It's the last Wednesday of the month and that means it's time for What's Up Wednesday. We had a wonderful month despite our dreary weather.
What I've Been Eating this Month:
Chia "pudding" in almond milk with fresh fruits
Roasted veggies over farro with sourdough rolls
Fruit and granola
tomatoes, cucumber, and an almond butter sandwich
Salad, acorn squash, and roasted potatoes
Pesto pasta with broccoli, roasted veggies and salad
chicken fajita & beef brisket taco
Lots of ice cream from Jeni's!
Quiche and salad
Salmon and pasta with veggies in a lemon/wine sauce
A Greek/rice bowl from Cava
Salad with feta and a veggie burger
Coconut shrimp with veggies
Homemade croissants that Alec made while on April vacation
Stuffed shrimp, roasted potatoes, and veggies
peanut butter cheesecake
Vegetable quiche with veggies
Sweet potatoes, veggies and salad
PB & J on a homemade croissant with butternut squash fries
What I'm Reminiscing About: Well, we officially have one boy that is no longer in his teens! Man those years flew by..
Ian age 13
Around age 14
Age 15
Age 16
Age 18
What I'm Loving: I've only managed it two or perhaps 3 times this week but I have been loving getting to sit on the deck once again to read and soak up some sun.
What We've Been Up To:
watching sunsets
lots of hiking
we went to our local casino to play Bingo as part of a school fundraiser
more hiking
we watched the eclipse
I went to Nashville for a long weekend to meet up with fellow bloggers Tanya, Jennifer, and Marilyn
Alec's last track season started..
Some more hiking..
What I'm Dreading: Nothing right now.
What I'm Working On: I'm working on cleaning the whole house, making a cake/dessert for Ian's birthday, making up graduation invites for Alec's party and pulling together a menu.
Make up of Alec's invitations
What I'm Excited About: It feels like these next few weeks/months until graduation are going to fly right by and I am excited for all the end of year things and "lasts" we'll be experiencing with Alec as well as all the exciting new firsts.
What I'm Watching/Reading: We Were the Lucky Ones (Netflix), Tracker (Paramount+), Resident Alien (Netflix)-- a show I thought I'd hate but ended up enjoying once my husband started watching it. One True Loves (Hulu), Mediterranean Life, P.S. I Love You (how did I miss this movie coming out in 2007? I LOVED it!), Ghostbusters Frozen Empire (at the movies!)
I managed to read 14 books this month! I'll have a review up next Thursday at our very first Share Your Shelf Link up (which I'll talk about more at the end of this post).
What I'm Listening to: Evan played this song in the car yesterday and I just can not get it out of my head.
What I'm Wearing: Still lots of pants and long sleeves with the occasional pair of flip flops thrown in (though you can tell I spent a long weekend in Tennessee mid-month with short sleeves, capri pants, and sundresses thrown in!).
What I'm Doing This Weekend: Celebrating Ian's 20th birthday with the family.
What I'm Looking Forward to Next Month: Alec's senior prom! My husband and I are also celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary but it will be pretty low key this year as we just can not find a good weekend to get away.
So much goodness going on here! Those crosssaints that Alex made look delicious so glad you are back to your gorgeous hikes. That navy striped sweater is fabulous!
Happy birthday to Ian, and all the senior moments...so many fun things to celebrate! I loved all the senior things and tried to soak them all up while they lasted. I love all of your food and the outfits...you're so great at documenting things. I need to learn to be better about this. I hope you have a great day, my friend and that you get to pull your flip flops out again and read in the sun!
Thank you! Ian didn't really do anything all for his senior year so I didn't have any of those moments to enjoy and it sounds like Evan will be the same way so I'm taking full advantage of all these fun things with Alec. It's looking like my flip flops will stay packed away until next week.
Oh, I'm totally going to try and link up with Share Your Shelf. It will encourage me to get my "end of month" book posts up in a timely fashion! And what a fun trip to Nashville!!! And yes, "dreary" is an excellent word to describe our April weather -- as they're calling for SNOW tonight. Ugh.
The first Thursday of each month? Oh man, that may be difficult but I will try! (Seeing as how I got my March book review out YESTERDAY, it is understandable how this will be a change for me (assuming I can do it for which I will make every effort!)). All the senior activities are exciting- how neat that you are making your own invitations!
Yep, but you are more than welcome to share your March book review! I just finished up the invitations this morning (well, making them anyway. I do still need to actually go through and fill all the information in now).
