Black Belt Scrapping

Postcards

Here are some more pics of our week so far.

I don't have much to talk about, because pretty much every day is the same. We get up early, have coffee and read the paper on the patio. I check my email and update here if i'm motivated to do so. Then we go to the beach for the morning and come in for lunch. Then it's back out to the beach or pool. When we can't take the sun anymore, it's back to the condo to clean up, goof off, do the wine and cheese thing, and decide what we're doing for dinner. Last night we went out for seafood at a locals' joint that we love. Then we hang out in the room or walk on the beach at night, and crash, only to wake up and do it again the next day.

There are a few exceptions...the guys play golf a few times. Andy and I went to the sales presentation again yesterday to get some free goodies. Shannon took a hip-hop class on Monday. I'm tempted to spare my sunburned face and go over to Worth Avenue to do some picture taking of the people shopping at places like Gucci and Prada. Tomorrow we'll be out of here early to go deep sea fishing. It's just bloody glorious here!

Well that's it for me....I love the early beach time when it's just us and the seagulls and a few dudes surf fishing from the beach. Time's a wastin'!

Lotsa Reasons

A bunch of people always ask me why we'd go to South Florida in the middle of the summer, when it's in the 90's with 90+ percent humidity at home and just as hot if not more, down here. 

We've been here a little over 24 hours now and I can think of at least 24 really good reasons!

1) You can't look up and see this in Cincinnati:

2) there's no ocean in Ohio
3) this place smells like a combination of sea salt and sunscreen all of the time
4) ocean breezes make the heat tolerable here, unlike the Ohio heat
5) No boogie-boarding in Cincinnati

6) dedicated reading time, I've finished one already.

7) You can't go to the "crab whack shack" in Cincinnati

8) There are more golf courses per capita in Palm Beach County than in any other place in the world (over 300!).
9) We get our own spot on the beach.

10) The phone doesn't ring.
11) You can check your email or update your blog while watching the surf crash on the beach.
12) Four pools.
13) Six jacuzzis.
14) There is no deep sea fishing in Cincinnati.
15) Eating fish that was caught a few hours ago.
16) There are no tasty waves in Cincinnati.

 

17) Reading scrapbook mags on the beach.

18) Interesting people watching.
19) Colorful bathing caps.

20) Colorful cocktails served poolside.
21) Ice cream sundaes every afternoon.
22) Opportunities to embarass yourself singing kareyoke.
23) No news, no radio, no reports of the price of crude oil, no crashing stock market analysis.

But the best part......

24) NO WORK!

Pay Per View

This is a pay per view blog post. I'm charging admission today, because I'm sitting in here Baltimore Maryland at an airport gate, where the BWI airport is charging me $5 to feed my internet addiction for an hour. 

I have to admit, despite the fact that this airport doesn't have free wi-fi, it's a very cool airport. Bright, clean, easy to get around, and great places to eat.  I'm sitting here at my gate in a big leather cushy chair with a table next to me that has an outlet where I can plug in my laptop.  Sa-weet!  It's almost like home.

Over the years I've spent a LOT of time checking out airports.  Most are average.  Some are fantastic, this is one of them!  Some are true Hell Holes.  Some of my least favorite places to fly in and out of include:

• Atlanta
• Chicago O'Hare
• New York Kennedy
• Philadelphia
• Detroit Metro 
• London Heathrow
• St Louis

Ugh.  I could write a book on my bad experiences in these places and how much I hate them, but nobody would buy it, because everybody else who has travelled a lot has been there, done that.

Then there are some cool airports:

Baltimore (not a bad place at all to be spending two hours of my precious vacation time!)

London Gatwick (GREAT shopping and stellar first class lounges!)

Maui (when you get off of the plane, the air smells like jasmine...nice!)

Tahiti (okay, who really cares about the airport, it was just great to be there!)

Auckland New Zealand

Venice (because you take a water taxi into town, not a car!)

Salt Lake City

Las Vegas (the security lines suck, but the shopping is great!)

Pittsburgh (seriously!)

Aspen Colorado (about three gates, lots of celebrities that can't hide!)

