Polygamist Turkeys

It's turkey mating season and so the males are going all out with their screeching and puffing. Here is one puffed up, possessive Tom escorting his 4 lovely ladies through my backyard.

Happy Weekend!

This is a picture of what I call Beignet's "Doggy Smile". She hopes everyone had a good weekend! Mine was fairly productive, but relaxing as well. It involved lots of napping.

Facebook Scrabulous

My new favorite way to waste time is to play Scrabulous with people on Facebook. Here is a game I had going on Saturday. At least it flexes my brain and is better than watching TV! I have always loved Scrabble.

(Saturday May 17, 2008)

Tales of the dumb

I hate pennies-- I wish the U.S. Mint would take them out of circulation. I put all my pennies in a jar because they are pretty much useless. Click here to read an amusing and interesting article from the New Yorker regarding pennies. It's long, but a good read.

(Friday May 16, 2008)

Gettin' it where I can

There is a sad sad shortage of decent Indian food in Nashville and so I am forced to eat frozen Indian meals from the grocery store. I thought this would be horrible, but it was actually really tasty. My only complaint is that it didn't come with rice-- I didn't feel like making any, so I used bread to mop up the sauce instead.

(Thursday May 15, 2008)

Local Wine

I am always interested in local wines, although I find that more often than not they aren't very good. This is one such example. Yuck-- it tasted like the white wine version of Manischewitz (which is this foul kosher wine that is really like alcoholic grape juice). As you can see, I served this wine in interesting glassware, because I felt it wasn't worth using a wine glass.

(Wednesday May 14, 2008)

Bon Appetit: May 2008 issue

This is a recipe I made from the May 2008 issue of Bon Appetit. It's Thai Tofu with Red Pepper Spinach and Peanuts. I was supposed to top it with peanuts, but I forgot to buy them, so oh well. It was still good. I heart tofu-- it is so nutty and delicious. I want to learn how to make it.

(Tuesday May 13, 2008)

I said I want lemonade!

Nothing says Spring weather to me like sitting out on the deck and sipping fresh, homemade strawberry lemonade. The strawberries are local and came from Delvin Farms.

(Monday May 12, 2008)

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! This is the card I made for my Mom. I made it using bits of shredded junk mail and old to-do lists. See, I told you that shredder comes in handy!

(Sunday May 11, 2008)

The perfect protein

Because I no longer eat meat, except on rare occasions, I need to be careful to get enough protein. For this reason, I now eat two hard boiled eggs every morning. I also try to eat a lot of beans and tofu. Every week I boil a dozen eggs and then I spend the week going through them. I've noticed that, for some reason, the brown eggs are much harder to peel than white eggs. These are local, organic eggs I picked up from the Turnip Truck.

(Saturday May 10, 2008)

New Tonic Water

We all know my signature drink is a gin and tonic, preferably with Hendricks Gin, but I will drink Tanqueray (or Tanqueray 10) if need be. The tonic water I am less particular about. I like to try different ones to see if and how they affect the taste of the drink. This one, which I picked up from Whole Foods, didn't taste any different than "normal" tonic water.

(Friday May 9, 2008)

Veg Head Confession

I think this will surprise my readership, but I've been a quasi-vegetarian for about a month now. Basically, I eat no meat at home, but I will eat it sometimes when I go out (less and less though), or when I am at someone's house. However, I did make an exception the other day. My neighbor, Gary, shot a deer and so he has a TON of venison in his freezer. Venison lover that I am, I did take some off his hands. I am making an exception because he killed it himself...it wasn't bred to be killed, or processed by the horrible meat industry. Mmm, bambi burgers, so tasty. Burgers are what I miss most of all, so it worked out in my favor, I believe.

Cat vs. Turkey

I heard this strange squawking noise out back this afternoon, so I went out on the deck to investigate. It turned out that Louis had gotten into a fight with one of the wild turkeys. I think it's obvious from the photos who emerged victorious.

(Wednesday May 7, 2008)

Shred it like lettuce

For years now I've been telling myself that I should buy a paper shredder. There are so many novel uses for shredded paper, plus it protects against identity theft. I finally bit the bullet over the weekend and bought a shredder from Office Max. Now I can't stop shredding things! I love the sound it makes when it sucks up the paper. I have some cool art projects in mind for the shredded magazines and I'm going to use the shredded newspaper in compost.