I mixed up my days and thought next Wednesday was the last Wednesday of the month, but it'll be may haha. You've had quite the month! Good luck with all the grad party prep! Also looking forward to the book reviews :)
Joanne, you had a busy month and I love all of that healthy food you've been eating. As always you look nice in all of your outfits. How exciting that you all will be hosting the book link-up and I'm looking forward to that.
Oh my goodness - I so want to eat at your house!! So much good food. Looks good even in the pictures! And lots of cute outfits too!! Hard to believe it is prom season!
Happy birthday to your son! Enjoy the celebration. I love having adult 'kids'! Your book posting sounds interesting. I will try to link up, going to put it on my calendar. We have porch sitting temperatures but the pollen here is something else and we cover our furniture and roll up the rugs outdoors for the month of April to make the cleanup easier. We're almost ready for morning coffee out there though and I can't wait!
Hi Joanne, loving the look of the meals you've been eating - yum! Happy belated birthday to your son! That deck where you recline to read looks awesome - lucky you! What an outlook! I really love that first sunset photo - it's fabulous! Looks like you've had a fun time in Nashville (I'd love to visit there). Lots of good stuff in this post. Thanks for linking up with #WWWhimsy and hope you enjoy the rest of your week! xo
All of your food looks so good, especially those roasted veggies and the chicken fajita! Here's to more sunny days sitting outside! It's gorgeous here now which is a shame because it's been chilly for most of today. The invitations look fab and happy birthday to Ian! It sounds like you had a great month!
Plenty to celebrate coming up so happy birthday to Ian and happy anniversary to you. Love the bloggers real life link up - I love meeting bloggers in real life ... it's always like catching up with old friends.
What a fun month, Jo. Your meals look delicious and many are the same as what is on our menu at home. I always enjoy photos of the nature surrounding where you live. Isn't it wonderful catching up with blogging friends IRL? Thanks so much for participating in #WBOYC? and have a lovely May. x
What a wonderful month. As always your food pics look so delicious and healthy. Happy birthday to Ian and good luck with all your plans for Alec's graduation! I clicked on the song and even though I have never heard it before I totally get why it sticks to your head! Hahaha! Ruth@playworkeatrepeat
What a fun month and so deliciously busy! Those homemade croissants look fabulous and how cool were your pictures of the eclipse?! Yay for meeting blogging buddies - I bet that was a lot of fun.
Aw, thank you! I both love and hate when he makes croissants; I love it because they are incredible but I hate it because I just cannot resist eating them.
It sounds as if you have a lot going on, Joanne. I must say I especially enjoyed what you do not have going on right now: anything you are dreading. Yea!
Do you remember the TGIF lineups on Friday nights? I can remember planning sleepovers and time with friends around TV Show lineups of our favorite shows... or else trying to set the VCR to record our favorite shows if we weren't going to be home. And through the years I had SO MANY favorites! Growing pains aired in 1985 which put me around age 8 and it stayed on the air until I was 15 or so; I'm pretty sure most people in my age group watched mostly for Kirk Cameron and all his antics. I still have a soft spot for family sit-coms! The Facts of Life aired when I was just 2 and stayed on the air until I was 11 so I'm sure the episodes I remember so fondly were either some of the later ones and then reruns shown later on when I was old enough to watch from the beginning. I think everyone would have loved an Edna Garret in their lives. Benson another sitcom that began airing when I was just 2 and was done by the time I was 9 (another one I must have watched mai...
I loved the challenge of this week's list for our 26 lists link up. I don't know about you but I really need to laugh more lately. It's such a great stress reliever. 1. Books-- I love a good funny book that makes me laugh out loud. I haven't read one in a while but if you have any recommendations I'm all ears. The last book I can remember making me laugh was the Un-Honeymooners. 2 The boys being silly. 3. Watching shows like America's Funniest Videos or Family Feud. 4. My husband. Most people don't realize it but he's actually pretty funny and often makes me laugh. 5. Whenever my sisters/ family get together and we get to reminiscing (particularly if my Aunt Elaine is around) we end up laughing so hard at all the old family stories that we are all in tears by the end of the night. It's fabulous. 6. Movies like Mom's Night Out, Christmas Vacation, and Grown Ups make me laugh out loud. 7. When my ...
