weekend recap, july 22 edition

1. Museli bar from my favorite bread lady | 2. Post sleepover snuggle | 3. Birthday cake | 4. Found treasure | 5. Treasured time | 6. Local wildlife at low tide | 7. Unexpected delight | 8. Cheater pasta salad (recipe this week) | 9. Treasure from dear friends | 10. The cocktail (still) to be named later | 11. Cooking for the week | 12. Little Violet | 13. Busy day | 14. Refreshing water | 15. Sunday dinner

Poor Neel worked all weekend. How sad is that? Picture his saddest face. He's in the middle of reviewing grants for the NIH and has a Tuesday deadline, so Saturday and Sunday felt like normal weekdays around here. 

Un-fun. 

Cal and I managed to rally.  

Cake and pool and homemade lemonade and salads and doggie walks and birds' nests and steamed clams. We managed well enough without Neel, I suppose.

I spent good part of Saturday sitting around the pool talking about blogging. Why I do it. What it means to me. What I think is important about it (I should have all my blogging classes around the pool!). It's a subject that's dear to my heart, and I never tire of chatting with people about it. If you were sitting around the pool talking about blogging, what would you say?

After that, I spent most of Sunday watching a creativeLIVE Food Photography Workshop taught by Andrew Scrivani who is a food photographer for the New York Times. Have you ever done anything with creativeLive? Their workshops are amazing. You can stream them for free when they are live (which is what I did) or you can purchase them after the fact. I've seen a few (all photography related, but they do other stuff too) and they're phenomenal. It was a three day workshop and I only caught the third day, and I was inspired. Read: I need to get my butt in gear. (Seriously there was so much information in that third day alone, I think if I'd done all three I'd be on total sensory overload. Instead of writing this blog post, you'd find me in a puddle of mush.)

All the while, in the background was the final stage of Le Tour de France, coming into Paris at twilight for the first time ever (to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the tour). Such stunning images of that pretty city. You know, those guys started biking in that race the day we got to Paris. Good Lord. No wonder they dope. And then, this morning as I type this,  all eyes on London! It's great fun to see the two cities we were just in and the places we so recently walked so much in the news.

It's time for a new week. Still hot. Still some work, still class. Still some fun. And I finish this post thinking about blogging and photography and wondering, what's next? 

weekend recap, july 15 edition

1. Best Bread Ever | 2. Urgent Care (again) | 3. Medicinal | 4. Start of Simple Syrup | 5. Bath | 6. Simple Syrup | 7. Coffee Table Hunt | 8. Party House | 9. Evening Boat | 10. Grocery Cart | 11. Diptyque | 12. New Cocktail | 13. Sunday Dinner | 14.  Pimms | 15. Simple Dessert

Victory! I made it through Sunday night with just one coughing fit! And that at 4:30AM. Are we perhaps on the mend? All of us? What a miserable week. Cal felt a bit tender skinned on Wednesday night (the first sign of a fever in our house), and then while I was teaching on Thursday he texted to tell me that his fever was 103. Un-fun. By Friday his fever was down, but his throat was so miserable that he couldn't eat anything.

Picture that. A thirteen year old boy, not eating anything for 24 hours? Dang. I called our doc, but all their offices were booked for the whole day so our choices were waiting for their Saturday hours (walk in) or Urgent Care on a Friday night. Neither were good options, but when Neel got home and could actually see lesions on Cal's throat with his naked eye, we opted for Urgent Care. 

You know what? We were in and out in half an hour. So fast I didn't even get to see which flat the gal picked in the Paris House Hunters International.  

We've been taking it easy all weekend. And not finding coffee tables.

Saturday night saw Neel and me at a going-away party for some long-time friends. Those things are always fun and hard aren't they? I really felt for my friend Shelly who had so many people to speak with (she was losing her voice before the party was half an hour old!) and was having trouble saying goodbye. Neel and I were lucky to see some friends we hadn't seen in ages, so we had a blast catching up at this gorgeous house as the sun set along the river.

On Sunday, when I started thinking about making cocktails, I knew I was starting to feel better. We've been toying with making some new cocktails (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) this summer, and an inspiring sip of a drink Saturday night had us experimenting on Sunday. I'll have a recipe on Wednesday for you. Tomorrow is back to our trip for a bit. Neel got some exciting news this weekend that had us all doing a happy dance so a celebratory cocktail and dinner seemed much in order. (I don't mean to vagueblog, but let's just say that our travel plans for next year are already set. More to come...)

So we're hoping that everyone is finally on the mend this week (no.more.coughing) and that in between work we can finally start having some summer fun again. I know I have some fun scheduled for this week. What about you guys? Good weekend? Good week?