senioritis

We had the Turkey's senior pictures done earlier this month. The prints came back a couple weeks later and were overexposed. So we took 'em back and did a quick redeux. Here's what we had to choose from: 

Check out the laughter in the smallest picture on the right. Hee hee! And the sepia tone on the right we called the "Lincoln pose." 

But the one we chose to have printed was ... 

Drum roll, please. 

dumdumdumdumdumdumdududududumdumddadaumdadumdadumdadumdadum

Ta da! 

That's my Turkey!

My SENIOR Turkey. ;-)

qr goodness

 

Be impressed?

Be very impressed! :-)

the littlest burrito

Call him a little burrito. Or maybe an empanada. 

Either way he's delectably cute and yummy. 

Yummy for snuggles ... 

and that's what I finally got to do with the cutest new nephew in the family!

*happy dances!*

(Sorry for the quirky angle on this one.)

(I was trying to get those fists and feet in the photo and got a little crazy.)  

(And it was also the cell phone camera in low light which doesn't help.) 

(But you get the idea, right?)

Meet Mateo! You saw his cute toes a few posts ago. 

He slept through most of his first real introduction to me, 

Crazy Aunt Jess, 

but he did stretch and yawn and every once in a while. 

Until next time, little Mateo!

nom nom nola

I wanted to get to this cute little restaurant in NOLA last week but their hours didn't mesh with my availability. A few conference folks found their way there and said it was great, although none mentioned a bacon sundae. Check it out: 

Our “Notorious” Bacon Sundae
Pecan praline ice cream with a creamy bacon caramel sauce 
carrying a bit of both Pink Himalayan & Black Lava Salts, 
& micro-planed Nueske’s Applewood Bacon, 
layered with whipped cream, of course! $8

Forget the bread pudding with warm rum sauce and get me a bacon sundae pronto!

Oh wow. Click here, download the menus and prepare to be amazed. There are so many creative combinations and taste sensations just waiting to explode on the palate.

Green Goddess is definitely going on The List for the next visit to Nawlins. :-)

nawlins

Nawlins. New Orleans. NOLA. It's all the same thing - one crazy city with 24/7 liquor and lots of music!

It's also the place where I spent the majority of the week.

I was there for a conference. 

Honest and fer real!
(Come on, peeps! My mom reads this blog. It was a conference. Truly!)

The hotel was at the corner of Bourbon and Canal Streets in the French Quarter. 

These dudes were on the corner of Bourbon Street every afternoon by 4pm and sometimes stayed until after midnight. I couldn't see them from my hotel window, but boy could we hear them! They were very loud in tune rockin' jazzy obnoxiously fun exuberant, not to mention a little yeast-like in the fact the group would suddenly expand its members and instruments for no apparent reason.  

I should have turned around and gotten a picture of the crowd.
They were a hoot, too. 

But I did get a picture of this: 

That's a cat sleeping in the gallery window. 

The print behind him was one of my favorites in the Royal Street galleries.

Other French Quarter sights: 

Thanks for throwing the beads my way, peeps on the orange and pink float!

I escaped the French Quarter late one afternoon and took the streetcar 

down (up? over?) to Tulane. 

Even the Tulane trees had beads hanging in them! 

I call these the "beaded trees." 

There are lots of them along the "street side" of St. Charles Street.

And really, what trip to NOLA would be complete 

without a stop at Cafe Du Monde for beignets?

Mmmm! I can still taste the sugar... 

Before catching a cab to the airport for the trip home we wandered up to Antoine's for lunch. 

Who could resist the $0.25 martinis? 

Not us! They were seriously yummy. 

(That's my melon martini above.) 

At first we thought it would be a tiny taste, a sip of a martini. 

When the beverages came to the table we were pleasantly surprised. 

And $0.75 later we were quite fuzzy! 

 VERY fuzzy! Hee hee! 

Earlier in the week we had dinner at NOLA, one of Emeril's restaurants. 

It was so super yummy that I forgot to whip out the cell phone 

and snap photos of our delectable meal. 

Trust me when I say it was good, though.

Go! Get thee to Nola's!

Preservation Hall was also one of our stops. 

We had a great time listening to the St. Peter Street Playboys 

(you can find them on iTunes) (I think)

and then wandering back down Royal Street 

and peeking in gallery and antique shop windows. 

But not before picking up one of these: 

Bread pudding with a warm rum sauce that tasted like a kicked-up maple syrup. 

Swoon! 

(Notice that I didn't pick up alcohol, but a dessert?!) 

Did I see Jackson Square? Yes, but not in the daylight. 

Did I get out of the French Quarter? Yes, but not for long. 

Did I get drunk? Wellllllllll ... does tipsy count? 

Was it a fun trip? YOU BETCHA! 

But I learned a lot at the conference, too. *wink*

in remembrance

Here is how I chose to honor the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001:

I flew. 

Commercial. 

What better way to say, "nanny nanny boo boo," right? 

Security was a little tighter than usual at the airport today,
but the lines moved right along and not a soul complained.  

When we touched down it was clear that we can only win if we keep moving. 

If planes keep flying. If life goes on. If we don't let them get the best of us.  

And if we continue to have the freedom to paint jets to look like an orca.

updatey-doo

Either I make a practice of hanging at the hospital nursery and taking pictures of bambinos or there's a new cutie patootie nephew in the pink turkey world. 

I'll let you decide.

:-) 

birt-day

Happy birthday to my favorite Turkey! He turned 17 Friday and, as usual, I couldn't let a milestone pass without marking it appropriately.