I've been in and out of so many airports here and abroad that I've long lost track. I know what I like, however.  I like airports that have bathrooms that are bright and clean and no lines in the ladies room, good food, bars that aren't smoky and with televisions where you can watch sports, no ongoing construction, bright lights and lots of windows, clean spaces, layouts where if you only have an hour to connect, you don't have to be an Olympic sprinter. That's a huge one. The United terminal at O'Hare would make the list for being awesome, if you weren't always worried that you're going to miss your connection. I swear, when you're going through Chicago or Atlanta (and LAX to some degree), you're always at a dead sprint.  

Coming back from New Zealand years ago, I had to connect in LAX.  I had two hours to get through customs and get to my Delta flight going to Dallas and then on to Cincinnati. I didn't make it because I couldn't clear customs in time. The (insert derogatory adjective here) shuttle driver didn't drop me at Delta, so I had to "go round the loop again" and I missed my connection. Unfortunately, they couldn't get me back to Cincinnati until the "red eye flight", meaning I had to hang at the airport for 12 hours with no money and nothing to do. I then got to fly home "overnight" which was even more bizarre given that I was so messed up due to jet lag from flying from down under that it really didn't matter what time it was. I was tired, hungry, and clueless. 

That was back in 1993, and there must not have been widespread cell phone usage back then, because I remember that I had no money and couldn't call home to tell Andy that my flights were all screwed up.  The worst, however, was the fact that I had brought home a bag of great seashells with me on the plane and unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, there must have still been a creature in one of the shells, because at about the 30 hours of travel mark, the bag really started to reek.  BADLY.  I'm sure I reeked pretty badly myself. It ended up taking me nearly 40 hours to get home. I've hated LAX ever since. Thank goodness for cell phones, because that horror could never be repeated these days, now that the cell phone has long replaced the evil pay phone that would not let me reverse the charges to my inlaws house.  Yeah, I'm still bitter.

Hey, look at that...my hour is up, and a plane with SOUTHWEST painted in obnoxious colors is here to fly me to sunny south Florida, where the air is filled with salt and sunscreen, and there is a different kind of comfy chair and a cocktail the color of pool water waiting for me.

Look for installments of "tales from the beach chair" coming to this blog all week.  Ciao!

Get A Piece of the Rock

If you're old like me, you probably remember that old commercial. I can't help but let my mind wander to the old Rock Hudson joke, but we'll skip over that thought! 

Anyhow,I mentioned the other day that my girlfriend is getting a new kitchen.  I helped her pick her cabinetry, her hardwood for the floor, and appliances, but so far the most fun as been picking the granite.

We are fortunate in our area to have Mees Distributors, a regional wholesaler of tile, granite, and marble who has in the last few years started selling retail to the public. Their prices are rock bottom (ar ar ar!), and their selection will just rock your world, especially in the warehouse when they keep the granite and marble slabs.

When I was a kid, I loved pretty rocks.  I still do, but my tastes have refined a bit, morphing from things like fool's gold when I was 11 to real gold, diamonds and semi precious stones, and lovely polished granite in homes. For me, a trip to Mees is like going to the jewelry store, only your kitchen will wear it instead of you.

It's fascinating to me that brave, strong Italian men quarry these beautiful stones out of the mountains in Northern Italy. How do they know what they're going to get? How do they know that it's not just ugly rock? How do they move all that weight? I don't know, but I'm glad. The different pieces range from very subdued, to over the top, including some of their very "high end" finds that include fossils and geodes like these (for some reason, Typepad always washes out the color in my photos and it makes me crazy.I promise you that the color on my photos is really bright and brilliant.Thanks Typepad!):

Mees ought to pay me to advertise for them, seriously! The place just ROCKS! 

 

My girlfriend thought she had the one she wanted all figured out, but it didn't work with her kitchen accents as much as she would have liked, so nothing has been decided yet. I'm glad, because that means that I get to go back. In my head, I've basically replaced all the surfaces in the kitchen and every bathroom in my home. So when that winning lottery ticket drops into my purse, I'm ready to place my order!

That's about it for today. Gotta finish packing and tie up some loose ends for our trip.  And it is Friday after all, so maybe I'll just GET STONED.   

