There's Nothing To Do In Pensacola

Yep, nothing to do here at all. I sit and watch my plants grow. Look. The jasmine bush is growing new buds!



And I cut a branch off to transplant and start a new bush. It's growing new buds too.



But in all honesty, Richard and I heard that out of someone's mouth on Sunday night when we took the girls out for dinner. And we've heard it multiple times from other random people. Really? There is a ton to do here. There is more to do than we have time for the most part. Our next door neighbor, who is retired Army, also happens to be part of the Jazz Society here. He was telling us about the Jazzfest that they put on, and Richard offered to throw some soldiers his way for volunteer work. Richard headed down there early Saturday morning to make sure everyone was doing their job, and the girls and I headed down that afternoon after a certain stinkpot's morning nap. We got there just in time to eat some lunch (gyro nom nom) and for the children's jam. The big girls grabbed a seat and patiently waited for a few minutes.



Then they started handing out kazoos.



And then they were given some really nice harmonicas.



As you can probably imagine the amount of noise all those kids were creating, the girls couldn't hear the direction the group leader was giving. They finally asked if they could be done after sitting there for about half an hour. We walked over a few hundred feet and made a bracelet.




After they were pleased with what they had made, we decided to take a walk around and look at the arts & crafts tents. We found one artist in particular that we were absolutely in love with his work. We took his card in hopes to purchase something in the future. His name is Sidney Carter. You can take a look yourself at his work athttp://www.sidneycarter.net/home. In the meantime, the girls posed by a fountain so you can see that Addy was there with us. She just had to be strapped down.



We did a once over on all the tents and then decided to take a walk around the Seville area.



A few pictures from the historic village.







And this is Seville Quarter. We were supposed to have date night there that very evening to watch Senses Fail play. The Reggaefest would've just been an added bonus. No babysitter equals no fun for mom and dad.



Oh and Daddy! Looky what we found :)



Richard stopped in and grabbed a glass of IPA that he was pleased with. The tour is on during your next visit!

We then came home to relax after a long day of walking around and me flinging poo around the park (a story for another time). Late that evening after dinner we got a knock on our door and it was the neighbors from across the street with this.



A cherry cobbler dump cake. They came to say thanks because Richard had helped pull a different neighbors dog off of her a few weeks back. She had been bitten pretty bad, and I'm really sad to say if he hadn't ran out there I don't know how bad the incident could have gotten.

So people, morale of the story is there isn't anything to do in Pensacola if you don't want to do anything in Pensacola. Geez, drive 5 minutes down the road and go to the flippin beach.

Yummy Dinner - Grilled Bruschetta Chicken

We have usually eaten pretty well in our house, well that is when I cook. Which I've gotten better about it and we don't eat out that often anymore at all. Every weeknight I'm guaranteed to cook and maybe once on the weekend we eat out. With all this actual cooking I'm trying to divise a better system to meal planning and making grocery lists. And of course in the midst of that, because it wasn't enough work, I decided I wasn't actually cooking as healthy as I could be cooking. So, ignore the statement about my organizational skills because this has nothing to do with that. I was searching blogs and websites and magazines for healthy dinner recipes that didn't take fifty million years to cook with fifty million ingredients that would make my grocery bill fifty million dollars. And you know what I found? So called "healthy" recipes that still call for all-purpose flour, butter, bacon, cheese, sugar, etc. I'm slightly disgusted that our society coins these ingredients as healthy which leads the majority of our nation believing that they are eating better and being healthy when they truly are not. I will step off my soap box because I love me a big ol' biscuit with tons of butter and honey, but I'm not disillusioned to think that I'm eating healthy because I've concocted it to be less than 200 calories. Again, off my soapbox.

A few weeks ago I pinned a recipe on pinterest that was bruschetta chicken. I was too lazy to go back to pinterest today to get the recipe, but spent painstaking minutes trying to find a recipe similar (See my delima with life? I'm lazy and make things harder on myself than need be. As Richard tells me all the time, work smarter Audrey, not harder.). What I ended up writing down had nothing to do with the orginal recipe I saved, so I winged it and what I came up with Gillian said I could call a keeper.

Ingeredients:

1 lb of boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 large tomatoes, seeded and diced
3 T basil chopped
minced garlic. I think 2 cloves. I dunno, I never measure garlic.
Grated Parmesan cheese
2 T olive oil, divided
salt and pepper to taste.

I pulled out my grill pan and glazed it with a half the olive oil and preheated it. S&P the chicken to taste. Once pan is heated toss the chicken on and cook until done.
In the meantime, cut and seed tomato. Dice tomato. Roll and chop basil. Add basil and garlic (mince if need be, but I used my nifty fav of all time squeeze garlic). Drizzle with the remaining olive oil and S&P. Mix together. When the chicken is done, remove from heat and dust with grated parm. Serve smothered in the tomato mixture.

Not sure of the calorie count, but it's got to be pretty low considering the recipe I tweaked was around 180 per serving and it included flour, butter, egg substitute and bread crumbs. I served it with roasted petite red potatoes that I halved, brushed in EVOO, S&P and threw in the oven for 30 minutes. I actually had my dinner for leftovers because of a meeting I had to run out the door for and it was just as amazing. I need to be sure to keep this for a regular rotation. Sorry for the lack of pictures!

Lorelei of the Sea

When I was in high school I had an Eagle Eye Cherry cd, and on it was a song called "When Mermaids Cry".  It was about a mermaid named Lorelei. Ever since I've had a secret obsession with mermaids and went as far as wanting to name Gillian, Lorelei. Richard veto'd and I've never tried to name one of the girls that since (and the reason being I have a nice "theme" going...and every child he's veto'd my top choice saying I'm trying to name an 80 year old woman), but I still have a secret love of mermaids and the name Lorelei. Did I mention the first baby item I purchased for Gillian was a blanket from Gymboree that is covered in mermaids?? And she still sleeps with it.

