What a Great Birthday!

Yes, today is my birthday. I am 29 and holding... or as one of my friends says, "I am 29 plus shipping and handling and I am getting quite expensive to go anywhere" That makes me laugh whenever I hear that. I am getting older, but as the old saying goes; Aging like fine wine is what I am. I just cannot remember who said that but it is someone I am related to, just can't remember who. Oh My Gosh.. they say the first thing to go is the mind and with me forgetting things, who knows. Oh well on with my day. I will stop being philosophical because I am no good at it.

My day started out like most any day, I got the kids on the bus and sat down with coffee. But I had plans; plans to shop and buy some things that I wanted and things I did not need. I succeeded. My first stop was of course Starbucks for an Espresso Truffle. I have come to love this concoction of a drink, it is so flavorful to the point of almost being addicting. I savored my coffee as I drove to downtown Olympia for my first real stop on my day of fun (I should say my morning of fun since I was with no kids and able to go shop for myself, that is until 12:30 when the bus comes to bring home my preschooler). Anyway, my first stop was at a very cool little shop downtown right near Farmer's Market called Einmaleins and if you are visiting Olympia WA or you live here in Olympia or near here, you have to go into this store at 121 State Ave downtown. Mathias is such a nice person and we had a great chat in the store while I was purchasing my newest cookbook, Flavors by Donna Hay. He also had some chocolate on the counter that was coffee infused chocolate and it was so good, I should have bought some. I could have eaten that as my morning treat with my Espresso Truffle, but I had to resist since I was having other treats during my day. You can find him at the site (just click the Einmaleins name above, or he is @einmaleins on Twitter. Look him up, he is a neat person and I look forward to going back to his store soon (after all I have to buy up the rest of the Donna Hay cookbooks, I really like that the recipes are simple and don't take 15 million ingredients to get something yummy on the table). See you another time Mathias!

Onward was next to Farmer's Market where I bought herb plants and a couple of pepper plants. I attempted to grow my own herb garden from seeds and failed... miserably. I do not think I am cut out to grow things from seeds, I have failed now a few times so now I give up and will always buy plants instead. I got some really nice herbs (chocolate mint, greek oregano, sweet basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and lavender; I have always wanted to experiment with lavender, I hear people rave about it). Then I bought a green bell pepper and red bell pepper plant. I look forward to planting those this evening after the hot sun goes down with my little planting helper (who happens to be 4 years old and has an aversion to dirt and hates to get dirty so this is my chance to expose her to dirt... again). Oh, and I also bought her a sunflower plant because her little seedlings died also. She wanted to grow her own sunflower, so now she can.

Then again it was on to Jay's Produce Stand because I wanted to get some more things for the house and it is really fun shopping there because the prices are so good, I can buy a lot and not worry about cost. This time I spent $14.90 and got basically heavy things such as:
Cantaloupe 3 lbs/$1
On the vine tomatoes 84 cents/lb
baby lemons 10/$1
baby limes 5/$1
cauliflower 69 cents/lb
navel oranges 59 cents/lb
bananas 49 cents/lb
pink lady apples 69 cents/lb
asparagus 79 cents/lb (I have never seen asparagus that inexpensive and so I also ordered my 40 lbs of asparagus for canning next week, I will pay for that when I go pick it up)

Again, Jay's did not let me down. I still think this place is hands down the best produce stand in Thurston County, anyone who lives here should visit. They are on Mud Bay Road on the west side of Olympia WA.

Then I did some other things today; took Nicole to Taekwondo, went and picked up pizza, had dinner, went to Walmart, etc etc yadda yadda. Then Nessa (my 4 yr old little helper) helped me to plant my plants I bought at Farmer's Market and planted her sunflower. It was a lot of fun watching her try to avoid getting her hands dirty or her clothes dirty, she sure took a long time to plant her one little plant because of that. You will notice all my plants are in pots; well, that is because we live in an apartment and have no actual ground to plant directly into. So we have to use pots, but it still enables me to have my fresh herbs and homegrown tomatoes which is what I want because they are better that way.



One more birthday on the books is now almost past. This year it is 39, next year is 40 but I am confident that I am going to age gracefully like fine wine! So this is also day 29 on the books of NaBloPoMo and looks like I am going to make it to 31 days this month of blogging. YAY me! I usually never back down from a challenge.. ok well a challenge like this anyway.