Happy Easter



Easter Bunny sneak attack!



All tuckered out!

Zoe went to her first Easter egg hunt today. Actually, she started crying the minute we got there, so we rocked and watched the hunt from the upstairs window. It was a fun Easter hunt and brunch hosted by the wonderful Sue. Once Zoe fell asleep, I surrounded her with Easter eggs as though the Easter bunny had visited her in her slumber. Very fun for baby's first Easter! Happy Easter to all!

Have Tools, Will Travel!

Michele and I have been busy, busy getting the house and ourselves ready for our January new addition. We've thankfully been blessed with many friends lending us time and hands. I was able to repay some of our friend Sue's generosity with a little labor of my own! Sue helped us so much by priming and painting our baby's room, so when she mentioned wanting to build a little stage for her baby, her four-year-old baby, I was all over the idea! Our friend Joe and I spent part of this past Sunday building the sweetest little stage that I just imagine will be party to lots of little productions - productions that Zordan will hopefully be a part of when s/he's a little older! It's always fun to have a good reason to get out the drill and build something that you know will be loved for years to come!

Joe and me standing before Sue's freshly-constructed stage!

Dinner with Deb

Two lovely ladies joining me
for a meal! What could be better?

This baby is bringing out in me a desire for friends and home. . .and food! That's a lot of fun! We got to enjoy a weekday dinner with our wonderful friend, Deb. I don't know why, but having friends over for dinner on weeknights is such a fun thing - maybe because it feels a little naughty (friends on school nights was a big 'no-no' in my childhood home).

We had a really yummy, but super simple meal of pasta with chunky vegetable sauce, salad, and garlic bread, heavy on the garlic. I did make the salad dressing myself, but following the recipe made a very thick (thick like pudding) dressing that I really had to doctor up to make it applicable to a salad.

Michele made the salad - so good!
And, yes, those are more of our
volunteer tomatoes!

The pasta sauce was actually made in response to a comment Michele made when we had the Tomato Venus Soup I shared the recipe for last week: "Yum, this would be good over pasta!" At the time, I thought that although it was a kinda thick soup it was far too soupy for a pasta sauce, but the idea stuck with me. To make it more sauce-appropriate, I chunky-cut a bunch of veggies (carrots, zucchini, broccoli, green peppers, red onion, and pretty much anything else I had in the crisper) and sauteed them up, then I went pretty much along with the recipe for the soup - just didn't garnish it with butter or sour cream at the end. It turned out really good and was an excellent way to clean out those last bits of half-used veggies in the fridge!


I really love this chunky sauce! And it's really pretty, too!



Gifts from Heart and Hands

In addition to the wonderful gifts of time, labor, and friendship we are being showered with, we've been blessed with some other wonderful things, too.

I know I mentioned previously the wonderful pregnancy organizer from our friend Deb - it has SO come in handy - well, my mom, who also knows us well, recently sent us a package. One of the best parts was that it was addressed to M + M and Zordan (our baby's temporary name until we meet and find out if s/he's a she (Zoe) or a he (Jordan)).

And inside, was a reference guide to babies (in response to my frequent comment to my mom: I really hope there's a book on that!) and a Michael Jackson DVD, for Michele, MJ's biggest fan.

To join the Dr. Suess book the the lovely Bridget gifted us with early on, we now have a collection of Winnie the Pooh books from Sue. They are currently gracing the book case in the new living room - right next to where the awesome accent chair will be - the perfect spot for reading time!

And then there are the baby blankets! Our dear friend Sue collected many, many baby blankets when she was pregnant with her now four-year-old son, Max. And she's started us out right with the beginnings of a collection of our own. One very special one was hand-knit by Sue! I know it will be a favorite!

We just feel so blessed with all the love in all these gifts and know that little Zordan will feel blessed as well!

Exciting Changes

Everything is so exciting right now. So much is up in the air, or rather, so much is to come that right now could be an impatient time of waiting, waiting, waiting for me, but it's not. Our friend Sue was over for dinner last night and the three of us discussed how impatient I normally am and I was thinking about that this morning. I really am VERY impatient, but with this whole journey to our baby's arrival, I just feel super excited. I think it's because every day is full of something fun and new, some exciting change. And since I'm finally feeling most excellent, I get to enjoy them all.

Here are a few things I've enjoyed over the past few weeks:

Me - I'm really enjoying the changes with my body as our baby grows. I had a hard time with this in the beginning, I think because I was SO sick, but now, it's just thrilling to experience how my body is creating everything our little miracle needs.

