Every time they ask if I've had theirs before and if I've liked them. They love to remind me how sweet the asparagus are. And, the green spears really are so tasty.

I love that we can still get asparagus, even at the beginning of summer. The summer fruits have arrived in all their glory too. We've been devouring nectarines and apricots and strawberries. I think the strawberries will need their own post like asparagus. We've been downing them by pint-fulls every week.

Happy summer eats!

weave me the sunshine

I love seeing all the WIP {work in progress} quilts that pop up around the internet on Wednesdays. Today, with just a couple hours to spare, I'm joining in on the fun.

This quilt has been in progress for quite some time. All the way back in April {goodness it's been that long?!} I posted about my start. Things were slow going until June. When I learned that I would actually be able to attend the June BAMQG meeting I pulled something close to an all-nighter to try and get the quilt top finished. Ummm, yeah... the top didn't quite get finished by that meeting.

The all-nighter did get me excited to see this quilt coming together. So a couple weekends ago now I started getting the strips put together. There's still one more to add to the bottom and then a boarder around the whole thing. Then, finally, the top will be done.

I was completely inspired by the Crazy Nine Patch by Oh Fransson! and the hands-on tutorial a member of the BAMQG did. Starting with 5" charms meant my finished blocks would be a bit smaller than the example. By bit, I mean a lot! These were squared up to 3.75". And with smaller blocks, but the wish to make a bed sized quilt I had to do some finagling to figure out the best way to use them. Graph paper was my friend!

Now, to just get the top finished {hopefully this weekend} and come up with a back side. I'm thinking mostly solid with a stripe of zigzagged half square triangles - rainbow style.

Happy sewing!

it's the weekend!

That's my favorite phrase to repeat when I walk in the door on a Friday evening. It is said with much excitement and often hands raised above my head. And it is always followed by a dramatic sigh.

What follows will be a random, weekend worthy, post of pictures from our weekend so far.

Our dinner tonight... pizza bianca from the June Everyday Food. Wow, it was tasty. Here in the picture the pizza is missing the arugula that was the perfect finishing touch. Lukas even agreed, though when tasting it on its own prior to putting it on the pizza Lukas likened the flavor to vomit. Sorry, not a pretty image/taste for such a wonderfully tasty pizza. To round out the meal we had asparagus with bell pepper, mushrooms, toasted almonds, pepitas and a little squeeze of lemon. Mmmmmm...

Prior to the yummy dinner I spent the day in the garden. This has been the year of disappearing plants. First it was the garlic. One by one the green stalks just vanished. No suspicious nibbles or wilting - just there one day, gone the next. And then it was my cucumber plant. It was growing so big and it too just vanished one day.

Today while weeding a completely different patch of the yard I found some chewed on cloves of garlic. My guess is a neighborhood cat made off with the green parts but ditched the cloves. But, I have no guesses for what happened to the cucumber plant.

With more space now available in the garden I filled it today with round two of garden version 2011. Today I planted more peas {since that's about the only thing I'm good at growing}, lettuces, and basil. And I covered the garden with a net to keep out birds. Hopefully that will allow the seeds to sprout and maybe keep out the plant thief. Fingers crossed.

And just because he's so cute... and it was a weekend {last weekend}, here's Inigo hanging out on my current quilt project. He has claimed it for his own. Every time I lay it out he must come hang out right on top. Good thing he's cute.

::sew:: clean

Well over a year ago Lukas and I ventured to the fabric store to pick out fabrics from some house projects. Things like fancy-ing up the shower curtain, seat cushions, table runner, etc. But in all that time I've only made the fancy shower curtain.

Well, that and this set of napkins. To make the napkins I started with one yard of this fun fabric. It's heavier than quilting cotton and works great for napkins. I quartered the yard {fat quarters}. Then I followed Martha Stewart's instructions for making napkins with mitered corners.

In short... there was much pressing involved. And by the time I was done pressing I was just about out of energy. So, one napkin got make just to see that it could be done. The rest sat pressed, but unfinished for quite some time. Hard to get excited to sew napkins when there fun things to work on.

At a recent BAMQG meeting and sew day I pulled these out to finish them up. Our meetings are so much fun with lots of sharing and chatting so I only managed to finish up one more. But that got the ball rolling again and the last two were quickly finished up.

Now we love to use them every day.

I'm linking up with Needle and Spatula's Dinner Party. You can go check it out to see all the other dinner related sewing projects.

Postcard :: let's go home

Our longest day of travel began with an early breakfast on the veranda. Rita, knowing we were leaving on the early bus, brought us breakfast at 6:30. We waited on the main road for the bus - distinguished from the school buses by the "fancy" paint over the standard bus orange. This was our most crowded ride of the trip. I was squished in a seat with another woman. The aisle was packed - Lukas stood in the back. Little kids were practically falling into my lap with every bounce of the bus. On and off people shuffled and eventually we made it back to Dangriga.

There was some worry when the express bus pulled into the station with only 12 seats available. Luckily we got seats, but there were a few people that ended up standing. As we pulled into Belize City the bus stopped at a taxi association. "International airport?" That was us.

We checked into our flight right at the time it was supposed to board, but when we got to the gate nothing was boarding - the flights were running on Belizian time. So we were late leaving Belize and late getting into Atlanta. Our lay over wasn't as long as we thought so we were in a hurry.

We hustled through the airport to customs. Then got directed tot he line that wasn't moving. Every other line around us moved quickly along but we were stuck in the same spot just watching the clock. Finally it was our turn, but our customs form gave the guy a moments pause.

