1/2 Marathon

I have now run a half marathon! The inaugural year for the Providence Rock 'n Roll half marathon. As off as it seems - since it rained the whole time - I don't think we could have had better weather. And thanks to the great support from running partners and cheering on the sidelines it was a successful race that finished with a performance by Sugar Ray (photo above) who was not worth standing around in the rain for... We ended up taking our wet selves and dry clothes to the Westin which was amazing, we were greeted with dry towels and bottles of water. At lunch I quickly realized what I will be in for the next few days as my legs were so weak it was hard to push my chair back from the table but well worth it. Maybe next time I'll try training...

garden green veggie pesto

I'm running my first 1/2 marathon tomorrow. With all the craziness being with my family I have not been training so I'm a bit nervous about being able to run these 13.1 miles tomorrow but for tonight we'll eat pasta. The friend that got me to sign up for the race has invited us over for a pasta party. Since I'm trying to eat as much as I can out of our yard while I'm here I've offered to bring a pesto from garden greens. 

I cooked chard and beet greens with olive oil and garlic, when they were nice and tender I put them in the food processor and added fresh basil from the yard, slivered almonds (because we had them on hand), salt and pepper. We put i t over fusillli  pasta and added a can of white beans.

uno wild wedding gift

This is a year of weddings, I've received 9 invitations this year. As friends and family are getting married after having lived on their own and are already combining households of kitchen supplies etc it has changed what people ask for - like cash for the honeymoon - which is fine, who needs more stuff!?! but to keep things interesting I like to give the happy couples something a little more personalized too but without adding to the burden of more stuff particularly that is unwanted.

One of the upcoming weddings I have is my cousin's. He and his fiance have a tradition of bringing Uno cards everywhere with them (last time they were here for a visit we played Uno at a bar). So I decided to use that as inspiration for a gift for them. Magnets seem like something everyone ends up using and they don't take up much space and don't have to match decor. I have a few decks of Uno cards around myself so I "sacrificed" an old deck to make magnets. 

I decided to use their wedding date, some wild cards and a draw two. I cut them to 1" squares to match glass tiles I had, used adhesive to attach them to the tiles, once they dried I attached a magnet to the back.