Happy Birthday John!

Today is John's birthday. He's only 29 years old, which is pretty crazy.  I sometimes find it hard to believe he hasn't hit his thirties yet. But NEXT YEAR.

We're not really doing anything special, but I did tell him he could have whatever he wanted for dinner, and he chose Long John Silvers. *sigh*. Only John.

We spent last weekend in CT with my parents and got to spend some time in the pool, some time riding bikes, some time eating, and some time playing games. It was a GREAT long weekend.

Back in April, YPA (Young Professionals of Akron) went to a fencing academy for a demonstration, which was really interesting. The grounds were nice to look at, too:

And some random asparagus, why not?

Happy 4th!

It's 11:30, and John is still in bed on this holiday day off.  Since the mail doesn't come on holidays and Sundays, they are the only days he gets to sleep in.  Since I typically wake up around 8:30, it's nice to have a few quiet hours to myself where I can sit around and do nothing and not feel too guilty about it, since I wouldn't want to wake him up anyway, right? So I'm being nice,  not lazy.

So far today I have finished reading one book, started reading another, played iAssociate on my phone, and watched an episode of Dawson's Creek on netflix. It's a tough life.  The rest of my holiday plans include doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and cooking up some stuff to fill the freezer for those mealtimes that I don't feel like cooking.

And, of course, posting some photos.  I take so many photos of my flowering tree every spring, that I played around more with the editing on these ones so I didn't have the Same. Thing. Every. Year.

The new floor that John and Friends put into our family room. Looking great!

A different angle

I was buying some clothes online, so I had to double-check my measurements

Even Yoshi likes the new floor!

If I remember correctly, the asparagus had a lemon-miso dressing on it.  It was really good!

It's Getting Hot In Here

I was just telling John the other day that it seemed like a lot of my coworkers were having issues with the AC dying this summer, and that I hoped it didn't happen to us. Well. Guess what died early Saturday morning?  Yup.  It's getting hot.

Luckily, our house is pretty shaded from all our trees and it hasn't gotten unbearable yet.  The worst part is that I was planning on having the AC inspected and likely replaced at the end the summer since I knew it was old, but I wanted to wait for the off season for cheaper prices. Oh well.  We'll see what happens when I call them on Monday.

In the mean time, let's get caught up on some more photos. Well. I'll probably never get caught up, really, but here are some more!

My first attempt at Whoopie Pies. They were... ok. I'm not much of a baker.

Now, cooking on the other hand, I love. This is mushrooms and tofu with some sauce and spices wrapped in parchment paper and thrown in the oven.  Very yummy!

Ok, the one thing I do bake a lot of is bread. We haven't bought store-bought bread in years (other than hot dog buns, which I always have good intentions of making by hand, and then we do some last-minute grilling and run out and buy them), but this here is some mashed up banana for the Best Banana Bread Ever.

Let's take a break from all the food to look at my pretty tree. Ooooh.

Back to the food!  These are containers of Corn Chowder waiting to be closed up and put in the fridge for my weekday lunches!

And here's that loaf of banana bread (wide and "flat" because I made it in the bread machine instead of the oven.  Mostly because that's less dishes to clean because the bread machine does all the mixing for me.

More pretty tree!

I really though I already posted the following photos, but I couldn't find them in a search of the blog, so I guess not?  As you know, we replaced our front door earlier this year. You can find all the before and after photos here, but here are some side-by-side comparisons:

The new door "stain" doesn't exactly match the woodwork stain, but it's pretty darn close.  Also notice how the new door is shorter, and they added a new piece of molding - matches perfectly and looks like it was always intended to be here!

Close up of that new piece of moulding.

We decided since we spent so much money on a new door that we didn't want to cover it up with a storm door.  It's weird going from directly inside to directly outside but I LOVE the way it looks.

Not only do I love the new design of the door (it really fits with the 1920s house), but I also love that you can'ts ee into the house from the street anymore. John likes that it's "zombie-proof"