Short but Sweet

CHA is the semi-annual Craft and Hobby Association trade show and for several years I would go to all of them. The summer show is always in Chicago. This summer I had an opportunity to help April in her booth, but vacation kept that from hapenning.  Sorry April!

When I worked for Imagination Project, we'd work our asses off for days and days, doing all the packing, the setup of the booth, working the actual show, and doing all the break down of the booth.  It was truly exhausting work, but it was fun to experience the buzz of the show...these shows were always like the Disneyland of arts and crafts. It was always fun to meet up with so many of my friends from around the country and around the world. I miss seeing those people.

Anyhow, I got an email last night out of the blue, asking me if I'd like to take some digital files of new paper prototypes and do some magic with them, but I have a busy day today and my deadline is tomorrow night, so this is going to be short and sweet today. 

I got a lot done yesterday, we're in good shape for our upcoming trip. I had to pick up a new snorkel mask for Shannon, as well as the book Twilight at Barnes and Noble.  I hadn't heard of this book before recently, but I guess there's quite a buzz about it, and it's being made into a movie to be released in December. I'm not into vampire romance, but I might have to read it when she's done. I'm thrilled to see her so excited about a book.

I'm in big denial that I'll be in a swimsuit on a public beach in a mere 4 days.  I hope there's no "Jaws-like" panic taking place on the beach. 

Remember when I wrote about helping my friend with her kitchen cabinets?  Well some good fortune has come her way and she's now getting a new kitchen remodel. We're going to pick out granite today. I'm thrilled for her, and it's fun helping spend her money.

And speaking of remodeling, here's a sneak peek at my Extreme Bathroom Makeover. I'm not ready to totally unveil it yet, because I still have some pictures to go on the walls.

Now I'm off to look at granite, pack, and get my CHA assignments done!

Hey look, this wasn't so short after all.

 

Recipe Tuesday ~ Sausage and Pepper Pasta

Late last week we grilled up a bunch of chicken sausages with asiago cheese and spinach that I had picked up at Sam's Club from one of the "food ladies" that were giving out samples.  They were very economical, and delicious.  So we grilled a bunch and figured we'd use the leftovers for other things.

As we were sitting down to eat, I turned on Rachael Ray and lo and behold (what exactly does that mean?) she was making meals with chicken sausages, including this awesome easy pasta.  It was the perfect 'what to do' with my leftover chicken sausages. I changed her recipe up a bit, and we had it on Sunday night.  It was so delicious!  It's not a healthy recipe, but it's not that bad. You could make it better by using whole wheat pasta, low fat or fat free ricotta cheese, and you're already saving a lot of saturated fat grams by using chicken sausages. You can also use pepperocini peppers if you want to spice it up a bit.

Sausage and Pepper Pasta (adapted from a Rachel Ray recipe)

1 box rigatoni or penne pasta
8oz spaghetti/pasta sauce (I use a kind that has no corn syrup in it)
1 can diced tomatoes, drained (or use diced fresh if you have them!)
Six chicken sausages, cooked (grilled, sauteed, or broiled) and cut into pieces
1 red pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 C jarred mild yellow peppers, drained (or chopped banana or pepperocini peppers)
1 med onion, chopped
olive oil
garlic
kosher salt
black pepper
1 16oz carton ricotta cheese
Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a non-stick skillet and saute onions, peppers, and garlic until soft. Add chopped sausage and cook five minutes more.  Set aside. 

While cooking vegetables, boil the pasta until al dente and drain.  Add back to the pot.  Add pasta sauce, tomatoes, and ricotta cheese and gently stir until the cheese has combined well with the sauce. 

Spread veggies and sausage mixture in the bottom of a baking dish.  Pour pasta and sauce over the top of the sausage and peppers.  Top with parmesan cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

This was very easy to make, it used staples that were in my pantry and fridge, and the family loved it! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

And speaking of letting me know what you think, I need a few good books for vacation and nothing is exciting me.  Tell me what your favorite vacation read is and I might pick it up today at the library or bookstore.  Thanks!  I've got some scrapbook freebies to give away and I'll pick winners randomly from my comments today.

No recipe next week......I'll be on vacation and making reservations instead.  I suggest you do the same!