Cloudy Days

Over the past few weeks we have had a couple cooler cloudy days. It's been wonderful. 

It was especially wonderful because I was done with one of our larger RS activities. I am the RS Activity Committee Leader for our ward at church and am thus responsible for putting on activities for the women about once a month. This month we did an activity based on "when like gives you lemons, make lemonade."

Luckily several members in our ward had lemon trees and were willing to give me TONS of lemons.

I had a sign-in at the entrance with some lemon lotion and lemon drops.

We had delicious lemons treats available for afterwards. These pictures were taken before the activity so it doesn't show all of the fabulous treats everyone brought. We had lemon bars, lemon cakes, lemon casseroles, lemon muffins, lemon dips. It was fun to see what could be done with lemons.

We had a class on cooking with lemons. The teacher shared samples of habanero lemonade. It was surprisingly good. A little too much of a kick for me, though.

We also had a class on using lemons in the home for scents, cleanings, body products, etc. and made some lemon soap.

And of course we had a little message on turning life's lemons into lemonade. My favorite decoration of the evening was the lemonade stand Michael and I put together from free pallets off Craigslist. Ridiculous? Maybe, But it's good to know our kids will have the necessary props should they ever take up lemonade sales on the streets of Poway.

Anyway, back to wonderful cloudy days. Since I was over and done with this activity, I decided to have a couple days of freedom from my "to-do" list. 

Instead I used my time to finger paint with Thomas.

What a masterpiece!

The doctor wants him to have diaper-free time so I thought it was the perfect opportunity.

Things went a little downhill when he learned that Mommy's arms were more fun to paint than the paper.

I did a little baking. 

So far I have tried two different bread recipes with similar results. The bread is good - fluffy, tasty, etc., but it tastes too much like white bread. I even used some whole wheat flour. I was looking a little more for the hearty homemade type bread. 

I also made a strawberry rhubarb cobbler, some toddler muffins (surprisingly delicious), and a couple apricot pastries. When we were in Paris one of my favorite moments was sitting outside Notre Dame eating an apricot pastry and hot chocolate. It was so delicious. My homemade version was a success.Then again, how can you go wrong with pastry, custard, apricots, and an apricot glaze? I can't wait until we get our own apricots from the trees in our backyard!

The weather has been so wonderful we thought it warranted a morning of hot chocolate and pastries in front of a fire. Days like these are far too few.

We also did a bunch of yard work (post coming soon). Thank you, weather, for giving us this brief respite from the sun before you scorch us this summer.

And just for fun. Here is a video of Thomas using yarn to play with Lily. Thank you Pandora commercial for ruining the moment...