Our daughter the baker

Tags

cake, decoration, postaday2016, work

I have raved about our daughter’s homemade chocolate chip cookies in the past, they are quite addictive, you can’t have just the one. This time instead of baking cookies, our daughter lent her talents to sculpting a cake for her soon to be ex-co-workers as both a going away present and good-bye. She is leaving her position at the Volkswagon car dealership which is why her cakes are decorated with the Volkswagon logo and shaped as the Volkswagon beetle. I think she did an excellent job, her little Volkswagon beetle is adorable and for someone who has never decorated cakes before, she rose to the occasion. I wouldn’t have done half as good of a job as she did, I don’t have the decorating gene in me.

I hope her co-workers appreciate the work she put into the cakes, we got to taste the odd pieces of cake that were sculpted away and the cakes were both tasty and moist. My impression is that the going away party is going to be bittersweet, I know her manager doesn’t want her to go, yet I am sure that he wishes her luck in her future endeavors. I don’t know how many workers go out of their way to bake cakes, decorate them with a special theme as a sign of appreciation and thanks for the work experience. We are very proud of our daughter.

New locations for my azaleas

Tags

candy, postaday2015, scent, work

    

I am so proud of myself, I was going to blow off the whole transplant and weed project today and put it off until tomorrow, but I went ahead and did it today. It actually wasn’t so hard, all I needed to do was go outside and get started and then I fell into the easy rhythm of working with the earth. It is so calming, between the buzzing of the bees, the chirping of the birds, the scent of lilac and other plant scents wafting through the air, working my fingers through the cool dirt, I spent hours in the back.

The transplant part of the day was easy, it was the weeding that took the most time and that was because I was fighting with my usual bane, the invasive Bishop’s weed. At some point in the afternoon, I was thinking “look at me being prideful, thinking that I could even assert a modicum of control over Mother Nature” it is a losing battle, but I kept at it because if I let the Bishop’s weed go, it would eventually overtake and choke the life out of the rest of my plants and I don’t want that so I get plowing forward.

   
 

I am going to leave these holes as is because as soon June 1 comes I am going to fill these holes with something perennial, hardy, self-seeding and beauttiful.  I don’t know what colors, but hopefully  something bright and colorful.

  
The honeysuckle is all set to bloom, the garden may smell lovely now, however just wait until the buds burst open, their scent is so sweet, it is like candy. I’ll be standing near the flowers inhaling their sweet scent in just a day or two, mark my words.

Cross-eyed and satisfied

Tags

book, postaday2014, work

I have been at it for hours every day, cutting and pasting the individual essays into a singular document to make it feasible to print out at my local Staples. The editing was completed a week ago, this is organizing the essays into a book format, so it is a tad tedious. I used to spend at least three weeks proofing the fonts, font sizes, font styles and kerning way back when I worked as Catalog Coordinator at Conran’s-Habitat, it has been a long time since I spent hours on the computer doing that type of tedious work and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t fun back then, this time it is different because this is my book and not just copy for affordable furniture and table linens.

I am getting there slowly but surely, I am also looking into finding a literary agent, small publishers and self-publishing. I am busy, busy, busy and it feels good.

Clean up in aisle backyard!

Tags

garden, muscles, postaday2014, raking, work

Today has been one of the prettiest days in Blandford that we have had in forever, and my garden was calling me. As you can see in the pictures down below, my garden is a mess. This will take more than just a few hours of work, by golly.

After taking the pictures, I spent a few more hours raking, pulling and cutting, now my muscles are pooped, I am pooped. I love gardening, but to be honest, this cleanup business every year is a drag, it reveals the potential of what is to come, but the payoff is visually tiny. If I took more pictures of the “after”, they would look pretty much like the “before”. We are still in early April, I won’t see any real signs of life until mid May, if memory serves me right, I think. lol

I do feel happy with the work that I did and the clean up, even if it is a work still in progress. I am keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow won’t find me too stiff and slow with my muscles saying I hate you; gardening muscles are different from walking muscles, my gardening muscles are the ones that will be upset, I think. Hopefully, they will be fine with me. I’ll let you tomorrow.

Daily prompt: Sixteen tons

Tags

boring, creative, postaday2014, work

How do you feel about your job? Do you spring out of bed, looking forward to work? Or, is your job a soul-destroying monotony of pure drudgery, or somewhere in between?

Sixteen Tons; one of my all favorite songs to dance to with my father. I remember dancing what the French call the “rock” to Sixteen Tons, I suppose it was some bastardized version of the Jitter Bug, I think? My father danced so well, just thinking about it puts a smile on my face.

When I used to work outside of the home, way back when, I never found it to be dreary or monotonous. I worked primarily in the retail and the restaurant business and trust me, those two industries are never boring. I was very lucky to always find myself surrounded by talented, creative and very nice people, even the customers were often wonderful and engaging people.

I can’t even complain about my time at the law firm because it wasn’t your run of the mill stodgy law firm. Dolgenos, Newman and Cronin was located in the heart of SOHO, New York, sharing space with an art gallery that the partners themselves owned. They were also very welcoming and loved a good party. On the day that I was hired as a part time file clerk, they threw a party in my honor. When I left to go back to work at Conran’s/Habitat at Astor Place, they threw me a party to wish me well. You can’t beat having employers like that.

