SUYL-All About Me

I know most of the bloggers who link up with Kelly's Korner on Fridays are young enough to be my sister-ha! okay daughter but whatever, I'm linking up anyway. I love her blog.

Kelly's bringing back a link up she used to host on Fridays called Show Us Your Life (SUYL), and this week's theme is All About Me. Everyone participating is invited to tell their story so we can get acquainted. Hop over to Kelly's Korner if you want to play along.

I've been blogging since 2009 and feel like more than a few of you know everything there is to know about me. If that's you feel free to carry on with your weekending, but I'm guessing a handful of new readers will stop by via the linkup, so for you newbies here's the 411-

I've been married 32 years this June to my college sweetheart.

He is still my sweetheart.

Also in my head I'm 35.

We've moved nine times in 32 years (you do the math) with stints in Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey (twice), Maryland, England (sigh), and most recently South Carolina (the Upstate not the Lowcountry). My hubs retired at the end of February 2015, but accepted a brand new job in February 2016 so he's back on the treadmill.

Also the new job is not in South Carolina, but if you want complicated we're your people.

I am still manning the home front, fluid as that concept may be. I've worked as a speech pathologist, kindergarten teacher, school director, and have spent much of my non-working adult years as a volunteer. Volunteers make the world go round.

We sold our home in Northern NJ last June and moved into an apartment here in SC to supervise, fret over, and mostly hurry up and wait for our lake home to go up. We're halfway there, or at least I like to think we are.

I hope to goodness we've reached the mid point.

Is it possible we're not at the mid-point???

We broke ground at the end of September, and the rains came pretty much immediately after. We've had an enormous amount of weather related delays, but currently the dock is in, the house is framed, and fingers crossed the roof went on this week.

We're learning so much in the process and
thinkknow it will be worth it once we're in.

The absolute joy and deilght of my life are my two girls, both in their mid-20's. They inspire and amaze me with their brains, humor, creativity, and most of all with their tender, caring hearts. They're best buds and have been since the word go.

Daughter1 married the love of her life in January 2015, then promptly moved to the complete opposite side of the country to start life as a Mrs.

She works part time for Young Life, and full time spoiling her hard working Dr. Captain husband and their Boykin Spaniel. She blogs from Washington State at Sincerely Shannon.

Daughter2 lives right here in the Upstate (yay!) and teaches third grade. In her spare time (ha!) she keeps up with her Beach Body health and fitness program and her cute and slightly quirky Greyhound, Gemma.

Daughter2 also blogs (It's Elementary), and I so love keeping up with my girls both in person, and through their writing.

My blog is hard to quantify, but I like to say it's a slice of life, and a mostly happy one at that. I use too many words (you've probably figured that out on your own) and think I'm maybe more storyteller than blogger. You'll find a wide range of topics here, but the most common themes are mid-life observations, growing up girls, parenting young adult children, married life, the weather (sad, but true), our home build, our travels, life across the pond, home, family, and God's amazing grace.

I love Jesus, books, a cup of tea at 3 PM, all things England, 70's music, hiking, sunlight on the water, and new mercies every morning. I am a total and complete optimist (yes, even in 2016) and I host a fun meme here every week called The Wednesday Hodgepodge.

Whew. Okay, your turn. What's your 411?

Hindsight is 20/20

I did not blog today but linked two older posts over at Kelly's Korner in her Show us Your Life Series on Parenting.

Daydream Believer

Riding Bicycles

If you have something to share why not link up too?

Have a great weekend!

Kiss the Cook

Last night daughter2 made dinner. Raise your hand if you love having your college kids home? Daughter2 loves to cook plus did I mention it has been raining hard here for six days straight and it's been dark and gloomy so hunkering down at home just feels right?

Here is the finished product-

Chicken piccata, honey balsamic green beans and garlic roasted potatoes. Oh my word-so delicious!

She used Giada De Laurentis's recipe for the chicken which you'll find here. A real treat and not just because I didn't have to cook it myself. The honey balsamic green bean recipe is courtesy of Paula Deen. Go here for the recipe because it's definitely a keeper. The garlic roasted potato recipe ala Nigella Lawson can be found here.

Who thinks my daughter loves The Food Network?

She might have also baked lemon cupcakes with a lemon cream cheese frosting for dessert. I did not eat a cupcake (yet!...a finger in the batter doesn't count, does it?) but hubs said they were fab.

Fyi-he did not use the word fab but that's what he meant.

Hubs does not say fab.

Who's happy they taught their daughter to cook starting way back when she was just a cute little munchkin?

Who thinks she is still a cute little munchkin?

linking with Kelly's Korner today-show us your life/main dish recipes

Show us Where you Live-The Kitchen

I know.

