Easter Snapshots

We spent today at my parents house (minus my Dad, who had to work) enjoyed an Easter feast - our second in two days!

My Uncle Peter, the token vegetarian of the group, somehow got tasked with carving up the ham.


After dinner (and dessert) we taught Grandma to play Apples to Apples.

The cousins - Mark, Me, Joe and Laura.

Grandma and Aunt Barbie (and Joe).

Me, my Mom and Laura.

It was a beautiful day and a great way to celebrate Easter. (And, with all the leftovers we brought home we'll be reliving the celebration all week!)

Happy Easter!

5 Question Friday

I found this fun link-up during the UBP '11. This is my first week participating but I'm planning to keep this going in the future!

1. What is your favorite Easter tradition?



Ham dinner with the family. Reguardless of which family we're with it's always a great meal and great company.



2. Are you a "shower" or a "long, hot bath" kind of person?



Shower - especially after overflowing the bathtub last week. No baths for me for a while!



3. Can you parallel park and if so when is the last time you did it?



I don't think I've parallel parked since my driver's test but I totally nailed it that day! My Dad was so proud.



4. What is your favorite Easter candy?



Cadbury Cream Eggs! I'm making Cadbury Cream Egg cupcakes for tomorrow's Easter Eve party and I'm super excited about them.



5. Easter: do you go all out with the Easter Bunny or focus on the religious part of the holiday?



Our Easter is focused on church and family. Because there's no kids in our house right now, the Easter Bunny skips us.

Another Hole

Last night, in an effort to de-stress I grabbed my book, a glass of wine and drew myself a bath. Twenty minutes later, Mark started hollering from downstairs that he thought the bathtub was leaking and I needed to drain it, now. After the roof issue, this was really unwelcome. My Dad came down after work to see if he could pinpoint the leak. He cut a hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling, below the upstairs bathtub drain. So, now we have a hole in the bathroom and a hole in Mark's office. My Dad has all kinds of fun toys. Like a little camera on a wire thing that he can stick up in the hole and look around. We spent a while running water, filling the tub, etc. The verdict? He couldn't find any leak. He's thinking that the overflow drain isn't sealed properly and I must have massively overflowed the tub last night. How stupid do I feel? The good news is that as long as we don't overflow the tub, there's really no need to fix it immediately. The best way to access it would be to take out the vanity - so we'll address it when we replace the vanity in there. What a headache!

Early Garden Planting

We got busy in the garden this weekend, as planned. This is what we're starting with: Lovely raised beds, thanks to my brother. I measured them out and added green paint dots (courtesy of a bingo marker!) to mark out one square foot sections. Carrots, lettuce, spinach, onions and potatoes went in the ground. I set up the composter too:

I'm so excited that everything's coming together!

2011 Garden Plan

So, there it is. The tentative (and rough) plan for the garden. I'm sure it will change before everything is in the ground but that's what we're shooting for. There are a few other things we have (like melons and strawberries) that we're going to put in other areas, too, not in the garden beds.

On one hand, I feel like it might be a little ambitious for a first-ever garden. On the other hand, I'm really excited about it!

Wish us luck - stuff starts going in the ground this weekend!

Composting 101

Last night, I took a composting class that was offered through the county. Part of the deal was that you got a composter with the class registration - for considerably cheaper than we could buy elsewhere - so I was pretty excited about it. An hour and a half class on composting, though? What could they possibly talk about for an hour and a half?

I really had no idea how much was actually involved in composting. In case you're interested, here's a quick primer:

- Your composter (or compost pile) needs to be a minimum of 3' diameter and 3' high to work properly. Larger than 10' diameter and 5' and you'll kill things, not compost them.

- It needs to be 1/2 to 3/4 full to start composting - otherwise your material will rot instead.

- They work best when placed in the sun.

- To work best, the internal temp of the composter needs to be between 70F degrees and 140F degrees. To cool it off, just turn the pile. You'll want to turn the pile at least once a month during the winter and twice a week during the summer.

- You have to have at least 50% moisture for things to compost. If you reach in a grab a handful of material, you should be able to squeeze a few drops of liquid out. If you can't, it's not wet enough.

- Your compost material should be 25% greens (grass clippings, vegetable peels, fruit) and 75% brown (dried out plants, leaves, coffee grounds). You can go up to 50% greens. This all must be mixed together to compost properly.

