A Fish for the Porch

I have been wanting to make this little guy for a while.  The pattern is Mimi Kirchner's.  Her blog is here and you can get the pattern here.

 

I used scraps...the largest piece was from my mother's stash that I inherited.  The green corduroy is from a jumper that I had in high school....a long, long, long time ago.  The fins are made from a skirt that I discarded recently.  Now when I clean out my closet..instead of throwing things in the Goodwill pile..I often hang onto something just so I can cut it up later.  It was pretty easy.  I may make him some pals before the summer is over.  He looks a little lonely.

My Little Back Porch

Several years ago we tore down our old rickety deck and replaced it with a porch.  The porch was supposed to be a ground-level deck but something was lost in translation.  I have learned to live with it....and to love it.  Sometimes I wish it was about 3 feet bigger though.

My color scheme has changed over the years....it is usually inspired by the door mat of the year.  This year is no exception.  But these gave me free reign.  They are made of recycled float-rope.

Now everything is colorful....all colors.  The furniture....

And the flowers.....

Now if this heat spell would just break so that we could enjoy it.

A Powerless Dinner Party

On June 29 a strong, crazy storm came through Richmond (and pretty much the rest of Virginia).  They are calling it a derecho.  This is something we don't have around here...evidently it is well-known to folks in the central and southern plains.  It is  an intense, long-lived line of thunderstorms.  These particular storms raced eastward at nearly 60 mph from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic coast. The storm killed at least 20 people, caused millions in property damage, and caused massive power outages in major urban areas along the storm’s path.

We were only out of power for about 41 hours....we were pretty lucky....and we had no property damage.

We did have a dinner party planned though....for Bill's Americorps team.  Bill retired a year ago and has spent the last year as an Americorps volunteer....giving him time to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life.  His Americorps team (Bill and 3 young women) tutored and mentored at a City elementary school.  He wanted to have them to dinner before they scattered for the summer...this was our last chance.

So we did it....without power.

We brought in two large coolers and iced down everything we would need...and a few more things.

This is the mess....and yes, that is a glass of wine....I started early.

Bill cooked macaroni in a pot on the grill so that I could make macaroni salad.  We had a bean salad and caprese salad and he cooked pork tenderloins on the grill.

We had no dessert...hard to do without an oven or a freezer....but I don't think we missed it.

This experience should make our next dinner party a breeze.