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 Garden Thymes, Issue #1

Hey, Friends! Welcome to my new post series - The Garden Thymes. Yes, that's a pun on newspapers and herbs. We keep it classy on this blog.

Since I've done pretty well with my Tuesday's Ten posts, I figured the best way to post more would be to design another series on a specific day. I played around with Weedin' Wednesdays and Farmin' Fridays, but decided to skip the alliteration this time and go for the classic wordplay on Thyme/Time. Funny story - we haven't even planted thyme. But you won't know that until Issue #3 or #4.

This project, like many others, began many months ago, when my hippie husband Billy decided we should plant a garden and harvest our own vegetables, herbs, etc. I figured that after 7 years of living in Portland,(7?! Can you believe it?!) it was time to give in to the green culture and get growin.

So we decided we'd break out our tools and build us a planter box.

Maybe you remember this photo, when we first shared it back in March. Yep, two months ago. But it was still snowing back then, so there was really no rush.

We found a great tutorial video online, which I can't seem to find now. Some google-ing will probably get you some good ideas to supplement this "tutorial." It's a pretty basic rectangular setup with four walls, no bottom, and no ledges. Maybe we'll add ledges later, since I think they look nice.

We priced out various lumber sizes, and ended up choosing nine 8'x6"x2" boards in order to make an 8' x 4' box, 18" high. If you do some math (or if I do your math for you), that's six boards for the sides (stacked vertically) and three boards for the ends, each cut in half. We also got a 4"x4"x8" post to secure the edges together, and got that cut into four 18" pieces, with a 24" piece leftover. Yay numbers.

Here's our kind Mr. Home Depot, slicing our boards for us. Sure, we have a saw, but they never rarely charge us for cuts, they are wayyy faster, and likely more accurate.

Then we get home, reasses our side yard (the future home of Planter), and decide that four feet wide is too fat, and three feet would be better.

 So THEN we pull out our saw, chop one foot off each of the newly-sliced 4-foot boards, and add those wooden feet onto the ends of our 8-foot boards, securing the pieces together with some scrap plywood that was hanging out in the garage.

Now we had wood to make a 9' x 3' box. (Below are some one-footers waiting to be connected.)

I like lots of screws - Billy doesn't. I won this time.

So here's our dog, posing next to our long sides - 9 feet long, 1.5 feet high. You can see our 3-foot ends in front of the goose, and our 1.5-foot posts standing up.

Ooh, looks like a planter! Sorta.

Where's Waldo Bentley?

Putting the sides together is very simple, but slightly time consuming. You line up your posts with the end of one side, and drill holes all the way through. We used 3/8" holes and 3/8" bolts that were 5.5" long. I let Billy do the hard work here.

Then you take a picture of your dog, who's taking a break from ripping up his nice shark bed in the yard.

Then you take a picture of your husband, who's still working hard on the planter box.

Our sides were made up of three 6" tall boards, so we drilled three holes on each end, spacing them out so that the bolts from one side didn't run into the bolts from the other side. The bolts on the right are at the top of each board, while the bolts on the left are at the bottom of each board.

Then you repeat for the other four sides. Ideally, when you went to the hardware store, you bought 24 bolts that were 5.5", instead of about 15 bolts that were 5.5" and 9 bolts that were other various lengths, like 5" and 4.5". If you didn't, then you can take a break and head back to the store to get the right parts. We would never buy the wrong sizes, though, of course, but just in case you run into that problem...

  We completed two "L" shapes with the four sides, and then brought them over to the side yard to be finished, since it would be way too heavy and awkward to carry the box into the side yard once it was all put together. And we know Billy's my muscles aren't that big. :) And you're right - it's not quite put together here.  We had to go to Home Depot and get the right size bolts.

And that's where I leave you! The Garden Thymes will resume next week, when it takes a closer look at the dirty side of gardening - dirt.

the gooes loves tuesday's ten (#11)

Welcome to Tuesday. I hope it's sunny where you are, too.

1. Friday night was celebration time for me - major work deadlines checked off the list, too many hours of overtime complete, and an "excellent work" comment from the CFO. Yesssss.

Billy and I took that opportunity to try happy hour at the Doug Fir Lounge, a classically-Portland-weird place. We enjoyed drinks, snacks, and a white man dressed in full middle-eastern garb, robe and headpiece included, all for $25 (including tax!) What a steal. 

 2. The sun is back! And we are all happy. Especially my cat dog, who loves naps in the sun. 

 3. Billy worked the UP graduation all weekend, so as a congratulatory treat, I made him salted chocolate peanut butter cookies that I pinned. They turned out pretty good, but they don't look quite so hot. The cocoa powder makes them a funny poop color. After Billy worked graduation last year, I made him Boston Cream Pie. And although he loves cookies, he really wants me to recreate that delicious-ness. We'll see.

 

 4. It's not really fair to make Billy cookies but not make Bentley cookies, so I ended up making treats for both my boys. Bentley's were slightly less tasty, though. :) 

 Are they ready, yet?! I'm waiting!!! 

