the goose loves the return of tuesday's ten

Just ignore the fact that today is Friday. Just like I'm ignoring the fact that I have yet to buy Billy his birthday presents. For his birthday tomorrow. And I'm ignoring the fact that I have more boxes unchecked, than checked, on my to-do list. Just join me in avoiding reality.

1. It's unfortunately hard to avoid reality when it made a bright-purple stain on your carpet. This one goes straight to dog-shaming.com, which is the perfect website for feeling better about your own misbehaving pets.

2. Billy brought home all of these. And we don't even really eat apples unless they are baked with cinnamon and sugar. So guess who's making birthday pies this weekend.

3. Jambalaya was on the menu last weekend, with grilled shrimp. And extra cajun seasoning.

4. I bought a half-flat of berries at the farmer's market last week, so it's berry-baking-time around here. These were raspberry cheesecake muffins. Yeah, I know. Cheesecake. In a muffin.

5. We took advantage of the long weekend (yay for labor day!) by packing a picnic and going to Champoeg Park about 45 min south of Portland. (That's pronounced "Shampoo-ey" for all you non-American Indian speakers.) Sandwiches, chips, and beer=best picnic ever.

And not a bad view, either.

6. Shady boys.

And tired beagle, aka angel beagle.

7. And no picnic is complete without a stop in historic Butteville (yeah, bring on the grade-school butt jokes) for some icecream. That's Birthday Cake on the right (for me) and marionberry pie on the left (for Billy).

Hot Stuff.

8. We finished up the weekend with some homemade bbq chicken pizza on the grill. That's Billy's first edition signature bbq sauce, homemade crust, and chicken/mozzarella/red onions/pineapple/green bell peppers.

Mmmm melty.

9. To keep other dogs (humans?) from discovering his little treasures, Bentley typically tries to hide his poops as they come out. See Exhibit A below. You bury that bum in that fern, Bents - nobody will ever find that poop. Especially since Dad's going to pick it up right after you're done anyway.

10. And lastly, as we move away from poop chat, since I probably won't be back here tomorrow, a very special happy birthday to my favorite husband Billy. Here's to the big 8-2. Or is it just 2-8? Time goes so quickly.

 Love you boo.

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 the first bbq of the summer

Wednesdays can be tough. You're far enough away from last weekend to remember the freedom you enjoyed, but not close enough to next weekend to get excited about the freedom it will bring. Wednesday is just an awkward weekday, really.

But sometimes you had a memorable weekend and you force yourself to continue bathing in it's glorious sunshine-y goodness, even though it's practically long gone. Here's one such example.

On Sunday afternoon, we had our good friends Dane and Danielle over for some BBQ action. We hadn't seen them for quite awhile so it was great to catch up and even better to throw some good ole meat on the bbq. I even went the extra mile and put a tablecloth on the freshly-wiped table.

We munched on Juanitas (the best tortilla chip known to man) and lime-garlic salsa, a cousin of the tasty mango-peach salsa from Fred Meyer, and drank a few beers.

A few days ago, Billy was showing disdain for a certain brand of microbrew, and I suggested that maybe he's unfairly biased against certain brands, and therefore will disklike whatever he tastes from that brand. I challenged his beer tastebuds to a blind tasting, where I include some of his famous brand biases, to verifiy the quality of his tongue and determine whether or not his bias is rooted in fact or belief.

Since the challenge included 6 different IPAs, I figured it'd be better to do when there's reinforcement for drinking up the beers once tasting was over. Luckily, Dane and Dani were up for joining in, so Dane blind tasted with Billy and Dani helped me officiate.

As it turns out, Billy's #2 favorite beer was from a brand he doesn't enjoy. So ha! But at the same time, tasting six different IPAs all at once is somewhat overwhelming, so maybe his taste buds were having trouble keeping up. In the end, they matched two bottle caps with the right beers, and their clear favorite was an IPA I picked up from a new brand - Uinta from Utah, I think. We'll have to get more of those.

Then we moved onto the good stuff - grillin' meat.

Dane and Dani brought over burgers and skewered shrimp, and it was all SO GOOD.

And the grill is working great - thanks, Mom & Dad & Billy's Dad!

We were so into the food that no photos were taken of our plate-fulls, but let me assure you we ate plenty. Along with the shrimp and burgers, we had grilled veggies that Dani brought and a greek pasta salad that I made. De-lish.

Oh and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Nothing says summer like strawberries and homemade whipped cream. And nothing says fun like whipped cream with creme de menthe liquor.

Thanks, Dane and Dani, for enjoying a super-relaxing and fun bbq with us, and for welcoming summer with us. If only summer wasn't already over. But for now, I'll revel in the memory.

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.