Two posts on a Friday but nobody actually reads blogs on Fridays anyway do they?

I wanted to link up with Kelly's Korner today for the Show Us Your Life series.

Today people are posting pictures of their kitchens...why not add yours?

I love my kitchen and spend more time there than anywhere else in my house.

I love how open it feels and I love the color.

Its not easy to take great pictures in there though because of the lighting.

We have recessed lighting and over the sink lighting and over the island lighting and over the table lighting.

Plus the kitchen opens up into my family room which has two story ceilings and big windows so the lighting is tricky.

Plus I stink at photography and have a puny camera.

Okay, I think I'm done with excuses now.

One of the things that convinced me this house should be mine was the island...

It's an unusual shape, a pentagon.

I like the angles and I love the granite, both the color and for clean up.

I have not allowed the island to become a dumping ground for mail or anything else.

Yay me!

Well, yay hubs because he's all over that.

I like to keep the island clear with the exception of a centerpiece of some sort.

Right now I have big pumpkin pie scented candles in hurricane jars with a fall berry wreath around the center jar.

The previous owners did not have a back splash behind the stove so I've put a big tray there for now which I love.

We may just leave it like that.

One of our house guests in England bought this tray for me after I took her to Windsor Castle. It's lovely and reminds me of England and good friends both.

I have some of my favorite pottery on top of my cabinets.

These came from a little town in Italy called Nove which is not far from Verona...

Here is a different view looking into our back hallway from my kitchen sink...

I also love the desk and cabinet above it which is filled with guess what?

More pottery.

Seriously, does anyone else feel happy just looking at this Fig pitcher?

We have a digital photo frame on the desk and when my girls are home we play a game where every time you walk by the frame you have to shout out the location of the current picture.

I think it's true that in many ways the kitchen is the heart of the home.

One of the reasons I love fall so much is all the cooking and celebrating and family togetherness it brings... weekend football games, daughters popping home for a few days of break and of course Thanksgiving dinner.

Plus the colors of fall match my house which is just a little icing on the cake.

Show us Where you Live-The Dining Room

I thought I'd join in with Kelly's Korner today for her weekly 'Show Us Your Life' posts. Today people are posting pics of their Dining Rooms and I love to see how others decorate one of my favorite rooms in a house.

I know a lot of people feel like the dining room is wasted space because its not used on a regular basis. If I'm serving a meal in my dining room it usually means my whole big extended family is gathered round for a holiday meal or celebration of some kind and I love that. Or it might mean friends are gathered for a dinner party which is something else I enjoy. It may not be used often but when it is its almost always something special and happy. Forgive the bright lights...this was taken pre dinner party one evening and I hadn't dimmed the chandelier yet.

Speaking of the chandelier...it has got to go. I'm pretty sure its the one the builder installed when the house was built about ten years ago. We've been in our house just over a year now and most rooms still need a little tweaking. We're getting there but its a work in progress!

If you read here you know I have a thing for dishes and pottery and having a meal in my dining room means I get to use some of the pieces I've collected while traveling.

The walls in our dining room are navy blue up top with white wainscot minus the paneling down below. The trim is also white. I love the color and have navy walls in my living room too. It sounds dark but its not...the white trim, windows and open foyer between the rooms keep it feeling light but cozy.

We've gone back and forth on the window treatment...we like it bare and we sit back off the road without anyone directly opposite our house plus there's a fairly large tree in front of the window so we don't need anything for privacy.

We've decided to put plantation shutters up anyway though because I love the way they finish off a room and also, hello...

This girl? She likes to stalk the groundhogs and chipmunks who hang out in the rock ledge on our front hillside. This means there are practically permanent nose prints on the glass which makes me a teensy bit crazy.

This is one of my favorite pieces...

Its hand made glass that we bought in Murano. Murano is a series of islands just a quick boat ride from the city of Venice and its famous for its glass making. You can watch them work and the stuff is positively gorgeous!

I also love birds and bird prints and we have two Audobon prints in Antique frames with silk mats that we've moved from house to house through the years. I like them best in a dining room.

The corner where my server sits needs something on the wall above it...just can't quite decide what...

I guess I should mention our cork collection...when we moved to the UK we began saving corks everywhere we went and we keep some of them in a pretty glass jar in a corner of the dining room.

Thanks for stopping by today..hop over to Kelly's Korner to see more dining rooms on tour.

Daydream Believer

Before I had my own children I used to imagine what motherhood would be like.

It would be rosy.

Always very rosy.

Hearts and flowers and rainbows.

Oh I might have imagined pacing the floor with an adorable not sleepy infant on my shoulder but in my picture I would be sighing and smiling at the loveliness of that. Not anxious and crabby and bone weary tired after 56 consecutive nights of interrupted sleep.