 I made a bunch of bone shapes, and then a few paw, fire hydrant, dog house, and heart shapes too. He loves these things. I can get him to do 10 to 12 tricks in a row before giving the treat to him, except that by that time, he's drooling all over... 

 5. Saturday was my beautiful mother's birthday! She just turned "35." What a young thing! Look how beautiful she was on my wedding day (almost two years ago, back when she was "33"!). 

Love you, Mom, and Happy Birthday! I swear I'm going to put your package in the mail today tomorrow!! 

 6. Saturday was also Cinco de Mayo. Billy worked a long day at UP, and I worked a long day at home, so we went out for a drink and a snack to celebrate the day of Mexican victory over something. We went to our local Cha Cha Cha, where we enjoyed drinks, chips, and tacos. It rocked. (Like my instagram shot?)

 7. Saturday was not as nice as Sunday, so Bentley and I spent most of the day inside. By about 4pm, though, he was driving me crazy so we went out for some fresh air and energy-releasing. We walked around Cathedral Park, under the St. John's Bridge.  

Bentley had fun - he pooped once and peed about 15 times. Gotta show that lamp post who's boss, you know.

 8. Sunday was much sunnier, and Billy was finally done working around 6pm, so we pulled out the BBQ and grilled up some burgers. We didn't have buns, but we had pita bread, so we had a burger-building-with-pita station. Mmmm avocados!

 FYI - toothpicks make any meal look fancier. Before, it was a pita-burger falling apart. Post-toothpick, it's a fancy deli-style pita burger.

 9. In less-fun news, we are on a mission to pay off our student loan debt in the next year. We were halfway through our 5-year goal when we decided that loans suck and we're wasting way too much money on interest and far too much of our income is stuck paying loans. So now we're paying them off very aggressively, which means even more of our income is stuck paying loans. But not for long.

Sallie Mae alone has about $15k. And then you add in the other four places between Billy's loans and mine, and you're looking at close to $45k. But we're determined to get rid of this fast.

10. Which leads me to last night's dinner - healthy and easy on our budget. I made falafels from Peas and Thank You, the same book I made the Blueberry Muffins (#5) from. They were pretty good, but I think I over did the garlic a bit lot. It's good that garlic is good for you!

Any of you making healthy garlick-y things? Or spending all your money on stupid loans? Or taking naps in the sun with your dogs?

the goose loves tuesday's ten - #10!

Full Disclosure: I'm writing this on  Thursday, May 3. Two days late. Life is busy.

Welcome to The Official Tenth Week Anniversary of Tuesday's Ten. Ten glorious lists of ten, which means I've posted about 100 different things in the past 10 weeks. The only shame is that I've only posted about 100 things, with very little besides the Tuesday posts. But we're working on that.

1. This weekend we made Breakfast Quinoa, a recipe from one of my fave food bloggers How Sweet Eats. We used half coconut milk and half regular milk, since that's what we had. I added cinnamon-sugar toasted almonds that were delish, even if slightly over-toasted. We made a half cup of dry quinoa, for a total of 1 cup cooked quinoa, which is only half a cup of cooked quinoa per person. This amount makes it look like a fancy restaurant entree (sparse), but it's actually super filling. And tasty.

2. Our dog sits weird. Super weird. I mean what are all the legs and arms (or just legs?) doing at this point?

3. Sunday included a $130 trip to Home Depot. But, I must say, we got some good deals. That's a 6-foot fiberglass ladder for $40. Score. And we bought our first family rake and shovel. Yay for growing up.

4. Other spending included $10 on 16 wooden garden signs from The Plaid Barn (another one of those Groupon-for-crafters sites). I just need to slap some paint and words on these bad boys, and stick em in the planter box! Oh and plant some plants, too. Probably should plant things first.

5. On Sunday, after I spent 3 hours in the office and before we spent 6 hours on the garden, Billy and I fortified ourselves at Bunk Sandwiches. They're fairly famous, I think, and they've been on various TV shows like Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

We tested them out for ourselves, and the result is good. Extremely tasty sandwiches, but technically a little pricey. Definitely worth trying.

I got the tuna melt (above) and Billy got the roast beef (below).

6. We found a new dogpark! And this one superly rocks. It's a 5-7 minute walk from our house, across the street from a delicious coffee shop, fully-fenced, covered in nice green grass, and usually very empty. In the past week, we've probably been about three times. I think I'm ready to admit that we're in love. Did I mention we can walk there? Now we just have to get Bentley to bring the ball back once we throw it.

7. Speaking of Bentley, he's still looking for people to join his Heart Walk team. So far, he's just got one lame team member (me). Even his dad hasn't signed up! But we did pass out 30+ of these invitations (below is one sheet that we cut into four invites) to my coworkers, so hopefully we'll get some participation soon! Join Bentley's Team and Donate!

8. Here's a sneak peak of what kept us busy on Sunday...

9. And here's a sneak peak of what will keep me busy this weekend! I swear I need a vacation just to get caught up on my sewing.

10. And finally, speaking of vacays, Billy and I are dreaming of a wild getaway over Memorial Day weekend. Currently topping our list is camping or cabins in Sun River, Oregon. Hmmm!

Happy Tuesday (Thursday) to you all!