A few months ago I started a mixed media painting. I wasn't sure what direction I was going with it until I had a few of the pieces just click into my mind that they looked like the intricate detailing that could belong on a mermaid's tail. Once I formed Lorelei, I put her away and have either been too busy or no creative juice flowing to play with her. That is until this week happened upon us. It was supposed to rain all week and I haven't been feeling the greatest. I've only left the house by choice once, and that's because we had no food. So here she is.



I wish my camera took better pictures so that you can see the detail the way I see. Guess if I'm going to keep painting I'll have to employ Megan to take pictures for me.



I say she's done, but that probably isn't a whole truth. I said she was done yesterday and I've gone back in and added a ton more detail. Gillian asked me yesterday afternoon where her belly button was. I responded by asking her if mermaids had belly buttons. Since this is going in her room, I obliged and gave Lorelei a belly button. I'm also thinking I may want to go in and throw an antiquing glaze over her to add interest. That would require me getting dressed and leaving the house though, and that interests me right now as much as watching paint dry.

Working for the Weekend

Richard has put in a lot of hours at work lately, so Addison and I decided to head down to his office to catch a few minutes with him one afternoon. Some nights he is lucky if he gets to see her for five minutes before she heads to bed, so I take small opportunities to go to him for her sake.

We weren't in the office long before she started making herself way to comfortable. She began pulling books off of shelves and running into the other offices. Of course none of the soldiers mind, and they think she's adorable, but I booked it out of there before she stirred up too much trouble. Now that she's walking(running) I try to let her walk instead of carrying her if the area is safe enough. She found the stairs on the way to the car. We don't have these at home.

And this is the random picture of a Blue Angel flying by the house. It really is no where close to being overhead but it's loud enough to feel like it's in the house with you.

We all loaded up in the car on Friday night and headed out to buy a powerwasher. We have major concrete areas due to the pool in the backyard and the front sidewalks were just disgusting with caked in dirt. Saturday afternoon Richard started to powerwash and the girls and I decided it was warm enough to try out the pool.



Winnie went swimming too.

All the meanwhile poor Daddy worked.

And I'm sure right now you are thinking, you said you went swimming, but there aren't any swimming pictures. That dang baby is impossible to coral next to the water. I couldn't have the camera taking pictures and keep her from drowning at the same time. I have to work on my strategy.
We finished off the night by setting up the Wii outside and playing Just Dance next to the pool in the dark. Gillian said she is going to start using it as her after school work out. I think these girls are going to grow up not knowing that they have a choice whether or not they exercise. Of course, towards the end of the night I was the only one dancing and R+girls were back in the pool. I didn't get any pictures of the night because my camera stinks in that setting.
Today I took the girls' to Perdido Kids Park for a birthday party. It was blazing hot and all I could think about was coming home to get back in the pool.

I once again failed at taking any actual pool pictures, so I made them get back in for me.

I love this picture even though I cut Gigi's head off.

G jumps far,

Nenna jumps high,

and Winnie cowers under the lounge chair because I keep throwing her in the pool.

And poor Richard...still cleaning.

Hopefully this fixes my lack of big girl pictures from the past few weeks! It's supposed to rain alllll week. Blah. Not that I should complain because most of my family and friends are STILL dealing with snow. So, if I don't blog for a while that's why. I'm doing a lot of reading and watching movies at home in my downtime and letting Addy run wild in nothing but a diaper the other 15 hours of the day.

Dining Chair Re-Up

Back when Richard first joined the army he bought me a beautiful dining room table and chairs with part of his enlistment bonus. I love(d) this table, but I've always had conflicting feelings toward the chairs. #1 the seats are upholstered. #2 I wasn't crazy about the fabric choice on the chairs, they just really didn't reflect my personal style at all. We've moved several times now and have been through the red dirt of Hawaii and the gritty black sand of Arizona. The outside elements take a toll on your upholstery believe it or not. I attempted to oxyclean the upholstery about a year ago and it helped for a while, but then the fabric started looking dingy again.

I bought some fabric a while back on major discount that I had intentions of using as roman shades in the breakfast nook. Months later and it was still sitting in my laundry room on a shelf with the rest of my fabric remnants. All the sudden yesterday I had an epiphany that I could use this fabric to recover my chairs! I started off with one chair and I loved the result, but then started thinking I wanted more. I didn't want to tire of the same fabric overwhelming all six chairs. I played around with a few schemes with Megan over @. I finally decided to go with the flow of one pattern for every two chairs. I love the end result.

Here's the before picture of what the chairs look like straight from the manufacturer plus a few years of dirt, grim, and kids spilling stuff on them.



And after 2 days of pulling and stapling and running out of staples and buying four sets of the wrong size of staple, here is the end result.






And the fabric up close.



See the peacock and hummingbird??? This is the original fabric. I bought it because of those details. I love it!



^This one is on the two chairs with the arms. I like the pattern a lot but wasn't sure it was good to stick with my birdy friends allll the time, so it went on the two chairs that get stuck in another room occassionally.



And just a simple print to pull it all together.

I think I'm going to take the scraps from the three and attempt to make a table runner out of them. Or maybe some wall art?? I dunno. Guess you can't know if I don't!

And just for your viewing pleasure, what happens when Mommy is busy decorating the house....



They were all over my house. I was finding them at 4 o'clock when I do a one last clean up in preparation for daddy to come home from work. Oh well, there are worse things for her to be playing with, huh?

I can't wait to share some other projects I am either working on or have formed in my head. In the meantime I'm going to attempt to take some pictures of those other two kids that live with me this weekend.