Recipe for a 100% Wonderful Day...

This morning started off a little unsure of itself. I had a 5:45am running date with a friend and this commitment loomed over me even as I slept. I woke up at 2:15am, 3:23am, and 4:35am thinking it was time to get up and cursing the day I became a slave to running. When 5:15 actually did roll around my mood was not much better. I reached for my phone at least 4 times to call Mikaela and cancel but each time the excuses I thought up in my head were not good enough to say out loud despite my best attempts to perfect them. And so with no call to tell her otherwise Mikaela arrived at 5:49am (4 minutes late!) and I came to find out that she was entering into this 8 mile expedition with a similar mindset. To make a long story short: she came, we ran, the rain conquered. When I finished I looked like a drowned labradoodle. My pony tail was one giant rat's nest with odd frizz-curls framing my face but luckily an accompanying doodle-stench was absent. I say luckily because there was no time to shower. I hurriedly (and somewhat violently) brushed the rats out to create a lovely fluff-ball on my head, stuck a headband on forementioned fluff-ball, and packed up left-overs from last nights foray in Moosewood Restaruant: New Classics and ran out the door.

It being Seattle the weather on June 2nd is nothing but doom and gloom but for some reason today I decided that I would eat while I worked in order to afford myself a walk to Pike's Place. So after eating my polenta and Sicilian Stir-Fry (the rosemary, garlic, basil, red pepper flakes, and red wine are what make it delightfully Sicilian) I grabbed my umbrella and headed out. I picked up a coffee from the tourist laden original Starbucks and got down to business -- scoping out the flowers!

I did not title this entry "Recipe for a 100% Wonderful Day" because I have bad hair and woke up earlier than I would have liked so that I could run 8 miles in the rain. But I am sure that you, my ever so clever reader, know this. You have patiently been reading so that you too can know the secret to a 100% wonderful day and finally we have arrived. Hold on to your fedoras because here it is...

...

...

...

...

PEONIES at $10 for 6 stems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know!

Did I tell you or what?

Take a minute. Process.

...

...

...

Now, get in your car / hop on your bike / board that bus and get down to the market.

Or just enjoy this picture. Can you spot the peonies??



Feeling sunny in spite of the surrounding stratocumulus',
OLIT

Lame, I know...

I must say, this week was infinitely better than last and I am wrapping up this Friday feeling energized and accomplished (faciliting a raucus book club at the Senior Center and paying off debt collectors with my first pay check are pretty big accomplishments if I do say so myself). However, with all of this energizing and accomplishing I have had hardly a moment for a real post and sadly that moment is yet to arrive. Instead I leave you with two images that I'm currently inspired by. Seperately they each represent two of my favorite interests: vegetarianism and taxidermy.

{thank you design sponge}

{bright bizarre, you're an angel.}

Happy Friday!
OLIT

Post Script: This Old Lady in Training does not actually perform taxidermy herself. Instead she has a strange and unshakable fascination and magnet-like attraction to anything involving stuffed once-alive animals or their mounted heads/antlers/etc. Don't judge.

Really? Wednesday already?

When starting this blog I fully intended to update nearly daily and now here I am almost a week after my last post with very little inspiration to work with. I have some ideas but am feeling a certain amount of laziness and so will put them off until tomorrow or maybe even Friday if I feel like it. But in the meantime I will put up some pictures of the centerpieces I worked on this past weekend for my grandmother's 80th birthday party.

My aunt, mother, and I headed to Lowe's on Friday in search of flowers to use but were hit by divine inspiration and opted for potted herbs and vegetables the guests could take home and place in their own gardens.

That evening I hammered out and flattened forks to be used as table number holders in the pots.

The next morning after my mother and aunt transferred the plants to terracotta pots my cousin and I made numbers for the center pieces, wrapped the pots with ribbon, and inserted the flattened forks.


Once we arrived we were able to put the centerpieces down, check with the seating charts, and finally add numbers to each plant.


All in all I was very pleased with the final results!!! Nothing like a good centerpiece project to get me going!!

More soon.
OLIT