I don't tend to keep a lot of crafting supplies on hand so when I saw this month's de-stash challenge I wasn't sure what I was going to make. I finally realized that with so many of my Christmas gifts being cash and gift cards this year that I needed to make up some fun paper crafting/ creative ways to gift them. I still want my nieces and nephews to have something to open so I pulled out my papers and stamps and made up some cute little money/gift card holders. They were much easier to make than I thought. The first one I worked on was to hold some oversized Nintendo gift cards. I made a standard sized card and folded down one corner of the card front. Then I ran my double sided tape along the bottom an 1/2 way up the side creating a cute little pocket. Finally I added some cute embellishments and ribbons. Voila! A simple and easy gift card holder for those larger sized gift cards. The bulk of the tweens and teens on my list j...
Alec really wanted to try making his own gingerbread house this year without using a premade kit. We talked about how we never really eat the house since they don't taste very good. Years ago we gave up on the frosting that comes in the kit and began making our own so we thought perhaps we should try making our our house too. Only problem is that no one in the house likes gingerbread. We talked about trying to make the house using a sugar cookie recipe. Alec was so excited at that idea since he just LOVES sugar cookies. He found a recipe online for a simple sugar cookie recipe and mixed up the dough. He rolled it out an cut it to the size of our cookie sheets-- we had read that it's easiest to cut the house pieces out after the dough has been baked and is still warm and soft because then you don't have to worry about any of the pieces losing their shape while baking. I had picked out a simple cookie cutter set on Amazon and as soon as the ...
I finished up the 52 Book challenge by mid-July this year despite reading lots of other books along the way. 1. Locked Room Mystery-- Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney- 2. Bibliosmia: A Smelly Book-- Heidi by Johanna Spyri 3. More than 40 chapters -- Betting on You by Lynn Painter 4. Lowercase Letters on the Spine-- The Book Proposal by KJ Micciche (read in Jan) 5. Magical Realism-- The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer 6. Women in STEM-- The Women by Kristin Hannah 7. At Least 4 Different POV-- A Fatal Affair by A. R Torre 8. Features the Ocean-- Blue Hawaiian by Carla Luna 9. A Character-Driven Novel-- Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close 10. Told in Non-Chronological Order-- The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins 11. Title Starts with the Letter "K" -- Key Lime Garden Inn by Annie Cabot- 12. Title Starts with the Letter "L" -- The Last Love Note by Emma Gray 13. An Academic Thriller -- One of Us Is Next by Karen McManus (read in Jan) 14. ...
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So much goodness going on here! Those crosssaints that Alex made look delicious so glad you are back to your gorgeous hikes. That navy striped sweater is fabulous!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kathrineeldridge.com
Thank you!
DeleteYour meals look amazing and so colorful as always! PS I Love You is one of my all time FAVES :)
ReplyDeleteI couldn't believe I had never heard of it! I loved the movie.
DeleteHappy birthday to Ian, and all the senior moments...so many fun things to celebrate! I loved all the senior things and tried to soak them all up while they lasted. I love all of your food and the outfits...you're so great at documenting things. I need to learn to be better about this. I hope you have a great day, my friend and that you get to pull your flip flops out again and read in the sun!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Ian didn't really do anything all for his senior year so I didn't have any of those moments to enjoy and it sounds like Evan will be the same way so I'm taking full advantage of all these fun things with Alec. It's looking like my flip flops will stay packed away until next week.
DeleteOh, I'm totally going to try and link up with Share Your Shelf. It will encourage me to get my "end of month" book posts up in a timely fashion! And what a fun trip to Nashville!!! And yes, "dreary" is an excellent word to describe our April weather -- as they're calling for SNOW tonight. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI hope you do! We are supposed to get some frost and below freezing temps tonight but it looks like it warm up by next week.
DeleteThe first Thursday of each month? Oh man, that may be difficult but I will try! (Seeing as how I got my March book review out YESTERDAY, it is understandable how this will be a change for me (assuming I can do it for which I will make every effort!)). All the senior activities are exciting- how neat that you are making your own invitations!
ReplyDeleteYep, but you are more than welcome to share your March book review! I just finished up the invitations this morning (well, making them anyway. I do still need to actually go through and fill all the information in now).
DeleteI mixed up my days and thought next Wednesday was the last Wednesday of the month, but it'll be may haha. You've had quite the month! Good luck with all the grad party prep! Also looking forward to the book reviews :)
ReplyDeleteOops! I've done that before.
DeleteHappy birthday to Ian and happy anniversary to you! Graduation definitely brings a whole season of change. I'm excited about Share Your Shelf!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I had to search long and hard to find even just those few photos of Ian.
