I was going to do a Wordless Wednesday post — after first checking to make sure it was actually Wednesday — but then I realized I just like words. I may not use a ton in my posts, but I like them nonetheless.

Morning biking today for breakfast:

I do love my routines.

I actually had pretty good sleep last night. The day we got back from Colorado, I had horrible insomnia, which was my pattern for a while now. Then for 2 days in a row I slept and slept hard getting about 8 hours of sleep. I was shocked!  I felt so good those days and thought “this is what people who sleep normally feel like”.  Too bad it didn’t last.

I shared a picture of these on instagram the other day:

Yes – I made them. King Arthur Flour has a bake along series and each month they post a recipe for everyone to try.  I hadn’t done one until this month, I’ve got the baking bug. I really do love to bake, but for obvious calorie reasons, I don’t bake near as much as I would like.

Anyway, July’s recipe is Blueberry Hand Pies. Here is the link to the recipe. It’s pretty easy, although there are a fair number of steps.

These were delicious!

I really haven’t been steered wrong with KA recipes. Good stuff.

I’m gearing up for fall and holiday with the soap biz already. Getting stock up for the wholesale buying which really starts to hit in August. Boxing and labeling:

Still lots more to go, but I’m feeling pretty prepared for the season so far.

I don’t know about where you are, but we have had garden friendly weather this year. Rain every few days. I’ve actually only needed to water the garden a few times this whole summer.  See how happy it is?

And it makes me happy 😀

We just returned from a trip out to Colorado. We arrived late on Thursday night and came back on Tuesday. We stayed in Greeley.

The reason for the trip was John’s sister and her partner of 20 years got married! 

There was a lot of last minute planning to do on Friday and part of Saturday before the ceremony. After it was finished, there was some work to be done at the reception. It was held in an art gallery, which was really neat. I wish I had a chance to actually get pictures in there, but it was so busy I didn’t get a chance. The gallery has a nice open space with a sound system area and hardwood floor for dancing. It’s such a great idea for a gallery to get exposure and bring in money by holding receptions.

John and I set up the beverage area and mixed up the sangria. The gallery has a little coffee shop attached to it, which was our food and drink area.  John behind the counter!

He’s so cute <3  It was fun doing all that.  One of Sarah and Cathy’s friends made some home brewed beer for the ceremony as well, with a homemade “kegerator”!

A good time was had for sure! Best wishes for a long and happy marriage!

After the first couple of nights, John and I moved over to a B&B for the remainder of our stay. It was the Currier Inn:

Interesting note, John and I lived 2 houses away from this when it was being built in 1998!

It is an octagon shape all throughout.

Our view in the dining room:

John did play this piano and it was really out of tune LOL. He didn’t play it for long.

Our host didn’t seem to quite know what to do with a vegetarian, which is so surprising to me.  They’ve owned the B&B for a few years and you would think other vegetarians would have stayed there. She asked if we were okay with eggs and cheese since everyone else was having some sort of meat filled entree. I ate veggie, too, as I figured it would be easier.

Simple, but good. The B&B was quite nice, although we both thought the price was a little high for the overall experience there.

We spent the trip visiting, playing games and walking. No trips to the mountains this time.

I did have one of the best cookies I’ve had in a loong time!

Ginger cookie with a lemon cream cheese filling. This cookie seemed like it was made just for me!  I kept talking about how good it was 😀

Greeley has been doing some nice things with art in the downtown area including murals in an alley.

Other than being in an alley and kind of “fragrant” on a hot day, it was very cool.

It was so hard for me to take a picture without my sunglasses on on a bright day.  It was pretty hot while we were there – in the 90s.

The trip went by all too quickly.

Just a quick note. We are back from vacation in Colorado 

Long travel day today, but home safe and sound.

The weekend started around here with taking Pixie to the vet on Friday. She was feeling poorly for the week and had tummy issues, which doesn’t happen much with indoor cats. However, we did take her out on her harness last week and she ate a lot of greenery. She loves being out in her harness:

The vet thinks she may have ingested a tiny mushroom since it has been so rainy around here lately. Any way, with being off her food, diarrhea and vomiting more – hairballs being pretty common – Pixie got put on antibiotics  and probiotics. Did you know they make special probiotics just for cats?

She is definitely feeling better now and eating her food.  We are waiting on a stool culture result just to make sure she didn’t ingest a parasite (ewww).

Unfortunately, there was no true cupcake ride this weekend. Saturday it kept raining on and off, which makes it too hard to go a long distance. Unless we wanted to ride in the rain, which I don’t LOL. We actually did end up having cupcakes anyway. We were down in Albany and stopped in at the new Rivers casino down there.

