the goose loves tuesday's ten (#12) - on friday

Just ignore that Tuesday's post is three days late and that Friday's Garden post is nowhere to be found. Yet. Just enjoy what you're getting when you get it.

1. SUNSHINE. Yes, for a whole freaking-ly awesome week. YES.

Sunshine = painted toes and cute sandals. Painted those babies myself, mind you - still saving the big bucks for loans. Pretty sure that when we're done paying loans, I'm getting monthy pedicures and manicures. Take that, budget.

2. Sunshine = dogpark. Let's play where's Waldo Bentley again.

Found him!

3. Easy = ideal. Curried goose goose cous cous. The longest part of this dinner prep was finding the craisins in the back of the pantry and toasting the pitas. Yes it was that easy. (Looking to make some of your own? Boil your water, then add to cous cous in a bowl, let steam for 5 minutes covered. Mix curry (or other spices) in a cup of plain yogurt, mix into fluffed/cooked cous cous. Add toppings. Eat.)

4. Warm nights = party on the town. I ignored my 74-year-old ways and stayed up past 10pm, and it was so worth it. Hung out with Carolyn, Caryn, and Caryn's cousin Jenny from Michigan.

That was a delicious pitcher of McMenamin's Ruby Ale we shared.

5. Dog + dock = summer. We went with Billy to his drum lessons at Willamette Park, and enjoyed ourselves on the dock at the boat launch. Bentley almost got the geese.

He also almost jumped into the water.

I stopped him, before he grew an extra tail from all the contaminants and diseases in the Willamette River. Even though two tails could be useful, I guess.

Go grab your sunglasses before my pale skin blinds you.

6. Quinoa=TASTY. Want to put in slightly more effort for dinner than the curried cous cous above? Make quinoa (20 min) and then add salsa (0 min), feta (0 min), pumpkin seeds (0 min), and sliced avocado (1 min). The taste to effort ratio on this one is perfect.

7. Sunshine = BBQ. After having a fabulous craft day with the girls (Allison - send photos!), we let them stay for some BBQ action. Billy mastered ribs, and we also had chicken, corn, bread, pasta salad, and a little lot of alcohol. Here's Monika and her bf Josh. At least one of them is happy in that relationship...

And the gang. Allison loves the food, Carolyn is wondering where the dessert is.

The ribs were devoured pretty quickly.

8. Bentley = weird. Who sleeps like this? I do love that his relationship with Moose has left the agression stage and is entering the cuddle-buddy stage.

9. Bentley = psycho. Look at those crazy eyes!

A. We finally bought more dog food.

B. No, we don't usually let him eat dinner like this, even though he loves it.

10. Heart Walk = Success!

Thanks to many generous donations from you all, we've surpassed our goal! Big shoutout of gratitude for a generous $500 from Dad & Mom, and to Carolyn and Allison for raising $$ and walking! And to family members Peggy & George, Monika, and Grandma & Grandpa, for your generous dollars too!!!



Also a big thank you to my coworkers for helping me raise $300!

I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night making 75 chocolate chip cookies and 50 red-velvet-cheesecake-brownies, and sold them at work on Wednesday and Thursday. I roped in $250 in cookie sales and another $50 from generous coworkers.

Here are the brownies:

 And the packaged baggies:

It was lots of fun, and I probably only spent an hour (between the two days) peddling my goods. Cookies may not be entirely heart healthy, but they sell FAST!

We're gearing up for the walk first thing tomorrow (Saturday) morning, so think of us and walk in your own neighborhoods in support! Photos will follow...

the goose loves tuesday's ten (#9)

Friends!

Can you believe it's Tuesday already?! These weeks have been flying by. I also apologize for giving you nothing each week but a pretty awesome weekly Tuesday post. I'm going to work on forcing myself into other "themed" weekly posts (on different days) so that you get more stuff to read. Because you definitely just sit here waiting for another post all week - what else would you do?

Sunny weekends have turned into a recent trend around here, and I'm 100% A-O-K with that. Except that still only getting two days of sun for every 5+ days of rain is still not enough. Or it's still enough for us Vitamin-D-deprived Portlanders to go crazy at the sight of sun. It's really a problem, though - we see the sun and we force ourselves outside. Or we feel guilty for being inside. Or I we get very overwhelmed about wanting to do everything within one weekend to enjoy the sun, and only having 48 hours (or less, really, because I do sleep) to do it all. Sunshine can be quite the burden! I'm working on letting go and just doing what I can.

