Tribute to Summer dinner

Our weather has been miserable hot and miserable humid, so I decided that we needed to celebrate summer a bit. My method? Grilling! We went out this morning and bought a little grill (Weber’s Smokey Joe), since it’s just two of us, and we don’t plan on grilling all the time. I spent the afternoon making ‘tato salad, cutting veggies for kebabs, and baking a blueberry cobbler.

This evening I got the grill going with a a bit of trial-and-error (and a bit too much “carcoal starter”…*wooph*). And about an hour later we had a yummy summer-themed meal. Can I just say that I love grilling? I mean, really, fire and food, what more could a person want?

Tags: baking

Too Hot to Bike

This weekend was just too hot and too humid to bike. Friday night we went to a movie (The Devil Wears Prada, if you’re wondering), and I felt like I was having trouble breathing just walking into the theatre. Gotta love 80% humidity with >90° temps.

So, we took the opportunity to knock off a couple items off of our summer “to-see” list.

One item on the list was a small exhibit at the Freer Gallery called Pretty Women. It was an enjoyable exhibit. I didn’t snap any pictures, but did get one by one of the same artists featured in the Pretty Women exhibit.

Next on the list were the Muppets at the American History Museum. The museum has a display of Muppets voiced by Jim Henson, and some later Muppets from The Dark Crystal (the latter ones are not near the 3rd floor display of the other Muppets – you’ll need to search a bit, but I think they were on 1st floor, if I remember correctly). The display is only up until September, when they’re closing the museum for renovations. Here are a few of my pictures (I’m posting thumbnail sizes to fit more pics in this entry – click an image for a larger view at Flickr):

After lunch, we walked down to the Air & Space Museum to see Magnificent Desolation, and IMAX movie about the moon landings. The movie was really cool, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to walking on the moon. We still want to see the Roving Mars IMAX movie (also at the Air & Space), and Aliens of the Deep (at the Natural History Museum) – looks like we’ll have to make another trip down to the Smithsonian this summer.

Tags: museums

Weekly Kitten-check

Duncan and Ares were easy to find, sleeping on the floor in the master bedroom:

Artemis, however, was hiding pretty well. I looked on the main level and in the basement, even looking under the futon, where she’s been known to hide when we have service people in the house. No luck. I went back up to our second level and called her a couple times. Then I remembered that sometimes she liked to go in our closet. That’s where I found her, but I’d already disturbed her nap (bad mama), so she was ready to jump out. I had to snap quickly:

Tags: pets

Well, we don’t have to bike anymore this summer!

Why? Because we made our summer’s goal! Today’s ride? 32.6 miles. Yay us!

We decided to take the Mount Vernon Trail to…well, Mount Vernon, of course. We metroed to Rossyln, and hopped the trial from there, went through Alexandria, down to Mount Vernon, and back to Alexandria. We’ve done the trail from Rossyln to Alexandria several times before this, but it was the first time we ventured further south.

Getting out of Alexandria and under the Wilson Bridge (read: construction), was a bit nerve-wracking, but the rest of the trail was beautiful. I worried on the trail south about the return trip – we seemed to be going down several small hills, but it seemed that there weren’t so many uphills, which, of course, would translate to downhills on the return trip. The last hill up to Mount Vernon did defeat me, and we walked the last 0.2 miles to the top (it was a long hill!).

Fortunately, the ride back to Alexandria was hardly as bad as it seemed it might be. In fact, except for one bad, long, hill, it turned out toe be reasonably easy. And, 30 miles, to boot! Yay us, again!

Trip miles: 32.6
Weekend miles: 32.6
Season miles: 219.1 (yikes, over 200!!)

Tags: bike

GASC: Saturday

My day started bright an early with a class at 8AM – a very difficult feat after the midnight crop last night. The class was called “What do I do with that?”, and promised to introduce us to various embellishements that we may not have seen before. This class was well worth the early wake-up! The coolest thing the teacher showed us was “magic mesh” – check out the pictures below. We used it as a page decoration with some “confetti” beneath it (I use the term confetti in quotes, because it’s actually more like crinkled up tinsel, but the teacher called it confetti).

I had just 45 minutes between my morning classes, but I popped out to the convention floor, and hit the dollar-scrapping booth, which had been hard to get at yesterday. I found a bunch of cool things there, including “irregular” paper (which was only printed on the wrong stock of paper, not smuged or anything) from Arctic Frog.

My second class was sponsored by Paper Tapestry, a company that supports a village in India where their paper is made. The paper is spectacular, and I ended up buying a supply after the class. In the class, we made mini-books that fit nicely in a box. Check out the pictures:

I have special plans for that book, and will post pictures when it’s done.

After that class, I had a few hours before my third and final class of the day. I was walked around the show floor, buying the things that I’d been thinking about (though, I talked myself out of several things, yay me). I also participated in several make and takes, but couldn’t seem to get in on the one at Little Black Dress. That one was really cool – it cost $4, but was well worth it. The participants made a little mini match-book type book (though larger than a matchbook). They embellished many of the pages with stamps and flowers, but the coolest thing was the front cover. There, they put an embellishment that’s made from that confetti I used in my first class this morning, but rather than just gluing it down, first the make and take teacher would iron a pat of the stuff on an inked stamp, and it turned out really cool. After getting home, I tried it myself, though I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, the picture will give you an idea (you might need to click through to the larger version to see it better):

My final class was another mini book. This time it was made from plain papers, but we first folded the papers into a “paper bag”, and then into a book. The book has several places to poke and hide pictures or tags and journaling. We also played around with the EZ distressing inks – I need more practice with it if I’m going to use it, though!