It’s quite nice, really, if on the small side. John has a players points card with a lot of points on it, so we got free food at the bakery, which is the reason we stopped in there! I should have taken a picture. Not sure why I didn’t, probably because I was overwhelmed with the sugar. It was a big cupcake and one that would really be only for a 40-mile ride.

My appetite still seems all over the place. I had gained a little from my Ireland weight last fall, then I took off a few pounds and then last week I was just eating too much. I generally ride 80-90 miles a week, plus walking, which is really a lot of activity. With that comes the boomerang effect of the appetite. It’s kind of hard to actually lose weight over the summer months, although I did that last year. It’s also a challenge not to gain – but when is that ever not a challenge for me 😀  I note that last summer, I actually cut down how much I normally exercise because I wanted to take off some weight.  It’s just hard not to be super active when our warm weather outdoor season is kind of short.

On the track of warm weather, I found this little guy/gal in the yard yesterday:

I think it’s a cicada and I’ve never seen one up this close. I know we have them around here, but I’ve just never seen one.

It was flailing around upside down and when I touched it with my glove, it just grabbed on and sat on my hand. I put in in a potted plant on the patio.  I had no idea that there were so many species of cicada and they do come out every 17 years, but with so many species every year has them – just not always in huge numbers.

Speaking of patio, we are certainly enjoying Radiance Falls, which we installed last year.

We need to cover it over the winter as the cedar trees left a ton of junk in it that was  a pain to clean out. We removed the pump over the winter just to keep it safe. It looks a little more naturalized this year. I have a few planting around it, but not much. It’s a tough spot for growing with dry shade.

It’s another busy week coming up. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Happy birthday to America!

May all of my fellow Americans have a safe and happy Independence Day!

I’ve been trying to pull together a post, but my blog thoughts are about as scattered as the rest of my thoughts, so here are some of those random things.

-Why do people use “continue reading” for their blogs still? I’m having trouble keeping up with blogs and personal social media as it is. There is a reason I have a blog reader – so I can read the blogs! I’m not clicking and going to a site to read the rest. Sorry. Not sorry.

– Baby bunnies are the cutest things ever. I hate the damage they do to my garden and I yell “Stay out of my garden!!” and then “But you are so cute!” I’m a sucker.

– Misogyny masquerading as a compliment is still misogyny.

-I have always hated hashtags. For whatever reason, they annoy me to no end. With growing our business social media accounts, I  have had to use them. Kicking and screaming I’m being forced to use hashtags.  And of course it’s working in growing the accounts (which annoys me). Still not doing Snapchat, though.

-I wrote my first word of Portuguese. A customer sent an email that said “Gostei muito dos produtos !!” , which I thought was Spanish until I tried translating it. Turns out it is Portuguese. It says “I really like your products”. So using babelfish, I translated “thank you”, which should be “Obrigado”. That’s what I wrote them, so I hope it’s correct! 

-Allowing others to help me is really difficult. I’m so independent that I really struggle with not doing things. With my shoulder issues, pulling on the lawnmower cord is a big no-no. I really hate the fact that when I want to mow the lawn (we alternate), I have to ask John to come and start it for me. It’s for my own good, but the stubborn independent in me is having a hard time accepting that.

Maybe all this stuff in my head is from insomnia, which has come into active phase again.

That’s when I start contemplating stuff like this:

Lots of stuff rolling around the noggin 😀  Good thing tomorrow is a garden post!

All the area schools had their graduations this weekend. School officially out!  My niece graduated high school from Saratoga.

I think there were about 500 students graduating. That made for a loooong ceremony LOL!  My niece getting her diploma!

She is off to college this fall and going to my alma mater! SUNY Potsdam. I went to Crane school of music there. Logan is going to be a biology teacher.

There was a nice little party afterwards. We picked up some cute cookies to bring:

Very proud of Logan and hope she loves college as much as I did!

With everything that has been going on and poorly timed weather, it’s been a couple of days without biking. Lots of walking, but it’s not the same 😀

Sunday was picture perfect. Sunny, not too hot and no humidity. Our ride this morning took us to Lake George. I know I post a lot of pictures of the lake, but it just is so beautiful.

The only problem is no swimming right now at the beaches because of E. coli in the water, which is usually the result of too many ducks and geese on the lake. Looks pretty inviting, though!

I do so love this area. Never get tired of this view.

We have missed our cupcake ride lately. Hopefully we can get one in soon!

