Sunday, April 22, 2012

Wandering

The fun didn't stop after the wedding!  I got home that night, went straight to bed, got up at normal girl waking time on Saturday and immediately started preparing to host 28 people for lunch!  Mom wanted to feed all our visiting relatives but she lives half an hour away from Frederick.  I live about half a mile from the hotels where all of our out of town family was staying so it made sense for me to have them over vs. making them all drive out to my parents' house.  So technically she was the host and I just provided the location.

Anyway.

We made a quick Saturday morning breakfast.


 Then I spent the morning trying to address the issues in my house that I have ceased to see but that other people might notice, like dirty hand prints on the powder room door and boxes of picture frames sitting in corners.  I had Charlotte's leftover breakfast as a snack.


Then everyone started arriving while I was in the shower.  I thought people were coming at noon but Mom had told them 11:30.  Oops.


We ordered pizza from Papa Johns because the last time I looked into ordering pizza they had a whole wheat crust option.  When I called and asked for whole wheat crust though I was met with incredulity, because apparently they haven't offered whole wheat crusts for 3 years now.  EXCUSE ME for not ordering pizza all that often!


Yes, that is the Happy Birthday banner from  Charlotte's birthday 3 months ago in the background.  I guess I was not very successful at addressing the house issues I have ceased to notice.

I made my lunch on wedding leftovers.


Then these puppies rolled out.  My parents have an OBSCENE amount of cake leftover from the wedding.  Like 12 huge cakes obscene.


Most of these are STILL sitting on my counter or in my fridge, along with 2 whole pizzas.  Giant chocolate cake.  Chocolate mousse.  Tiramisu.  Red velvet cake.  Carrot cake.  Giant cookie platter.  And no, I haven't had one single bite of any of these desserts the entire weekend.  I think the sheer volume of dessert in my house is the key...I know that if I take even one bite my resolve will be gone and I can do SO MUCH damage with this much junk just sitting around waiting to be eaten, so I'm not starting.  Will is going to take them into work tomorrow where I'm sure they'll disappear quickly and finally be out of my life.  

Also my official Saturday morning weigh in revealed that I am a comfortable 3.4 pounds into my new decade!  That makes 16.7 pounds lost since I started this whole blogging my food thing in January, and it means I'm 3.6 pounds above the lowest weight I've ever achieved since having Emily.  

I had some of the rum punch I made though.  Mmmmmm.

Rum punch is nothing without nutmeg
I also had a chai tea latte.


 This guy would be happy to help me with my excess dessert problem.


We hung out for the rest of the afternoon.


Emily did a little paintball smashing while Will was trying out his newly fixed paintball gun.


Mommy did a little painting of her own.


Then I snacked a bit...




...and turned the girls over to Nancy while we headed downtown!

First stop was Voila tea shop.  It's one of those little shops right on Market St. that I've walked by a million times but never really noticed.  It's awesome inside though!

Lots of samples
Walls of tea
 I liked this place even better than Teavana, because they actually have samples of every tea in neat little magnetic tins so you can physically open them, see them and sniff them vs. standing there while a Teavana employee wafts you in the face with the lid of the tea tin.  They have SO MANY teas, plus it's a cute little local place, which is always better :-)

Speaking of cute little local places, our next stop was L.O.V.E (Lebherz Olive Oil & Vinegar Emporium).


 I can always use some more yummy vinegar.  And it turned out I needed more olive oil too but I didn't realize that until I got home so I only left with vinegar.  I got oregano, lavender and fig.

Yum.  My salads will be super-tasty.

After that, I took my parents and sister + brother-in-law next door to VOLT for some drinks before dinner.



My drink was delicious as usual, but kind of horrifying-looking.


It was a "Swizzle", which had tequilla, bitters, and falernum.  I still can't figure out what the blood-like stuff on top was.

I hope the bartender still has all his fingers

 Once we had our drinks we headed to Quynn's Attic, where we took over the top floor (the attic of the attic?) and had a yummy dinner.



I had a spiced sangria.


Will and I split the harissa-marinated shrimp appetizer,


and the bean soup.


The shrimp was delicious, but the soup was really disappointing!  Extremely vinegar-y.  We've had it there before and enjoyed it, so I don't know why it was so off tonight.

The sangria was good though, so I had another one.


My dinner (split in half with Will) was rockfish topped with crab and underneath was veggies instead of rice pilaf.


Will's dinner (split in half with me) was salmon salad.  


After dinner I had a
nerdy
tawny port.


It was so nice to not only get a chance to go out to dinner but also time to wander downtown a bit.  Will and I had been going in opposite directions for a couple days in a row, so it was felt like a date even though there were lots of other people around.

Once we got home Will had a cookie, so I followed suit.


Then it was sleepy time.  One of these days I'll feel caught up on sleep again!

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