16 Weeks - Heading off to my first
prenatal yoga class. Oh how I LOVE yoga!!

17 weeks wearing what has turned out to be my FAVORITE
pregnancy outfit to date!
Comfy, comfy, comfy, all my favorite colors, and a citrus-fruit
covered skirt! Who could ask for more!?

Our home - I've always been a collector of things, so I thought the drive the purge would really freak me out ("Oh no! Where is all my stuff!"), but it's been really great! I love seeing my house more organized and weeding out the un-needed that has just been taking up space. I also LOVE having a reason to re-paint or paint rooms! Decorating my home has always been one of my favorite things, so taking this perfect opportunity to redo a few rooms has been a joy!

Michele prepping and priming our new living room for paint.
She is helpfully assisted by the lovely BethAnn who does not
like her picture taken, but was a huge help in getting this room ready!

Friends - We've always been surrounded by loving people, but with the baby coming, love has just been overflowing! We're so grateful to all our wonderful friends for the calls, Facebook messages, visits, dinners, and especially for the painting and reorganizing assistance! It's really all been such a wonderful blessing!

The meal we're about to serve our dear friend Sue (who also hates her picture taken)
after she spent the morning putting the first coat of paint on our baby's room.
Mexican Stuffed Baked Potatoes (recipe in a post to follow)

Life Modeling

First sitting

I recently had the opportunity to do some life modeling for a friend's oil painting group. When I first heard that I would need to hold a pose for four hours, I was very nervous. I new I would get frequent breaks, but it was the length of time of inactivity that had me worried. I am not often inactive. In fact, I'm known for my constant activity. Michele and I are exact opposites in that regard - she loves taking breaks and resting and just sitting. I need to constantly be doing and going and accomplishing something. I sat for two four-hour sessions for the group and was amazed at how wonderful it was! Since I rarely rest, it was such a treat to just sit and not have any choice or opportunity to do! I just sat and thought and planned and had a great time (I guess technically thinking and planning are doing, but you know what I mean.) This sitting happened in the midst of the holidays so it was great having a nice restful break.

Same model + different points of view = four different paintings

I thought the whole process was amazing. Seeing myself on canvas in oil paint was so cool! The painters are very talented and each painted a very different painting. They were all positioned with a different point of view, too. At first it was odd having a group of folks staring at me and commenting on this feature or that, but soon it became so interesting to hear what they noticed about features that I just kind of take for granted. None of the painters finished their paintings by the end of the second session, but all plan to finish at home. I work with one of the artists and hope she'll bring the painting to work or take a picture of it completed for me. For now, I've been enjoying my pictures of their works in progress. Thankfully, I'm good at sitting and staring and the group would like to have me back. I can't wait to see what my next costume will be! This sitting I ended up as a kind of African queen, so we'll see what/who I am next time. And I'm excited about the rest and relaxation!



End of second sitting

A Belated Merry Christmas to You!

A hilariously well aimed fall!
What are the odds?

Oh how I hope you all have had a very merry Christmas! Michele and I had a wonderful time together and with wonderful friends! We started the holiday week putting up our tree - a little later than usual, but time has been getting away from us lately! We went through about 4 CDs of Christmas music getting the lights on the tree. We wanted to finally get all the lights blinking - we usually has only one string of blinking lights around the middle of the tree with all the other lights steady as an oak tree! We couldn't get them all blinking so we went blink-free. Our special ornament this year is actually two: I found initial ornaments at Michael's and got an M and a W made out of little bells. Michele was thrilled and so am I!

We spent Christmas Eve at church as always. It's my very favorite service of the year. Half in candlelight, which is just so charming. Plus, I get to sing my favorite carol: O Holy Night. Michele shot a video of it which I'll post one of these days if I can figure out how!

Merry Christmas from us!

Another Christmas Eve tradition is to have anyone who will come over for snacks after service. We had four lovely friends nosh on tapenade, cheeses, roasted tomato slices, homemade pickles, apple and pear slices, and mini muffins. I'd made the muffins from a recipe that came into my head a few mornings before: a regular banana bread recipe (actually this recipe was my favorite recipe which is vegan and was given to me by our beloved friends Cindy and Jeremiah) to which I added two handfuls each of chocolate chips, dried blueberries, craisins, and diced dried apricots. Boy were these yummy! Our friends and we just sat around eating and chatting until nearly midnight - a wonderful night before Christmas treat!

So delicious!