Actually I have to say that of all of the jobs that I have held over the years; full-time or part-time, being a stay at home mother is, for me, the hardest one that I have ever had. Having said that, being a mother has definitely never been boring; it is by far the best thing that has ever happened in my life. The house work part of being a stay at home mother, not so much, that is definitely the most boring and uninspiring job that I have ever encountered and for me, the only drudgery that I have ever known. Being a mother HOORAY, housework BOO. 😀

Getting back into the routine

Tags

Home, postaday2013, routine, work

I find it interesting that even as an adult, summer still feels kind of like a summer vacation and now that September is drawing on nigh, the need to get back to the usual routine is calling, a back to order if you will. This summer I went here and there; Boston, New York, Miami twice and now I think all the traveling will lessen, I think. Today was a good day to get back to the routine of cleaning up, dishes, laundry, sorting and folding and giving the various small gardens a good soaking, plus the usual cardio walks that Jack really needs.

It is a lot of fun to get away from the, by the time summer rolls around, monotonous everyday chores, but after a few months, it feels good to get back into the groove of whatever routine you abide by, at least I try to have a routine, it helps keep me grounded and calm. I have always had issues with anxiety and stress and my life lessons have taught me, that keeping my good habits near me and being constant are healthy and helpful ways that work in my favor.

Unique Sweets

Tags

baking, pastry, postaday2013, T.v, talent, work

My hubby and I are watching the show Unique Sweets on the Cooking Channel. It’s a dangerous show to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, everything that they are describing is making my hubby salivate. All this show is doing for me, is calling my inner patissiere or baker to get out into the kitchen and make something like croissants or pain aux raisins or an apple galette. Trust me,when I say that I don’t have the skill set or the true talent to go into business making beautiful pastries for public consumption. My stuff tastes good, I might even go as far as very good at times, but I never get the aesthetic part right.

The show was highlighting breakfast pastries and there were three places that rated their mention. On the West Coast there was Knead Bakery, there was also Levain Bakery and there was a third called Sonoma Bakery. All three had original pastries. There was a breakfast apple pissette; essentially a thin crust apple pizza which looked mouth wateringly delicious. Another amazing breakfast pastry offering was the palme d’or which is a puff pastry shell filled with soft caramel sprinkled with sea salt topped with a vanilla pastry cream and sprinkled on top with a generous dusting of sugar that the pastry chef puts a blow torch to creating a hard carmel topping to the pastry. It was a masterpiece. The other pastry that was truly note worthy was a whole wheat dinner roll that once out of the oven was split open and stuffed with slivers of excellent European chocolate and closed back together. After purchasing, you saw the customers open their whole wheat rolls and see this luscious molten chocolate emerge, I have personal experience with this type of treat. When I was a child in France, my sister, my cousin and I at 4:00 p.m, would take 4 inch pieces of French baguettes and insert pieces of chocolate in the interior and eat them for a snack. French crusty baguettes make an excellent foil for good quality chocolate.

My love of baking is really the love and desire to put smiles on everyone’s faces. Whenever I make something by hand, it makes me so happy to see my family close their eyes, flair their nostrils and lick their lips in delight. It truly is all about the love. That would be the only reason for baking in a professional capacity, to spread the love and goodness that is all about patisserie.

Monday’s can be fun

Tags

fun, marriage, movies, postaday2012, school, shopping, work

Yesterday my hubby decided to work from home since Monday was a floating holiday. However, our baby girl had school and needed to be driven back to her campus so we decided to make an adventure out of the journey once we dropped her off in time for her first class.

My hubby had a meeting with a colleague located not too far from the baby girl’s school and he turned the meeting into a breakfast meeting at a lovely cafe, so while my hubby and his colleague were discussing work, I was busy eating two eggs over easy, sausage and rye toast with plenty of coffee.

Afterwards, after saying our goodbyes to the colleague, my hubby took me to a spectacular food speciality store located solely in the Boston area, Wegman’s. It was so well organized, well stocked, well laid and so pristine. Everything looked excitingly delicious. The produce section with its varieties of fresh mushrooms, the choices between broccoli, cauliflower and romanesco, a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower, it is such a pretty vegetable and tastes exactly like a hybrid of the two. The meat section was outstanding, offering locally sourced cuts of meat and organic choices as well.

Cheese had its own showcase stocked with local cheeses from Vermont, Massachusetts and even Maine. We bought a tub of Fromage blanc made in Vermont for the kids to try, to see if we found something to tide them over until they could get back to France for the original petit suisses.

The adventure wasn’t over, a movie was in the works as we got closer to home. Since we had been out and about so early, the day was still young. That is how the idea of a movie came about and we had the same movie in mind, The Man with the Iron Fists.

It was great, I have always loved martial arts movies and this one was fantastic. It was presented by Quentin Tarantino and the director is a new one, the rapper RMZ, who did a bang up job. It was an homage to the old genre of martial arts movies and the choreography was exceptional. I grew up watching the old style movies featuring Bruce Lee and his contemporaries on Saturday afternoons on channel nine. The acting was great, the movie had Russell Crowe, Lucy Lui and other Asian actors that I knew by sight not by name.

If you enjoy martial arts movies, you will definitely enjoy this one. When we got back home, Jack got extra attention to make up for our absence and we settled down for a quiet night of t.v, Bones was on and then Castle, so it was a night of not to miss t.v.

Like I said, Monday’s can be fun.