Day 336:

I was at a loss yesterday as to what to take a photo of.  So in desperation, I raided the fridge.

BUT for today, I took a gazillion photos.  It's either a feast or famine thing in the photo department.  I can hardly wait to show them to you--some are pretty cool!  Editing now, so I'll post when they're done.  Yay!

Day 335: Oh. Yum.

I have been craving something vegetabley all day.  So this was supper tonight, inspired by a recipe I saw at Ree Drummond's Pioneer Woman blog once.  Sorry--don't have the link to her recipe handy.  But go over and look around, if you haven't discovered her yet.

I wish I would have stopped to arrange everything nicely, with the asparagus tips showing.  Frankly, though, I just wanted to dive in and eat it.

Easy peasy to do.

Throw some olive oil in a pan.

Add some minced onion.  I wanted garlic, but reached into the cupboard to discover...none.

Add the pealed, deveined shrimp that you found in the bottom of your freezer from who knows how long ago.  Cook for three minutes, until pink.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

Add the zucchini slices in a single layer.  Cook for a minute each side, until slightly brown.  Scootch to the side of the pan.

Remove the corn from two cobs and throw in there.  Cook until slightly brown.  The smell will almost send you to heaven.

Scooch to the side and do the rest of the vegies in the same manner.  Slice.  Brown.  Scooch.  I used zucchini, corn, asparagus, mushrooms, and grape tomatoes.

When the vegies are done, throw the shrimp back in and heat through.

Remember afterwards that you were going to add some herbs from the garden but became so overwhelmed by the desire to inhale the vegies in the pan that it slipped your mind. Ah well.

I served it with couscous. 

And ate two, huge, heaping plates full of the stuff.

And wanted more, except I was sitting there in a blur of vegetable ecstasy and couldn't move.

I think I'll go to sleep now, and dream of lightly browned vegies.  Sigh.

Day 335: A lonely, lost soul

Came across this little guy yesterday and took a photo.  Julia made him when we were camping, and he was misplaced.  But now he is found. 

And now I have to figure out what to do with him.

Crumbs.

More from the party

Photo for today will be later, but I wanted to put up some more photos from yesterday for hubby and my mom.  And anyone else, too!  I didn't take many, since I was busy with the kids, but here are a few.  Maren's husband, Kraig, was running around with his camera, so I'm hoping he'll send a few along!  *hint-hint!*

Julia's buddy since birth (pretty much!) Saskia, has a birthday the day before Julia's, so this year we decided to celebrate their birthdays together.  Maren and I have been great friends since we met at storytime at the library when our kids were, gosh, not even a year old.  Handy how that works out!  Anyway, we had it originally planned for last weekend, but Saskia was the only one of Julia's friends who could be there, so we rescheduled.  We held it at a local park near the woods so there would be plenty of room for the kids to run around.  They found mushrooms, as I showed you yesterday, and frogs!

Made hobby horses:

Played a neat German party game that Maren had planned. 

Played and played and played and didn't want to stop for hot dogs or cake. Finally we got them in and I took a bad photo. So I'm not posting it! I posted the cake a couple of days ago, so you can look at that and imagine candles in it and Julia blowing them out. In a blurry manner. I made Saskia an identical cake, only with a purple mane, and Kraig took photos while I lit candles and such for Saskia.

Then presents:

The kids played some more--well after the official party time was over.  But we just let them run around.  Why not?

Maren pointed out that we didn't have a single photo of us together.  So her husband took one of us:

I was up quite literally all night prior, and you can tell!  Holy Bags Batman!

So there you have it.  A really casual birthday party.  No schedule to speak of.  We just kind of went with the flow, let the kids do their kid thing, giving them a couple of things to do to get the creative play juices going, and let them use the time however they wanted, for the most part.  Other than my not being with it enough to do the cakes earlier, it was pretty stress free.  All set to do the same thing next year, Maren?

Day 334: Party day

since Iwas up literally all night last, I'm only going to post this one photo.  And it's not even a party shot.  But the kidsfound it at the party.  Reminded me of Disney.

Real party photos tomorrow, when  I can take a bit of time to go through them.  right now, I'm so tired it's dangerous!

334: Cakes, cakes, cakes

The plan was to bake these and freeze last week, then do everything else party-ish yesterday so I could frost today.

Didn't happen.

Ended up baking over the last couple of days, doing nothing party-ish until today, then going mad trying to get it all done.  Which is why it's the middle of the night, it's not looking like I'm getting any sleep tonight since there are still a gazillion things to do.  Yuck.  But this is what I've spent the last few hours doing.  Two of them--this pink one and one purple.  I just noticed that this photo was taken before I added the nostril.  *snort*

All righty then.  Now it's off to put all the stuff in a box and then make a bunch of card stock stick horses.  Oy.  Who needs sleep, anyway...

Sweet dreams, all.  Dream a little dream for me!

Day 333: Crazily busy--so more garden photos.

Getting ready for Julia's birthday party on Saturday, so lazed out and ran into the garden yesterday for the photos.  Sorry I didn't post on the correct day, even though I took the photos.  I had to run out with the kids late to get a few things for the cakes (yes, cakes.  It's a birthday shared with a friend, and I offered to make the cakes).  As a result, we got home late late, and Adam had a restless night.  I was up the stairs every 15 minutes, and finally decided to just stay there without posting.  Laptop is dead (again) so I couldn't bring it up and post there.

So.  SOTC, since I didn't have time to edit:

Basil:

And Halleluia!  The black eyes susans actually bloomed this year.  Finally.  They're still not looking particularly healthy, but at least we have more than one sickly little bloom.