Christmas morning means homemade donuts and phone calls with family in the Wescott house. Oh, what lovely treats! The donuts were especially good this year, though combining donut making and phone calling meant that I forgot to let the donuts rise the first time - went directly from kneading to donut forming and rising instead of kneading, rising, punching down, donut making, and second rising. Next year I'll get them right! Regardless, they were WONDERFUL!!

I need to do a special post about the extra special gift Michele made for me and the special one I made for her, so I'll save any discussion of gifts. After chatting with all our loved ones, we spent most of the day eating donuts, drinking soynog, watching Roseanne (we're working through the series from beginning to end as it was both of our favorites when we were younger (I'm totally neglecting Star Trek, but that's OK.)), and eating more donuts. We rounded out the day with a dinner party with more wonderful friends - which was a good thing because we'd eaten nothing but donuts all day! Our holiday was full of blessings of wonderful friendship and love and I hope yours was as well!

Our special MW ornaments for 2010. They jingle so sweetly!

Vacation: Day Three: Brunching and Appling

Our vacation was so fun and so full that I didn't take the time I planned to blog about it. Now that it is over, I'm dedicating some time to share it with you.

So, day three: oh what a fun day this was. We had sweet Deb over for a birthday brunch - Deb's birthday was the week before and Mum's would be the week after. Michele and I made the blueberry stuffed french toast recipe I'd made for my birthday brunch, but this time we used apple and golden raisin bread and plums instead of blueberries for a taste of fall - oh how wonderful it was!

Wonderful women enjoying a wonderful brunch - who could ask for more?

We then went appling - I think I made up that word! - or apple picking - at the prettiest orchard I've ever seen!

We couldn't have asked for a lovelier day or a lovelier orchard!
Doesn't Michele look great amongst those pumpkins!

We started the day with an applesauce tasting to see which apples we'd be sure to pick since we planned on making applesauce. All four of us fell in love with the Rhode Island Greenings, so we drove out to that orchard and started looking for them . . .and looking . . .and looking! We couldn't find them anywhere, so we decided to head farther into the orchard - driving as they'd directed us to do - and I got the car stuck in the mud! A crazy mess indeed!

Millions of apples on hundreds of trees and of course
the shortest of us wants the highest apple!

Well and truly stuck! We tried adding items from the car to provide traction:
paper, Wegman's bags, plywood, Deb even volunteered her coat - all with no success!

A lovely tractor driver pulled the car out of the orchard - and informed us that they'd been out of RI Greenings for quite some time! - and we went on our way to fill our baskets with other apples. We got massive amounts of apples and wore ourselves out on this lovely day! It was just a perfect day - getting stuck in the mud not withstanding!

Hey, is this what they mean by a "tractor-pull"??

After all the stuck-in-the-mud drama, we were tired, but we
still had a ball picking beautiful - and yummy - apples!
These three ladies were great sports - though they all became backseat drivers
everytime I came within feet of anything that even vaguely resembled mud!

On Display

How fun to have my work displayed
for all to see - and looking SO gorgeous!

My work is on display in a local Michael's! It's actually to show folks how lots of different items can be framed. My friend Karen's husband Randy, who works in Micheal's framing department, used to work of local artists and crafters to create the display. I can believe how awesome my hotpads look! Thanks Randy!

The mat he used for this one looks like it
was made just for it!

The framing makes a pair of simple
hot pads look like a work of art!

Zucchini Cupcakes

Zucchini cupcakes with cream cheese frosting - I'm sure my
icing piping skills will improve with practice!

I've never made cupcakes before that I can remember. I've only actually made cake a few times. So, I wanted to try making cupcakes for our church's anniversary picnic tomorrow. I also wanted to use something in my garden to make them - enter the zucchini cupcake. I just used that zucchini cake recipe I made for the Squash You Very Much dinner, but I tripled the recipe. I had no idea how many cupcakes that would make, so I ended up with 70! Oh well, they are really yummy so any not enjoyed at the picnic can be taken to church on Sunday for after-service socializing. And since I really like trying lots of new things all at once, I wanted to trying piping on the frosting (my friend Karen does that and it just looks divine!) After a bit of trial and error and a LOT of mess - i.e. icing on the floor, counters, hands, feet, and most body parts in between! - they turned out pretty good looking - and they taste just awesome! If you remember from the dinner party post, the recipe calls for raisins in the cake, but I substituted craisins. Well this time, I used half craisins and half dried apricots - oh heaven!

