Check me out at Chihuly Garden and Glass

Cool news today.  Some of my little flower pot and watering can gift sets are headed to the museum store at Chihuly Garden and Glass!

This is one of the grooviest places to see if you are new or visiting Seattle - it's over at Seattle Center near the Space Needle.  Gorgeous exhibits of Chihuly glass installations, both inside and especially outside in the garden area.

And if you already live here and haven't gotten over to see it yet - get your butt over there!

They'll be delivered Monday, so by next week there should be a purrrty little display of my items.  Sweet, eh?

Tomato Assault

I had a notice of this sitting in my inbox for a few days now, and didn't get around to reading it until this morning.   Have you heard about the Tomato Assault?

It's coming the the Washington State Fair this summer.  That's the Puyallup Fair.  In case you hadn't heard about that - they've changed their name.  I guess they finally got approval to be the official state fair for Washington State.  It was somewhere else for years (where?  forgot now) but their fair has mostly died out. It turns out the the Puyallup Fair had way more 4H, attendance, vendors, etc. going on, so they were able to take over the official title.  So now it's the Washington State Fair in Puyallup.  I'm guessing nobody really cares and is still going to be calling it "The Puyallup" anyway.

But I digress.  The Tomato Assault is a ginormous tomato fight.  Check it out.

It all happens at the fair grounds on July 13.  A beer garden, great food, a costume contest, live DJ and inflatables -- then on to the pitching of 40,00 pounds of rotten tomatoes at each other.   Wow!

Tickets at Brown Paper Tickets, or their web site.  Also Living Social has a deal on the entry package right now (in case you read this before deadline).

It's Spring

It's official. Today is the first day of Spring.

And it actually feels like it's changed somewhat. Little flowers are opening up on my daffodils and primroses. I can see the little red buds on almost everything else. Stuff is going to pop. We just need a couple of sunny days.

It's Friday and life is good. My construction work project in the basement, that has had me relocate to the dining room for what feels like a year is finally getting close to being done. This is a surprise to nobody, but unexpected things came up and guess what? it took twice as much time and money as we expected. Doesn't this happen to everyone? We are no exception. All of it is good stuff though, and well worth while.

My new favorite place to shop is Second Use. If you've never heard of it, just check out the groovy new web site. They re-sell salvaged building materials and just plain cool stuff. I've been going there almost daily to get pieces for my new studio space: a gorgeous cast iron sink, a huge old school desk/work surface for a counter top with cabinets that the sink will go in, a laboratory style faucet set up. Plus super cool other stuff - like old plumbing knobs, handles. I'm keeping my eye out for a great piece of wrought iron for a trellis in the garden. I also got a great piece of marble for my work bench, which will be the easiest clean surface for all my oil measuring and slopping of ingredients. Oh yeah, one day I got a file cabinet for nine dollars. You can't even buy a cardboard file box for that cheap.

There's so many other things on my list that I want to go back over there and hunt for. It's a treasure trove of great junk, and great prices. Need a claw foot tub? A set of bright orange school lockers? A metal cart from a hospital? Head over. Reuse, recycle.

The other great . . . really, really great news I got today is that we're headed over this afternoon to finally sign the papers on the refi of the house. It's been a painfully long wait - just because they are deluged with refi's now that the rates have dropped so low. Whew. Paperwork. Closing. Relief. Happy Hour as soon as we get out of there.

* * * * * * *

The White House is planting an organic kitchen garden on the grounds. Isn't that the coolest? Happy Spring dance. The long winter and the long wait is finally over. Zippity Do Dah.

Urban Bites

If you haven't heard about the Urban Bites promotion yet, take a look at this -- and GO!

Eleven pretty great new restaurants in Seattle are participating in this "Urban Bites" promotion - a set menu featuring one drink and two small plates for the fixed price of $15. You can click on each restaurant and see the food and drink menu they are offering. Some of options look super tasty and tempting. It runs only through the month of September, from Sunday through Thursday, and during the whole dinner hour, not just Happy Hour. I'm trying to figure out if I have any open nights in the next couple of weeks, and how many I can hit up. Who wants to grocery shop and cook when you're so busy working?

The Puyallup Fair is going great - I spent the day out there yesterday. This morning I am finally finishing up those late labels for the new bath salts, so I can get those pix up on the web site today. More orders are heading out, as many as I can squeeze in before I have to head over to Collage for my shift this afternoon.

And it's back to the Fair again all day tomorrow. So much squeezed into so little time. Nuts.

Buckets of Beans

I got a minute this evening to run over to the Columbia City Farmer's Market, which is nearby, but just far enough away that I don't get to go weekly. It's such a tightly packed little market, squashed into a too-small parking lot, but chock full of such wonderful vendors. I always end up bringing home way too much food, more than a gal can possibly eat in a week, but who can pass up the incredibly beautiful buckets of every kind of string bean imaginable?

