This past weekend my sisters and 3 of my cousins met up in Folsom, CA at my cousin Angela's house. This is our 6th annual Cousin's Weekend, but this was the first time we met up in California. And let me tell ya....it was a BLAST! We only had 4 days, but we sure packed a lot into those days and we just has a really great time. So much laughter and reminiscing ...I'm still smiling 2 days later!


Here I am, belting out Sister Christian with my sister Betsy. Mind you, I may have had a few cocktails before I agreed to do this!


Here's the cousins! Angela, Betsy, Sarah, Terry, Kate (me), Steph and Claire

We had to get Brian in a group photo...he was such a helpful pool boy all weekend!

Alcatraz: I really wanted to take a tour, but Sarah and Terry had no interest, and really we didn't have enough time for it.

Skyline shot of San Francisco:

Jordan:

Jordan, Claire and Collin taking a lunch break:

Miss Claire, looking as adorable as ever:

This was a really cute store in Old Folsom called Melange. My sister Sarah found a replica of a picture our grandma had hanging in her house for as long as we could remember. I felt like it was a sign that we happened upon that picture, and Sarah bought it! It was only $24, so the price was right and it was a fun memento from our trip. I seriously LOVED this store though...so inspiring and just plain cute!

Well it LOOKED good...

For the past 2 years I have been following the blog of Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman (see link to the right). She has a cooking section where she posts recipes, and she beautifully and meticulously photographs each step in the process of her recipe. And every recipe I've tried has been magnificent. From time to time she will have her friend Pastor Ryan share some recipes. I've tried a couple and they were great, so last week when he shared a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala, I was intrigued.

Indian Food is something new to me...I've never tried it and I can't even say that I've been wanting to try it. But there was the recipe, step by step and it looked easy and it really looked darn good! Off to the store I went in search of the 'vital' ingredient...Garam Masala spice. Yeah, try looking for that in my po-dunk town - ha! So I ventured the 16 miles to the next city and found some -- after searching the spice section for no less than 10 minutes -- whoohoo!

Well I followed the directions to a 'T', and it sucked. And I realized the reason why is that Garam Masala has a significant amount of cloves in it. And those cloves were all I could taste. I even added more rice to drown the clove taste but no luck. Jason was so kind...he ate almost the whole bowl...until I threw mine down and refused to eat anymore. I promptly went upstairs and threw in a frozen pizza...and everything was right with the world once again.

I tried to expand our horizons a bit but I guess I have to realize we are pretty simple people. Fancy is definitely not a requirement in this household. And I'm ok with that!

Spring Clean-Up, FINISHED!

Well this is the finished product of my backyard project. I pretty much doubled my garden size. Mom and I split my daylilies and spread them out a bit, added some other perennials she had at home, and I also added some moss roses I bought over Memorial Day weekend.

Jason and I had brought home some rocks from the north shore last summer, so I spaced them out a bit for accents. Finally they have a purpose! We do need to get more mulch down, but Mom and Dad gave us 6 bags they had leftover, so I spread those out so I could get an idea of how much more I needed. Those 6 bags covered more than I thought they would, that's for sure!

Anyway, I'm happy with the finished product. Now I just need to keep up with the weed control so it will stay looking this nice!