The day after

Well, a wonderful weekend was had by all.

We saw my family for a lovely barbecue on July 3, which was fun. I was charged with bringing dessert, so I decided to feed the kid in all of us and make s'mores. Caroline and Roger and I roasted a bunch of marshmallows on skewers, assembled them, and arrayed them on a platter decorated with mini-pinwheels made from red and blue tinsel. Very adorable! The adults initially bemused and sorta hesitant to try them, but as they ate they all looked so delighted and the rather huge pile on the platter disappeared VERY quickly. I'd read somewhere about putting peanut butter on the graham cracker before you mush in the chocolate and roasted marshmallow? Oh my goodness...it takes s'mores to a whole different level. Gourmet.

And on the way home, we saw the fireworks show from the next town over (they always do them on the 3rd, don't ask me why) so that was a nice surprise.

The 4th saw us lounging around the house, Caroline and me playing games, Roger taking a master-nap. (You have to work up to that level, to nap that long and that well. :-)) I opted to stay with Gemma during fireworks time, which was good because she was quite disturbed by the distant booming noises. Me, I sat and watched the Boston Pops on tv and enjoyed the Boston fireworks display on the small screen. Which is how I like it, as you know.

Today, a few of my art quilt friends and I met to start an inspiration mini-group. It'll just be six of us, but we all get along well and we seem to be at relatively similar commitment levels. None of us is driven to compete or sell quilts, but all of us want to make interesting art quilts and grow. So, it was a lovely morning. We brought various things to share...books, magazines, quilts in progress, and inspirational stuff in general.

One thing we decided ... loosely, because we all have a lot of other stuff in the works -- is that we will commit to work in a series, so that each month when we meet we can talk about how what we've done and what we are doing moves that series forward. The details are up to each of us to work out.

We each brought our own lunches and had a grand time talking and laughing and looking at stuff. It did just what I wanted...inspired me to go MAKE something.

Oh---I will pass along a few interesting distractions:

Check out www.live365.com -- an online radio station where you can find all sorts of interesting music combinations to stream over your computer, and it's free.

And www.isketch.com -- let me tell you now, if you've ever liked Pictionary, this is seriously addictive! You choose your "room" of players (sorted by language and difficulty) and away you go. It is very fun. My friend Sleen, with whom I recently connected online after 10 years, is a big player and I blame all the time I wasted this weekend playing isketch on HER.

It is REALLY fun.

So many fun things to do.....