the goose loves tuesday's ten (#5!)

 What up, friends.

Today has been an adventure. We started with an early morning, then 8 hours of work, then $500 in car repair,  and then 3 hours of snare drum practice at our house for Billy's scottish pipe band. Fun? Yeah, for the dog - he just got like 8 new friends. Me? Notsomuch. But I'm accomodating. All great stories for another day.

So finally we get around to the fun stuff. 10 Tuesday Things at 10pm.

1. I think the first day of Spring was this past week. I don't know officially since we are still in snow-ville. Yes ma'am - we woke up to snow on Wednesday morning. Or was it Thursday? Pretty though.

 2. Oh wait. Maybe it is spring! We did enjoy several gorgeous hours of sunlight on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. And so of course, like 95% of all other normal Portlanders, we headed outside.

We only got as far as the backyard, but it was heavenly.

 Bentley loved it too. That dog likes sun almost as much as he likes chicken. Almost.

 3. On Saturday, we went out to pizza and a north portland bar for our friend Allison's 2th birthday! The pizza was delish and we spent awhile playing trivia at the bar, which was also terrific.

There's the birthday girl on the left, and some crazy guy Chris, our good friend from college, who happened to get his tooth knocked out hours earlier in a basketball game. Ouch. He's going gangsta-gap-toothed in this photo.

 And the three of us girls! Billy is to Jackie's left, hiding.

 4. If you don't already know that I'm obsessed in love with the color purple, then you haven't been paying any attention. It's been my favorite practically since the womb. Once, when I was about 12 and in mid-middleschool-crisis, I thought about changing my favorite color to blue or something. But I didn't, primarily because I didn't want to let my dad down - I knew how much he knew that I loved purple, and he was always so awesome at picking out fun purple things for me from business trips or trips to home depot. I love me my purple maglite!

Anyway, that long story is just to let you know that today, my new admin assistant was watching out for me too, and it reminds me of my dad, which is nice, since I miss him and my mom a lot (a visit to CA is coming soon, though, I promise!). She brought me 6 packs of purple post-its, two of which are a gorgeous dark purple, not just the pastelly-easter purple I normally see! Yes. Made my day.

5. On Sunday, Billy and I bravely avoided the to-die-for Portland Brunch scene and instead whipped up some English-Muffin-French Toast. What does that make it? English toast? French muffins? Who cares. It makes it tasty. There's even a ghost fork in the photo.

 6. Since Sunday morning was still sunny, we took advantage of the dry day and got some projects done outside. More on those later. But now I remember how much I love the sun. And how much I miss it.

Bentley loves the sun too. And loves being lazy. I'm pretty sure he's at least 27% cat. (Most likely along with 12% bear, 31% wolverine, 24% dog, and 6% bunny.)

 

 

 7. We Billy continued our cooking spree on Sunday night, with a bbq-ed beer-can chicken. We were pushing our luck on the good weather, and by the end there were rain drops harassing our chicken, but it came out REALLY good.

 I made the rest of our brussel sprouts as our green side, but we skipped the carbs. Who needs carbs when you have perfect chicken?

8. Just as I predicted last week, we started on our planter box this weekend. We checked out the ready-made ceramic and plastic planters at Home Depot, but options in the size we wanted (big) ranged from $35 to $65+ each, and we'd want two or three of those (they're usually circular pots, about 2 feet in diameter?). So we figured the build-your-own route was cheaper.

Based on a tutorial and plan we found online (more on that later), we picked up twelve 2"x6"x8' doug fir boards (about $3 each), one 4"x4"x8' doug fir post, 24 3/8" carriage bolts, 24 washers, 24 nuts, and a 3/8" drill bit. We do have the full-on drill bit kit, but it doesn't come with anything smaller than a 1/2" bit... really??

The nice man at Home Depot made our cuts for free. He cut six boards in half (for the short sides of our rectangle) and cut our  4"x4" post in 18" pieces. But we're basically building a 4'x8' rectangle, 18" high. Except that when we got home, we decided a  3' x 9' size was better for our side yard. So we recut and pasted boards together. Pasted with screws. But enough blathering on this for now - full post later, once Portland convinces us its ready for spring and done with snow. So maybe by June.

9. Onto other crafty arts, I haven't sewed anything for a little while, and my fingers are itching for thread and fabric and the whir of the machine. I've been dying to buy some cotton voile (never actually felt it, but heard it drapes beautifully), perhaps in this Tula Pink Dandelion Olive.

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Or maybe I'll buy some of this wispy pink.

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My end goal is one (or several) beautiful spring-y infinity scarves. I wear scarves at least four days a week during winter, but most of them are too warm, even for our shoddy "spring" in this town. But these would be a perfect bridge to the free necks of summer. And maybe I'll even give some away.

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10. Easter is almost here!!! I'm not as into Easter as normal, but since I gave up lattes for Lent, I'll be more than thrilled to get a veinte-20oz-full-fat-milk-foamy-latte on Easter morning. Doesn't Starbucks sell a bathtub size now? I'll have that.

In other Easter news, I think that we should get Bentley a bunny for Easter. Or maybe two. And real ones this time, not big fluffy ones. I think I like these. Maybe I like them because they have Bentley ears. Maybe I'm obsessed with big-eared animals. What can I say, I love ears.

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Looks like that's it for tonight. Come back later this week for more photos of Bentley than you ever wanted needed.