- Don't pack in the material!

- Things you can compost: Vegetable food scraps, grass clippings, leaves, flower, sawdust, straw, fruit (freeze before adding to the pile and it will compost faster), egg shells (smash them up first) and coffee grounds (and filters).

- Things you shouldn't compost: Meat scraps, peanut butter, mayonnaise, fish, grass clippings treated with herbicides, weeds with seeds, pet waste, food with grease or soap residue.

- After you have your compost, you'll want to keep it covered, dry and away from trees. Water will wash the nutrients out of the compost and tree roots can quickly take over a compost pile.

Composting has a lot of benefits for a garden, including that it has increased water holding capabilities, improves the soil workability, ties up iron and aluminum in soil and helps reduce soil splattering (which is important because some plant diseases start in the soil).

It's not likely that my compost will be ready for this growing season, but I'm excited to have it for next year's garden. Is anyone else composting?

Biopsy Results are Negative!

I got a call from the surgeon's office this morning letting me know that my biopsy results were negative. As in, it was a fibroadenoma - just a lump.

They've been saying pretty much all along that's what they thought it was. It's one thing to be told a best guess, though, and quite another to hear the official lab results.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers - it was an incredibly nerve wracking experience and the support really did mean a lot.

So, now I'm lump-less and a bit bruised but otherwise just fine. It's nice to have it all behind me.

Baby Lunchdate

I've mentioned it here before, but I met a great group of girls online when I was wedding planning. Almost two years later, we still talk daily and get together when we can. Yesterday, one of the girls, Maria, was passing through the area on her way to a family function so we set up an impromptu lunch date with another girl , Rachel, who lives close by but we've never had an opportunity to meet up. And, they brought their beautiful baby girls with them.

From left to right - Rachel with Julia, Maria with Ella and myself.

The girls were adorable and it was nice to sit and chat with the girls for a bit and catch up face to face.

It also thoroughly freaked out the cats. They both sat at the fringe of things, wide-eyed like, "what are these tiny things in my house and why are they screaming?!" It was pretty hilarious and in hindsight, I wish I had taken pictures of them, too.

Ultimate Blog Party 2011

I'm so excited it's time for the Ultimate Blog Party, hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom, again! I've participated in the party the last two years and have found some great blogs and great blogging friends each time so I'm exited to see what this year's party has in store.

If you've found this post through the party, welcome! I'm Kate, a 20-something relative newlywed. I married my best friend in 2009 and we bought our first home last summer. Our two adopted kitties, Rocky and Kali, round out our little family for now.

So, what do I generally blog about? Anything that's going on in our lives at the time. Lately, it's been a lot of home improvement, spring cleaning and starting our garden for the year. Two of my other passions - community service and reading - also make frequent appearances. We love to travel when we can and I share those stories as well. (Our last trip took us to Grand Cayman, Isla Roatan, Costa Maya and Cozumel).

I also love to cook, so I thought I'd share some party snacks.

Spinach dip, Chocolate Jack Daniel's Cupcakes, Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies and Spicy Snack Pretzels... seriously yum. All of my cooking was starting to take over this blog a bit too much, so a few months ago I moved them over to Kate's Recipe Box. If cooking's your thing, you should definitely pop over and check it out!

Okay, enough about me - I can't wait to meet all of you! If you're stopping by, please say hi and link up your blog so I can visit you too. Happy blog party!

March Reads

March's reading list included:

666 Park Avenue - This was a good, not great, little soap opera about socialite witches in Manhattan. Some of the relationships seemed forced but overall it was a fun read. I'll be looking for the next book in the series when it comes out. I got it as a first read.



Anna and the French Kiss - I loved this book in a sort of giddy schoolgirl way. In the book, Anna gets shipped off to spend her senior year of high school at a bording school in Paris. There is nothing remarkable about Anna - she's just your average, mildly-akward teenager - but that's what makes her so lovable and relatable.

Change of Heart - This book agrivated me to no end. I found all of the characters irritating and unlikable and the plot twist that was supposed to make you second guess your beliefs didn't phase me at all. The only redeeming quality was that the outcome I wanted from the beginning did indeed play out at the end.

