I was going to write an entire post about the process.  I’ve only made quick pickles before.  This recipe uses a two day process where the pickles soak in brine for 12-24 hours.  I got a picture of the cukes soaking.  Then today I got everything set up.  Got my pot of water on and going.  Started packing the jars and the next thing I knew the kitchen was HOT and there was steam everywhere.  No time for photo ops.  I only swore loud enough for the neighbors to hear once.  Not bad.  

The owl dress is complete!  Which is important because it’s decided, this year there will be a Halloween party.  This is Chase’s party dress, she’s going to be very excited.  I had to drag Chase out of the Halloween aisle at Target.  She liked being scared by the motion activated snack bowls again and again… and again.  Halloween falls on a Saturday this year.  Crazy.  Doesn’t seem like it happens that often.  So save the date!  I even bought candy corn.  

Next up is a new, or hopefully a couple of new, nighties for C.  There are a couple of new badges in my sidebar.  One of them being for the Sew, Mama, Sew pyjama party sew-along.  Fun, no?  It runs through September so I figure I can get one nightie done.  My friend turned me on to a new local source for fine fabrics and so I have everything I need to get going AND you can too (stay tuned for a little de-stashing give away that I have planned for this week!) 

But the REAL highlight of the weekend?  Ben’s big score.  I never keep much cash on hand but I can usually fish a wrinkled dollar bill from the depths of my purse if I’m motivated.  I managed to turn one up yesterday to help Ben score a whole box of WWII gliders.  You know the kind that come in a paper sleeve with a little plastic propeller.  You just pop all the pieces together and let them go.  Much plane excitement on the block this weekend because we had just the perfect amount of wind to sail a glider right out into the street.  They must have been sitting around in someone’s basement for a while though because they have definitely lost some of their resilience.  One nose dive and, well, it’s a good thing we have a whole box.  

Today’s email was perfectly timed because I had no idea what to make for dinner and had forgotten about the pound of gulf shrimp that I picked up at the farmer’s market last weekend.  I had Ben take them out of the freezer and by the time I got home they had just defrosted enough for me to get the shells off and to use a pair of kitchen shears to devein them.  Now I remember why I love to keep shrimp in the freezer.  

This is a really simple recipe in some ways.  It’s one of those that you don’t truly need a recipe for.  That is except for the sauce.   I will also say that it seemed labor intensive while I was preparing it.  I think that was mostly due to the homemade toasted breadcrumbs.  However labor intensive it seemed though, I got home some time after 5:30, said hi to everyone and cleaned up before starting dinner and we were sitting down to eat by 6:18.  That’s pretty good time in my book.  You could definitely save some time by starting with already peeled and deveined shrimp and using panko instead of making your own crumbs.  I make my own crumbs a lot recently since I’ve decided to give the food processor a permanent home on the counter.  I just like the way the taste AND use up bits of stale bread.  When I can I like to make extra and stash them in the freezer.  

To make the sauce I adapted the recipe for to be a quick and dirty approximation of a remoulade.  I kept the mayo and dijon base but then subbed a tablespoon of my pepper jelly for the red pepper and honey and omitted the shallot and green onion altogether.  I also adapted the recipe to use the smaller shrimp that I had.  I just reduced the cooking time… in the toaster oven.  Can I tell you how much I love and use the toaster oven.  I almost never turn on the big oven, ever.  It’s amazing.  

I served the shrimp with rice with the sauce drizzled over and a green salad on the side.  Everyone agreed that it was tasty.  Chase even ate a couple of bites of her shrimp.  Overall, a really nice, quick weeknight recipe.   If I keep buying the shrimp from the market I’ll add this to the repertoire.  Lord knows I have enough pepper jelly to get through.  You can find the complete recipe here.

The downtown market is huge.  They had to move the section for artists across the street to a completely separate location.  They used to be blended but now the entire original market is food only.  Chase decided she prefers downtown.  It has kettle corn.  It’s pretty amazing.  I thought we ran out of bacon so I bought two pounds and I bought a pound of Carolina shrimp since I always talk myself out of buying the farm raised shrimp from China.  The price is comparable so if it’s good I’ll stick with it.  We got more tomatoes because I can’t stop eating tomato bacon sandwiches with basil.  I tried it once because we had no lettuce and now I’m hooked.  Plenty of mayo please.  

Tomatoes and red peppers were the only veg I bought today.  I bought the rest of our fruits and veg for the week yesterday.  The red peppers are for pepper jelly.  I bought more jalapenos than I thought I could ever use but since I’ve been eating them hot out of the oven wrapped in bacon now I don’t know (thanks Erin!).  I bought blackberries for jelly but ended up not having quite enough fruit so I mixed them with some mystery berries that I froze a while back but neglected to label.  They turned out to be strawberries so I made a batch of mixed berry jam.  So the jam is done.  I hope to do the pepper jelly tomorrow and then move on to some pickles.  Though I don’t have a good recipe.  Have a good recipe for dill pickles?  I have a new book with a recipe that looks good but nothing tried and true.  

Oh, and about the sheep mask.  They were handing them out at the market.  The reverse is a $1 off coupon for the Maryland State Fair.  It starts on August 28.  Looks like we’re going this year.

It looks kind of sad just hanging there all wonky-like but I’m fully confident that it will be super cute on.  I’ll put some more time into it while I’m NOT at the office, mwah hah ha.  

This pattern is rated 3 out of 4 scissors compared to the tea party dress’ 1 and it shows.  Anything with tiny sleeves is bound to make you want to tear your hair out at some point.  Speaking of tunics.  I picked up a super cute tunic from Sweet Pepita at Pile of Craft.  I have to try to get pics of that but you can see Pepita sporting a similar one here.

