Weekending

 Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Friday was a great start to the long weekend. I drove close to an hour north to meet my brother in the town of Piqua for lunch. He had to drive longer than an hour to get there (there are no towns exactly to half way between us) but he didn't mind doing that. We had a really good lunch at Red Lobster. It's not a place I eat at often- we have one fairly near us at home and I don't think we've ever eaten at it. The last time I had it was with my sister in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago.

With a full belly how nice would a drive straight home have been and then once home just chilling out with a good book and perhaps a little shut eye if/when reading combined with the still full belly resulted in that "I think it's a nice time to shut my eyes" feeling? That wasn't in this particular afternoon's future but that's all right :). I had told Donnie I'd pick up some items for his office at Sam's Club so I did that. From there, I went to a large garden center called Grandma's Garden.

Grandma's Garden is a large, locally owned family garden center. It comprises fourteen acres and has a gift shop, pond, goat area, and sells a huge variety of anything plant related from flowers to trees. It gets really crowded on the weekends- Friday mid afternoon was not bad. The staff there is so attentive, friendly and helpful. I loved everything that I got there.

I looked at the fountains for sale (was not in the market for one- I was just curious what theirs looked like. This bad boy cost close to $3000 installed- several thousand more than what we paid for our pretty lil' fountain :))

Plants and pop- a couple of my favorite things :)

I arrived home and Donnie was home 😃 He'd been able to leave work a little early. He wanted a burger for dinner and didn't want to grill so I drove into town and got him a Whopper. I wasn't really hungry from my big lunch so I just got mozzarella fries. We ate on the patio as the weather was perfect and then walked into town to get ice cream. Just the best weather for a walk and cool sweet treat. We planned to watch a movie outside but ended up watching good US Open tennis matches instead.

Saturday, I woke up super early and decided to run outside. I have been running on the treadmill lately; I listen to my political/news podcasts when I'm on the tready so it feels like I'm accomplishing two things when I run on the tready. However, it's nice to run outside as well (I don't listen to music or podcasts when I'm outside as I want to hear what's going on around me).

This here is nose drippin' weather... had to take a tissue with me for this run

By the time I arrived home, the temp had fallen to the high forties. 

Once inside and showered it was time to get to work... We had friends coming over later and I had a bit of prep to do and lots of clean up. I had made this guitar shaped cookie cake earlier in the week and froze it. I got it out and made frosting to ice it. Then I made a Rice Krispie treats using the same guitar shaped cake pan. Everything turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself... 

One of my friends who was coming over later loved the hot pepper jelly that I'd made last year so I decided to make some for our get together. It's such a good use of peppers and it has a unique, good flavor. Per the ol' blog, I found the recipe that I used last year so I got right on to making it. 

Getting ready to chop some perfectly imperfect garden veggies for the jelly

UGH! Something went sideways in the process of making it. A confluence of events occurred which resulted in a spill on the stove that resulted in lots of smoke, smoke detectors going off and the biggest mess I've ever had to deal with on the stove:

The best news possible from this mess is that the jelly was salvageable and tasted great once it had set. The recipe calls for specific timed events to occur and when the spill happened, all timing ceased. So I was pleasantly surprised that the jelly turned out. It was a bit more gelatinous than it should have been but the taste was good and that's all that counts.

We picked up pizzas from Jett's for dinner with our friends.

Look at my new friend! Our friends had just picked up their puppy the day before and didn't want to leave him so they brought him over. He was so good and sweet.

We had a nice time with our friends and puppy!

Sunday morning, I woke up with not much time to spare before church. I had time to make a dessert, a chocolate eclair cake, for later that day and then it was time for church. Once home from church, I heated up leftover pizza for lunch and ate it somewhat hurriedly on the patio... 

I drove to Columbus to pick up Alyssa! She wanted to come home for one night- to get some things for her room and for storage. She had gone to the OSU- Texas game on Saturday so she did not want to be picked on Saturday 😆

For dinner, we met a group of Donnie's family members at Marion's in Mason to celebrate Donnie and his sister's birthdays. Had a nice time and pizza again!!

Once we arrived home, Alyssa had some homework to do but she did play a couple of games with me which was nice and reminded me of summer :(.

Monday morning, Alyssa, Donnie and I headed out to get some items she needs for school and shortly after that it was time to bring her back to Columbus, It was a short and sweet visit but living as close as we do, it's not a big deal to get her for a day or so. 

We brought this with us from home for her bed....

When we moved her in, we knew her bed would be against walls but we didn't realize that this vent sticks out such that one side of her bed isn't flush against the wall. So we added the wood...

  ...filled in the space and now she can lean against the wall. That's the plan anyway.

We also ate at a Chicken Salad Chick restaurant near campus. So good!

Everything was so sweet and feminine. HOW do they get guys to eat in here???

I came home and relaxed. We watched (well, I listened. My back was to the TV so I could see the fountain!) tennis and football on TV. I love how the flowers that I planted look near the garden.