Weekend Update

After what felt like the longest week ever, this weekend has been equally long but much much more pleasant.  I’ve had lots of fun with friends, fun with Mikey, some quiet time by myself and lots of food and wine. 

Beth’s birthday was this week. We celebrated by wandering the Avenues and exploring Total Wine.  Beth, Amy, Brie and I wandered around the store for ages picking out stuff, finding all kinds of nifty new wines, craft beers and yummy liquors.  I finally found the pumpkin pie vodka I’ve been hunting for since Pinterest tempted me with pumpkin drink recipes.  I can’t wait to try them.  In further celebration of birthdays and spring break, we drank some of the wines we bought at one of Beth’s trademark wine tastings. We did a March Madness bracket test of Bordeaux versus Chianti coupled with flatbreads.  Ever since we had flatbread pizzas at Seasons 52, we’ve been pretty hooked on experimenting with them.  Everything was super delicious and the company was grand – Amy, Jonathan and Emma even made an appearance. Emma is almost one; she’s adorable.  There are so few girls in our group that getting to see Amy so frequently is a treat.

Easter was today but being away from family, lacking children to do any Easter Bunnying with and lacking any religious sentiments, we did not exactly celebrate it.  Last night Beth and I dyed eggs using some strange methods that yielded varying results – they never ever turn out as nifty as they look on the boxes. Today Mike and I slept way in, made buttermilk biscuits for brunch then spent a fair portion of the day fighting with the dryer vent. We lost to the dryer vent. The dryer continuously wins these battles. We spent much of the remainder of our afternoon fighting other battles, kicking butt in Torchlight.

Friday night, I celebrated the opening of one of my very favorite restaurants – a long anticipated event in my little corner of the world. Melbourne got its first Chipotle! Nearly every time we go into Orlando, Mike takes me to Chipotle because I miss their tasty spicy burritos. No more! I gorged myself on a hugely delicious burrito after waiting in one of the longer lines of my life. After our joyful Chipotle trip I took Mike and Chris to Total Wine to get their contributions to the wine tasting and more exploration of our giant new wine store. 

I’ve gotten a bunch of time to myself this weekend too.  A couple of really good runs, some surprisingly satisfying cleaning and organizing events, some sewing and a lovely bath.  I’ve even gotten to sit down to read a whole magazine. 

Summer Closet Challenge

Temperatures climbed into the high 80s this weekend.  It seems that, despite this week’s cold snap, a Blackberry Winter as Wikipedia tells me, summer has returned. Prompted by the increasing humidity and unreasonably warm garments filling my closet, I pulled down the boxes of my summer clothes.  Summer clothes, as I know them, never truly go away down here.  The little tee-shirt with its short sleeves that would never EVER have shown its face in my January closet growing up now lives in my closet perpetually. Only the really extreme clothing cycles in and out – the heavy cardigans, long sleeve blouses, tank tops and candy colored skirts.  

During my first year down here, I tried really hard to not buy a bunch of new clothes, only buying what I felt I desperately needed to help make my northern wardrobe Florida functional.  I made notes on what I thought I needed, living through every “season” Florida had to offer before committing the ample amount of money it would take to totally revamp my sweater-rich closet. A year and a half ago, when we moved into our house, I remember complaining vociferously about how urgent remodeling my closet was.  Now, as I pull all of my summer clothing out of storage and begin to try to stuff it into my closet, I realize two things:  I still need to remodel my closet and I have WAY too many clothes.  Too many is an understatement; the amount is staggering and equally embarrassing and impressive.  Thus, my summer project begins:

No clothes buying! None. Zero.