I want to immediately get started on the next piece.  I’m just not exactly sure what that’s going to be.  Chase is thrilled about the cats.  I still feel kinda badly that I threw all the pattern designer’s advice for selecting fabrics out the window and went with this loud print.  But I love love love these Alexander Henry fabrics and, quite frankly, don’t think I could pull them off myself.  Lastly, the pattern calls for using a hem facing but I ended up putting in a narrow hem which I think is totally fine.  I cannot wait for Chase to wear this tomorrow.  I’m gonna tell everyone the wrinkles are from her wearing it.  : )

With the car out of the way we spent some time this weekend thinking through the week’s dinners.  So far so good.  Tonight I made this chili from Fine Cooking and was really happy with the results.  Pureeing some of the beans with the tomato and chipotle is really an interesting technique and it really made this a quick dinner.  I bastardized this salad from Ina Garten (courtesy of Erin, thanks for the great tip!) and subbed it in for the plain avocado topping called for in the original recipe.  The chili is REALLY good with lots of limey avocado on top and a dollop of sour cream.  I’m just glad I did it.  It’s so easy to fall into a rut of take out.  So easy, too easy.  My only goal for tonight is to pick which of the 5 meals we planned to do tomorrow.  It’s my only goal, I can do this!  Right?

Here are a few pictures from memorial day:

Sometimes, as much as I want to have people over and have a good time it’s really hard for me to let go.  I have a tendency to get so uptight and self-conscious that it makes everyone feel ill at ease and that’s, well that would be unsouthern.  Anyway, the pizza wasn’t perfect and the kitchen floor could have used a good scrubbing but we had a good time all the same and to me, that’s nothing to sneeze at.  

The biggest news of the weekend is that Chase told me that she had to use the potty and then did.  After that she told me that she didn’t want to wear a diaper and then used the potty again later!  I’m stoked.  Of course, she pooped in her pants later but baby steps.  Not a whole lot else happened.  We got going on the joint sandbox project on Friday and got it filled up.  It’s frickin fantastic Chase will sit in that thing for hours and dig and she loves it.  

So you’re going to start thinking of me as the the little lady that cried wolf.  I worked on another garland but you’ll notice that I still haven’t posted anything in the shop.  I got cold feet.  I don’t know what I’m doing here and don’t know if I’m ready to jump in with both feet… and I believe that you have to jump in with both feet.  That’s where the hesitation comes from.  Other friends that have launched Etsy shops have been so thoroughly prepared going into it that I feel like maybe there’s something I’m missing.  Plus, when do I ever go into anything fully prepared.  Around 9 o’clock this evening I thought that’s it I’m just going to post the stuff and see where it goes.  It’s now 11 and there’s still nothing up there.  That’s partly because Forgetting Sara Marshall was like 3 hours long but also partly because I’m all freaked out about it again.  That movies is hilarious by the way and one of three that I watched over the weekend.  Twilight came in and I watched that too.  It was ok, very middle of the road.  It didn’t have anything on the book except I will say that, having read all four books at this point, I never had a clear image in my mind of what Edward looked like in the sun and the movie kind of filled that part in for me.  I kind of like that.  

Ok, so the weekend in a nutshell.  I particularly like the one that is just a sheer expression of joy… and I owe it all to our neighbors and their sandbox.  Such a simple thing, a sandbox but she’s thrilled!

I call the new garland spring flowers.  I AM going to post them up in the shop.  Tomorrow.  I’m just going to sleep on it one more night, k?

Ok, so it’s Sunday.  What did we do today?   Reflecting back on it, it was a pretty busy day.  It was a pretty busy weekend for that matter.  I took Chase to the ped on Friday for a lingering cough.  He told me that she was wheezing, hooked her up to the nebulizer and sent us home with meds.  I kept her home for the day and she took a loooong nap.  Saturday we didn’t do much but all the worrying I did about her coughing and wheezing took it’s toll.  I will say that I love her pediatrician.  He called me this morning just to check in on her, on a Sunday!  He’s the best.

This morning since she got me up at the crack of dawn we did some organizing, some painting, and more cutting before running our errands.  Actually, this picture is from Saturday.  Today’s target was a bin full of paper ribbon.  She’s just completely obsessed with mastering the scissors but it keeps her way quiet so I’ve been letting her have at it.  They’re safety scissors after all and she seems to have the appropriate level of respect for the tool.  Later I stole away to the library during nap time.  I won’t tell you how much I owed in fines but I took out a brand new fresh stack anyway.  Sometimes I think I’d might as well just buy the dang books.  It’s not like I don’t work across the street from the library or anything, seriously… I don’t know what my problem is.   It rained today but it’s still pretty mild which is great since I see that my cold weather veg are sprouting already!  Ok, now that I’ve dumped my brain here you’re all caught up.  What did yo do this weekend??

I meant to make a size 2-3 but somehow ended up making a 1-2 so I may be stitching up another one this time next year.  I used size 6 circular needles even though it’s not knit in the round so you could use straights.  I didn’t check my gauge it’s such a small quick project I decided to just knit away.  It looked about right size-wise so I figured it would be ok.  I used a bulky weight (machine washable!) alpaca yarn from lovely yarns, a local yarn shop.  Now I feel like tackling something more ambitious… but what?  I have some books out from the library I want to look through.  I don’t know, I may be entering that dangerous I have more ideas for projects than I have time for phase.  Whenever that happens I just end up watching a lot of tv and not being very productive at all.  Another look at the hat: