Hello Monday Thoughts and Things

Good morning friends. Is time flying where you live because it feels like it's flying here. We're still in summer mode, but school has been back in session in our area for two weeks now and that makes me think it should be fall. 

Except it was 96 degrees when we left the house to meet friends for dinner on Friday night, and that's summer, right? 

Let's back up to Wednesday. Friends invited us to their house to play water volleyball and it was so much fun. There were about 25 people there and the hosts ordered pizza and everybody brought a snack or side to share. Nobody took the game playing too seriously so we laughed a lot. 

Thursday I got a few things done at the house, including getting one of the guest baths downstairs emptied out because painters are coming next week. I told hubs the economy is tanking but we're doing our part to  keep it going here with home improvement projects. 

I've been wanting to add some wallpaper to this bathroom pretty much since we built, and I'm finally getting around to choosing the paper and finding a hanger and having a decorator help me with the paint color for the room that will be just paint, no paper. It will be two days of painting and then one day to wallpaper and I'm excited to have it finished. It's going to be a nice change. We're reframing a print we've had hanging on the wall too so once that's done I'll share some pictures.

We've been in our house almost eight years now, and it's time to re-do a few things that are in need of re-doing. I'd like to paint the whole interior but we've got that other big project happening outside, also starting this week (fingers crossed) so paint will be on next years docket. 

Friday afternoon I had my yearly mammo scheduled. My appointment was at 4:45 PM which seemed like an odd time of day to do this, but whatever, at least it wasn't busy. And since it meant trekking in to the nearby city we made plans to meet up with our old neighbors at a place we've all been wanting to try. 

Oh my it was so good. 

Do you like sushi? If you don't like sushi you might not be on board, but we all like sushi and agreed this was excellent. The restaurant is called O-ku and they have locations in a handful of cities, mostly in the south. 

They do fancy cocktails and I had something called Sugar and Spice which was a jalapeno infused vodka with passion fruit juice and a sugar rim. Scrumptious! Hubs had a bourbon something called Tokyo which he enjoyed. 

The menu is a bit different than your typical sushi restaurant and we shared some small plates to start. This was blue fin tuna, fried shallot, compressed watermelon, and a brown butter sauce, which sounds crazy but it was wonderful. 

We each ordered our own rolls which we also ended up sharing, then added some Wagyu beef we cooked ourselves (it was the real deal!)...

Wagyu beef cooked in wagyu butter is something else. Yum! We were there for over three hours just enjoying the food, the company, and the truly excellent service, and we all agreed it was a fun dining experience. 

Saturday was another scorcher here with temps still  again in the 90's. Hubs and I hung out in the lake.  Literally. We have not had a day to just chill on the water and it was so nice to have nowhere to go and nothing we absolutely had to do. 

I spent an hour right here. 

I'm tied to the dock so I don't float away. 

We followed that up with a boat ride to check out a part of the lake we haven't really seen much of this summer. We always like to see what kind of new construction went up in the winter months and we like to see what people are doing to their property in terms of landscaping in case we want to copy. 

Hubs had to stop the boat once for me to jump in because I was melting. 

We came back to our dock and swam a little, then we showered (outside because that's still a thing here) and hubs grilled us steak while I added a salad and baked potato, which in my opinion is a perfect meal. There were a few clouds in the sky after dinner, but we chanced it and ran the boat out in time to catch the sunset.

Never disappoints. 

We ended the day with more Olympics. We have really enjoyed them this time around and I'm kind of sad they're ending. I think the US Women's track team was my favorite viewing. Such talent and speed, brains and beauty too. 

Sunday. It was hot. We had a friend coming by to look at our lemon tree and give us some advice on fertilizer and care and tell us if it's in a good spot, sun wise which it is. She has a lot of fruit trees and knows how to grow citrus. Ours is loaded with lemons that are still very green, but she assured us all is well, gave us some fertilizer and told us what to buy. Fingers crossed we'll have yellow lemons in another couple of months. 

Sunday afternoon we loaded up the car with various framing projects we want done (I think there are five)  and we drove to Michaels. Nobody was working the frame department and their 'framer' was at a training all week. Ugh. We'll shift gears and go to Hobby Lobby instead, hopefully Monday before the barge gets here with the landscaping materials. 

Hopefully the barge gets here Monday. 

Sunday afternoon we beat the heat and watched a movie, hubs grilled chicken for dinner and I made a side of pesto pasta with my homemade pesto, then we ended the day with a float. 

The lake kind not the Root beer kind.

So how was your weekend? 

Linking this post with the regular Hello Monday party hosted by Holly and Sarah.