Cue the window markers.

I made him drive everywhere and people were waving and honking and shouting, "happy birthday!"  It was super cool.

But let's take another look at the side window, mkay?

There. See it? My inaugural experience with window paint and I misspelled "birthday!"  *smh* What's super funny about this is I was painting the windows in the parking lot of the party store and people were walking by and commenting, giggling at my efforts. Little did I know they were giggling at my misspelling! Yikes!

I quickly tried to add the missing "h" and was [barely] able to squeeze it between the "t" and the "d." Barely.  It seems the window paints dry quickly, making the edits even tougher.

Misspelling or not, I'd just like to say ...

Happy 17th Birt-day to my Turkey!

the piano guys

It's been a while -- a loooooong while -- since I've posted about my piano obsession. (In case you didn't already know, I want a piano. Want. Want. Want. Waaaaaa-nt! It's like baby hormones -- there's no stopping the want.)

These guys don't help:




Aren't they cute? Love Jon's butt wiggle. Dancing in the wheelchair. And the conga line was a hoot!

Here's another that's just super sweet:





More from the Piano Guys available here.

Like 'em? Then you must subscribble*!

And get me a piano! Stat!

(*Subscribble -- that's pink turkey shorthand for subscribe + talk/write about 'em!)

irene

In college I had to write a paper about presidential leadership. Presidential as in Washington or Jefferson or Garfield or Arthur or Cleveland or Nixon or Reagan. The ones that currently occupy a big white house. THOSE presidents.

The professor assigned a commander in chief to everyone in the class. I got #35. He was otherwise known as John F. Kennedy.

My paper was terrific except for the small glaring omission of his assassination. I mean, what did his assassination have to do with leadership anyway? IMHO it felt as if everyone talked about #35's demise rather than his time in office, and this paper was all about leadership so it made sense to exclude that one tiny detail. Right?

WRONG-O! The professor laughed -- cackled actually -- and handed the paper back with instructions to rewrite it pronto. Apparently the assassination has EVERYTHING to do with Kennedy's leadership. Dang.

This is what was going through my mind this morning as I set out to give you, my peeps, a blog post about my latest craft project.

Huh? Kennedy to craft projects?

Bear with me just a smidge longer, mkay?

*Ahem!* Back to it....

So this morning I was going to give you the lowdown on how I spent hours in front of the TV last night making button flowers and omit the whole Hurricane Irene schmaltz. That's when I realized the omission of Irene's visit this weekend would be heinous and cause you, my peeps, to mimic my professor of old by guffawing and asking for a rewrite.

Irene has been all over the news. The only way you could have missed her is if you were in Antarctica this weekend. She has excited news producers like a blizzard and caused Matt and Ann to have Sunday morning duties. She is dancing with everyone along the east coast before retiring for the night, and having some serious economic impacts along the way. Everyone knows Irene.

The good news is we escaped Irene's wrath with just heavy winds and about 5" of rain last night. The house is dry, the power remained on, the cat was happy to have us home, and it was a relatively easy night.

This was our biggest excitement. We heard a "thud" early in the evening that turned out to be part of the neighbor's tree crashing down on our adjoining fence. Easy schmeasy (because it's their fence!!!). This morning the yard has lots of leaves and tree branches littering the grass, but nothing else. We are very lucky to have escaped the brunt of the storm. 

Conversely, this is what the inside of my house looks like. YIKES! I baked for a while after returning from my afternoon hair appointment (my southern roots were showing) so the kitchen looks about the same. Tsk tsk.  It was great to have a night at home where the creative juice-o-meter was reading "high" and we didn't have anything else that was begging to be done. Or at least not begging loud enough for me to hear it, *blush* so I was comfortable leaving the mess overnight. Hopefully I can get a few more done this morning. 

That's my Cape May mug in the foreground keeping watch over the button mess. :-) 

There you have it, peeps. Irene has left the building, leaving a crater in the fence and a mess in the house. It's been a good weekend! I hope you have escaped relatively unscathed as well. 

vacation excursion #4 :: blue ridge parkway

It was our last day in Asheville and we were headed north. Towards home. 

But not without a final excursion/adventure to complete the vacation. 

Welcome to the Blue Ridge Parkway!

It was a breathtakingly beautiful drive. 

This here picture was taken with my cell phone. 

Love how you can still see all the different hues of blue and the layers of mountains.

We were driving when the Turkey leaned out of the car window to get this picture of the lake.

He didn't use my cell phone. Thankfully.

Cute. But we forgot to take off our glasses. 

But it's also kinda cool because of the reflection of the clouds on the lenses.

Aha! No glasses. Squinting in the sun, though. 

And the breeze meant the Turkey kept getting my hair in his mouth. 

Eeeuw!

Purdy! 

He kept moving the camera and cutting me out of the picture! 

We laughed. 

Or, as it looks like, *I* laughed! 

 

 The Parkway is a 2-lane, twisty, turny road cut through the mountains. 

The speed limit is 45mph but we barely ever got that fast. 

The views were just too gorgeous to miss. 

So after about 30 miles on the Parkway -- and 2.5 hours -- 

we took the first exit we saw. I can't tell you where it went, but it was 

No Man's Land. Maybe even No Mountain Man's Land. 

There were a few trailers every once in a while, but no cell service, 

and definitely no amenities. 

We just kept going NW until we found the interstate. :-) 

And we were home 7 hours later. 

It was a GREAT trip! 

Four* thumbs up for Asheville and its environs!

*two thumbs from each of us