Happy Easter!

For the first time in my life...

I bought asparagus! You may not think this is a very big deal, but if you tell my parents they'll exclaim, "she did what?!" Let me explain. When we were young my parents made us eat our vegetables like any good parents should do. Usually if my mom made something out of the ordinary like brussel sprouts or asparagus she would often heat up a second vegetable so we'd only have to try the "nasty stuff." Well, one night she made asparagus as the only vegetable option. I REFUSED to touch the asparagus. I was therefore punished with the option of either eating my asparagus or sitting at the dining room table for the rest of the night until 9:30pm. As the stubborn person I am, I sat there until bed time.

So mark today in history! I actually bought asparagus. And at the moment, I am testing out a cream of asparagus soup. If the soup doesn't turn out (or if it isn't tasty), it may also be the last day I buy asparagus!

Bright & Cheery

Last Sunday I was at the quilt shop to do some long arm quilting for customers but got side-tracked by some new fabric arrivals. I love how bright and cheery all the colors and prints are! The owner wanted a sample and kits made of a quilt from a new pattern book called "Fat Quarter Fonts" by Terry Atkinson. I quickly volunteered, forgot about the quilting I was going to do, and put together fabric for this quilt. A majority of the fabrics are from a line called "Bubblegum Basics" for Henry Glass & Co. fabrics. The pattern was so simple I got it put together in just a few hours. The name is machine appliqued onto the blocks. I machine quilted it last night with a rose pantogram pattern that you can see a little better in the small picture at the top of this post.
If you haven't guessed yet, this quilt is for Ella. :)

We're Moving!

Josh and I found a cute two bedroom bungalow house to rent! We're SO ready to move. It's hard to believe we've lived in our apartment for over 2.5 years. That's just about as long or longer than most of the places I've lived in life! What makes us really anxious to move is the ever increasing cigarette smoke smell in our apartment from our neighbors. We don't even have a connecting hallway and the smell is strongly disgusting.

More about our new home! It has a four seasons porch on the front, a living room and dining room with just an archway in between, two modest sized bedrooms, linen closet, small bathroom, very nice kitchen (see picture), backdoor with closest by doorway, unfinished but clean basement with our own laundry!, landscaped and fenced-in backyard with patio, garden & compost, 1.5 car garage... Plus, the landlords seem REALLY great. They even invited us to borrow their kayaks! I was very excited that they let us pick our own paint colors and are going to paint everything before we move in except for the porch, although they did say we could paint it if we eventually want to (it was recently redone).

Since it is a small house we didn't want a different color for every room. We chose (from Behr paints) Mother Nature for the kitchen/2nd bedroom (both have lots of white trim, cupboards, wainscoting,etc) and Baked Scone for the living room/dining room. The small hallway is currently red and the bathroom is neutral. We like those areas the way they are. It'll take a while to get everything put together, so I'll just include a couple of "before" pictures until later this summer after we have moved in and have things settled.
These two rooms (dining and living rooms) and the larger of the two bedrooms are going to be a more neutral color. Not quite so yellow!This was taken from the 2nd bedroom looking into the hallway. This room will be painted a shade of green above the wainscoting.
This is the wonderful kitchen...with TWO windows! I'm so excited about having tons more daylight. This room will be the same green as the 2nd bedroom (right now the color reminds me of mint ice cream).

Oh! I forgot to tell you where it's located! It's just North of Lake Nokomis in South Minneapolis. Far enough North to be out of range of the loud airplane noise yet close enough to the lake to enjoy frequent walks and rollerblading!

Catching Up

I've been reminded that I haven't posted in quite a while, so here are a few things we've been up to to get you up to speed:

1. The Friday before Valentine's day Josh took me out to dinner at the Dakota downtown Minneapolis. We had a delicious gourmet dinner paired with wine and delectable desserts, not forgetting to mention the live jazz group featuring Connie Evingston!

2. Saturday, Josh and I babysat the cutest little boy for some friends who were going out for Valentine's Day and spending the night at a hotel. I was surprised with how well the little boy did without his parents there in the morning for the first time (he's 20 mos.). After he went to bed, Josh and I made a delicious steak dinner (generously prepared by the family) and watched Mama Mia! I didn't sleep very well that night as it was my first time babysitting a little one overnight. I kept waking up to check on him. Thankfully the parents had a camera monitor so I didn't have to get out of bed each time!

3. My best friend from college Shaghayegh invited me and some of her other friends and family over this last Friday night for a Persian dinner. It was the best home cooking I've had in a long time. Dinner was followed by tea and cheesecake with homemade whipped cream! I of course stayed pretty late, and by the time I left there were 5 inches of new snow on the ground! I drove Josh's car that day to work (the tires are completely bald), so I had a rough time getting home. I was so relieved to make it home in one piece without spending any time in a ditch.

4. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at Kari's baby shower. We played all the typical games...guess the melted candy bar in a diaper, guess the baby food flavor, etc. I won (tied) the baby food game. All that time being a teacher in an infant room paid off! Kari was given a lot of nice things, and I think she really liked the booties I made for her baby (sorry I forgot to take a picture). We're all excited to find out if it's going to be a baby boy or girl! Kari's due towards the beginning of April.

5. Today I'm going to go work at the quilt shop and do some long-arming. It has been awhile, so I hope everything runs smoothly!

Ciao!