Baby got showered

Last Saturday, Lola and I threw a baby shower brunch for Becky and baby at my parents' house. The preparation took a lot more work than I anticipated. Granted, I created a lot of the work myself, but still.

Lola came up with the "dots" theme for the shower, and I went berserk creating centerpieces (from How About Orange) and a 23-yard garland. Poor Brian got roped into assembling large sections of the garland because I was too busy scouring Microsoft Office Online for the best clip art.

The clip art was for our onesie-burp-towel-sock decorating station (inspired by Say Yes to Hoboken). We had buttons, paints and iron-on transfers at the ready for guests to personalize items for the baby. Since I couldn't find any iron-on transfers in stores that met my discerning taste, I set about creating my own. I spent hours (HOURS!) first finding the "cool" clip art and then arranging them in Publisher to fit the most items on one piece of paper (I'd only bought seven sheets of ink jet printer iron-on transfer paper). Once they were printed, I roped poor Ben into helping me carefully cut out every single image. Hand cramps abounded.

In the end, all the prep work paid off. We had a festive atmosphere, great food, and fun activities. What more could you ask for in a shower?

The garland

The clip art iron-ons

The decorating station and centerpiece

The Zuester. The Zoo. The Zooey-Zawee-Zoe. The diva.

How I spent my weekend.

My fourth of July weekend was filled with a lot of food, family, fireworks and fun (How's that for alliteration?). And that's just how I like it.

In contrast, the weekend preceding Independence day was filled with gross gutter garbage (Again, how's that for alliteration?). That's not how I like it. Since my gutters were sprouting maple trees, I figured that was a good indication they needed cleaning. Too bad my 6' step ladder isn't quite tall enough for me to safely reach the gutters. Most of the time, I ended up perched on the do-not-go-past-this-step-or-risk-injury-or-death rung of the ladder. Talk about a dirty and dangerous duty (wee! Alliteration is out of control tonight!).

Here's a shot where I'm actually practicing safety first.

All hands on deck

Last weekend, after lovingly repairing the rotting car siding on my garage, my father took particular issue with the wacky chop job that was my deck railing. That meant one thing: it had to be repaired. NOW. Since my dad had to hit the road to milk cows, that left Brian and me to fix it. It took two trips to Mendards, five new boards of pressure-treated pine, one bottle of carpenter ant and termite killer, and Brian's muscle and skill to get the job done. I did a little bit of holding the boards in place and a lot of staying out the way.

My before and after shots are kind of lousy, but here they are regardless.

Before.
Instead of laying one solid board on top of the deck posts, the previous owner cut the top railing to angle around the posts so that the tops were flush. The wood was rotting all over the place.

During.

Brian prying some nails loose.

After.
Brian drilling the last screw in place while supporting the Bush-Cheney '04 election. Talk about multi-tasking.

Bug off!

I never should have discouraged my mom from buying a hand-held bug zapper while we were in Taiwan. Now, it's coming back to bite me. Quite literally. The mosquitoes are out of control this year! Those little suckers even bite me through my clothes! While I was waiting for the bus the other morning, I garnered three new bites around my arm pit (weird, I know) and killed one mosquito as it prepared to feast on my forehead.

You can get your own hand-held bug zapper from Amazon for just $8.93.

Zap! This is what all the racket is about.

V is for Victory Garden

Hey, look! My backyard now includes a little victory garden! I should just call it a vegetable garden, but that doesn't quite capture the romanticism I'm going for.

Over the weekend, Chad cleared a space for me to plant some veggies. I'm now the proud mama of six tomato plants, one zucchini plant and two zucchini seedlings. Grow, babies, grow.

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!

New Roommate

I have a new roommate. His name is Brian. He just moved here to start his career in network administration. So far, he seems friendly and easy to get along with. He's agreed to mow my lawn and help me cook meals. He's also taken to filling my coffee thermos for me in the mornings since I'm chronically behind schedule.

This is Brian. He also happens to be my brother.

How I spent my summer vacation...

Eating! Every single day in Taiwan, we were presented with all kinds of new and yummy foods to try. This was right up my alley since I love to sample! There's very few foods that I dislike. I feel like they all kind of have their place in this world...and in my stomach.

Dumplings and all the fixin's for dinner