"You've been to a farm?" Yes, we'd been to a farm and no we hadn't washed off our boots. So after collecting our big backpack from baggage claim we headed back to security. There we were routed to the line with the special scanners.

"What kind of livestock were there on the farm?" the agent asked us. What? There weren't livestock on the Sho's farm. "Vegetables," I replied. "Just plants."

"Oh, then collect your bags at the end." With that she was done with us and we hurried on. We dashed through the airport; our flight should already be boarded, but maybe we'd still make it.

The crowd around the gate seemed like a good sign that we hadn't missed the flight. Out of breath I asked the woman at the counter if our flight had boarded. "Where are you going?" she asked. "San Francisco." "Nope that flight hasn't boarded yet." Well, we'd made it and the run through the airport left us with enough time to change our money and get two pieces of piping hot card board with cheese they called pizza.

And with that... one last flight and we touched down in San Francisco. As we walked out of the secure area at SFO Betty {my mother-in-law} was there to welcome us back. We collected the big backpack and went home.

{click here for: Postcards #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, and #11}

*Note: I know when we were planning this trip we were hunting down any details we could find. So, if someone doing the same thing happens on this little blog of mine and would like more information and specific details shoot me an email. I may not have the answer, but I can tell you what we did. megan{dot}a{dot}wenger{at}gmail{dot}com

one year down

To celebrate being married for a year {and to fill the long weekend} we ventured up to Lake Tahoe. What we didn't plan on when thinking of places to spend the weekend... snow?! But the hotel was booked and the forecast said possible snow. So here it was almost summer and Lake Tahoe was a winter wonderland.

Our first evening there we headed out to Bonsai Rock. Lukas was hoping for some smooth water to reflect the rock and of course fingers crossed for a killer sunset. Well, we found the rock {good thing we'd been here before} but that was about it for this night. There would be no killer sunset or reflections. Instead, we didn't even get out of the car due to the grayed-out sky and snow fall that was starting to obscure the road.

We nixed the idea of getting up for sunrise in favor of staying up late and enjoying our vacation. The only goal for the next morning was waking up in time to get breakfast at Heidi's. Breakfast was tasty {even if it was too expensive} and the weather was breaking by the time we finished. We were off to Cascade Falls.

Lukas had brought along our waterfall book and we took advantage of it. A 1 mile hike took us to the top of the falls, overlooking Cascade Lake. Quite stunning!

Can you spot Lukas?

That night we did manage a trip to Bonsai Rock that didn't involve getting snowed on. There wasn't a killer sunset or reflection, but we had fun just the same. Some places we can go out to shoot and have it all to ourselves, but not so at Tahoe on a holiday weekend. As we hit up the popular photo spots we kept running into the same group of photographers. Everyone wants a shot of the magical landscape. {pretty sure Lukas was composing his images to avoid any photo bombs}

To cap off the trip {and it wouldn't be a photography trip if we didn't get up early for at least one sunrise} we caught the sun coming up from Eagle Creek Falls. There's something pretty special about waterfalls that tumble into bright blue lakes.

And that was the trip... 3 day weekends go by too quickly.

Postcard :: Hopkins

It was scorching hot when the bus deposited us in Hopkins. We walked south to find our hotel - Hopkins Inn. Right as we walked up to the group of red roofed, white cabanas a woman that had been on the bus with us was being told there were no rooms available. We were so thankful to have a reservation. And even more thankful after our perfect stay.

Our host, Rita, showed us to the little cabana - clean, neat and welcoming. First order of business was supposed to be showers but the ocean was too inviting. So, even before taking the much needed showers, swimsuits were quickly donned and we waded out into the shallow, warm water. For quite awhile we bobbed around, enamored by the blue water and blue sky and feeling refreshed.

"Perfect place to end the trip on," I told Lukas. And it really was. There wasn't much of anything to do in Hopkins except relax.

Our swim was followed by lunch, another afternoon swim and relaxing until dinner. Dinner was tasty fish served by an unsmiling waitress/cook.

Our last full day in Belize we woke up for sunrise and walked a few yards across the sand from our cabana to the water. The sun rose pink. Then we napped and enjoyed the breakfast Rita's husband brought to our veranda. Fruits, toast with jam and fresh orange juice. It hit the spot.

We filled that last day with more swimming and relaxing. For lunch we walked all the way up the beach to the north end of Hopkins. One of the dogs from the Inn decided to come with us. He meandered through the shady spots as we walked with our toes in the water. A couple of pina coladas and an amazing pizza later, who should be waiting outside for us but the dog?!

"You staying at Hopkins Inn?" a woman asked us. When we nodded our affirmation she followed up with, "I thought so. I recognized the dog." So the three of us made our way back home - me, Lukas and the dog.

Dinner that night was at Yagadah - why'd we go there? Well, because yagadah. {had to through in a pun for my family} The atmosphere here was a world different than last night's dinner place. Rosie served us tasty food with cheer and even talked us into dessert with her winning description. She laughed when Lukas call me iced tea fancy. It did have a lime wedge on the rim of the glass.

We repacked that night for the las time. It was funny, but we were almost as excited to be going home as we had been when we were leaving home at the start. Tomorrow we'd be home!

Stay tuned for the final segment of our honeymoon journey - the travel home!

{click here for: Postcards #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, and #10}

*Note: I know when we were planning this trip we were hunting down any details we could find. So, if someone doing the same thing happens on this little blog of mine and would like more information and specific details shoot me an email. I may not have the answer, but I can tell you what we did. megan{dot}a{dot}wenger{at}gmail{dot}com