Weekend Wrap Up and a Recipe

Where did the weekend go?!? I can't believe it's already over!

Jenna flew in Thursday evening and we took her to Endolyne Joe's for fried zucchini. They have the BEST ever! Thinly sliced and lightly breaded. Oh yum! I want some just thinking about it! Jenna and I opted for breakfast for dinner and the hubby had a steak. Good food, good company, it couldn't have been a better night.

Friday, we stopped at Starbucks before I had to pay the vampires a visit as they requested another vial of blood to test my creatine level one last time. I should get the results in a couple of days and find out if I will be referred to a nephrologist or not. My fingers are crossed for NOT! After the vampires, I took Jenna to the West Hylebos Wetlands to walk the boardwalks. It was a beautiful morning to walk thru the wetlands. After our walk, we headed back to my house to pick up the hubby and head into Seattle. We had lunch at Steamers in the Seattle Center House and then bought our tickets for the Duck tour. We had plenty of time to kill so we headed down to Pioneer Square area to visit the Utilikilts shop and a few other places. Then we headed back to Seattle Center area and had drinks at Sport in Fisher Plaza across the street from the Space Needle. Jenna and I had blue Hawaiians followed by Jaeger bombs in preparation for the Ride the Ducks tour. The duck tour was 90 minutes long and we drove thru Seattle and then went into the water. It was fun, but not quite what I had expected. It was around 6PM by the time we finished the tour, so we headed to the West Seattle Street Fair to meet up with Jenna's cousin and have dinner at Elliot Bay Brewery Pub.

Saturday morning Jenna had to leave early to go pick up her girls from Camp Kirby. Later on, Walter and I headed to Luna Park Cafe in West Seattle to meet some friends for a late leisurely breakfast. They serve up a great breakfast, with heaping portions. I had the South of the Border Pile. Green Chiles, Monterrey Jack and Cheddar Cheese, with fresh salsa over a pile of hash browns and topped with two fried eggs and a biscuit on the side. Oh my! After breakfast we said goodbye to one of our friends, as he unfortunately had to work, and the hubby, JB, and I headed to Fauntleroy to catch the ferry to Vashon for the lavender farm tour. We had a great leisurely day on the island hanging out at the farms, watching a cooking demo, and drinks and a Margherita Lahvosh (Armesian cracker bread topped with fresh mozzarella, basil, diced tomatoes, and pesto oil drizzle) at the Hardware Store. I had an amazing drink called the Cucumber Facial which I need to recreate. It was cucumber slices, with seltzer water, pimms cup, and midori. So refreshing and light!

Sunday, a friend invited me over for lunch. She served a fabulous broccoli cheddar soup with veggies and you all know how much I love soup! It was a great time to get caught up and to meet her grandpa who is living with her now. After that it was home to do laundry and housework.

Sorry, no pictures today. But I will leave you with the recipe for the delish and easy coffee cake we tasted at the demo on the lavender farm. The recipe calls for pear, but you could substitute any fruit you like for it and best of all, you use one bowl and one pan!

Lavender Pear Coffee Cake
2-1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground lavender
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 slightly beaten egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Topping:
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground lavender
1 cup chopped pecans

In a bowl, mix together flour, sugar, salt, lavender, and oil. Set aside 1 cup of mixture for the topping.

Add 2 cups chopped ripe pear to the above mixture. Add egg, buttermilk, baking soda, and baking powder.

Spread into a foiled lined, greased 9x13 baking pan.

Mix reserved flour mixture, ginger, lavender, and pecans. Sprinkle over top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until knife comes out clean



Enjoy! And Happy Monday! I will try to have pics tomorrow!

P.S. How was your weekend? What did you do?

Cinnabuns Update

It's Friday and I have a Cinnabuns Across America (aka The Leia Project) update for you! If you haven't been following along, you can read about it here.

This week's photos come from Miss Sassy Britches....

First up are Sassy's rents...

Meet Sassy Pa

and Sassy Momma

and then there's Sassy herself


and the BEST for last

If you aren't familiar with who Scope is , you can check his blog out here.

Thanks Sassy Britches for playing along!

Happy Friday everyone! Have a terrific weekend so you can tell me all about it!

I'm Soo Excited and I Just Can't Hide It!

One of my most FAVORITE people in the world is arriving this evening! And I am soo excited! Jenna is flying in from Arizona and spending tonight and tomorrow night with us before she heads up to Camp Kirby early Saturday morning to pick her girls up from their week at camp. Jenna and I met at that same camp back in 1992 as camp counselors. We have lots of fun things planned while she is here, including "Ride the Ducks of Seattle" and The Bucket from The Rock, I might even tempt her with some of their brown sugar mozz bread. Yum! Jenna is an AMAZING woman and I consider myself lucky to be her friend. She is a mother to three beautiful girls, runs her own company which inventories native plants, and is a throat cancer survivor who never smoked a day in her life. She is one of those people that it doesn't matter how long it's been since you've seen or talked to her, you just pick up where you left off.