The Walk - All of Richard Paul Evans's tug at your heart and I usually love getting lost in the emotional upheaval of it all, but this one fell short. It opened in the familar, heartbreaking frame I was expecting but once the character started "the walk" I quickly got bored. The ending seemed so abrupt I couldn't help but wonder if Evans had gotten tired of the story too.

Jane Eyre* - I didn't actually finish this, but I spent so much time on it that I felt compelled to add it to the list. With the movie out, I thought I'd finally get around to reading the book. I "read" it exclusively for 2 1/2 weeks and only made it about 100 pages in. It just didn't hold my interest at all. Someday, I'll give it another go.

Shakespeare's Counselor - This was the final installment in the Lily Bard series and while I'm sad that it's over I thought it was wrapped up nicely. This one focused equally on the mystery and how far Lily had come personally since the first book. It really showed Lily as someone with a future and no longer living day-to-day, which I appreciated.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz - This book is a 2011 Printz Honor Book and I think the recognition is completely deserved - the book is fantastic. It's the dark yet funny journey of how Vera deals after her best friend dies. It's touching, believable and very well written. I definately recommend it.

Who Was Marco Polo? - My In2Books penpal picked this book for our latest read. It was cute and informative. I was really surprised about how much I didn't know about Marco Polo as I read it.

This puts my finished book total for the year at 19, which is a good pace to make 50 for the year.

I've also decided to tackle the Nest Book Club's Spring Book Challenge. I'm still not sure if I'll be shooting to finish or not, but there are some really fun-looking tasks that I can't wait to work on. The full list is below.

Spring Book Challenge 2011 Tasks

5 pts
-Read a book with a one word title
-Read a book that you already own, but haven't read
-IHO Cherish an Antique Day (April 9), read a classic
-Read a book by an author that has an X, Z, or Q in their name
-Lewis and Clark set off on 5/14/1804: Read a book set somewhere you'd like to go
-Read a book with a person's entire head not visible (only shows other parts of the body)
-Flowers are (finally!) growing: Read a book with a green cover or with "flower" or a specific flower name in the title
-Read a book you loved as a child/teenager
-IHO Earth Day read an ebook, library book, or listen to an audiobook
-Read something outside

10 pts
-Read a book about/at a wedding
-School's out for summer: read a book set in or about high school
-Read a play by Shakespeare
-Read a book set in or about a country you haven't been to
-Read a good book: has an average of 4 stars or higher on Goodreads. The book must have at least 50 ratings (not reviews).
-Read a book with a weather word for the start of hurricane season. Ex: snow, rain, thunder, hurricane, wind, etc.
-Poll Nesties for your book (out of 5 you suggest)
-Read a book to continue a series you have already started
-IHO Pet Owner Day (April 25): book about a pet or animal
-Read a book about an author (biography, memoir, historical fiction)

15 pts
-IHO of royal wedding, book about royalty or royal character
-Holocaust Remembrance Day (May 2): book about/set in the Holocaust
-Read a book of poetry
-Read a book in a genre you don't normally read
-Read a book by an author with your name (first, middle, maiden, or last)
-Read the April, May, or June NBC pick and participate in the discussion
-IHO National Smile Month (June), read a humorous book
-Read a popular book: a book that has at least 15,000 ratings (not reviews) on goodreads
-IHO Mother's and Father's Days, get a suggestion from your mom, dad, or other family member from an older generation
-Read a non-fiction book that isn't a biography or memoir

25 pts
-Experience a story in 2 mediums (Book & TV show, movie, audiobook, play, etc.)
-Read a book about sustainable agriculture, urban farming, farmer's markets, community gardening, or American food policy. Post a 100+ word response to what you read AND a picture of at least 1 edible plant that you are growing in your home/garden.
-Pick a nestie and read one of her 5-star books and one of her 1-star books (or 2-star if she doesn’t have a 1-star). Report back on which nestie you picked, what you thought of the books and how your ratings compared to the nestie you picked.
-Before & After - Read two books- the last word(s) of one title will be the first word(s) of the second.
-Read a non-fiction book about Africa or the Middle East (history, politics, geography, etc). The book can be about a particular country or the region in general. Post your thoughts on the book and whether or not the book impacted your impressions/opinions regarding this part of the world.

The challenge starts today and goes until June 30 - looks like I'll have a lot of reading to do in the next three months!