Wednesday Photos

On Monday, my sister and I went the National Museum of Natural History and visited the butterfly pavilion.

Summer Restaurant Week 2012

Saturday was the last day of Restaurant Week for this summer.  I was so excited that my sister was going to be here to experience it.  Plus, with three people, we get to try even more great dishes.  If you haven't been before, 200+ restaurants in D.C. offer a prix fixe three course menu for $20.12 for lunch or $35.12 for dinner.  It's a great chance to eat at some fabulous places that we wouldn't go to otherwise. 

This time we tried District Commons, which is located right at the Foggy Bottom metro stop and is owned by the same restaurant group that operates Acadiana, D.C. Coast and Passion Fish.  I love to go to restaurants in this group because most of the restaurants that participate in the Restaurant Week give you a limited number of choices for your meal, but Passion Food Group lets you choose any entree on their menu. 

Appetizers:   For our first courses we had Texas Chili (Jim), Mixed Greens Salad (Sara) and Seafood Chowder.  Jim's chili came with this adorable star shaped cornbread and my soup had Hidden Valley Ranch oyster crackers.  The salad had excellent deviled eggs with pralined bacon. 

Entrees:  Jim ordered the Pork Rack Chop “Blue Ribbon” with Benton Ham, Mozzarella, Eggplant Chow Chow and a Jonnycake.  My sister ordered the Roasted Duck “Low & Slow” with a sorghum chili glaze and Wild Rice-Sweet Potato Hash.  I ordered the North Carolina Mountain Trout with Broccolini, Pine Nuts, Citrus Burnt Butter, because I can never say no to trout when I see it on the menu. 

Dessert:  Honestly, I'm surprised we had any room left for dessert at this point, but we had the Boston Creme Pie, Peach and Mango Sundae and the Chocolate Raspberry cake.

A fair is a veritable smorgasbord...*

I see that it has been nearly two months since I came to visit you at this blog.  What can I say, I've been busy.  In that time, we found new tenants for our rental property, got said property ready for the new tenant (carpet cleaning, painting, etc), went to Tennessee to see Jim's brother and his wife and all our nieces and nephews, went to a baseball game, went to a soccer game, and celebrated our third anniversary.  I'm exhausted!

Food on a stick

Last night, we went to the Arlington County Fair, mainly to indulge my addiction to traveling death rides and fried food on a stick.  It did not disappoint.

Keep your head & hands inside the Sizzler

It was starting to get cloudy when we left the house, so we were just hoping to get some rides in before it started to pour rain.  Plus, you always want to do the rides before you eat.  We almost made it.  First we rode the Sizzler.  The Sizzler, which is sometimes called the Scrambler,is my favorite carnival ride.  It has three main arms with four buckets on each arm and it just whips you around so that it looks like you are going to hit either the middle support or the fence around the ride. 

After the Sizzler, we went to a ride called the Hurricane.  This ride has six arms with a bucket that seats four people.  It rotates and uses compressed air cylinders to bounce riders up and down.  This is ride we were on when it started to pour rain.  It was also at the far end of the fair ground, so we had to run the whole length of the midway to get back to the indoor exhibits.  Needless to say, we were completely soaked.

Mmm,  Twinkie

Fortunately the rain didn't last long, so we were back outside and looking for food on a stick.  We got corn dogs, the obligatory funnel cake, lemonade and Jim ordered a deep fried Twinkie.  I have to tell you, it was better than you would have thought, although how you would eat a whole one, I don't know.  I only had a small bite, but the Twinkie gets sort of melty and creamy once it's fried and it is very, very sweet.

So, as the title says (thanks to Charlotte's Web), a fair has a little bit of everything and I, for one, will never pass it up.

Soaking wet and lovin' it!

My New Favorite Place

We have great friends.  Great friends who own their own condo at the beach.  Great friends who will let you use that condo in exchange for caramel popcorn with peanuts.

The first weekend in June, we went to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  It's the closest beach to D.C. at about three and a half hours away.  We were going to drive over after Jim got off work on Friday night to try to avoid the weekend beach traffic, which can get ridiculous, but there was severe weather on Friday so we decided to very early Saturday morning.  We left home around 6:15 and I took this picture at 9:48, and we even stopped for breakfast.

