Catching Up

So, this past week has been somewhat busy. We went to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert at Mountain Winery on Wednesday night. The concert was absolutely great!! We had so much fun. One of the companies that Steve works with has box seats for their summer concert series. The seats were definitely the best in the house.  The box seats had individual seats you could move around so you could get up and dance. There were complimentary appetizers, beer, and wine. It's an outdoor venue that is beautiful. Mountain Winery, as it's name implies, is on the top of a mountain in Saratoga. They have a picnic area and a parking lot that looks down on the San Jose...what a spectacular view!! I wish I had some pictures to post, but the pictures Steve took with his cell phone turned out horrible :) We're looking forward to going to another concert there this summer. We're checking into the availability of tickets from the company Steve works with. We're hoping maybe Steely Dan will be next. You can check out their concert series on their website here Mountain Winery.

So on to the projects this weekend...we finally finished the front door!!! At first we thought we were going to have to buy a new front door because the handles were not the same length. After some close inspection we figured we could patch the small hole and it wouldn't be notices...which fortunately turned out to be the case. So we painted the door and installed the new hardware (which took a few tries :)). We also had to paint the shudders above the front door since they were the same color. In the end I was happy with the way it turned out. If you remember, I posted a while ago about being concerned with the color of the hardware and the new light..but I think it looks fine. What do you think?

 

                Before                                        After

We also managed to get some yard work done this weekend. The new area in the back was in need of a little TLC. I pruned back some plants and cleaned up a few dead leaves...and what a difference it made! Steve sprayed for ants...since it seems like there are millions in the yard...they can stay there as long as they don't come in the house! And after all that I also managed to get in a couple of workouts and a swim in the neighbors pool. All in all it was a good weekend.

Camping

We went camping at Standish Hickey State Park over 4th of July weekend. We met my parents and my uncle. It was absolutely perfect weather...got to maybe 85 on Saturday and cooled down into the 50's at night. We went on lots of walks around the campground...and had some delicious (as always) gourmet dutch oven meals. I think...no I know...camping revolves around food. We always have carnitas tacos (courtesy of my dad) on Friday night and carnitas hash and cinnamon rolls from scratch on Saturday morning. My dad recently got in to roasting his own coffee beans, so he brought his popcorn popper camping and we roasted some coffee. It smells a little funky during the roasting process, but boy did it taste good in the morning!!! Below are the green coffee beans

                

Below is the roasting process...you have to blow off the bean sheaths (I don't think that's what it's really called, but I can't remember the name).

         

And finally you have beautifully roasted coffee beans!!! Go Dad!

             

Here were a couple of our wild life finds...one huge banana slug and an inch worm.

        

Here are a couple of pictures Steve took when he and my dad went down to the river.

        

The name of the game for the weekend is to RELAX...which is exactly what we did. My mom and I did a little scrapbooking and the guys made their trip to the store for ice and sat around reading.

       

       

My uncle always cooks dinner on Saturday night...it changes, but is ALWAYS delicious. This year it is was chicken and pesto pasta.  Isn't it pretty?!!

                            

And for dessert...chocolate pudding cake with tag-team whipped cream. I think we all got our forearm workout whipping the cream!!

          

Sunday morning was another first...we had biscuits (again from scratch) and gravy with sausage...mmmm good!

I love going camping!!! We always have such a great time. Can't wait for the next time!