Matt sometimes has a hard time getting rid of things he no longer uses or needs, including old clothing. As of last year, he had dozens of T-shirts in a plastic container under our bed: T-shirts from high school drumline, college tees he got for various undergrad events, shirts from every performance of the percussion organization he was in through all four years of undergrad and three years of grad school. So last fall, I decided to be an AWESOME wife and turn some of his college and high school percussion shirts into a quilt, so they could be useful. (I'm sometimes horribly unsentimental, but I understand that other people are not unsentimental, and therefore, he and I agreed that this was a good solution.) I decided that this would be his Christmas gift, and it would be so thoughtful of me.
Except that I had never quilted before. I basically had to ask my friend Jess to hold my hand through every single step of the process. Christmas came and went. Then January came and went. Matt's graduation came and went. AND STILL THAT DAMNED QUILT WAS NOT DONE.
But gosh dang it, I finally finished it last weekend. Merry Christmas, Matt. I'm never quilting again.
The day before Quilt Finishing Day, I took a trip to Farm Patch. A friend had told me that they sell basil and tons of other herb plants for $2.50, and since that's how much a little packet of basil costs at the grocery store, I decided that perhaps it was time to start my own tiny herb garden. So I bought a pot of basil and a pot of cilantro, and came home excited to try my hand at actually keeping plants alive and harvesting edible things from them.
Then Matt got super into the idea and came home with a Mexibell pepper plant after a trip to Lowe's.
After some discussion about whether we should plant them in the ground (in the tiny space we have in the flowerbed) or whether it'd be easier/better to re-pot them, we wound up getting some decent-sized pots and Matt "built" this cinderblock stand for them, so that it'd be harder for Elliott to go right up to the plants and chomp on them the second she runs out the back door. He drilled holes in the wood so the pots can drain properly, and so hopefully I can avoid drowing the plants.
(I think I accidentally once drowned a succulent. It looked sad, so I watered it, and then it looked sadder, so I watered it more. #fail)
It's been nine days and the plants are still alive. I'm sure it's too early to call success, but I am inclined to celebrate anyway.
I was informed that cilantro doesn't need a lot of space, so it got a small pot I already had.
L to R: Basil, cilantro and tiny Mexibell buds! (Mexibell is a mild bell pepper/jalapeño hybrid.)
This actually happened on the trip back up from Mexico, but do you remember when we first decided we wanted to try all the places along the Texas Kolache Trail? And how we managed to hit two of the places on the south route, but the Original Kountry Bakery was closed on Sundays?
Well, it is NOT closed on Mondays! And on the drive back home, we passed through Schulenberg right around lunch time. We stopped for lunch — the egg-salad sandwich was NOM, and Matt said his burger was good too — and picked up a few kolaches for later.
We got lemon, cherry and apple fillings (Matt didn't want to get meat ones since we still had a ways to drive), and I'm glad we finally got to try the last place on my south-route list! The lemon one was amazing, but I wasn't convinced the apple one actually was apple — the filling tasted like it had something peachy in it, but Matt thinks I'm wrong. I wouldn't say these were my favorite of the kolache places or anything, but they were still pretty tasty.
Clockwise from left: Apple, lemon, cherry.