First, thank you so much for the nice comments on my fativersary post. Everyone’s maintenance is different and it’s always good to hear other people’s stories. 😀

I’ve been getting a lot of morning riding done.  I usually work for a while and then ride after I get the morning shipments out for pickup, although Wednesdays are the usual bagel for breakfast ride!

The coffee cup is a 20 ounce cup. This place had only 2 of the big mugs for a long time and then they broke, so we were bringing in our own travel mugs since we avoid takeout cups when we are dining in. They finally got some replacements and I overheard one of the employees say to another one “These are the big cups. We only have a couple of these because nobody gets that much coffee for here”. Well, we do.  I wobbled between laughing and being annoyed.

Anyway, on to the title of the post. Not a recipe, but a food find:

I have had veggie tots, which are pretty good, but these were new. Since they had broccoli, John passed on them LOL!  This is a serving of 3 ounces weighed out. Cooked in a toaster oven:

These were puffy and a bit crispy. They tasted like broccoli in mashed potato form. I actually think they were pretty decent and a nice change up to my usual broccoli!

Things with the soap business have been picking up speed. I’ve added 3 new wholesale accounts and 2 more have requested samples since mid May. I’ve been working with a wholesale business coaching group and it’s been helpful keeping me on task. You have to be  way ahead of the game for retail and now is the time to start working on holiday stuff, which is a little annoying since summer just started LOL!  Product design samples are done and I’ve ordered my labels to get ready for photography in July to make my promotional materials to send to stores, although full production on those products won’t begin until August. Here is one of my labels that just came:

I’ve tinkered a bit with font and logo and those will be rolling out over the course of the year.  It’s nice to have a set game plan to follow, I have to say.

Another think I can’t believe is coming up is my niece’s graduation from high school on Friday! Holy moley time zooms by.

It’s time! Yay!  Can you tell I love doing these posts? I never get many comments on them, which is weird because 300-400 people visit my blog daily. Lots of lurkers.

Anyway, it’s time to say farewell to the irises.

.

Brindled beauty actually might have a couple more buds on it. We’ll see.

New alliums opened up. These are Star of Persia:

You may remember these from last year and how I fell in love with them. I proceeded to buy a bunch of the bulbs for other places in the garden.

In my non-thinking, I  put some behind the irises, which block their view from the front since they are short.

Not sure what was going through my head when I put these in there.

The other allium have lost the petals and leave behind a cool seed head:

I love how these look, so I will just leave them up until they completely dry out. Those 3-balled things are the seed pods. I’m not really sure if these will self-sow or not since I always get them as bulbs. Guess I’ll find out.

Last of the rhododendron:

I have not seen as many bees as I had hoped this year. There are definitely less. 🙁

The wave petunias in my tippy pot have started growing.

The color on these is very cool. John’s favorite color is purple, so I got these for him.

The peonies that flank the front walk are opening up. They are Karl Rosenfeld.

This is about as big as they will get, which is okay for the front walk. I can’t even begin to imagine how many times a dog has peed on these…

These got horrible powdery mildew last year, so I have been spraying them with neem oil, which is supposed to help. You do have to apply it again after rain.

Baptisia with more flowers on it.

It’s getting nice and bushy. I think it will end up a foot taller or so at maturity.

Foxgloves:

I think that is some kind of viburnum behind them. Last year I really cut it back and the foxgloves had room. I forgot this year and it already is crowding them out. Oopsie.

And lastly the lupine:

I have not had the best of luck with these. I think I have planted 10 baby plants over the last couple years and this is the sole survivor. I don’t always have a green thumb.  I wish they would take because I love them.

Those plants in the background are my neighbors. I really want to put up at least a decorative fence between our properties just for some kind of separation. We use different kinds of mulch, so that pretty much divides the beds LOL!

What a post title, right? Better than “untitled” I guess 😀

It finally stopped raining and the sun came out today. I had my first ride since the 49 miles done on Sunday.  I got to test out my birthday gift of new riding shades. My old one were falling apart. The ear comfort pads were gone and the nose pads were coming off. Now I am styling:

I had a pretty low-key actual birthday. Working and going out for dinner as we had all gathered on Sunday.  Here are a few of my gifts.

Garden flower:

Lularoe leggings:

Those are bees and roses on these. They are quite comfy.

Outdoor solar lights for my planned little project that will hopefully work out LOL!

Plus some gift cards to Lowe’s and a local garden shop.

A gift of another sort arrived today.  I am doing a review of a product called Diet to Go, which is a fresh meal delivery service with different meal plans. The box came packed with ice:

There are 3 days worth here and I’ll be reviewing these on separate days starting with tomorrow. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. They look pretty good!