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Charming, that boy... Wednesday, June 30, 2010 Smoke alarm goes off. Shouting in from the back patio, Benjamin yells "Whatcha' cooking, mommy?" ~Courtney posted at 10:18:50 AM Love Summer! Tuesday, June 29, 2010   ~Courtney posted at 2:25:02 PM Beatin' the heat! Tuesday, June 29, 2010  Benjamin is borderline obsessed with a (now, well-loved) Thomas the Tank Engine catalog that came with one of his recent train acquisitions. He's out relaxing on the patio, "enjoying the windy breeze, the birds and my favorite magazine about trains." ~Courtney posted at 10:47:09 AM A little of this, a little of that... Monday, June 28, 2010 Benjamin had a fantastic two-week visit up in Northern NY. He got to do all kinds of things that we don't do here in Baltimore, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute that he was up there. In fact, he really didn't want to come home with us, and informed everybody that "I am going to stay up here for the rest of summer vacation." He also told us we were boring and that Nana is funner than we are. That having been said, Andrew and I realized that we needed to get on our game, and make a super fun metro-weekend for our little guy. On Saturday, Andrew and Benjamin slept in until TEN in the morning. I didn't know B was wired for that, but NY really wore him out. When we were up and running, we went out to one of our favorite brunch spots for a late morning breakfast. Benjamin watched Mickey Mouse Club on the iPad while Andrew and I sipped a bloody mary and watched soccer. After that, we just hung around the house for awhile, and I took a nice little siesta. The heat has been stifling, and we debated whether or not we wanted to walk across town to go to the movies. We didn't. But, we really wanted to see Toy Story 3, so we sucked it up, walked to the bus stop, and took our new favorite bus line to the Inner Harbor, then changed lines to haul us over to the movie theater, a few stops away. Getting there became part of the adventure! An adventure that really floated B's boat! Er, drove his bus? Benjamin did great in his first movie, even though I thought it too scary and sad. He put back an entire bag of gummi bears, and without me realizing, a LOT of my Diet Coke. Oops. We opted to walk home to burn off some of that sugar (and aspartame) and bumped into this sand sculpture building thing in the Inner Harbor. They had a giant sandbox with beach toys in it, so we let B hop in to play for a little while.  We hiked the rest of the way home, and crashed for the night. I hadsigned up for the Baltimore Women's Classic 5Ka few weeks ago, so we got up early, and walked down to the pre-race festivities. Benjamin, upon hearing that there was a kid's fun run, decided he'd be running as well, and demanded that we hit the running store to pick up a couple packages of Jelly Belly sports beans for his big run. In fact, he wore them in one of those running belts for the race. Hilarious. The race was kind of meh for me. It was super-hot, and I have gotten too cocky with running lately, and need to consider training for the races, even the 5ks that I do. A year ago I was placing in my age group, and now I am BARELY making the top-third. Not cool. I also just signed up for a February 2011 marathon, and am doing the Baltimore marathon as a relay team, so I just need to get my act together. Here we are, after both of our fun races!  We stayed relatively close to home for most of the afternoon (again, oppressive, stifling heat...triple digits on Sunday, as opposed to the 99 degrees on Saturday), and decided to pack a picnic dinner and walk to the park for the first concert of the season. We brought a blanket, and got there early enough to get a nice spot under a tree. Benjamin ran around like a maniac, and Andrew and I shared a bottle of wine and relaxed for a couple of hours.  So, it wasn't the same kind of fun as NY, but it was just the kind of weekend we like to have in the city, so a super-fun welcome home for our little guy! Today is back into the grind with lots of time outside, work, playing, gardening, and hanging around in underwear. Him. Not me. Although, while typing this out realized that it's nearly 4 PM and I am still in my jammies...  Stay cool! In case you were wondering, the Polaroid look of the pictures are from this super cute iPhone app called Shake It. Thanks for sharing your great find, Dana! ~Courtney posted at 3:42:45 PM Catalog Living Friday, June 25, 2010 Fantastic, fantastic silliness is the Catalog Living blog I tripped over today. It's brand new, so keep checking back to encourage her to keep coming up with the witty, silly and fun posts! ~Courtney posted at 9:17:29 PM tee-hee Wednesday, June 23, 2010  I love this. Check out linocutboy's Etsy shop for others! ~Courtney posted at 1:54:08 PM The little things Tuesday, June 22, 2010 I brought some of the little metal pieces of dollhouse furniture back home with me after a quick trip to NY two weekends ago.  