Getting Up to Date: Squash Patties, Blueberries, and Broccoli

I have been sick in bed with the flu for the last week and a half (and then on Thursday I ventured outside for the first time in a week to get a little fresh air and after five minutes got stung by a bee! After which event I discovered that I have a "vigorous localized reaction" to bee stings, which means it caused a very itchy, painful rash radiating away from the sting halfway down my arm and side! Not a good time!)

So, I thought I would quickly update you on what's been going on with me, aside from my lovely summer flu and bee sting.

1. While Michele was home last, we made yummy, yummy squash patties. I found the recipe on a very wonderful blog, Turkey Cookies, which is written by a Rochester woman, though we've never met. We used yellow squash for our patties and they turned out so yummy. We made two varieties - one with pepper jack cheese and one with smoked gouda - oh they we so good and got even better as leftovers! 

Yellow Summer Squash Patties with Michele

2. My friend Deb and I went blueberry picking a couple weekends ago. So fun! We picked loads of berries - and tasted loads of them as well.

My picking bucket of blueberries, very nearly full

And then I made Very Very Blueberry Jam - it is so incredibly intensely blueberry. It tastes like heaven!

Jelly jars of jam all in a row

3. Last week's Featured Square would have to hands down be broccoli. I have never seen broccoli growing, so it amazes me to see it in our garden. Beautiful heads of broccoli. Michele should be home this weekend and then we will feast - a great broccoli feast!

A beautiful head of broccoli

A Squash You Very Much Dinner

I wanted to have Deb over for dinner to thank her for caring for my garden during my Georgian vacation. I thought it would be lovely to feed her the very items she'd been caring for (which is a concept unique to garden-sitting and would be not at all appropriate for baby-, house-, dog-, or cat-sitting.) Unfortunately (or fortunately since everything was DELICIOUS) the only thing ripe, ready, and meal worthy was summer squash - zucchini and yellow squash. Well, that and pickling cucumbers, lettuce, and basil, but that doesn't really make a meal, does it? I had my doubts about making a meal out of squash, but it was really fun!

This was as delicious as it is pretty!

We enjoyed a Marinated Squash Salad - which I did serve on a bed of lettuce from the garden. This salad was SO good and refreshing, not to mention colorful!

Blossoms patiently waiting
in my messy fridge

Our entree was as fancy as can be with a Squash Blossom Frittata. Squash blossoms are best picked at dawn, so I arose from my bed this morning and dashed outside to pick these lovelies, then stored them in a glass of cold water in the fridge to keep until dinnertime. The frittata itself came together in a jiffy and was simply delicious!

Here it is while it's still cooking and before it is

topped with the cheese. I used both female

and male blossoms (the females are attached

to the tops of the two baby squash in the center.)

And here it is topped with asiago
cheese after a few minutes
under the broiler. YUM!!

This was so good! Oh, so good!

Now, I was at a bit of a loss about dessert. Since I'd hit on a theme, I didn't want to stray from it, so I googled "squash desserts" and got about a million hits! Whodathunkit?? I decided to try Zucchini Cake. I thought the green of the zucchini would look pretty against the white(ish) cake. For the same reason I used craisins instead of the golden raisins the recipe called for (color, color, color). The cake is like a light, fluffy cake version of its denser cousin, zucchini bread. The cream cheese icing lets the enjoyer know that it is closely tied to sister dessert, carrot cake. Zucchini cake is the less sweet, less dense sibling.

Deb, I and the garden thank you VERY much!

My Fourth of July Weekend, Part 2

I also spent part of the weekend working on another mini quilt. This one is for a very dear friend who loves dolphins. I named it "Dolphin Frolic" and I used the same technique that I badly described in my last post about quilting. The water and the dolphins are individual "quilts" that are partially attached to the main quilt. To give the sky a bit more dimension, I did the same with some of the clouds.

I'm off this week - my company closes for a week for 4th of July every year - and it is very hot outside, so I think I will be spending a lot of time quilting. I'm excited to get started on the next idea that's in my head!

My Fourth of July Weekend, Part 1

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July weekend! Mine was great. Michele is on the road, but will be meeting me in Georgia this coming weekend to go visit my Dad, so I didn't mind that she was away for the fourth!

I got to spend some wonderful time with my very good friend, Deb. We went to a day lily garden and an arboretum on Saturday. Oh, how lovely!

Here are my favorites from the lily garden:

I see another Lily Garden quilt coming in the near future!

And here are my favorites from the arboretum:

Now this birdhouse is gorgeous! I'm thinking about building a replica of our house as a birdhouse (but I'll display it in the sun porch, not outside! I'd hate to actually ATTRACT birds!)