Here's a pic from a visit in 2007

left to right: another one of my favorite people Cora, me, the hubby, and Jenna with her youngest daughter

ohhh... The Bucket. Alot of rum and a wee bit of fruit juice.

After Jenna leaves on Saturday morning. I will be headed out with the hubby and a couple of friends to catch the Fauntleroy Ferry to Vashon Island for their Seventh Annual Lavender Farm Tour. This is one of my most favorite summer activities!

Butterfly with lavender from 2007 tour

What are your weekend plans?!?

Be sure to check back tomorrow for a Cinnabuns Update!

Tasting Cupcakes

We are tasting cupcakes in the office today. And it's all Maggi's fault! LOL! You see back before I got sick, Maggi sent me an e-mail about a new cupcake shop opening in Seattle. It cracks me up that she knew about a cupcake shop in Seattle before I did, but she did. And I am thankful that she pointed it out to me. But of course, then I had to get sick and had to wait and wait....until today. I was able to run out at lunch and check out it out. The name of the place is The Yellow Leaf Cupcake Company and it's located in Belltown. I spoke to the baker and they have approximately 45 different cupcake flavors that they rotate through, with 9 selections daily. So, I asked for the 3 most popular from today's selection and took my little box back to work to divey up the cupcakes for us to try. My favorite of the 3 was green tea with berry. We also had coconut chocolate almond, which was good as well. The 3rd cupcake was a little scarier... it's their signature cupcake flavor... tomato soup and I wasn't quite sure about it at first. But it turned out not to taste anything like tomato soup, it was more of a pumpkin spice taste. So, if you like pumpkin spice, you will like a tomato soup cupcake. But I am not a fan of pumpkin. Oh well. Thanks Maggi for letting me know about The Yellow Leaf!

P.S. the people there are super nice as well and it looked like they had a great tea selection!

Don't Try This at Home, Seriously, Don't!

As I mentioned yesterday, we went to my brother's house for our good ole' family fourth of July party. Since the hubby had the parade in the morning, we were the last to arrive and just in time for the early dinner. We also arrived in time for the chaos. You see, my brother the fabulous grill master that he is, was so involved in his "creations" that he didn't think about the fact that when he pressure washed the deck earlier in the week that he had moved the grill and it was backed up to the house. Unfortunately it resulted in this....

My sister-in-law and I were debating whether or not we could fix it with our heat embossing tools. =o) That did NOT go over well with my brother. LOL! Oh well. As usual, the food was wonderful. My brother made sliders and there was one specially made for each person. You could also go back and make your own, he had every condiment imaginable for slider creation, including the hubby's favorite baconaise. Here are the burgers all ready to go in their baskets.

Along with the sliders were my brother's famous JoeJoe potatoes and yes, they really are famous. Neighbors show up out of no where for them. It's actually a bit scary! And my newest favorite, grilled corn on the cob with cheese and herbs and then squirted with lime just before you eat it. Oh yum! Of course there was potato salad, deviled eggs, chips, veggies, cookies, angel food cake, and a heavily frosted 4th of July cake. Yeah, too much food and we were all full!

What did you eat on the 4th?!?

Weekend Wrap Up

Why does the weekend have to be over? Why?!? I have a love/hate relationship with 3 day weekends.... I think they really should be 4 days! =o So, Friday my mom came over to help me out with some yard work. The yard had gotten totally out of control with me being down for two months and the hubby working six nights a week. The yard has been tamed for now and hopefully we can continue to keep up on it. After the yard work, I took a much needed nap and then I ran some errands before I started working inside the house.... preparing for a house guest later this week! YAY! I am soo excited

Saturday, the hubby took off for Edmonds to participate in their 4th of July parade... I opted to stay home. My muscles were sore from lack of use and I wanted to stay inside where it was cool. Here is a pic of the group after they finished the parade. The hubby is to the right of Vader when looking at the pic, the trooper with the red detailing on his helmet.

When the hubby finally got home, we rushed off to Bonney Lake to my brother's house and bathed in the glory of air conditioning and the bounty of food he had prepared. I will share pics tomorrow. Our evening was cut short though as we received a call from ADT saying that an alarm was going off at the house and the sheriff had been dispatched. Oh joy! It turned out to be a false alarm of course.

Sunday, I lazed around and then got my Happy Mail packages ready to go out in today's mail (hint, hint for those of you who signed up, prepare to watch your mailboxes!) And then headed off to the salon for my hair appt. Same color, same cut, nothing new. Then it was home to wake the hubby and head off for dinner at my in-law's to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday.

So, that was my weekend in a nutshell. How was yours? What was your favorite part of your weekend?!?

Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July!!!

I took the photos(circa 1979) I found the other day and made this layout, but the pic isn't all that great because there is way too much bright light outside... makes my Washingtonian eyes hurt. LOL!

Headed to my brother's house soon for the shin dig, thankfully he has air conditioning! Hope you are all having a GREAT weekend!

PS I've had quite a few people ask if I am on FaceBook, yes I am. If you want to connect via Facebook e-mail me at callista72(at)comcast(dot)net and I will let you know how to find me!