This and That

Mid-week updates are rare for me, but I guess I feel motivated. Not that much is going on really, just the usual work, wedding planning, hanging out, dog stuff, and such. I poured myself some milk today and saw that it expires on 9/21/08, one day after the wedding. That really freaked me out to see that I'm getting married before my milk expires. There's still so much to do!

This past weekend we picked out tuxes for the groomsmen and Erik. I'm unsure of the groomsmen vests and will be going back to give them another look-over. I am very against shiny fabric and am paranoid they will be shiny in photographs; details details! I know all the boys will look handsome anyway :)

Our wedding bands are done and they turned out great! I know a couple people are interested in seeing them so here are some pics! We are very pleased with them.

A little blurry, but you get the idea.
It is 3 separate bands that will look better once they're sautered

Erik's tungsten ring, very masculine :)

Now then, onto more important things. Pies! I don't know why I'm on such a pie kick lately but at least other people benefit from it. I made another apple pie, this time with crumb topping for abo game night over at Sarah and Sobo's. This past weekend I picked blackberries and made them into a pie (well, 5 cups of them). That was the first pie I kept, Erik was happy about that.

Apple pie with crumb topping

Blackberry pie

Now berry picking is really a great time. There are "briars" right in the park at our house and we (along with other park patrons) have been picking them clean, or at least attempting to. There are hundreds more berries every other day and its impossible to keep up! Although some old ladies with walkers, buckets, gloves and hairnets did a pretty good job the other day.

Erik and I have picked about 1.5 gallons which isn't a lot by any means. But, our freezer space is limited and I only have time on the weekends anyway!

Although the picking is easy enough because its right at our house, berry prep is rather extensive.

After picking comes washing:
filling a sink works best

After washing comes drying:
I'm lazy and just set them on paper towels

After drying comes freezing:
the first freezing must be done on cookie sheets to keep the berries from mushing!

And after freezing comes more freezing:

once the berries are frozen, you can put them in containers
(I'll take a pic tomorrow of my berry collection, camera is dead!)

And after that comes jelly, pie, smoothies, crisps, pancakes, syrup, and more! Well I'll have to pick more berries to accomplish all that, and get a bigger freezer, but a girl can dream.

A few blueberries from random bushes by the road

Best use for blueberries in my opinion

A couple weeks ago Erik and I bought Scrabble. Well deluxe Scrabble to be exact, which has more tiles and spaces! Our first game I was the victor by a large margin thanks to my 82 point word, 'Reasoned'. How you may ask, does that add up to 82 points? Well I landed on a quadruple word space, among possible others, AND I used all my letters, which is a bonus of 50. That may not by exactly 82, I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was killer.

Our second game I was not so lucky and Erik beat me, but not by much. Another game is in order.

leftover letters

The weekend before last we took the dogs to the dog park. Now this is a pretty big deal considering Captain inexplicably becomes aggressive with dogs in the park, has a great time off leash with dogs at daycare/boarding, and last we knew was awful with dogs at the dog park! I've worked with him for months with mixed results, but had been avoiding dog parks altogether. He did pretty well, but had to be supervised constantly. We had more fun outside of the dog area in the HUGE park that is Gabriel Park.

If you click on this pic to maximize it, you'll see all of Captain's feet are off the ground

Behind again

I always seem to be at least a weekend behind, so for now I'll just keep up with tradition and talk about the weekend before two days ago.

The weather has been great down here, its cooled off quite a bit (well up until now, that is) and that has been a great relief. Saturday Erik, Todd, and I rode the max downtown and enjoyed Brewfest down by the river. It was incredibly crowded but fun nonetheless. We actually only tried three different beers because of the long lines, my favorite part was people-watching. It was really an odd assortment of folks.

We then walked to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. The food was quite tasty and they have BBQ sauces of all levels of spiciness. Erik order the most spicy and was regretting it by the end of his meal. If its too hot for him, it should not be served in a restaurant.

Sunday Erik and I went out to the park to pick apples from a previously scoped-out tree. The apples aren't great by themselves, but I made a tasty apple pie with about 18 of them (yes, they were small apples.

Later that day I headed over to Gretchen's house (sorry, no pics!) and enjoyed a delicious pot luck. I got to meet some interesting people and eat a lot of good food. Kristin arrived in Portland late on Sunday and came over to crash at our place for the night. It was a good weekend, as usual!

Apparently there's only one way to pose when holding a beer mug