Oh August!

For August, I'm
Excited:  about upcoming trips
Worried: about our green card application
Watching: The Olympics
Reading: The newspaper, magazines, e-books
Listening to: nothing in particular
Creating:  jewelry, or thinking about them
Cooking: everything
Loving: the Olympics 
Hoping: that the residency stuff is fine
Looking forward to: having the option to travel internationally if we wanted to, in about 6 weeks

Busy week recap

I am not proud of this but after a busy week, this is what the craft room looked like this morning:

Here are a few things that contributed to this mess:

1. Medical exam for my residency application: I had provide my vaccination record, which mean digging through my files. I found everything I needed and I get the results this Tuesday. There is also a pile of paperwork for the rest of the application process.

2. Annual eye exam: Looking for my eye insurance card, which I couldn't find. Eye exam was fine, no changes in my prescription. The doctor said that my vision is stabilizing and that in theory my eye numbers should not change for a very long time.

3. Joann had some good 50% coupons, which meant getting wedding supplies. 

4. I had leftover fabric after making the iPad pouch, so I made a small make-up bag. 

5. The Pattersons are in town this weekend and I've been collecting items to put together a baby basket.

6. Birthdays! Laura's, Jen's, and Baby Julia = making birthday cards/putting together gifts.

7. Wedding crafts; invitations; also we received our save-the-dates this week. We hope to finalize our guest list in the next few weeks, and send our save-the-dates in September.

I am a firm believer in a place for everything and everything in its place. The issue at hand was that everything had a place, but nothing was in its place. Clean-up was a breeze. In merely an hour, I was looking at this:

For Baby Morrison

This is what happens when we forget to water our plants for a couple of days. Maybe that's why we don't have any peppers yet (They are too stressed with the heat and not-so-frequent watering). Interestingly, the marigolds that we started from seeds are less tolerant of the heat/watering issue than the ones we rescued from Lowes. I'm not worried about the peppers; an hour after watering the plants, this pepper plant had already bounced back. I also found more tomatoes.

Jalapeno pepper plant

Marigold from seeds; look at the bright flowers from the other Marigold (rescued; right)

Also, my parents and sister came back from China this weekend. They had a nice trip, visited Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan (where my sister was). Soon my sister will apply to be registered as a specialist with the medical council of Mauritius, and hopefully will start practicing soon. Good luck sis!

We are also very entertained by the Olympics - I did watch the Walk of Nations on Friday and cheered for Mauritius - yes, we are represented at the summer Olympics. Looking forward to the women's gymnastics event this evening and hope that the US team will do great. 

Totally Thursday

If you've hung out enough with me, you probably know that I love bears (the animals, not the Chicago Bears or Cubs). I love all bears of all sizes and color. I think I would be plenty happy to be the Jane Goodall of bears. I wish I had known that before I went to college, so I could have chosen a different major (I am still a dedicated pharmacologist). Yes, bears can maul you, but so will chimps. Anyways, to the point of Totally Thursday.
Tom shared this link with me the other day. Brown Bears at Brooks River
It's of live cams in Alaska at Katmai Park and Preserve in Alaska. More specifically, at Brooks River. Brown bears, in the river, feeding on salmon! Too bad I'll be in Alaska only for a short amount of time because I did consider going there and even looked up airplane tickets.
There is also a link to Siku, a polar bear in Germany.
Oh boy, oh boy!!!
Stress relief strategy, pick-me-up strategy, happiness strategy: check

Re: two new states

A while ago, I wrote that I would soon be visiting the University of North Carolina for a training workshop. Well, today I found out that I was granted a Career Enhancement Award from UAB's Office of Postdoctoral Education. Woot woot!

Well technically it doesn't mean anything as far as financial gain since I won't see any money from it but it's a good thing to have on a CV.

Tasty Tuesday on Thursday

Long due post on kitchen happenings in July:
For our 4th of July party, we had beer brats and hamburgers, and side dishes from our friends. We made some jalapeno poppers (picture before they went on the grill):

Tom requested that I adapt the trifle cake to something that was served when he was younger:

This started with a gluten free cake mix. After baking I sliced the cake along its height and brushed both sides with a honey syrup. Then I built the layers, cake, whipped topping, strawberries and blueberries, cake whipped topping, strawberries and blueberries. I also soaked the strawberries in the honey syrup.