DeleteJoanne, you had a busy month and I love all of that healthy food you've been eating. As always you look nice in all of your outfits. How exciting that you all will be hosting the book link-up and I'm looking forward to that.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteSo much goodness in one post. Love it.
ReplyDeletewww.rsrue.blogspot.com
Thanks!
DeleteOh my goodness - I so want to eat at your house!! So much good food. Looks good even in the pictures! And lots of cute outfits too!! Hard to believe it is prom season!
ReplyDeleteAw, thank you!
DeleteHappy birthday to your son! Enjoy the celebration. I love having adult 'kids'! Your book posting sounds interesting. I will try to link up, going to put it on my calendar. We have porch sitting temperatures but the pollen here is something else and we cover our furniture and roll up the rugs outdoors for the month of April to make the cleanup easier. We're almost ready for morning coffee out there though and I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteThank you! We don't have any pollen... yet! The trees are budded like they want to bloom but it just hasn't warmed up enough.
DeleteAs always, all the food looks delicious! I am looking forward to the link up and hope y'all have good weather to celebrate the birthday this weekend!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteI hope you're still able to celebrate your anniversary because it's definitely a good one,
ReplyDeleteXOOX
Jodie
Thanks!
DeleteThis was such a lovely post! And it feels amazing to have a child out of their teens doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteIt really does!
DeleteHappy birthday to Alec! It's so strange when your children age, and you don't, right? You always have the cutest outfits and the best photos, Joanne!
ReplyDeletehttps://marshainthemiddle.com/
Exactly! LOL.
DeleteHi Joanne, loving the look of the meals you've been eating - yum! Happy belated birthday to your son! That deck where you recline to read looks awesome - lucky you! What an outlook! I really love that first sunset photo - it's fabulous! Looks like you've had a fun time in Nashville (I'd love to visit there). Lots of good stuff in this post. Thanks for linking up with #WWWhimsy and hope you enjoy the rest of your week! xo
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteThat purple sunset is so pretty. I will have to join your book link up...obviously.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I can't wait to see all your fabulous book reviews!
DeleteAll of your food looks so good, especially those roasted veggies and the chicken fajita!
ReplyDeleteHere's to more sunny days sitting outside! It's gorgeous here now which is a shame because it's been chilly for most of today.
The invitations look fab and happy birthday to Ian!
It sounds like you had a great month!
Thank you so much! It was only 45 (F) today so it's still quite cold here.
DeletePlenty to celebrate coming up so happy birthday to Ian and happy anniversary to you. Love the bloggers real life link up - I love meeting bloggers in real life ... it's always like catching up with old friends.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteWhat a great month, Jo, with extremely mouth-watering, healthy meals. I am so glad that you read One for Sorrow. I absolutely love that book!
ReplyDeleteAw, thank you!
DeleteWhat a fun month, Jo. Your meals look delicious and many are the same as what is on our menu at home. I always enjoy photos of the nature surrounding where you live. Isn't it wonderful catching up with blogging friends IRL? Thanks so much for participating in #WBOYC? and have a lovely May. x
ReplyDeleteThank you so much!
DeleteYou take the best food pictures!
ReplyDeleteAw, thank you!
DeleteWhat a wonderful month. As always your food pics look so delicious and healthy. Happy birthday to Ian and good luck with all your plans for Alec's graduation! I clicked on the song and even though I have never heard it before I totally get why it sticks to your head! Hahaha!
ReplyDeleteRuth@playworkeatrepeat
Thank you so much!
DeleteThanks for joining us Joanne and happy birthday celebrations for your son!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteHow fun that you met up with fellow bloggers!
ReplyDeleteThose croissants look amazing. And that sunset!! Enjoy your week, the birthday party, sunsets, and books!
Thank you so much!
DeleteOh that first sunset is absolutely stunning!! All of the shades of purple!
ReplyDeleteI could not believe it' we rarely get sunrises or sunsets that are so vibrant. It reminded me of something I'd see in Florida!
DeleteWow, you've certainly been reading a lot! I look forward to participating in your book linky. Happy belated 20th birthday to Ian! #WWWhimsy
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteWhat a fun month and so deliciously busy! Those homemade croissants look fabulous and how cool were your pictures of the eclipse?! Yay for meeting blogging buddies - I bet that was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteAw, thank you! I both love and hate when he makes croissants; I love it because they are incredible but I hate it because I just cannot resist eating them.
DeleteIt sounds as if you have a lot going on, Joanne. I must say I especially enjoyed what you do not have going on right now: anything you are dreading. Yea!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Delete