Five Things for Friday

Welcome to the weekend!  Let's start with this week's featured flower, the rose, because what's a garden without one?  Roses are the staple to every garden everywhere.  Just like the rhododendron is a must have for a Northwest garden and a bougainvillea is found in most tropical gardens, the rose is a universal garden flower.  I'm partial to the orange and old-fashion variety of roses.  Unfortunately I can't remember this one's name.

Last weekend found us at the Gathering of Guilds Show.   The show featured the Creative Metal Arts Guild, the Portland Hand Weavers Guild, Oregon Glass Guild, and the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers.  It was an awesome show and akin to going to a museum for free.  The work presented was truly artistic.

I wasn't planning on getting anything.  I certainly didn't need anything, but none the less, I managed to find this sterling silver ring that I loved!  It was simultaneously beautiful and bad-ass!

Sigh. Every year I do the same thing.  As I mentioned in a prior post, I love going to the nursery.  Every Spring I tell myself to just get a few things; you'll want to go again once Summer comes but you won't have anywhere to plant.  And every Spring I don't listen to myself!  Yes, it happened again.  We've been waiting all month, including 3 really nice weekends, for the Edible Plant Sale tomorrow, yet last weekend we went back to the nursery and bought all the vegetables and fruit plants our little planter boxes could hold!  We got cabbage, brussel sprouts, strawberries, carrots, arugula, shallots, peas, and a blueberry plant.  We're still going to the sale as Jeff managed to not plant every pot he had; those were reserved for hot peppers!

As I prepare for my sale in July, I'm also posting some of the furniture for sale on my website, Lora's Furniture. A lot of this furniture I picked up free on the sidewalk and refurbished (although, not the dining room set shown).  I've added a permanent link to the site on the left. If you're in need of anything and you're local to the Portland area, check it out or you can wait for the sale in July, which now has a firm date, July 29th and 30th.  Yes, this is the weekend of the Oregon Brewers Festival.  Come to town for the festival and swing by my sale!

Here's some personal good news...I've lost 20 lbs since last September!  How did I do it?  Well, hot yoga helped, however I also used this free app, iTrackBites.  It works on the same point system that Weight Watchers does where every food is assigned a number of points and you have so many points a day to use.  The nice part, like Weight Watchers, most fruits and vegetables carry no points so you can eat as many of those as you'd like.  The even better part, unlike Weight Watchers, is it doesn't cost anything!  Just the tracking of what I ate worked good for me as I've never really dieted before.

That's it for this week!  Enjoy the weekend.  I hope to get those free patio chairs I picked up painted as well as the lawn mowed, as you can see in the planter box picture it needs it!