Nothing Day

Today is my "nothing day". I'm doing nothing. Or, at least, as close to nothing as one can do with a baby and a puppy. I finished my event, I had a rough week last week and then a busy weekend so I think I deserve this. Especially since this week is going to be busy too. We have our bible study (Auxano) tonight, a meeting with a pastor for our baby dedication tomorrow, I am meeting a caterer on Wednesday to discuss a standing discount for my Event Planning business and then my mom's tea party is on Saturday so I've got to have everything ready for that!
Even though this weekend was busy, it was nice. Saturday, after I got up at 5:30 and waited until everyone else woke up, Matt and I went out for breakfast and picked up some more loose leaf tea. Fortunately I remembered that I also needed some for my mom's party before we left (I almost forgot entirely!). Then we ran a couple errands that resulted in Matt buying a router and we came home to get some work done. That evening we went over to Matt's parents' place for a fire and hung out with the family.
As a bit of an aside, why does everything at Earls have onions in it?? Seriously though - everything! Matt and I went for lunch yesterday after church with his siblings. I ordered the Dynamite Shrimp Rolls and the small house salad and Matt ordered Chili Chicken for us to share as a starter and the Hunan Kung Pow. well, first the Chili Chicken came with little bits of green onion all over it. Then my Shrimp Rolls came. They were tempura shrimp with slices of green onion rolled up in the nori and rice. Onion in sushi? Really? And then my salad was just saturated with onion and so was Matt's Hunan. It was really weird. We ordered 4 very different menu items and all of them were just overpowered with onion. I definately stank of onions for the rest of the day.
Anyway, at least we got to go out for lunch with people we love hanging out with, and everything tasted good in spite of the onions. Then last night we went over to my parents' house for dinner and to hang out. I got in a game of cards with my mom (and I won for once!) while Matt got to watch a movie with my dad.
I did manage to figure out with my sister what our exact menu for ma mere's party will be. My sister is making a black bean and corn salsa that we'll serve when people first come in as well as the proscuitto wrapped apples. Then when people sit down for tea we'll serve cheese scones and blueberry scones, lavender-honey poppyseed cupcakes and my amuse bouche which, thanks to my sister-in-law, I finally know what to do. She recommended that I stuff little melon balls with cinnamon sugar coated almond bits. Then I'll top that with my pistachio infused cream (I really want to make that for some reason!) Then, after tea, we'll serve a strawberry banana sherbet in little shot glasses. The teas we'll have are Red Rose (my mom's favorite), Cream of Earl Grey, Raspberry Honey and Amaretto Cherry.
I had wanted to serve mimosas with the salsa and the apples but I don't think it would fly with the majority of the attendees, so I told my sister I'd throw a tea party for her, because I know that party would appreciate it.
So this tea party won't be a Victorian tea. It'll be more eclectic than that. I'm still giving out the tea cup candles as favors and I'll have two centerpieces - one for the savoury table (the moss on the silver platter with my useless egg) and then a rose bowl for the tea table.
Oh, and Gabe's baby dedication will be the weekend after and we are now having three cakes. Yep, three. My mom is making an angel food, I wanted to buy a Dairy Queen ice cream cake and my Grandma made a birthday cake for my niece so she wants to make one for Gabe too. I may need to make something that doesn't have sugar - or, you know, run the risk of making all the attendees diabetic.
I do need to go grocery shopping today, if I happen to get a mild fit of productivity. Gabe is almost out of Cheerios! And I am out of coffee. Those are two very dangerous things to be out of.

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)