7 Quick Takes (Vol 208)

Friday is upon us and it is time for that most excellent of things….7 Quick Takes. Please contain your excitement at the thought. Remember, when you have competed your blatherous task here you need to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of my plummeting sugar level (there is no candy in the house!!), over to Conversion Diary.

April showers bring a bunch of blather.

1.
Do you know how I know that Spring is fast approaching here in the Frozen Northeast Ohio?

It isn’t the fact that the birds are starting to sing earlier and earlier in the morning.

It isn’t the fact that the temperatures are slowing getting warmer….most of the time (it was 18F yesterday morning).

I know that Spring is fast approaching because…..

I woke up to the smell of skunk wafting through the closed windows.

Lovely.

Spring has come!

2.
Check one more big thing off the “wedding list”.

Last Saturday we bought a wedding dress for Shoe Queen.

It is BEAUTIFUL. She is beautiful in it.

Do you want to see it? Great! Look!

Did you SERIOUSLY think I was actually going to show you what the dress looks like?

Sorry, you are just going to have to wait for August to see what she looks like. But trust me when I say it is gorgeous. We went into the Windy City, to a shop there in, and were helped by Andrew. He isn’t being swallowed by an evil shadow, I just had to black out the dress.

30 minutes in the store. She tried on two dresses. We bought the first dress she tried on. I would call that as painless as it could possibly be as far as wedding dresses are concerned.

And it was 25% off.

SWEETNESS!!

3.
Chock up another “household” accident to my name. You know you love those. Don’t lie and pretend that you don’t.

We had guests coming for dessert and pre-marital counseling last night. And I had a hankering for cheesecake. So I did what I usually do, I made mini cheesecakes that I bake in these cute canning jars. They actually bake in a water bath and then I lift each canning jar out with my canning jar lifter outer thingeedo. I am sure it has a name but I don’t know what it is.

I made six minicheese cake jars. I was lifting out number 5 from the water bath…..

And I didn’t realize that the canning jar lifter outer thingeedo wasn’t securely around the lip of the jar…..

And I had the jar just about 5 inches above the water bath pan and the open oven door……

When the jar slipped out of the lifter thingeedo.

There is that split second when you think, vainly I might add, that you can catch it with the lifter thingeedo. All the while knowing that you cannot. And in slow motion you see the jar plummet to earth, first hitting the edge of the water bath pan thereby spilling some boiling water into the oven. Then the jar bounces off the lip of the pan and hits the oven door, glurping half of it’s contents, in a volcanic jet of cheesecake lava, onto the oven door, then hurtling in a violent trajectory onto the floor where it lands on it’s side, and splatters more molten cheesecake lava onto the floor, the cabinets, the rug and my foot.

Lovely.

Alpha did you just say cheesecake and floor in the same sentence?!?

4.
Well after the jarring news several weeks ago that Google Reader was going away I think that I have found an alternative that is actually much better.

Feedly

I have to say that I actually like it a whole lot better than Google Reader. Still adjusting a bit but so far so good. And I REALLY love the iPad app for this. Really.

5.
I have purchased……

A new camera body.

SQUEEEEEEE!

I have been thinking and contemplating and thinking and congitating about this for a long time. It is a big purchase for me and I didn’t want to make the mistake of buying a particular camera just because I THOUGHT it was what I wanted. Something that had a lot of bells and whistles and was the “latest” thing. I wanted what I thought would best fit my needs.

And amazingly, after doing a great deal of research and thinking about the work that I do and what I wanted to be able to do, I bought something that was actually a bit less in money and less the “latest” thing.

Obviously I did not take this picture.

I had thought that I wanted the Canon 5D Mark II (not the Mark III which is WAY beyond my price range.) The Mark II is a full frame camera rather than a crop sensor which is what Old Faithful is.

I can see your eyes all glazing over at the thought of the debate between full frame and crop sensor.

But in the end I decided to go with another crop sensor camera that gave me other features that I wanted….

And was significantly less in price which was an added bonus.

She arrives soon.

I am too excited for words.

6.
HHBL and I have made the decision to take Chez Knit off the market if it isn’t sold in the next month or so.

I think I will be staying here for a bit more time.

Can you hear LaurenLeap yelling in joy.

But if that is the case and I am going to be here for more time I am going to do something about simplifying the landscaping a bit so that I don’t die in mid-summer trying to keep up with everything. I am not sure what that will look like but I am sure we are talking a boat load of sweat equity.

My body isn’t going to thank me for this.

7.
If the weather continues to be somewhat dry I am betting that LaurenLeap and I will be digging in the dirt soon. The spinach and peas need to get into the ground SOON and we are doing some “reworking” of the bed placement. There is always weeding that needs to get done and it just makes me happy to get out there and stand in the beds and think about what will be growing there come summer. We have already made some decisions. We aren’t going to be growing any cucumbers this year. It just wasn’t worth the effort, especially when we can buy them so cheaply from the farm stand a ten minute drive from the house. We may add some hot peppers in the mix somewhere and we are contemplating Butternut squash, but only if we can find a bush variety.

Decisions, decisions.

I am itching to get out to the garden and make things grow.