I pictured myself chasing laughing toddlers thru the green grass, baking cookies in a sunny kitchen, reading stories cuddled up on the couch.

I did not picture myself standing anxiously over an impulsive three year old as a doctor stitched up her head for the third time in as many years, nor did I imagine sending a cheeky little girl to the naughty step. In my daydreams my children were always obedient and never talked back. They thought I hung the moon every single day of their little lives. They listened to my words of wisdom and nodded in agreement all the while thinking 'my mom is the best mom in the whole wide world.'

I pictured myself lovingly preparing meals as my teenager sat nearby diligently completing homework. I pictured riding in the car while my happy smiling teen rode beside me sharing tales of wonderfulness about her day mingled with I love you mommy. I did not imagine ordering food at a drive in window then driving off without it. Or flying right on by a turn I needed to take because I was trying not to freak out over something my teenager just shared on the fifteen minute ride to ballet.

I never imagined so many of life's hard questions would require an instant on the spot response or that I would ever sit on the bed of my teenager as she cried about the hurt a friend had caused. Nor could I have imagined negotiating the parameters regarding parental supervision, alcohol, and the 's' word for every single weekend's social events.

I did not imagine saying no.

A lot.

And I could never have known that once my heart was opened to the heights and depths of parental love it was open to a deep well of other emotion too...that I would never again hear of a hurt or hungry or neglected child anywhere and not feel sadness in the deepest part of my soul.

I never imagined a child sick with a high fever calling from hundreds of miles away or the worry that would percolate under my skin all week until that child's sweet voice returned to normal. I positively never imagined living an ocean apart from my child. I did not picture one day hearing about car accidents and broken hearts from hundreds and even thousands of miles away and not physically being there to make it all better.

In my daydreams I was always there.

Because in the daydreams of my pre-parenthood days I never ever imagined grown up children.

I did not know that as they grew I would hope their hopes and feel their hurts and want to give them the whole world. That somewhere along the timeline known as child rearing I would realize that just isn't possible. Or even good. I would one day understand that disappointment and success, sadness and joy, are all necessary parts of childhood if we want grown up children who are full of compassion and kindness and generosity.

No one could have told me then that when those babies of my daydreams grew up they would be wrapped around my heart so tightly and so completely that I would sometimes be overwhelmed with love for them. That even though they are not in a crib in the next room but instead are hundreds of miles away they still have the ability to wake me up in the middle of the night.

That one day I would lie in the quiet darkness of an empty house and pray for their physical safety, for their relationships, for the paths they would walk, and the choices they would have to make. That in spite of birthdays marking the passing years, in spite of time and growing up, they would be a part of me always, and although every now and then I would long for the sweetness of a newborn or the cheeky little toddler girl, or the teenager who was changing before my very eyes, I would finally understand...

Its the birthdays marking the passing years, the years we marked in minutes and hours as we grew up side by side...that those are the very things that have woven our lives together to give us what we have today.

And like the strongest strand of chord it can be stretched but remains unbroken.

It was 1980 something...

I have a lot going on in the next few weeks and much to say but my head is swimming so I thought today I'd join in with other bloggers over at Kelly's Korner in telling the story of 'how I met my husband'.

Kelly has tons of readers and they are all ages but I think for the most part they are young. Er....younger than me anyway. But you know what? Couples who have been married a long time? They have a story too. We have a story. And in my head, most days I do not feel that far removed from the twenty year old girl I was when I met my hubs.

We met in college. Hubs is a Tennessee boy. I spent most of my growing up years in NJ although both of my parents are from out west. My dad was in the Marine Corps and we landed in NJ, he retired after we'd been there a few years and we stayed. My older sister had gone to college in Tennessee and was still living there and missing family which is what prompted me to look at schools down south.

Hubs and I had a history class together the first quarter of our sophomore year and he says he noticed me then. My roommate and I were both in the class so we'd come in talking and move to our seats and continue talking and he says he and his roommate (who was also in the class) thought I was pretty and they also thought I was unfriendly because I never talked to them in class. Hey, I was from NJ. And I'm not saying people from NJ aren't friendly but one of the first things I noticed when I got to Tennessee was that everybody talked to you, whether they knew you or not. It is something I love about the south still and now that I've lived a few
millionplaces I can see how he might have thought me unfriendly.

Anyway, he knew who I was and I knew who he was. Honestly, everyone knew who he was because he knew how to have fun. Lots of fun. Life of the party fun. I was in a sorority and he was in a fraternity so we were at lots of the same events too. Oh yeah, and he had a girlfriend. Anyway, we 'officially' met when one of my best friends started dating one of his best friends. He and the girlfriend had been on/off all year and were more or less 'off' when we met. Not completely but eventually. Obviously, because we're married.

