What a wonderful weekend, full of just the right amount of rest and productivity. A little time on the porch swing reading, organizing, sorting, laundry, cleaning, cooking, family and friends. I even got my run in, and the sore muscles this morning are informing me that it really has been too long. :/

I've kept all the buttons that come with new clothes in a box for years.  A couple weeks ago I was at Tina Freez's house and saw she had a jar of buttons on a shelf in the living room.  I decided that was a much cuter way to store them.  The next few weeks are going to bring a lot more organizing and tossing (hopefully).  I just have too much.

This weekend I also decided to be brave and try grilling something new.  My dad loves fish, yet we've eaten little of it at home over the years because my mom detests the smell in the house.  They were gone for the day at a potluck, so I decided to take over shopping and dinner.  Kate and I visited 3 grocery stores before dinner.  We picked up (way too much) salmon and I set about to find a good recipe.  This was one of the first times I've had hours to prepare something, and I loved getting to marinate it for hours before the meal, really relishing the dinner-making process.  I had planned to serve it was a different salad, but we ended up grilling up corn on the cob and using the huge salad my mom had made that morning.  When my parents reminded me they were going to be gone Sunday night, and I realized I had bought all this food that we never even prepared... I decided to invite a few friends over for Sunday.  I think I enjoyed preparing that food even more, finally making the Pioneer Woman's Rosemary Dinner Rolls (oh my!!), the Mandarin, Mint & Spinach Salad, and Jasmine Rice.  The salmon recipe suggested pairing with a Pinot Noir and the one I selected for Saturday turned out to be such a favorite that I picked up another bottle for Sunday. I'm pretty excited to be able to add a completely different type of food to "things I can cook."  It's a small list, but with this I feel a bit more courage to keep trying completely different things.  I still need to work on measuring how much to cook.  Saturday there was too much, and Sunday not enough.  My main focus on Saturday was timing.  I am terrible at timing everying to come out at the same time.  I stopped and wrote out how long each item was to take, and worked back a time table.  I did much better than usual.  However, my secondary focus (and a major goal behind the first), was to sit down with my guests and not be running around so much. There is still a lot of room for improvement there. :/