Weekend Update

Busy times.  I had a big long check list of wedding to-dos for this weekend, but after returning home from our cupcake tasting (lavish, I know) and dress fitting, we saw that our wedding invitations had been delivered which means that any previously made plans were thrown out the window.  

I opted for "self assembly" to save a few bucks and oh man do you really pay for it in wasted time.  I spent the entire weekend bent over my coffee table making thousands of trims, cuts, and re-cuts.  They will look good but I easily spent 16 hours on these stupid things and will never do "self assembly" ever again.  They are almost done and hopefully will appease the handful of people that keep asking us "so what is going on?  what are the plans? what are the details? why haven't we gotten an invitation yet? what should I wear?  can I bring my girlfriend?"  Give me a break!  It's still 2.5 months away!

On another note, we successfully met our goal of not eating out during the week.  We survived on the normal salads and sandwiches for most of the week, Dave made a quiche on Thurs. night, we splurged on Dion's for Saturday night, and last night we made fish tacos which were del-i-cious.

Calabacitas, Lime & Chile shrimp, Dos Equis and Tacos (soy ginger marinated cod from Trader Joe's, garden tomatoes, store avocados, red onions, homemade yogurt / lemon juice / garlic salt / garden dill and parsley sauce)

We have three tomato plants this year.  I bought two of them from the Co-op's Earth Day celebration, and the other one from Home Depot.  The Home Depot plant isn't even close to producing ripe fruits, yet we've been yielding about 5 tomatoes a week from the other two locally grown plants for about three weeks.  Goes to show that local is better and that the Home Depot plant is a genetic mutant. (The orangey tomatoes are called "Golden Sisters" or something and have the most amazing flavor!)

Saturday afternoon, after the cupcake coma wore off, David made his specialty, the egg mcmuffin

Oh, and aside from cupcake tasting, dress fitting, and invitation making, on Saturday morning I also crawled through some old buildings on my dad's new "family farm" (more on that later) and found some awesome looking rustic wood to make wedding-ish signs, some old mason jars with a natural pearly patina from being outside for 50 years, and an old wooden Scottish whiskey crate from a NM liquor distributor from the 1950s.  All very cool.  They will all find their way into my list of wedding projects.  Here's a teaser from my most recently completed DIY wedding project:

corn hole board:  prep work before painting chevron stripes

such a good week

man oh man.  Last week I worked 9-6 so I could give a training and it was the best thing ever.  Yes, I love my evening schedule but changing it up every once and a while really adds some spring in my step.  The time at work just flew by and then as soon as I knew it I was at home again, walking the dogs, cooking dinner with dave and finishing up more wedding projects.  Granted, work was super slow this week and I was exhausted every morning and every night and I wouldn't have been able to deal had I really been required to do actual work.  Plus I was dead asleep by 10pm every night... Bla.

Anyways, Dave and I really got to play house with normal bankers hours and it was very domestically romantic.  On the 4th of July I worked on a wedding project most of the day and then we BBQed with friends and parked at the UNM soccer stadium to watch fireworks.  It was so perfect.  The air was cool and we were sitting on the tailgate with the dogs and our friends.  The dogs were very well behaved and baby Alannah (the newest member of our clan of friends) slept through the entire show.  So nice.

Thursday night I decided we were going to grill pizzas for the first time and it was sooooo cool.  Did you know that you can buy dough from Dion's?  It's $3 for enough dough to make an 18" pizza!  We made two smaller pizzas and Dave manned the grill as I layered on the toppings.  It was raining outside and the dogs were muddy and the pizza was delicious.  Loved it.  Then we drank some wine and watched "Paul" which is from the same guys who did "Sean of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz."  It was pretty darn funny, and again, I was fast asleep by 10pm.

Next week I'm back to my old schedule but I feel like I'm just coming off a week long vacation and I'm ready to handle everything head on. 

Here's a little recap of the pizza deliciousness:

Oh!  and I forgot to mention that later that night we also grilled some fruit and used it top some coconut gelato.  So fancy.  All you do make a little tin foil packet and add few plums cut in half, black berries, 4 tablespoons of melted butter and two teaspoons of sugar and then put on a hot grill for 20 mins.  It was one of those things I would probably find a way to mess up somehow, but since this was my week of re-invigoration, it came out perfect.  Pour it on top of some ice cream and enjoy.

(both dinner and dessert were loosely inspired by Food Network recipes)