I plan to keep them close to my desk/office, ideally on some shelves over my They make me happy. As does this picture. I like seeing the tiny pieces along with post-its for work, the flower from my own garden in a glass jar salvaged by my grandfather, and the iPad. We work hard all week, and go so fast all of the time, but sometimes it truly is the little things, and the memories they bring, that I need to make me happy. Clearly, I have some nostalgia happening right now. And it likely has to do with missing a certain 40 inch, 42 pound maniac, who informs all of us that he's staying in Potsdam for the rest of the summer. We'll see about that. Baltimore misses him. ~Courtney posted at 7:47:30 PM Attack of the yuppie Wednesday, June 09, 2010 So, my friend T recently posted a request on how people were saving money on groceries, and basic household shopping needs. While I am hardly known as the super thrifty girl on the block, I do actually invest a fair amount of time and energy in saving money when it comes to feeding my family. Not in the we buy crap way, but with the intentions of not wasting things, buying local produce and meat whenever possible, and being able to pull together a decent meal with what is on hand. I go to the grocery store once every 2-3 weeks, and do everything else through the market down the street, or the summer farmer's markets. Unfortunately, the savings are usually invested into eating out. Because my work schedule tends to be a little off and on, and because Andrew has long commutes two days of the week, despite best intentions, we don't always stick to our plan. That said, I've been working harder and harder to make sure we always have options to eat. This, ideally, keeps eating out as the fallback, not the default. So, for a multitude of reasons, I had more than my fair share of nervous energy this afternoon, and decided to roast the $8 on sale free-range chicken that I bought at the grocery store on Sunday. Nothing fancy. I just used some rosemary, salt, pepper, and basil, cut up an apple to fill it up, and threw it into the oven for an hour. After it had set, I chopped it up, creating a massive amount of food. Then I googled how to use the bones/skin to make your own chicken stock, and started that process, which ended up taking about five hours, but created over a gallon of stock! It's still cooling, but I am planning to freeze it (flat!) in quart-sized bags, since we always open those containers for recipes, but never finish them within the "week once opened" deadline. I used some things I had on hand here (miracle whip, lemon, sliced (and then toasted) almonds, onion and (duh) the chicken, and whipped up a double-batch of chicken salad for Andrew's lunches. Anyhow, the point is that little things can quickly be an enormous cost savings. I spent a few dollars on what ends up being 3-4 lunches, a couple of dinners, and over $12 worth of free-range broth. Between this, the composting, the urban container gardening (oooh, yeah, and the trip to Ikea tomorrow to get more terracotta planters for the tomatoes...), and the fact that I've put more miles on my jogging stroller than my car in the past 2 weeks, I am surprising even myself. All joking aside, watching the progress, added dollars in the bank account, and (holy smokes!) the fact that my garden is actually thriving, is really making me happy. ~Courtney posted at 7:49:10 PM A little hodge-podge... Thursday, June 03, 2010 I just found this necklace. I need it. I have no clue what it costs, but it's me. And I need it. And it's sold out. I can't even see the price (which would, clearly, determine my level of need). Anyhow, dear readers, if you see something like this, please, please, please share. It'd be perfect with the outfit I have on right now. We were out of town for a few days, and somehow, my weeds thrived, and the rest of my plants suffered. Benjamin and I just spent a few minutes pulling some of them up. This is pretty much what was being shouted through my neighborhood: "I need more weed! I love this weed! It's my favorite weed! Mommy, can we bring this weed inside? I am talking to my weed friend. His name is Yummy weed." Um, I suspect the police will be at my house momentarily. Weed friend is currently sitting on the couch with him right now. And is, apparently heading to bed with him shortly, too. Our last to-do with the whole moving in thing was to get our cars registered. Because we have payments on both of them, we had to do some extra paperwork, which took AGES, so we've been relying on our vistor passes to park our cars on the street. I am thrilled to be able to get our legit parking passes tomorrow. We are working like crazy, and have a weekend with home improvements planned. Mostly stuff for the little flower bed, and hopefully treating the patio furniture and fence, but I am getting the painting bug, which means my office will likely end up a different color. It's SO close to what I want, and the things left to do are pretty small and inexpensive, so it just needs to happen. Also, I got an iPad. I am in love. That's all. ~Courtney posted at 5:39:11 PM |
