thrifty finds

Friday morning I treated myself to a couple hours of thrift shopping at the Goodwill. It's one of my favorite pastimes but one that I hadn't passed time doing for several months. For one dollar I bought a glass with a nice big bowl for drinking red wine which is another of my favorite pastimes that I have indulged in recently.



This is not a clear picture of these two glasses that will work quite well for a nice fall dessert (maybe pumpkin mousse)with their gold leaf pattern.



Coldwater Creek jacket and Banana Republic skirt



Art and Soul cotton lawn blouse



just a really cute demin skirt that fit well



Dress shorts that I think I can wear to work....Jay said "What if they send you home to change?" I said "Then I will go home and change."



New York and Company cable knit top and DKNY slacks
Excuse my feet. I was standing on the bed to take the photos.

chicken and peach quesadillas

cut up rotisserie chicken, fresh ripe peach, cilantro, grated pepper jack cheese



served with sour cream with honey and lime juice and a sprinkle of cilantro

sides of white chicken chilli (it was leftover) and fresh corn, tomato and jalapeno salad

rainy monday

What I feel is come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it's all about
Hanging around, nothing to do but frown
Rainy Mondays always get me down

a fish tale

So I mentioned in my last Toastmasters post that I had signed up to be topicmaster for the Table Topics portion of the next meeting. Well, the next meeting was Wednesday. I was fresh back from my trip to Savannah and waited the next couple days for an email from the Toastmaster regarding the theme of the meeting. This email came Tuesday in the the form of a plea from the Toastmaster for someone to step in for him because he forgot that he was supposed to be Toastmaster and he also had forgotten that his company was having their annual golf outing on the same day. So I picked my own topic....fairs and festivals....and set to work.

We had talked about props at the last meeting so from my theme of fairs and festivals I came up with a carnival game of Go Fish for Your Question. It's harder than you think to come up with five decent questions on a topic.

Here are my five.
1. When I was a girl I belonged to a 4-H club. I baked a cake and sewed a skirt that I entered into the fair. What skill or talent do you possess that may make you consider entering something into the fair?
2. There are so many kinds of fairs and festivals...art, music and film for example. If you could host a festival, what would it be?
3. Fairs and festivals have entertained folks for centuries. If you could go back in time and live in a different era, what would that era be and why?
4. It seems that you can get any food fried at the fair. I've even heard of fried Coca-Cola. If you had a food stand at the fair, what food would you offer fair-goers?
5. I remember how exciting the midway was to me when I was a child. What is your favorite game, ride or activity at the fair?

Table topics is designed to make people think on their feet. We had two speeches scheduled for the day. One of the speakers cancelled so all we had left was Kevin McCue from my village of Williamsville and our District 65 of Toastmasters who is a finalist in the Toastmasters International Speech Contest. Yes, he has made it all the way to finalist in a worldwide speech contest and he was trying out his speech on us. I had plenty of time for all five of my questions.

I started with my little spiel about how summer is the season of fairs and festivals so I chose that theme for the meeting. Then how based on this theme I had derived(word of the day that I easily worked in and got points for because I was going to say came up with before finding out that derive was the word of the day)a carnival game of Go Fish. "This is a game of fate and chance" I barked. "Fate because you determine your own fate by fishing for your own question and chance because you get a chance to express yourself and win a prize. So step right up Ladies and Gentlemen. Who would like to take a chance?" I really did have prizes....disposable mechcanical pencils.

People stepped up, fished out their question, handed it to me. I read them the question and they gave a little 1 to 2 minute speech on it. Some people really seemed to enjoy the fishing process and acted out the part of snaggging a fish.

So again this went over well. I received many compliments on a job well performed although everyone receives a lot of encouragement in Toastmasters so I'm not going to let it give me a swollen head. But I do feel that I did well and isn't that the point?

savannah - day 1

When I take a trip I usually jot down what I saw and what I ate in a little notebook I keep in my purse so I can look back and remember the fun I had. On my recent girl trip to Savannah I neglected to do this so I'm trying to reconstruct it now. Sometimes the easiest way for me to remember is by remembering what I wore. I thought I was starting to get good at packing lightly but on this trip I just couldn't decide what to pack and ended up packing maybe ten or more outfits that never made it onto my body. But summer clothes are small and lightweight and ten outfits don't really take up that much room in a suitcase. Besides who knows...what if I spilled something on myself or was invited to a ball. I was going to be in Savannah....who knows.

My vacation actually started the evening before I left. My friend, Barb, had recently moved to Rochester so she came to stay the night so B could drive us to the airport in the morning. It was a lovely evening. We spent it on the patio with a bottle of wine and a visit from Alex, her sweet daughter who remained in Buffalo when Barb moved to Rochester.

The next morning, Wednesday, Barb and I flew into Charlotte where we met up with Donna and her sister, Carla, who flew in from Chicago. We all took the same flight from Charlotte to Savannah.



On the flight from Charlotte to Savannah I received a compliment on my necklace from the passenger across the aisle from me. I thanked her and told her that my sister had made it for me. A little later in the flight she turned to me and inquired about getting one for herself at which point I offered up that it was my sister's signature piece and then I offered up my sister's email address.



We arrived in Savannah around noon and Joan, our our lovely van driver, drove us downtown and told us what to see and where to eat and what was on what street and what streets to avoid and just a wealth of information and background on Savannah.
We checked into our hotel, The Hampton. From our fifth floor window on Bay Street we looked out over River Street and the Savannah River. Our hungry tummies guided us out to Bay Street and the descent down to River Street



where we lunched at Huey's.



I had a fried green tomato muffaletta sandwich with red beans and rice. My only regret here was that we didn't order the beignets for dessert. Normally just a wine or Margarita drinker I broke out of my rut and accompanied this with a gin and soda water with lime...refreshing.



We are all just so happy be here.


After lunch we walked the city some, got our bearings and stopped in a visitor center to begin making our sightseeing plans. We also walked into Matters of Factors where we had a lengthy chat with the owner about local Georgia wines and picked up three bottles for our late night chats at the hotel. Back at the hotel we all opted for a shower and change of clothes. It was hot, hot, hot and humid in Savannah.



We decided to attend the theater in the evening. We saw a delightful little play called The Beat Goes On which was all music from the 60s, 70s and 80s. And proof that it is a small world after all, who should Donna run into but a teacher from the high school where she works.



After the play we went to the Bohemian for a cocktail on the roof (continuing in my adventurous vein, I had a Bloody Mary which I thought was quite appropriate since I was in the most haunted city in the US). I knew I liked this hotel as soon as I entered the lobby.



Here I snapped a shot of the bridge to Hilton Head over the Savannah River.



It grew dark on the roof and we grew hungry. At midnight we found a little pub serving food until 1 am. We split a wonderful little Margherita pizza.

I think we had one of those bottles of Georgia wine back at the hotel and thus ended day one.

ground pork with sage and orzo

This may not look pretty but it was delicious. When I got home from Savannah my cupboards were bare so I worked with the things I could find. I browned the lean ground pork, then cooked the orzo in the same skillet with a dash of butter and olive oil til the orzo were brown. Then added chicken broth and covered the skillet until the orzo were done. Added the pork back along with a big handful of chopped sage from my herb garden and served it up with a sprinkle of Parmesan.