I’m so glad to be back home! Got in around midnight on Saturday and My butt is really dragging today lol. I’m doing this post from my phone as I am having trouble downloading pictures to my computer. Sorry if the pictures are whonky. Technology….

The conference went well. It was jam packed with seminars and lots of networking with old customers and hopefully many new ones. Met some customers that have been with us for over 10 years! So nice to put faces to names.

Check out the creativity of some of the guild members:

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All of that is soap, molded and carved.

I took one evening for myself and got in a workout

And then a swim

I also had the chance to meet up with a blog/FB friend. Sandy was reading my blog for many years. She took me to dinner and we had a great time chatting.

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Every time I’ve met an internet friend in person, it feels like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes. Conversation is easy and plentiful! Thank you Sandy!

There wasn’t a ton of down time , but I did get a chance to walk around some, including to Olympic Park.

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My hotel is the cylinder

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There is a lot to process from this conference and now the month of May is going to focus on me and taking care of myself.

Arrived in Atlanta today on about 3 hours of sleep ?. I’m at a conference for the soap guild representing our supplier company. I’m staying at the Westin Peachtree. Nice room.

27th floor! Good thing I’m not paying for the view

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My table

Lots of networking to do and getting to meet some of our customers face to face, which is always nice. John is holding down the fort at home. Four days here. Hoping to meet an FB friend for dinner one of the days as well.

Hooray for Friday!  I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with business stuff lately.  I wish I could afford to hire an assistant or at least a cleaning service for the house!  I have a wholesale show coming up Monday and Tuesday and then the next week I’ll be flying out to a conference in Georgia – my first time to that state! I won’t have much time to explore, but I imagine the weather will feel a lot warmer there than here.

Not too much riding happening because of cold and rain. The roads are clear and lawns are clear, but the bike path to the lake is still not quite open, which is not unusual.  Last week I got about 5 miles from the lake and ran into this:

Today I wanted to see how much farther I could get. Just around the bend from the above picture:

Not a lot of direct sun gets here, so it always takes a long time to melt. It will probably be another couple of weeks at least to get all the way to the lake.

My eating has been a bit all over the place. My usual stress eating. 😛   John made pizza again tonight, which he does almost every Friday:

John cooks for us more often than I do 😀    Here was some quick doctored up soup:

Pixie gets annoyed when I’m busy and moving around a lot because it takes away from her lap time. So she decides she is going to create it. Who needs a lap?

I think her face says, “I’m relegated to the butt.  No bueno”.

I found a new hobby I would like to pursue for my downtime – paper quilling!

Have any of you tried this?  It’s fun and I’ve been doing flowers like the tulip above. That is a tulip in case you didn’t guess that 😀   I hope to do more of this in a few weeks when all the madness settles down.

Hope there are still people reading!

Hey – I’m back!  Still waiting for spring. We actually had snow the other day. Again. At least it’s pretty much melted today, although our temps are still only around 40 right now.

The antidote to this? A gardening class!  One of the local nurseries held a container gardening class. I don’t do a lot with containers other than stuffing a couple annual pots into a container and calling it a day, so this was a good class for me to get ideas.

Here is a baby greenhouse in early April:

These are all gearing up for May when the big buying season happens, which is basically Mother’s Day through Memorial Day. These will all be ready to plant outside then.

We started off by picking out our pots and filling them with soil. We had a style choice from a couple of hanging baskets or a patio pot. I don’t hang flowers currently, so I was one of the only ones to choose a patio pot.

The filling station:

We filled the pots half way and then added a couple tablespoons of slow release fertilizer:

Then filled the pot:

Yay  – playing in the dirt!! 😀

There were stations set up with different plant combinations. You always need to keep in mind where your container is going to be and how much sun it will get, which will decide what flowers to put in.  One tip – halfway through the growing season, fertilize with a quick release fertilizer (or bloom booster), especially when the pots start looking tired.

Everyone had a 12-inch pot, regardless of style. These are small baby plants provided by the nursery, so we used 9 plants for each pot.  If purchasing the 4-inch potted plants, use 3 of them instead of 9 – or use 5 or 6 of the 6-pack annual size.

When doing multi colors, place all of the same color in the center and then alternate the other colors in a ring around the edge about 1/2 inch from the edge of the pot.

We had some design inspirations to choose from.  I liked this one:

However, me being me, I swapped out one of the plants. I used a blue superbells instead of the dreamsicle.

I put the blue in the center. See how these are smaller than the 6-pack size of annuals?

I love the superbells – or in real terms, the Calibrachoa if your nursery doesn’t carry Proven Winners – although most do.  They bloom all summer and fill up a pot nicely.

All potted up with my 3 plant tags to remember which ones are which. We then put a large marker in these with our names on them.  The nursery is holding these in the greenhouse until we pick them up in mid May, although we can visit them any time LOL!