The selection is tremendous there - as it probably is at the other Seattle markets that I almost never get to visit on the weekend since I'm off selling suds somewhere else. But we've got several cheese booths, dairy, fish and bakeries. European pastries. An Italian guy selling fresh pasta and ravioli (we had the pumpkin for dinner, yum). So many gorgeous tomatoes. Peaches to die for. And they've still got berries - the blueberry flats are so darn cheap right now, and tasty as can be.

I have no idea how I'm going to eat it all, but I can't resist the beauty and freshness of all that organic loveliness. With a small little baguette.

Sometimes I'm just so taken with the simplicity of it all. And wish I could set up my little booth like they do - just a flat table with a little checked cloth. A few rusty buckets. And a few little piles of soap bars, fresh from the kitchen. I think it started out that way for me at the Tacoma Farmer's Market, oh so many years ago. But I almost can't remember that far back.

And somehow it got to be so much more complicated. With ribbons, and decorating, and cute curtain panels. Merchandising and marketing. The pressures of being professional, creative, a cut above, etc. Just to swim with the big fish.

It's a constant tug of war, really. The desire to be a big fish, with the desire to stay just a small fish that can swim away whenever I want. Deep down somewhere I still like to pretend that I can just walk away from it all and do something else whenever I want. I don't have some vast company and team of employees that I'm beholden to. It's just me, and I can close up shop and run off to the Greek Islands when the going gets too tough, without having a mountain of responsibilities. Of course it's all a fantasy . . . dreams and big ideas.

Outdoor Movie Night

I spent the morning working my shift at Collage, the little artist co-op/gift shop over in Carillon Point which I've just recently joined. It's such a crystal clear, sparkling day that the view from my "office" - or rather the view I get from my spot behind the register - was truly something special. After a week of rain and grey skies, it's so nice to have a clear, summer day again. And everyone was out watching the boats in the marina, strolling the waterfront, lunching under the cool umbrellas in the plaza and Blu Water Bistro, just wandering around on their breaks, gazing at the beauty of the lake and mountains. The little white boats bobbing along in the dazzling blue waters of Lake Washington, the perfect breeze blowing through the trees - spectacular. It reminds me why I still live here.

And I was reminded again several times in the last couple of days. Several tourists came through the shop this morning from parts far away - one was Oklahoma and one was Palm Desert. Their stories of weather made me all the happier that I am enjoying such a mild, temperate, gorgeous place. No super hot stretches where you can't breathe air when you cross the doorway from air-conditioning to the outside climate. No monsoon rains which run rivers of mud that was previously dust storms. One woman claimed that our weather here over the weekend was like a day in January, and she was freezing in fleece today (it's 75 degrees). Hoo boy.

And my customer from Alaska who phoned, and was spending last month at a new house in New Mexico had similar stories. Too hot, too cold. I know I complain about the rain and grey sometimes but I wouldn't trade for one minute to live in a climate of extremes. It's the sacrifice we pay to have such perfect summers, such lush springtimes, such mild winter months. Yes, we get bad weather. Yes, it's moldy at times. But the loveliness and temperate-ness of it all far outweighs all the other trouble elsewhere.

I am thanking my lucky stars that I am not experiencing the massive rains and flooding in England (or Texas), the deadly heat in the rest of Europe (and everywhere else), the tornadoes, storms and whatnot. It's nothing but easy in this land of plenty. For now.

Oh, the whole point of my post today was supposed to be Carillon Point's Outdoor Movie Nights. Yikes, can I focus for just 10 minutes ya think? Over in Kirkland at the Carillon Point complex where Collage is located, they are doing outdoor movies on Saturday nights. The above link gets you the schedule and more info. Collage is having a little open house (free glass of wine! meet some artists!) on Saturday, August 11. Just in case you want to catch Casino Royale with the tykes and stop in.

That was it. Back to stressing about how I'm going to get it all done in time for Bellevue set-up tomorrow evening. I'll be tying up little bars of soap for the next 24 hours straight. Not. That's not how I roll. I DO need to work like crazy tomorrow, and a bit more this evening. But my beauty sleep is more important. Whatever I have is ok, whatever I'm missing I can squeeze in as the show goes on, and whatever didn't make it - probably I'm the only one who'll know. Somehow it all works itself out. And I'll need a glass of wine in the garden with the kittens playing chase around the posies this evening.

ETA: I am really losing my marbles. Totally forgot the freakin' labels for this deal. Apologies for posting twice. I WILL get the hang of it, I swear, any day now.