After this class, I stopped by the convention floor again, to see if I could get in on that Little Black Dress mini-class, but it had just begun, and I was too tired to stick around for the half hour that it would take for it to finish up again.

All in all, though, a great convention. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it again next year (and hopefully Laurie can go with me, at least on Saturday!).

Tags: scrapping

GASC: Friday

I went off to the scrapbook convention today. I had signed up for a bunch of workshops a few weeks ago, and my first one was a 10:30 this morning. The convention show floor officially opened at 10, I arrived at about 10:05, and the parking lot in front of the North Hall (the hall for the convention) was already nearly full. I parked in the back of the South Hall’s lot. Wow!

My first workshop was actually a jewelry-making class, but some of the techniques could be used for scrapbook embellishements. The teacher was great, and I had a lot of fun. Plus, we ended up with a bunch of extra wire to keep and bring home. See pictures below (and click through one to see them all at flickr).

After that class, I went to the convention floor and walked around all the booths (and stopped at the Make and Take pavillion a couple of times. I tried not to spend too much, since I knew that I’d be back tomorrow, and I really wanted to try and get things that I can’t get at my normal scrapbook store. The booths were great, though, and I found a bunch of new products (that will be on my birthday and Christmas lists ;-).

My second, and last, workshop for the day was at 4:00PM, and it was a page layout. One big thrust of the class was on adding doodling to pages. The teacher commented that many of the new rub-ons and products that she’s been seeing are basically pre-done doodles, and suggested that we might want to add them ourselves. The page, before the doodles, is really not all that interesting (see picture below), but after doodles it’s pretty cute. I only had time to just barely get going on the doodles, but I have a picture of what I finished in class. I’ll post an “after” picture later, when I’ve finished the doodles.

Before the midnight cropping party, I grabbed a quick dinner at Taco Bell (yum). Then it was back to my car to pick up my cropping supplies, and back into the convention all. I didn’t think I would stay until midnight, but when I finished my second page, it was 10:45, and I thought I could complete the third, and last of Sweetie’s 30th Birthday party pages, before midnight, so I pushed ahead. I did finish (and I think the pages turned out reallly well!), and it was a good thing that I stayed, because I won one of the door prizes during the 11:20 drawings! Yay me!

Here were my table-mates, Heidi and her grandmother Judy, and Donna:
 

One odd thing about the four of us at the table is that we had all lived in either North Dakota or Minnesota (or both). We didn’t know each other before the crop, and just happened to end up at the same table. I suppose it might just be that midwestern nice-ness.

Here are my completed pages:
  

All in all, a great day. I’m looking forward to tomorrow , even though I start bright and early at 8AM!!

Tags: scrapping

Friday Cats!

I’m just about to walk out the door for a scrapbook convention (yay!), and took a spin around the house to catch the kids. No big surprises – they’re all up in the master bedroom sleeping.

Tags: pets

Friday ride

Since we won’t be able to take a ride tomorrow, Andrew and I decided to take a short ride after work today. We forgot to take the bike rack out of Andrew’s trunk, so doing a ride from his work was out, so we decided to do an old favorite ride along the W&OD from the Vienna Community Center toward Falls Church. Along the way Andrew spied a bunny (see picture).

Total miles: 11.3
Season miles: 159.7

Tags: bike

Friday Cats!

I took a quick spin around the house, and here’s what the cats are up to (no big surprises):

Ares is face-marking the kitchen chair

Duncan is slumbering in the master bedroom

Artemis is sunggled on my sweatshirt on the ottoman in the living room (where I’m working)

Tags: pets

Weekend Bikin’

Saturday – C&O Canal

I’ve been itching to try new trails, since I’ve been getting a bit annoyed at the a$$hole cyclists on the W&OD, so I suggested that we try a piece of the C&O Canal. We drove up to Great Falls, just across the Potomac, where there’s an access to the trail in the National Park there. The trail was really quite nice. It was packed gravel, instead of pavement, which meant that biking was a bit harder. I snapped a bunch of pictures along the way.

Trip miles: 21.2

Sunday – W&OD

Another goal for the summer, besides a 30-35 mile ride, is to start doing two longer rides in a weekend. We don’t want to do this every weekend, but it would be nice to do it every once in a while (with an eventual goal of biking to the end of the W&OD one day, staying overnight at a B&B, then biking back the next day). With that in mind, we set out this morning on the W&OD from Herndon.

Immediately, my butt hurt from Saturday’s ride. Plus the wind was blowing directly at us. So, we didn’t make a 20 mile ride today, but made a valiant effort. We went to Asburn, as we’ve done several times now, then turned around.

Trip miles: 17.2

Weekend miles: 38.4
Season miles: 148.4

Tags: bike