It was a beautiful weekend.  We could not have asked for nicer weather, the beach is beautiful and was not very crowded because it was still early in the season.  We even got to play mini-golf (my favorite beach activity) and eat crabs with one of my friends who lives in my computer (hi Laura).  The only thing that could have made it better is if the water had been warmer.  It was icy cold, but Jim went in anyway.

They give you a hat to wear!

Shell We Golf

The beach at night.  Isn't it beautiful?

Dinner on the Water

Ok, so it was really brunch, but I'm still counting it.  Back in the fall, Jim bought a Groupon for a two-for-one brunch cruise on The Nina's Dandy, which we used on May 20th.

I'm going to start by saying we almost didn't make it on the boat.  I was positive that we boarded down at one end of the waterfront in Alexandria.  Not so much.  By the time Jim finally asked, we had to hightail it a couple of blocks to the other end and just made it.  They took our picture as we got on and I would share it with you because it's a great picture of Jim, but I look like butt.  They made me take my sunglasses off (which are prescription) and took the picture before I could get my real glasses on and I'm squinting into the sun.  Lovely.  So you get this one instead of us on the deck of the boat.

We were seated pretty quickly and brought our drinks - Bloody Mary for Jim and mimosa for me.  The dining room is a tight fit with the buffet taking up much of the open space that is normally a dance floor, so the wait staff controlled the number of people in line.  The food was good, typical breakfast stuff and Thanksgiving style dinner, but nothing special.  There was, however, a lot of it.    

After we ate, we went up to the top of the boat to enjoy the cruise up the river.  We went up almost to the Kennedy Center and then had to turn around because they were racing dragon boats at the Georgetown waterfront.  On the return trip, we went down river to the Gaylord National before coming back to Alexandria.

On the top of the Nina's Dandy

Medallion on the Memorial Bridge

Lincoln Memorial

The Kennedy Center

Catching Up

You know, it's a good thing that I have absolutely no desire to try to monetize this blog because I do a terrible job of keeping it up.  But don't worry; I have written and scheduled several entries for your reading pleasure.

I'm going to try to do some catching up in chronological order, starting with our trip to the Center of the Universe.

On Saturday, May 12th we drove down to Ashland, Virginia, which, I am not making this up, bills itself as the Center of the Universe.  It cracks me up every time we drive into town.  It is also where Jim went to school, at Randolph-Macon College.  They were having an alumni event and we hadn't been down in awhile, so we wanted to see what was new.  Turns out, the answer is a lot.  They have built new dorms, are building a new student center/bookstore and are reworking the football field.  We walked around campus, which is quite pretty, and dropped in to the event for music, food and beer.  We also found the brick that Jim bought (and several other bricks for friends and teammates).


Then on the way, we decided to detour out to see Chancellorsville, just because we could and neither of us had been there before.  We live in a place that is smack dab in the middle of a whole bunch of U.S. history and that is awesome.  That, and because I was going to exit there anyway to get a Sonic.  We got to the visitor's center and sidled up on a group listening to a ranger talk about the wounding and death of Stonewall Jackson, which was very interesting.  According to the ranger, Jackson probably would have survived his injury and amputation, if he had not been sick already.  Then we got the battlefield map and took most of the driving tour before we had to get back on the road home.

DIY Project

I don't know what it is about a holiday weekend that inspires me to do projects around the home, but it always does.  I thought about doing the kitchen back splash this weekend, but then my car's radiator sprang a leak and had to go to the shop.  I knew the back splash would probably be a multi-Home Depot-trip project, so I put it off in favor of this quick and easy one.

Before and After

All you need is a lamp or two that don't quite match your style, some painters tape, a drop cloth and one can of spray paint (Rustoleum Textured Metallic silver).  I covered the electrical part on top with aluminum foil and stuffed the cord in a ziploc bag, then taped the little bit that was sticking out.  Once I got the lamps all prepped and dusted, it only took about 10 minutes to do this, which is good, since it was hot as all get out today.

I am going to change the harps from gold to silver and I need to get new shades for them, otherwise I'd show you a picture of them back in the bedroom.  The old shades are not the bright white I want, but I think the bases came out great.