I can’t wait to see how pretty this looks!  I’m glad I wasn’t the only person that said goodbye to my container…. garden nerd…

Here are some combinations that you can use for container ideas. These are all for mostly sunny areas.  Callie means Calibrachoa, which is also the name for the Superbells

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You can just write the names down and ask for them at your nursery. They will be able to tell you similar ones if they don’t stock those, but again, Proven Winners are carried in most places.

I didn’t leave empty handed, though. Everyone was given a little potted marigold on the way out!

Yay to be planting again!!

I decided that despite all the cold weather, it was time to take down the winter flag and hang up the tulip flag. Despite the fact that temps are in the 30s.  We had a “warm” day today that got up to 45 and it felt pretty good, I have to say. We took a nice long walk, except now I have a chill tonight… sigh…

Anyway, pretty routine stuff. Our usual Bagel Wednesday:

I seriously could eat bagels all.the.time  – but only if they are really good bagels. Our local coffee shop makes them in house and they are sooooo good!

I’ve started doing some daily meditation. Biz mentioned the Oprah/Deepak Chopra 21-day meditation series and I thought, “What the heck” and signed up. Because it’s free. 😀

I really struggle with meditating. It’s not even that long. My mind is so used to multitasking all the time that I can be repeating a mantra in my head and still be thinking about something else.  I have a lot of work to do on that.

Regardless, it’s good to do and the meditations are only about 15 minutes long. I am liking the Sanskrit mantras, too.

Moving on to the signs of spring – I have to say THANK YOU that we didn’t get anything from that last Nor’easter.  We’ve had enough snow.  Our front yard gets full sun, so a lot of our snow is gone there, although it’s still around.

It’s funny how we have this bare lawn and on each side of us, there is a snowy yard. Nature must know how badly I want to see the ground 😀   And I did see something!  Check it out:

Tiny, tiny tulip sprouts!  I was so excited to see these!  They won’t be blooming for another month, probably, but they have made their initial appearance. Spring will come, dammit!  Not only that, but this weekend is the Capital District Garden Show so I can bask in greenery and flowers for real.

Here it is March 18th and it was 4 degrees when we got up this morning. Four. I’m usually pretty positive about winter and such, but I am so over this cold weather. I want spring! I want riding! Wahhh!

Okay. I feel better now …somewhat….

Cold or not, it was still time for St. Patrick’s Day festivities.  We gathered at my sister’s house for some food.

Corned beef:

Irish Soda Bread:

Colcannon, which is a potato and cabbage dish.

This is a nice vegetarian side.  We used this recipe.  John made the colcannon and I cooked up some bacon for the non-vegetarians to sprinkle on top.  This was a keeper, too.  Steamed the potatoes in the Instant Pot, which worked great. 12 minutes after it reached pressure and they were nicely done.

A tasty beverage:

And some game playing.  We played Clue, which I haven’t played in years!  Also this one:

If you guys have not played this, you really need to get it. You just end up laughing so much!

Here’s hoping for more spring-like weather coming. I’m going to hang my tulip flag up to see if I can remind Mother Nature what time of year it is.

Did you do anything fun  for St. Patrick’s Day?

Daylight Savings Time and spring feels like it could maybe arrive sometime!  It feels more like spring, although looking a bit wintery out, still

At least sidewalks are pretty much clear so walking is much easier now. I think we will be getting more snow in a couple days, but at this point does it matter? LOL.

My inner (and outer) gardener is taking charge with moving spring along. This week I will be starting some seeds:

I don’t really need to start zinnias indoors since they will bloom on their own, but I want to get some started early so I have earlier blooms. The marigolds I just can’t seem to get to bloom before frost. I don’t know why, so these I’m going to do inside.

Had another Instant Pot success with some cheddar broccoli soup. I just put in 1 bag of frozen  baby broccoli florets, 2 cups of veggie broth, and a little bit of frozen chopped onion into the IP, pressure cooked for 15 minutes. Then I added one 12 oz can of evaporated skim milk that I whisked a tablespoon of cornstarch in and stirred in 8 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese (2%).

Sprinkled with a bit of hot sauce. This was really tasty! I’m keeping that one in the wheelhouse. John won’t eat it. The man does not like broccoli, which I don’t understand 😀  I had 4 soup meals to nosh on, though.

Have you tried any of the yogurt flips?

I thought this sounded kind of good and was something different to have for lunch. Seriously, though, what a tiny portion. I bulked it up with 1/2 cup of plain greek yogurt, which also cut the sweet down.

That’s the bulked up version. How do people stay full on these things?  The crunchy topping was quite good. It had these coffee flavored brownie bits that I would like to eat just by themselves.  While good, I don’t think I will have these very often. I can make my own version that is bigger and less sweet when I’m not so lazy LOL.

Another old favorite has returned – the protein pancake! Except I made it waffle style.

I found using an immersion blender works almost as well as my defunct bullet blender did, so I can have these again.

I had some nice sister time on the spur of the moment this weekend. She was coming nearby and texted me to have some coffee – of course!

We even had hearts on our beverages 😀

I can’t believe we are almost halfway through March already. The lighter evening today really felt great. We’re almost on the other side of winter!