Praying Mantis

          We've had quite a few bugs outside our house lately. I don't know if it's the weather or the harvesting or just the fact that we live in the Valley. To my surprise this big guy was relaxing on our patio chair and hung out long enough for me to take a quick photo of him. It looks like he has big funky eyes, but in fact when you zoom in on him (as I kindly have done for you, below), you'll see that the eyes are instead very small black dots. I'm assuming that's some sort of survival trick, don't you think? He has a funny mouth too.

Urban Salvage

On Saturday Chad took me to a new store downtown called Urban Salvage. It opened on October 1 and I was excited to see what the fuss was all about. It's a mix between a garage sale, an antique store and a regular retail shop, with a heavy emphasis on garage sale. They have vintage tables and chairs from local restaurants, window frames, tools, signs, old pictures and mirrors and lots of crap. But within that crap, given the chance, no doubt you'd find something that is a keeper. The shop is only open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays so the time to head down there is limited. Most of the good stuff was gone by the time we got there, but I'm not going to count it out in the future when we're looking for something specific.

This librarian's heart went a-flutter when I saw this old book-drop.  I couldn't figure out what I'd do with it in our house so we let it go. Sigh.

A quick shot of the inside.

The Fair

Sunday we spent the day at the Big Fresno Fair. This trip was Maggie's second time there (click here for last year's post) so I guess now she can be considered a fair regular. We looked at the animals, ate junky food, visited the awesome CBS47 booth and walked around the fairgrounds for a good part of the day.

Maggie getting silly at some booth. I think it was a water safety booth, but I'm not totally sure...

Chad and Maggie in front of the CBS47 booth. There were anchors and reporters there taking photos and signing autographs. In fact, when we took this photo it was the first time they had a fan-free moment. So great!

Book Party Fun

One of Maggie's sweet little friends had her first birthday and earlier this month we got to celebrate with her. Maggie REALLY enjoyed her friend's toys and made herself right at home to use them. We're going to have to watch that.











 



Below are a couple photos of Maggie taken by the birthday girl's photographer dad, Josh Sherfield. As you can see, Maggie is pretty fond of him.

Happy Anniversary

This past weekend Chad and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. My parents were kind enough to come babysit Maggie so we could enjoy an evening out on the town.  We went to an Italian restaurant called Giovanni's that I've had my eye on and then to a movie. For dinner we sat outside on the beautiful patio while enjoying weather so mild we didn't even notice if it was warm or cold. Another great night.

I want to thank our family and good friends for remembering our anniversary and sending their good wishes. It made us both feel really special and loved.

Here's Maggie whistling a little celebratory tune in our honor before we left for the night:

The above picture is so terrible and dark but at least you can kind of see the pretty patio and tree we sat under at dinner. Maybe use your imagination.

Gourds

Way back in the olden days we planted birdhouse gourd seeds in our garden. After a few months those seeds spouted and grew beautiful vines, leaves and robust green gourds. When they finished growing we cut them from their vines to give them the opportunity to dry out and harden. They've been curing for approximately two years now which was a year longer than necessary. Last weekend Chad decided to clean a few of them and turn one into an actual birdhouse. It's not a quick or easy process, but it was worth it and he did an excellent job.

Tamales

Saturday Chad, Mags and I went to a newish restaurant that we will definitely be going back to. Called Casa de Tamales they serve, oh you guessed it, tamales. And they are delicious. Maggie even enjoyed them! Woohoo!

We ate four different tamales:
Green Tomatillo Chicken
Chicken with Mole
Savory Sweet Corn (from the gourmet menu)
New Mexico Chile Pork

For our next visit we're going to try more of the gourmet and sweet tamales. I can't wait!


Here's the menu for those of you who live in the area. Really, the food is excellent. Go there and try it for yourself.

Boots

Now that Fall is here and the weather is sometimes chilly, sometimes warm, I figured this weekend was a good time to bust out the new Ugg-type boots I bought for Mags. She has more adorable new shoes (you'll see those in future posts) but Sunday was the day for the new boots. And shorts. And cuteness. They're a little big for her now but will hopefully be the perfect size by winter. With heavy socks. Or cute striped tights. Or skinny jeans. Lots of options there. So anyway, Sunday Maggie wore the boots for the first time and happily walked up and down our street with them on. Back and forth and back again. She had fun clomping around and we had fun chasing her. Here are a few of the snapshots we took.

Family Portrait

Last week I saw a photo similar to this online and decided that I had to have one with our family. Without further ado...here is our latest family portrait.

Priorities

I have a lot on my plate this week. Piles of housework to finish, a number of errands to run, email messages to respond to, and basically plenty of catching up to do. So what made top on my list this gorgeous afternoon? Harvesting lavender, of course. Yep. In my mind that seemed to be the most pressing task and somehow inched its way to number one. Bummer of a way to spend the last day of summer, huh? You should smell our kitchen, my shirt and my hands.