It had been a long day, and after everyone left, Tom and I realized that we had barely eaten, so we made bacon cheeseburgers:

And finally, this past Friday, Tom had to present at his lab meeting. So I made some coconut cupcakes, which I frosted with Malibu buttercream. Some didn't get frosting because I somehow managed to get red food coloring speckles in it and one of Tom's labmates is allergic.

Haven't been inspired to cook much this past week. Tonight's dinner was an egg and a grilled cheese. I hope that your plates have been happier than ours.

Two new states

I will be able to cross off two new states off my list soon. Last week, my boss agreed to send me to a training workshop in North Carolina at the beginning of August. By the end of the year, I should have Alaska and North Carolina crossed off my list of states and that would also be two new cities (goal of three a year). With football season starting soon, yes it's 47 days until the SEC football season starts, I'm hoping that we will get one more city in somewhere, sometime. Maybe we'll catch the Packers on the road again.

Sunny Sunday

Our plants, well all but one, are doing great. I've taken up pruning a lot of our flower plants to encourage new sprouts. All our tomato plants look healthy. We have four tomato containers, but only three tomatoes so far. They are almost ready to harvest (disclaimer, picture from about 10 days ago; these tomatoes are now red):

We have about five pepper plants (two containers) with a lot of flowers on them but no peppers yet. 

The Lowes rescue plants are also doing well. The marigolds have rebounded well, so have the begonias and petunias.

The not so good: our morning glory plant is covered in aphids and the Neem oil spray isn't helping. As of today, the aphids were contained to just that one plant. The mixed wild flowers pot isn't doing much of anything. There are barely any flowers in the pot.
And finally, we had some (a lot of) mushrooms come up in one of our pots. Tom identified it as a member of the Amanita genus; what can I say, he's really smart like that. In any case, these are toxic. We have been removing them and their surrounding dirt. These can have caps of about 5 inches in diameter. We haven't used the parsley or chives from that pot, but if we do, they will be washed several times.

I may be wrong here, but I think they came up following a change in watering schedule. The morning is so hectic that I have started watering the plants in the evening. At night the soil stays moist and is a perfect environment for mushrooms to thrive. That's just my theory. I haven't changed the watering schedule, mostly because this past week has been a bit busier than others. My friend and co-worker went on vacation on Wednesday, and I was put on dog feeding and playing duty. Also, the new gadget inspired a lot of crafting.
We'll see what happens in the garden this week. We're hoping for peppers and no mushrooms :)

Recap

I seem to be more recaps lately. Here's another one. My 4 year old laptop was getting eternally slower. It got to be very frustrating to want to quickly check something before going to bed or heading out of the door to run errands. I knew I needed somewhat of a replacement and after some further need assessment, I decided a tablet was the way to go. More specifically an iPad. This little puppy came on Monday. First two days: get used to it and downloaded apps. I was surprised at how many wedding apps were out there. Anywoo, the third and fourth days were dedicated to iPad inspired craft. I bought a cover and a camera transferring device. I also made this padded case; it also has a zippered pocket on the front to hold cables and accessories if needed. It cost less than $10 to make. It is not meant to be waterproof or too much shock resistant but rather it offers protection against scratches from keys etc... when being carried in my purse. Plus, I think it's very pretty (I love the fabric design) and makes me smile when I see it. 
 

After the May shenanigans, I can't change the flash setting (it's always off) on my camera. I apologize for the dark pics.
I have some scrap fabric left, so I wouldn't be surprised if some other sewing craft magically happened, maybe later today, since I was guilty of going to Hobby Lobby this morning. 
I was hoping that I could blog from this nifty device but have found out that there are no free apps with full functionality (at least that I know of).
That was my week.
I'll have a garden recap on Sunny Sunday and a full recap of kitchen happenings on Tasty Tuesday.

Belated Wordless Wednesday

 

Oh July!

For July, I'm
Excited:  about July 4th
Worried: about the heat
Watching: Masterchef and Hell's Kitchen
Reading: The newspaper, magazines
Listening to: nothing in particular
Creating:  to-do lists
Cooking: been craving salads, Indian food, and crawfish
Loving:  Aldi
Hoping: for rain this week
Looking forward to: my staycation at the end of this week

Happy Independence Day!
We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day! ~ President Thomas Whitmore from Independence Day