 1. On Saturday, I took Bentley to the dogpark to

a) work towards Goal #17 and

b) meet 50 other beagles.

Okay well we didn't actually meet 50, but probably close to 20! The Portland Beagle Meet-Up Group met at our regular dogpark at noon on Saturday, so we figured it'd be a good time to meet a bunch of other crazy cute Bentley-types. We showed up closer to 1pm though, so we probably missed the full crowd. We saw a ton of beagles, but Bentley is still the cutest. And doesn't have the worst bark. Look at that happy puppy face. He loves sunshine too. See all that dirt on his tongue?

He also found a cow weimaraner to graze with. We love those dogs - maybe we'll get a weimaraner brother or sister for Bentley one day....  

Oh and that spot smelled really good, so he had to roll his whole body in it. Several times. For several minutes each. 

 2. We took advantage of the sun and hung our laundry outside. We fit a whole load (minus socks and undies) on this little clotheshorse and our main line. 

We were just finishing hanging the last shirt on the line, which is tied between the fence (as shown) and our back door lamp-thing, when the lamp popped out of the side of the house. Everything stayed intact within itself, but is only connected to the house by a dangling wire now. Oops. (I'm pretty sure the landlords don't read my blog... for good reason...). So we screwed a 5" screw into the house, and now the line hangs on that. For now. 

(P.S. Mom - I taught Billy some awesome clothes-hanging techniques that I learned from being your slave helping you hang clothes for all those years... like how to be economical with your line space and your clothespins. He suggested I write a manual. I think I'll leave that to you, though.) 

3. I love my boys. But they take some weird pictures. And only sometimes do I suggest the poses. 

This one is called "Best Friends - 8th Grade Photo-Shoot Style" (back to back). 

 4. On a Friday night, the last thing Billy and I want to do is cook. But going out isn't always friendly on our strict-paying-down-the-loans-like-crazy budget. So this past Friday we found a happy middle ground. We walked to New Seasons, picked out crab bites, fresh pasta, lemon-artichoke sauce, and beer, and walked out for under $20. (Would have been cheaper if Billy wasn't a fancy-beer-snob).

  The only way we could have done dinner this cheap at a restaurant is without alcohol (or with PBR), and even then it would have been tight. And these things took about 10 minutes to whip up, so easy on the cooking and cleaning. Eating leftover bean soup probably would have been cheaper, but this rocked. 

The final product: 

5. On Saturday morning, I did feel like cooking. I whipped up the blueberry streusel muffins from the super awesome cookbook Peas and Thank You.

 Yes, it certainly does say meatless on there. And there certainly are a bunch of vegetarian and vegan recipes. And we are neither. But all of the recipes are delicious (I'm actually guessing here, I haven't made my way through it all) and it's by a (local!) blogger named Sarah. Check the blog out.

 

Mmmmm. These barely made it to Sunday morning. 

 6. Billy and I went to the dentist on Monday morning. Yeah, as if Mondays weren't bad enough, we decided to torture ourselves with the dentist as well. More like the dentist doing the torturing... I mean look at all of those evil pain-inducing tools. Unfortunately we didn't come out cavity free. Billy had 2, and I had, well, more than 2. The good news? I still have wisdom teeth! Nope, that's actually not good news either. The dentist will make plenty of money off us this year.

7. Back to the sunny weekend. Bentley had fun playing with his reflection and sitting on the been-up-for-nine-months-and-they-still-aren't-hemmed curtains.

8. Here's a good teaser for you! We think that it's finally done snowing in Portland, so we're slowly sashaying into gardening season. How can we call ourselves true Portlanders if we don't grow our own Italian parsley and jalapenos and stuff? So we pulled out the lumber we bought a few weeks ago and started construction. And yes, somebody needs a pedicure. Real bad. 

 9. After spending all remaining sunlight hours building, we whipped up some chicken salad for dinner out of the Cooks Illustrated magazine. Classic and simple, but super tasty. And leftovers. Yay! 

 10. But of all my ten ramblings, this one is the best!

Happy Birthday Jackie!!

Hope 25 is the best year yet, and here's to 75+ more!!

Til next week, or until Friday's Four. Or Saturday's Seven. Or some other clever weekly post title I come up with to get me to blog more...

the goose loves wednesday's ten

Okay so I don't really love Wednesday's Ten. I love Tuesday's Ten. But Tuesday was crazy, so we'll work on our Flexibility and post ten things on Wednesday. To make up for the delay, I've got twenty beautiful mostly focused photos for your enjoyment. Let's get going then.

