Weekend Recovery...

My houseguests have left and I have finally recovered from the weekend and have time to update. I got up early on Friday morning and headed for some pampering and a pedicure. It was absolutely wonderful. I have extremely ticklish feet and some parts of a pedicure are torture for me, but the scrubber that the girl I go to uses is really gentle and doesn't tickle at all. So, it was an hour of pure relaxation and a great way to start my day. Then I headed to HyVee, grabbed a decaf, non-fat iced caramel macchiato, and picked up all the items I needed for my salad and dessert for Friday night. Well - everything except for a yellow pepper, which looked horrible at HyVee so I had Matt pick one up for me at Target.

I spent all of last week craving chocolate pecan pie (which is strange considering that I had never had chocolate pecan pie before) so I decided to give it a try for dessert of Friday. The recipe for the pie was fairly easy, but I wanted to try making homemade pie crust for the first time. I checked several different recipes before finding one I felt comfortable with and gave it a try. I found it to be easier than I expected and will likely never buy pie crust again. The crust turned out flaky, buttery, and really good - and the filling wasn't bad either. I also made lemon bars and Matt made homemade vanilla ice cream. I was really excited about trying a salad recipe I found with lettuce, red pepper, yellow pepper, onions, artichokes, blue cheese, and a really good viniagrette dressing. It turned out really well and I'll definitely keep it on my list to make again. The artichokes and blue cheese made a really interesting flavor combination.

My mom's birthday party was a big success. It was a fairly small party, just my family, the Hoodys and the Witters. Matt's parents decided to not attend so Matt and his brother came over for a little while, but left before we ate. Brenda got her new fridge delivered about 2.5 hours before everyone was scheduled to arrive. Her old one had slowly been losing the ability to keep cold. Brenda felt that the situation was likely aggravated by the fact that they lost power in the storm in June and the fact that their fridge was over 20 years old. I headed over early to help her set up as her afternoon was a little topsy-turvy. We enjoyed great food (including fabulous bruchetta from a local Italian take-out place that I will be visiting soon!), with great friends. I didn't arrive home until almost midnight!

We got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Farmer's Market with Matt's folks. I don't know what they really thought of it, but I enjoyed it as always. I picked up some fresh sweet basil, fantastic tomatoes, green beans, and we picked up some of the pre-made enchiladas that we love to keep on hand because they are easy to warm up when we don't feel like cooking. We grabbed some breakfast at the Parthenon. I had an elephant ear that was perfect - flaky, sweet, wonderful. I also enjoyed a fantastic cup of homemade root beer.

The farmer's market was really our only excitement during the rest of Matt's parents visit. We cooked them dinner on Saturday night and my parents joined us for dessert. Then we took them to Summer Kitchen Cafe for a great Sunday morning breakfast. They left soon after breakfast and then my mom, Sarah, and I took my grandma to see Momma Mia! It was a cute movie and I think Grandma enjoyed it.

Work has been crazy the past two days. I've received more emails than I can keep up with and I am trying to get everything set for travel this fall. There are just not enough hours in the day. I'm hoping to get completely caught up tomorrow, but I will likely have to shut myself in my office to make that happen.