Dinner At Mom's

We went out to dinner with the mom's tonight. Jerry chose Smokey Bones because they had a $10 off coupon for checks of $20 or more. It was such a good deal that they had loooooong waiting lines. Luckily, we got there early and only had to wait 25 minutes ;) Butm, let's talk about last weekend!

My Mom cooked dinner at her condo instead of us going out last week. Doesn't she set a lovely table? She searched high and low to get that set of dishes because they are sold by the piece and no store had the whole set. I believe it was worth it because they seem to make her happy and may have brought out some creativity (lots of new recipes).

Erica & Sarah. They weren't feeling well but they joined us anyway. Poor Erica felt so poorly that she slept on my mom's couch after dinner. Despite her feeling awful and not wearing makeup, she is still a cutie! She definetly got the cute gene in our family :)

Fried chicken with some Polish sausage and red potatoe wedges. Yummy!

My Cousin Lea & Jerry. Lea is dishing out some fried okra. Now don't turn your nose up, my mom makes good fried okra. Lea is my first cousin and Cousin Erica is her daughter (and Sarah is cousin Erica's daughter) so I had my first cousin, my first cousin once removed, and my first cousin twice removed at the table. How cool is that?

Marge waiting for the rest of us to sit down. Those are pinto beans right above the text. Love them. Amaizing how bad they smell when you burn them though. It's an odor you will never forget.

Made It Myself Monday & Way Back Wednesday

My computer has a problem....I'm using my Dad's. I've been hesitating to install the software for my digital camera on his computer so that I could share photos on the blog. Tonight I just plugged in the USB and it had it's own program for extracting photos and it was much easier to use than the program that came with the camera so I am back to blogging!

Let's start with Way Back Wednesday - OK, it wasn't that way back as these are only photos from last weekend, LOL. But, since they are of a birthday dinner, I think we can classsify them as Way Back.

Above is photo of my hubby and mother-in-law at her 87th birthday dinner. Below is MIL eating birthday cake. I am such a bad photographer I forgot to take a photo of the lovely cake until AFTER it was cut. It was a marble cake with chocolate moose in it. (I'm such an Alaskan that is the only way I know how to spell moose!)

And for Made It Myself (Last) Monday:

Actually I finished this purse tonight but I have been working on it since Monday. I already mailed the items I finished on Monday. I made two reversible dog coats from this Alabama fabric for an online friend. They are team fabric on one side and corduroy on the other. I also made her two of the harness vest I've shown before but from the Bama fabric. I forgot to take photos, ugh.

I'm trying to come up with ideas to use up the leftovers. Not huge pieces left so it has been a challange. I made this sweet little purse - the first purse I have made since high school. Don't ya just love the handles? I made them from cotton duck, a very thick stabalizer, and ribbon with a floral motif. The handles are my favorite part!

Here's a close up of the ribbon. Just love that very small check. I actually bought three spools and used two on this project. Since I had a big print (the team logo) and a medium print in the starfish (?), thought the ribbon should be the smallest print of the three spools so add variety to the scale of fabrics.

For the inside of the purse I used some fabric a Kodiak friend brough back from Bali. I made pockets of the starfish-ish fabric and trimmed with the ribbon - again three sizes of print. The pattern wasn't particuarily difficult but because I used such a stiff stabalizer, which I found out was only supposed to be used for the BOTTOM of the purse, it made some of the work VERY difficult and I broke two sewing machine needles in the process. I went back and forth on a closure for the purse but I didn't like any I tried so I am not adding one.

Pierogi Grill

We finally had dinner at that Polish restaurant I wrote about before (we couldn't get a seat). We got in because it's not "new" anymore and the City has prohibited them from having the guy on the sidewalk in the pierogi costume due to heavy traffic in the area and the possibility of causing an accident. If was great!

Mom, MIL, hubby & I went tonight and we ordered this HUGE dish called the Polish platter with a little of everything. There was a dozen assorted pierogis (meat, cheese, potato, spinach, and combinations), a giant cabbage roll, Schabovy (pork cutlets with mushroom gravy), grilled polish sausage, potato pancakes, Schab nadziewany (pork lion filled with sausage, plums, and onion), kraut, yellow rice, potatoes boiled in dill, and french fries. We are all still wondering about the fries??? This is a dish you share and now everyone knows what they like best for the next time we go. The dogs were VERY happy that I came home with a small styrofoam box - they just finished their polish feast.


We did find it odd that the restaurant was decorated with an Egyptian motif. I found a story on the web (on TBO.com) that explains the surprising decor. I'm not going to tell you though - you can google it for an interesting story.