Yea! BBs Tees, one of my first clients, were recently on Good Morning Texas promoting their fabulous line of big sibling shirts and party-ware.

You guys were fabulous! I'm almost tempted to have another kid just so I can buy your cute shirts for Bug. But only almost. :-D

Perhaps you should break into the doggy market too. Roxy could use a big sister shirt.

This weekend my little family and I spent some time on vacation with a larger portion of our family Gatlinburg. We spent several days in a cabin with lots of grandkids and had a really nice time. My personal favorite was a visit to the aquarium. I loveaquariums. They even sparked a short-lived desire once to become a marine biologist.

Though marine biology probably would have been great fun, boy am I glad I found geography. I probably wouldn't enjoy aquariums half as much if I had followed that little dream, and that is something I simply could not bare.

We did some other fun things while on our mini vacation. The drive down to Gatlinburg was spent mostly on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which can be accessed just miles from our house. I hadn't been on the Parkway in years and had definitely forgotten how stunning the views were.

We spent a day at Dollywood, where Lily enjoyed (though not the first time or two) some baby roller coasters. Lily and I also snuck off one day and had an ice cream date. Then on the way home we ticked off another winery from the list. I'll post about that later.

It was a good break and we really had a great time. Lily was absolutely worn out and has slept more in the past 3 days than she has in the past 6 months. Spending time with 5 grandkids under 5 years old can really tire you out. Just ask Lily.

See all of this vacations photos in it's Flickr set.

Yesterday evening David, Bug and I walked downtown for the first of this season's Gallery Crawls downtown. It was fabulous. We scooted through almost all of our downtown's overwhelming number of art galleries, packed with stunning artwork, people and free wine. We spent the whole evening downtown, having had supper in a great little restaurant before starting our "crawl". We picked up a few things, though nothing large (though I've added several pieces to my list).

And then, of course, on the way home we walk past our nearby coffee house and spot a lamb grazing in the grassy area beside the shop. Nothing like a lamb to remind you that you're in the mountains. Only here could you go from the sophisticated setting of an art gallery to a lamb within a block. We got a shot of Bug trying to pet the lamb before it decided her dress looked tasty.

I love this town.

I am a bookworm. A complete and utter bookworm. As of late I have been downloading every book I've read to my Kindle on my iPod Touch.

It's been a bit of a war with myself on a couple of levels. On one hand I can look at it from a "green" perspective and I realize that I'm saving trees by not buying the gazillion books I read in paper. They're also so handy on my Kindle because I can take a whole library everywhere I go. On the other hand, it's not a book. I'm not curling up in bed with a good ole paperback. I feel like I'm neglecting a bookworm tradition. So I'm torn, but the Kindle has been winning out.

Until I spotted these babies. Briones & Co is another of those shops that I discovered ages ago. About a year or so ago I purchased one of their mini meal planners (though mine is not awesomely felted). One day I was randomly checking out some of my old "hearts" on Etsy, saw their shop, found out that they have a separate website (I love Etsy, but sometimes I feel I need to boycott them a bit if a seller has a non-Etsy shop - their fees will kill the profit for a seller) and bought crazy-awesome bookmarks!

When we moved here this was the first thing that got mailed to our new home. So they hold a weirdly special place in my heart. They're really just so cool. They have places for you to write about your book so that you can keep track of what you're reading. There are the usual places for title and author, but also a place to write down words you want to look up and favorite quotes. You can also rate your books right there on the bookmark and then save these babies for later reference. So neat.

So the arrival of these brought me to purchase my first physical book in a while, and I'm so excited that I get to use this handy dandy bookmark. Ingenious idea. You should probably go buy some for yourself.

This pumpkin french toast has become our new Saturday morning favorite. It is simply spectacular.

The recipe came from a super fabulous cookbook called Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. I bought the cookbook about 2 years ago after my mother told me about it. She had heard a review on the radio or something and new it sounded like something I would love. The focus of the book is sneaking healthful things like fruits and vegetables into foods that your kids like, such as mashed potatoes or chicken nuggets. A novel idea.

Truthfully, I have little problem getting Lily to eat her veggies. We've just always given her fruits and veggies first and foremost. The kid stinkin' loves broccoli. However, sometimes I need to trick myself into eating more of those colorful things, and it's really fun to me to see how good things are when I know that beets or spinach is hidden inside. Not to mention unsuspecting dinner guests.

Yes, I've snuck these recipes into get-togethers. David and I always sit back and chuckle at folks as they rave over yummies with veggies hidden inside. For example, for Lily's first birthday I made some cupcakes from a recipe in this cookbook. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing. With beets. The cupcakes came out with a very distinctive red color - as I'm sure you would imagine - and I just told everyone I was trying out a choco-red velvet recipe. My family fell for it and dug right in. They were almost all eaten - as they were seriously delicious and oh-so-moist - when I told everyone what they were. It was too funny, and I felt accomplished, as I got my kid cousins who probably haven't eaten a vegetable since it was pureed and in a baby jar to eat a veggie, and a beet at that.

Another such example was at a Geography Club meeting right after I got the cookbook when I made a dessert bar recipe from the book that called for pureed spinach to be mixed in with the blackberry jam. Like everything else you put in front of a bunch of college-age males, they were gone within seconds, all while David and I nibbled on the really yummy treats and giggled to ourselves. I never told anyone about those. Haha!

So, if you're having problems getting your kid to eat veggies, or just want to have some fun with food, you have to check out this cookbook. It's definitely one of the most used on my shelf, and for darn good reason!

*After looking around amazon.com I found that Jessica Seinfeld is releasing another cookbook in October. Totally just put it on my calendar.

If you've been following you'll know that I have a serious goal to visit every NC winery within 100 miles of our home by my 25th birthday. I feel I need a list to work from. (Gees, me and my lists.)

