Weekend Edition: Lost Weekend and California Recap

I got back from California on Thursday, and I was as sick as a dog!  I was feverish, achy, and coughing like I had the croup.  I spent Thursday afternoon, and most of Friday asleep on my couch with my dog looking worriedly after me.  By Saturday I felt well enough to accompany my mom out to finish our Christmas shopping, in part because I was buoyed by the Chicken Curry Stew at this restaurant.   Then back to the couch and early to bed.  On Sunday I felt a lot better, and I was back to baking my weekly loaf of sourdough, and making braised short ribs with sauerkraut for dinner, as well as catching up on a week-plus loads of laundry. Pretty dull stuff.  Since I planned to do a trip wrap-up on Friday for my Friday Fun post and felt too sick to get online, I'm just going to do it now instead.  Lost weekend, over and forgotten.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures while in California, well I did, but they were mostly of Tawny opening every gift that she received at her shower, and the items that we wanted to remember for later at IKEA.  Won't bore you with those!  Here is a quick pictorial view of the trip and some of the things we did.

Oceanside, California.

Tawny's belly, I guess that was about 33 weeks.

The next morning I made this flower arrangement for the baby shower from the things growing in Tawny and Jack's front yard.  Tea roses, camellias, bird-of-paradise, kangaroo paws, and oranges in your yard and blooming in December?  Yeah, that's the draw of California, in case you've never felt it before.

One of the buntings that I made her last shower was recycled for this shower. Yay fabric!

Tawny and her friend Annie.  They've been friends since middle school.   Tawny's mom is an amazing seamstress and she made that blouse as well as several others.  The details were really beautiful.

Present time!  

Tawny has that giant smile throughout all the photos from the shower.  Good job party organizers, you made her really happy.  I think everyone was laughing here because we all agreed that Jack was going to want a matching set of lion pajamas.

The baby shower was on Saturday, and on Sunday our focus switched to home improvement projects.  These are some of the bamboo flooring samples that Tawny was pricing.  She and Jack have only been in their current house for a little over a month, and their landlady has agreed that she'll pay for new laminate or bamboo flooring if Jack will install it.  Tawny is leaning heavily towards the bamboo option, and these pale colors were the simplest and cheapest options.  She's hoping that if costs are low enough they'll get to do the whole house, and not just the living room and kitchen.

Next we hit up IKEA looking for bedding, rugs, and decor items for the nursery/guest room.  This rug fit the color scheme perfectly, but in the end was rejected because it was synthetic, and Tawny wants a wool rug.

We both liked this poster, and again it fit the color scheme and has an educational component, but it too was left behind.  I'll do a separate nursery post update later in the week.

This is one of many citrus trees that adorn Tawny and Jack's yard.  This is an orange, but there is also a pomelo, a grapefruit, a lemon, a lime, and several tangerines.  Also a peach, an apple, a guava, a strawberry guava and two pomegranates.  Right now the citrus is just starting to ripen in quantity and Tawny doesn't know how to use it up fast enough.  She needs a juicer stat!

I suggested we make marmalade, which was fun.  We ended up with 17 jars of marmalade and really didn't use that much citrus, considering.  Oh well, she's got Christmas gifts at the ready, which is good considering the next paragraph's news.  It was her first time canning anything, and this was her leaning over the jars giggling as the lids popped down after they came out of the water bath.

Tawny's due date was supposed to be January 24th, but on Saturday her water broke and she's currently in the hospital getting ready to have Baby Boy six weeks early.  Everything seems healthy with mother and son, he just wants out early.  Good luck baby and mama!