A Weekend of Gluttony

Good morning, my friends. Happy Saturday. The sun is shining today, which is a welcome sight. We're attending the Big Red Fest wine event with Erik and Mae this afternoon. It's always fun spending time with them. We've been watching the weather forecast all week hoping for a rain break for this event. I'm imagining they'll also have tents set up since it would be foolhardy to schedule an outdoor event this time of year in Oregon.

All-in-all, my birthday turned into an enjoyable day. I have some pictures for you. After writing my post yesterday, the doorbell rang, and I opened it to find a pretty bouquet of flowers.

This was the attached message, but there was no indication who sent it.

Ooooh...I love a mystery, don't you? It took a while, but eventually, I was able to contact the florist to inquire who sent them. Turns out they were from Mae. So sweet, and they smell good too!

In the meantime, I got ready to go and headed off to the fabric store. It was a little like shopping for a new dress when you have money and a special event, and you can't find a single thing you like. I wandered through the entire store, but didn't really find anything that rose to the level of being "imperative to my continued existence." (My fabric desirability scale is rather dramatic, but then...fabric.) Nevertheless, I didn't come away empty-handed. 

I bought two yards of the ones on the right. The pastel rainbow will be useful when I make my next challenge quilt. The yellow will be the sashing when I start sewing the Vintage Linen quilt blocks together.

I bought one yard of the one on the left. I just liked it. It'll be a good fabric to use for bindings. And you know I love a fun binding.

Then, I took myself out for lunch at Jimmy Johns...the first place I came to...and then headed for home. When I arrived, Mike had already driven into town to buy a bottle of wine for our dinner last night. While he was out, he bought this pretty azalea for me.

Also...two of these...

It's a little "tart" with three flavors of chocolate mousse on top, and then a little bit of chocolate cake on the bottom. Mmm, mmm, mmm. That went nicely with our afternoon cups of espresso.

I took a nap, and then figured I'd get Eliza ready for quilting. Actual quilting was optional. This is going to be a pretty simple quilt. I used a "natural" YLI quilting thread on top and a white Bottomline thread in the bobbin. Then, my helper cat showed up.

He really doesn't understand why he can't lie on the quilts when I'm quilting them. There's a lovely broad expanse of table, suitable for his formidable body, and it's so comfy with the quilt spread out. 

He can't wrap his kitty brain around this "free" motion concept when it comes to free motion quilting. Cat free? Where's the fun in that? 

Well. I convinced him to move along, and then I went to work quilting two of the 12 blocks. It wasn't going well at all, and I was having trouble with my tension. And, frankly, I just didn't feel like messing with it. It seemed appropriate to put the whole project (machine and quilt) in a time-out. It can sit and think about its behavior for a few days, and maybe then we'll try again when it has adjusted its attitude.

As for the quilting...it's hard to think what to do with this. I decided to outline the appliques, maybe add in a few details, but mostly, I'm doing a loopy meander from one applique piece to the next. The quilt has a wide outer border, and I'll do something fancier there. There's so much to look at in this quilt, the quilting really should take a back seat anyway.

Okay, and it was reaching dinnertime by then. We had dinner at the Portland Charthouse. It has beautiful views of the river. We're not quite to the downtown Portland area here. We're in the area known as "Pill Hill," for Oregon Health and Science University hospital. I used to work in the emergency department there. From our table, this was the view to our left.

This was looking a little more to the right.

Of course, we had margaritas. I think you could get arrested for drinking anything else on Cinco de Mayo.

Mike chose a really nice pinot noir when he was out...big and bold for a pinot. Also, Erath is one of the original winemakers in Oregon Wine Country. The founder, Dick Erath, passed away recently. It seemed a nice way to honor the man. We met him once. He was friendly and an interesting conversationalist. As it turns out, he was an engineer before he was a winemaker.

We had an excellent server, and she took a nice picture of us.

We both had a cup of their delicious lobster bisque. We sometimes come here in summer and order a bowl of lobster bisque and a side salad and call it dinner. Also, they have delicious gazpacho when fresh tomatoes are in abundance.

Mike ordered the macadamia-nut encrusted mahi mahi.

I had the crunchy coconut shrimp.

For dessert, Mike had the Key lime pie.

I had a New York style cheesecake with macadamia nuts, toffee bits, and caramel sauce. This was to die for, and the piece was absolutely huge. Half would have been plenty.

Then, because clearly we needed more calories and fat at the table, they gave us this complimentary slice of Mud Pie.

It was past our bedtime by the time we got home. We both fell into bed and went to sleep. It's my last year to be able to call myself a sexagenarian. Next year, I'll have to call myself a septuagenarian. It happens to all of us sooner or later...if you're very lucky, that is.

Okay, so I mentioned the wine event already. As I've been writing this, I've had a Guinness Cake in the oven. You might remember when I shared the recipe for this several weeks back. There will be food at our wine event today. Last week I had a yen to bake another one of these cakes, and so I invited Erik and Mae to stop by for dessert this afternoon. (It's really a cake for four.) We'll enjoy it then. 

Then, tomorrow is Mike's birthday. He crossed over the septuagenarian line last year. Now...it's just more of the same...a slow slide into, um, octogenarianism. At least we can say he's on the uphill side of the slide into...you know. Joking aside, we both consider it a privilege to grow older. My older brother passed away at age 56. Mike's older brother passed away at age 60. Time passes no matter how much we wish to slow it down, and so we might as well celebrate it while we can. I was thinking of some song lyrics recently from Beth Neilson Chapman: "And I thought about years...how they take so long, and they go so fast."

And all of that to say that I'm going to take a day off from blogging tomorrow. It's going to be a busy kitchen day. Mike always gets his favorite Eggs Benedict for breakfast on his birthday. Also, I had a prime rib in our freezer, and so it seems like a good time to roast it up for his birthday dinner. It'll be just the two of us, but it'll still take the same amount of time. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend. We'll catch up again on Monday.