(Tuesday May 6, 2008)

I love technology always and forever

You know that song at the end of Napoleon Dynamite? Haha, one of my favorite movies. Anyhoo, I bought a bluetooth headset, finally. I've started relying more on my cell phone in an attempt to see if I really CAN get rid of my land line, but holding it up to my ear for long periods of time doesn't work so well. Also, I wanted to have this for the car. So far I like it.

Cut to the song from the movie I just rambled about...

Oompa Loompa

Am I diseased? Did I mysteriously turn into an Oompa Loompa overnight? No, it's just printer ink. I love my printer, but the ink situation is really annoying. I feel like it runs out of ink so quickly and the ink is so expensive. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just my printer?

Happy Mail

I love getting the mail, but I especially love when there is something real instead of just junk and bills. This is a card my Aunt Lore sent to me. She writes to me pretty frequently and she is really sweet. She is my grandfather's sister. When I was little, I used to be scared of her, but now I like her.

Get away from my door!

Lately all sorts of weirdos have been coming to the door-- politicians trying to get me to vote for them, some dude from the Mt. Juliet census, and now this Chiropractor. A Chiropractor? Going door to door? Sad sad sad. He gave me a magnet and a coupon, neither of which I intend to use. So there!

Spanish Lavender

So pretty, and it smells good too!

Columbine

A large planting of columbine in bloom.

?????

I planted this last year, and sadly, I can no longer remember what it is. Anyone have any ideas?

Rose bush

A couple of the rose bushes have started to bloom.

Peonia

I shall now bombard you with pictures from my Spring garden. Here we have a peony. I estimate that it will bloom next week. Peonies are one of my favorite Spring flowers.

Cherry Blossom Wreath

I am big on having wreaths on the front door. I just think it is warm and inviting. I needed a Spring wreath, so I picked up this cherry blossom one from Target. Usually I am against fake flowers, but in this case I made an exception.

Secret about Andrew

I am going to tell everyone a secret about Andrew. He probably has about 5-10 Bed Bath & Beyond coupons in his car at any given time. It's one of the many idiosyncrasies I love about him. I found this little tidbit out when I visited him and Chad in January. So when I got a BBB coupon in the mail the other day, I thought of Andrew and took this picture.

April book

I have really been slacking on my New Year's resolution to read 2 books per month. In my defense though, my life has been crazy lately. Before the end of April, I did manage to read one book. It was Augusten Burroughs' new book-- eh, I'm kind of getting tired of him and his stories about his crazy family. At some point it becomes irritating and I think that point has been reached. It was a quick, easy read though.

Cupcake Article

We all know how I am obsessed with cupcakes and how excited I am that Nashville is just now beginning to come around to having places where you can buy fresh ones. So imagine how excited I was when I saw that the Nashville Scene's cover story this week was about cupcakes! Oh happy day...

New cell phone

Actually, it's no longer so new. I've had it for about a month now. I kept meaning to take a picture of it and post about it on my blog-- so here it is, FINALLY!

I think it's the same phone Andrew and Chad have. I love it! It makes texting actually enjoyable, whereas I used to hate it.

Katie gets a haircut

When Katie's hair gets too long, because it is so curly, she looks like a fat, miniature sheep. She also gets CRAZY...like even more insane than usual. I think she really prefers her hair short. I know that sounds weird, but I truly believe that.

Doesn't she look so cute with her pretty bows?

Dutch Baby

One time, while staying at the Woolverton Inn, my favorite B&B, they served dutch babies for breakfast. They are this fluffy pancake that tastes sort of like a denser crepe. I made one at home the other day, and it was delicious! If you want to try making it, I used this recipe from Martha's website. They are traditionally made with apples, but I substituted Spring strawberries. I served it with whipped cream and some vegetarian sausage.

Cherry Blossoms at the beach

This is the other photo I took at the beach. It's of my favorite kind of cherry blossom, which comes from the Kwanzan Cherry Tree. They are double blossoms and are gorgeous. I picked one off a tree while taking a morning stroll.

Beach Sunset

I only took two photos while I was away at the beach for the weekend a few weeks ago...neither picture is of an actual beach. This is a picture I took of the sun setting over the canal by where we stayed.

Spring Study

I made the picture I took of the bleeding heart my computer desktop picture. It makes me smile when I walk in the room and see it.