It wasn't until the very end of spring quarter that my friend 'accidentally' left her keys at the fraternity house and asked me to go with her to pick them up. Hubs was there, out on the deck, sporting a black eye and a broken hand. The black eye was from baseball but the broken hand was from something else. See paragraph above regarding 'life of the party'. He asked me out on a date and I like to tease him and say I felt sorry for him, you know, black eye, broken hand... but I'm pretty sure it was the twinkle in his eye that made me say yes. We had our first date that next week.

We drove up to the mountains to a fire tower you could climb. Thinking back I'm not entirely sure you were supposed to be climbing there but college kids were always climbing that tower. On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen because he was horrified to discover I had never in my life eaten a corn dog and he felt it was his duty to get me one.

We were very much on again off again the first year and a half but I did meet his family quite early on in the relationship. As soon as I left their house his dad told his mom that he knew I was the girl hubs would marry. And he did. 26 years ago this June.

Hubs grew up in a small town. When we got married we flew to our honeymoon destination and that was only the second time in his life my hubs had been on an airplane. In the next three months he will be in China, Kenya, South Africa, Turkey, Italy and blah blah blah for work travel....we have moved eight times, lived in five states, and spent six years living abroad. We sent our daughters a continent away to university. We have friends from coast to coast and coast to coast. Literally. We have packed alot into these 26 years.

When you are starting out you think you know, more or less, where life will take you. We never in a million years imagined this life. But we did imagine that whatever God sent our way we would share it together. And we have. We may look a little older on the outside but on the inside?

We are still the kids who climbed the fire tower.

The post in which we get to play with fire

A few years ago my family bought me a creme brulee set for Mother's Day. And by 'set' I mean four ramekins and a butane torch. Creme brulee is my favorite dessert and they thought it would be fun for me to try making it at home. I think it was the whole torch thing that put me off...I never even took it out of the box. I started thinking about that set recently as I'm having a little dinner party this weekend and I'd like to make creme brulee for dessert. Hubs has been wanting us to try our hand at homemade pasta so we found a lobster ravioli recipe we decided to try too. We had our own little food network happening here last Saturday.

The lobster ravioli was delicious. And a lot of work. I don't have a pasta machine so this was all done the old fashioned way and its a good thing I've been keeping up with Jillian or I don't know if I'd have the muscle required for making pasta.

Here I am working out my biceps rolling out the dough. I took pictures of the filling but it looks kinda like raw fish and I think it might put you off so I'm not posting those.

We made the dough, the lobster filling, and a cream sauce and while I don't think mine looked as pretty as it could have it did taste magnifico. If I made this again I think I'd throw some parsley on top.

On to dessert because that's really why you're still here reading. The creme brulee needs to be made early in the day or better yet a day ahead and then just before serving you fire up the torch and heat the sugar topping. The hard sugar topping is the key to a good creme brulee...gotta hear that tap tap tap when you touch it with your spoon. We pulled them out of the frig about 9 PM and realized we had no butane for the torch. That was disappointing. I was happy to pop them under the broiler but hubs said no way! and off he went to the supermarket. He returned with a can of fuel so I let him play with fire do the honors.

Creme Brulee

(I used a recipe found here)

4 egg yolks

1 tsp. vanilla

dash of salt

4 Tbsp. sugar

1 pt. heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350. Put the egg yolks into a small bowl and set aside. Put the sugar into a mixing bowl and add the cream. Stir gently with a whisk. You're not whipping this, just stirring. Next, put it into the microwave for 2 minutes to dissolve the sugar.

While that's heating whisk the egg yolks to break up. When the sugar mixture is done stir it a bit to be sure it's completely dissolved. Stir in the eggs and whisk thoroughly. Add a dash of salt and the vanilla. Whisk well and pour into ramekins. I think this recipe would have filled 5 but I just made four in our practice run. Put the ramekins into a roasting pan and add enough hot water to the pan to come about halfway up the ramekins.

Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. They will be a little jiggly when you pull them out and will set up more in the frig. Let them cool a bit and then refrigerate overnite or at least several hours.

When ready to serve sprinkle the tops with sugar and then fire up the torch. If you don't have a torch you can set them under the broiler but what fun is that? I used plain sugar last weekend but am making some vanilla sugar this week to use on Saturday. You can also use brown sugar.

Squisito!

I'm definitely going to make these for my guests on Saturday. I think I'll add some berries alongside but it's not necessary. It's a light dessert and one that I can make a day ahead which is my favorite way to cook for a dinner party. Enjoy!

I'm linking up with Tasty Tuesdays today...visit Jen for more great recipes. Edited to link with Kelly's Korner-SUYL Desserts