So yesterday I sat down with a map (I am a geographer, ya know), a list of wineries, Google maps, and a pen and made a list of all the wineries we'll be visiting over the next barely-over-a-year. And here it is. I'll cross them off as I complete a visit.

1. Allison Oaks Vineyard
2. Banner Elk Winery
3. Benny Parsons Rendezvous Ridge
4. Brandon Hills Vineyard
5. Brushy Mountain Winery
6. Buck Shoals Vineyard
7. Calaboose Cellars
8. Carolina Heritage Vineyard & Winery
9. Cellar 4201
10. Cerminaro Vineyard
11. Chateau Laurinda
12. Divine Llama Vineyards
13. Elkin Creek Vineyard
14. Flint Hill Vineyards
15. Garden Gate Vineyards
16. Germanton Vineyard & Winery
17. Ginger Creek Vineyards
18. Grassy Creek Vineyard & Winery
19. Hanover Park Vineyard
20. Hutton Vineyards
21. Lake James Cellars Winery
22. Laurel Gray Vineyards
23. McRitchie Winery & Ciderworks
24. Misty Creek Farm & Vineyards
25. New River Winery
26. Old North State Winery
27. Raffaldini Vineyards
28. RagApple Lassie Vineyards
29. Raintree Cellars
30. RayLen Vineyards & Winery
31. Round Peak Vineyards
32. Sanders Ridge Vineyard & Winery
33. Shadow Springs Vineyard
34. Shelton Vineyards
35. Stony Knoll Vineyards
36. Thistle Meadow Winery
37. Waldensian Heritage Wines
38. Westbend Vineyards

**EDIT - Ok, I have to be realistic here. I'm not going to visit each and every one of these, so new goal. I will TRY a wine from each and I will do so before we move away, probably in spring of 2012. Now my liver won't shrivel and die quite so quickly.

Cheers!

I love Etsy. And I love jewelry. Specifically, rings. And I love the jewelry made over atIndiaylaluna. This brings me to my new favorite pretty, my new peace ring.

I discovered Indiaylaluna a very long time ago. She was one of my first "hearts" over at Etsy. I think I initially fell in love with her multi-metal stacking ring set. Last summer I invited Indiaylaluna over to my blog (back when I was blogging on Blogger) to do a giveaway and it was definitely my most popular giveaway ever. How could it not have been, right?

Well, the new ring is a piece I bought several weeks ago after drooling over it for well over a year. It is so dainty and meaningful. I received this beauty in the mail this weekend and I am absolutely smitten. It's perfect.

So, I have a fancy-pants new pinky ring that reminds me to chill the crap out. Who doesn't need one of these?

David and I have a very serious mission on hand. We are determined to visit every winery we possibly can while living in North Carolina. My own personal goal is to visit every NC winery within 100 miles of our new home by the time I'm 25.

This weekend David and I visited our second NC winery. (Our first was when we came up here before moving to check out the area.) We technically did go to this winery last weekend, as it is where the Grapestompers Homemade Wine Showcase was held. Though we were there, we never actually went into the winery, so we decided we would this weekend, and that's exactly what we did yesterday.

Thistle Meadow Winery was different from any winery that we've visited previously, as they actually don't grow any of their own grapes. Everything is made from kits. However, don't think for a second that their wines are substandard, as not growing their own grapes actually gives them the ability to focus whole-heartedly on the wine. Out of the 50-some-odd wines they produce, David and I tried about 12 between the two of us, and were really quite impressed. My personal favorite was a Chateauneuf du Pape blend, of which we brought a bottle home, along with several others. Mmmm...

The tasting room was quite comfortable, and the staff was so pleasant. Each of which we actually met last week at the showcase. While there we did also scoot over toGrapestompers, which is semi-attached to the tasting room, to pick up the last tools needed before we start our next batch of homemade wine.

We really had a great trip, and I know we'll be back. Not only because it's a mere half an hour from our house, but also because the wines were so unexpectedly yummy.

So, 2 wineries down, and some 30 or so to go.

I am in love with our local farmer's market. We've been every weekend since moving here and I always get the best stuff. A lady who has been there the past few weeks has been our salad green provider, and they make the best salads! Here's a really tasty one that David and I made for lunch a few days ago using leftover pork tenderloin from the night before. Everything in the salad was either local or organic, except for the pork and balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing. Amazing.

Leftover Pork Salad

• salad greens
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper
• leftover pork tenderloin, cut into thin strips
• feta cheese
• carrots, chopped
• croutons

Toss salad greens with olive oil until just coated. Then toss with balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle with a bit of freshly ground salt and pepper. (we use a lot of balsamic because I like my salad quite tart, but use however much you wish).

Put greens on a plate and top with the remaining ingredients.

Voilà!

*Italicized ingredients are local and/or organic.

This is my favorite use of pork tenderloin. I cook it for dinner so that I can have it on a salad for lunch the next day. Yum.

{Photo Credit: amazon.com}

Some days I sit at this computer for hours creating fun things for fantastic clients. To help get me through my long hours David and I have amassed an insanely large music library of great (well, and some not-so-great) tunes. A recent favorite is the Yakamay album by Galactic.

David has listened to Galactic for years and when we heard an interview and song snippets on NPR a few months ago it was actually me who suggested we get this.

I love classic jazz and blues. I think I should have been born in New Orleans about 100 years ago. Or who knows? Perhaps that's exactly where I was in a previous life. Ha!

Yakamay is an alternative, funky, jazzy album, recorded by a New Orleans group featuring some insanely talented locals. It has some great outbursts of big brass and enough of a modern touch to be edgy. I'm insanely in love.

So this is what has been getting me through the past few busy weeks. You should really check this out.