Road Trip - Washington, D.C. Part III

With kiddos at home with their dad, Char tooled Lovey and I around the city to see the monuments at night.  I had never seen them lit up.  What a lovely perspective to see them in!

 Jefferson Memorial

 One memorial that I have never been to is the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial.  I would love to see this sometime during the day.  Instead of a building it was an outdoor nature walkway with waterfalls and vignettes that reflected different times and philosphies during his presidency.

I had Lovey stand here so you could get a perspective of the size of the bronzes

The Soup Line.  This was very humbling to see.  Lovey and I realize that it is only by the grace of God that we are not in that situation.  So many still are today.

Father and daughter

Washington Monument from the Tidal Basin

A jaunt across the bridge to get a photo of the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier sitting at the top of the hill.

 The United States Botanic Gardens all decked out for the Holiday

As was Union Station.  Gorgeous wreaths.  Next trip out I want to see the inside of this train station.

 Our nation's capitol is beautiful at night!

Road Trip - Washington, D.C. Part II

Char took us to the Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the National Air and Space Museum.

Aaaahmazing place.  Even if you are not into planes you can't help but be in awe over everything inside.

 The Space Shuttle Discovery

The Enola Gay.  The plane was named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot.  I strive to keep this an educational page.

An Air France Concorde.  Flying on Concorde was on my bucket list until the fleet was retired.  The closest I got was watching Concorde take off and land several times.  Lovey was fortunate to have flown on it twice. 

The Clipper Flying Cloud - the world's first pressurized commercial airliner.  This was one shiny plane.

The Spirit of Texas - the first helicopter to complete a round-the-world flight

The Airphibian - part plane / part car.  This is how you avoid those lines at the rental car desk.

A Boeing Stearman - the type of plane my father-in-law soloed in prior to his B-24 training during WWII

Lockheed Blackbird. A side note...during one of Lovey's flights on the Concorde, the pilot notified the passengers that there was no worry about traffic, at their cruising altitude of 60,000 feet, because the only other craft that was up where they were was this impressive reconnaissance aircraft.

This is the Rheintochter RI, an experimental antiaircraft missile built for the Luftwaffe in the last years of WWII.  What fascinated me was that the "wings" or whatever they are called are made of the most beautiful wood.

The Restoration Hangar

Planes, planes, and more planes!

Starting to get a little worn out.

A little refreshment and a rest.  This momma loves her babies!

We had a wonderfully good time!!!

Road Trip - Washington, D.C. Part I

Some of my friends looked at me funny when I mentioned that Lovey and I drove to the D.C. area the week after Christmas. Drive???  Why not fly??  Well, there are several answers to that question.

If we have the time, we enjoy driving; to see and enjoy this beautiful country of ours.  We can stop at different places; discovering new ones and re-visiting familiar ones.  We can try new eating establishments that we read about or learn of from the Food Network and Travel channels.

When we head to the Carolina and Virginia area we prefer to go "the northern route" which is Dallas picking up I-40 in Little Rock all the way through Tennessee and either up to Virginia or over to NC from their.

This year our route was altered to "the southern route" due to Winter Storm Euclid running along our northern route.  The southern route is through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia then we turn north in Atlanta.  By the way, can anyone tell me when they started referring to winter storms by name? 

We had enough snow in the DFW area to give us a white Christmas.  This is what it looked like until we reached Shreveport.

This is just north of Richmond, VA on I-95 our second day on the road.  Wasn't that a quick trip?

Several hours later we reached our destination and got to see these sweet things.

What a blessing it is to be a Mimi and GranDad to these cutie-patooties.

A Spicey Story

One of the delectations in my life is designing cooking and cabinet spaces in a kitchen.  I could literally spend all day looking at kitchen plans.  I've been fortunate to have been able to design three kitchens for Lovey and myself.  This last one I worked on four to five years.

See this rectangular panel to the left of the drawers?  I've often seen these as fabulous pull-out cabinets holding herbs and spices.  I love the idea of utilizing every bit of space, but I didn't particularly want my spices so close to the heat the range-top was going to emit.  I decided to house my spices in a drawer that is in the island, directly behind me when I'm standing at the stove.  I can simply turn around, open the drawer and grab what I need.



 
When we moved in I dumped my existing spice containers in the drawer and it worked fine except it was always messy, the round containers took up lots of space and I never really knew what I had in the drawer. Now that herbs and spices are available in bulk at several markets I frequent I only need to buy small amounts each time.  I can keep my spices fresh by buying smaller quantities. 

I needed to start by finding containers that were consistent, small and space saving.  I selected these tins I found at Specialty Bottle.  They are 2.5" high and about 1.8" across.  Resolving to keep the tiniest amounts possible of each herb and spice, these small containers would be perfect.

I made my labels, transferred everything to their new little homes and officially declared this project done.




I am still toying around with what to do with these spaces on both sides of the range-top.  The empty space back in there is just waiting to be used for something specific  One day an idea will pop into my mind.  I'll grab my graph paper, draw it up and visit the same cabinet man who built all the cabinets in this kitchen.  We'll go through our song and dance of "that won't work", and "you can't do that", but he'll figure it out because he knows what he's doing, we've been through this before with my drawings for this kitchen, and because of that, he gets me.  But there's no rush.  The space isn't going anywhere.  Any ideas?

One Year and Growing!!

This happy baby is my great nephew.  He's also known as my niece's baby and my brother's first grandchild.  He has his momma's blue eyes.

 

He just celebrated his first birthday .

 "Okay, it's sweet...oh yeah, sugar....Mmmmm".

The birthday outfit comes off for the smash cake.  Modern day mothers are so very practical.  Happy Birthday Luke!

A Halloween Treat Bag

These witch's broom treat bags have been on my 'oh-how-cute-I-want-to-make-these' list ever since I saw them in the October 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living (page 76).  For those of you who do not keep every issue of MSL, you can find them on her web site. 

On Tuesday of this week I arrived at work and found this little bucket filled with candy on my chair.

It was accompanied by this note letting me know that I had been 'BOO-ed'.

Those of you who work in an office environment are probably very familiar with this little game.  It appears around Halloween or Christmas (when it might be called 'Secret Santa').  Someone in the holiday spirit starts it.

The way it works is that once someone has 'BOO-ed' you by leaving you a Halloween treat and a copy of the note, you do the same to 2 others on your floor, department, or whatever.  You do this secretly and within one day.  You also display the picture of the ghost somewhere in your cubicle or office to let others know you've already participated, or have been BOO-ed.


Required to leave treats for only two people was not a gigantic task.  This would be a good opportunity to try out the witch's brooms since I didn't have to make a large number of them.

Here's what you will need.....

scissors, small branches around 7" long (1 for each broom), black twine or ribbon, lunch-size paper bags (2 for each broom) and whatever candy / goodies you want to fill your bags with

You'll be using 2 lunch bags for each broom.  Unfold one bag and push out its base while folding in the left and right sides.  Using the scissors, cut the bag into thin strips, stopping just short of the base.

 

 Cut thin strips into the top inch of the second bag.

Lay out the first bag

Open up the second bag and set inside the shredded one; fill with candy and/or other treats.

Gather up the shredded bag around the inside bag and cinch the tops of both bags.  Insert a small branch and secure with the black twine or ribbon.

My Thoughts
These are really big and they hold a lot of candy.  Each one of these held a whole bag of candy corn!  You can let your imagination run wild and put other fun, non-edible goodies in them too.
You can also use the smaller, miniature brown paper bags to make these if you prefer a smaller version (which I think is what I would do).