1. It's been rainy here - no sign of the Spring that's showing up around the rest of the country. I'm more than ready for Spring, but the dog isn't. He's perfectly happy going exploring (in the backyard) in the rain, getting his shiny coat wet and getting his cute little paws muddy. Some days, the paws aren't enough. He decides he has to get his beak muddy too, so he goes digging for treasure. In the mud. But then we get cute photos like these.

2. When he's not playing in the mud, he's playing neck-warmer-slash-ice-cream-guardian with Carolyn. Check out their matching eyes - they both look guilty, but for very differnt reasons. Haha. It's all fun and games until Bentley's tongue gets close to the spoon...

3. How's Moose, you ask? Doing just fine. Slightly less fluff-ful, but that's never hurt a moose. These days, Bentley  has been going moose-diving through the head, where there's currently a big gap (where the eyes used to be). We may or may not be encouraging him by putting peanut-butter covered treats in the moose's belly...

After a few days hours, when the floor is covered with fluff again, we pick it up play with it. Bentley especially likes the extra warmth of his fluff-scarf. Looks like a Lion!

Then Bentley gets tired of de-fluffing Moose and goes to sleep under his giant moose arm.

4. I promise we do things besides playing with Moose. Like on Saturday, when we took a stroll down Hawthorne and stopped by this retro thrift store. You probably had to be there to appreciate this awesomely ugly shiny green couch. And yes, that's Billy cradling the bag of yukon gold potatoes we got at the farm stand a block away for $1. Yes, 5 lbs for $1. What a steal.

5. After all the excitement at the retro store, we were planning a quiet night at home when we got a call from Billy's coworker. UP was taking a group of donors to go see the musical Wicked, and they had three extra tickets! Would we like to go? Of course! Those are my polka-dot-covered-knees in the bottom of the picture there. (Those tights are awesome, and remind me of the white tights with the blue velvet bears I used to have when I was 3 - right Mom? You still have those for future granddaughters, right?)

Yeah, I dragged Billy out in the cold for a photo at halftime. Or intermission.

And we brought our good buddy Carolyn! This was only her fourth time seeing Wicked...

6. Sunday afternoon was spent celebrating our friend Caryn's birthday! We went over to her house for some eating, drinking, and fun. She's the one in the purple, dead center.

Carolyn and I got her a mug that says "Bobby Newport, 2012" - get it, you Parks & Recreation fans?? All you others, start watching that show now. On NBC. Go.

We also spent some time hanging with Caryn's adorable baby boy, Brennan. The baby's practicing his boob-grab in this photo. (Sorry for being so graphic, Mom!)

I even changed a diaper. Or two. Three actually, because he decided to pee in #2 while we were mid-change. That's okay, better in the diaper than on me.

7. Billy won his work's March Madness basketball bracket! The picture is a little hard to read, but Billy's name is there at the top, with the team name of "Winning." At least the boy doesn't lie. He brought home $52, which we agreed he could spend on anything he wants, regardless of our budget. Sounds like $52 worth of beer will be joining our home soon.

8. And now, three things from yesterday - the REAL Tuesday, to make up for posting on Wednesday instead.

I woke up to some double-rainbow action on Tuesday morning! Can you spy both? Followed almost immediately by 12 hours of rain.

9. And in the evening, instead of posting my Tuesday post, I spent about 25 minutes emptying all of our plastic bags of bulk grains (etc) and putting them into the appropriate tupperwares. Let's go through them, class-picture style. Starting on the top row, we have arborio (??) rice (for risotto), dry garbanzo beans, dry white beans. Middle row - cous cous, unsalted- unroasted almonds, and basmati rice. Bottom row - whole flax seeds, unsalted-unroasted peanuts, and pumpkin seeds.

And to make Billy mad for fun, all stacked up in one tall stack. As you can see, very productive things kept me from posting yesterday.

10. Finally, I also spent Tuesday night making 40 chocolate chip cookies for a work meeting on Wednesday (today). Except somehow (BILLY!) only 36 cookies made it onto the plate. Hmm.

 

That's all for Wednesday, folks. Next week, we'll include a photo or two on the excitement of Easter. Mostly how I'll be drinking a 64 oz latte on Sunday, with FULL-FAT milk, to make up for all the lattes I've given up during Lent. What will you be gorging on Sunday to make up for lost time during Lent?