Hopscotch and the return to Huntley Meadows

We have been trying to spend every possible minute outside to enjoy the warm weather before the rain arrives later this week. After our morning at the zoo, we committed to spending the rest of the day outside. During Elsa's nap, Amelia and I broke out the sidewalk chalk. It took me a few attempts to remember what my childhood hopscotch pattern looked like.





It has been months since we've been to Huntley Meadows, which is rare for us. There wasn't much growing yet, but it was still beautiful with the late afternoon sun shining through the forest and a LOT of birds.

National Zoo

The weather yesterday (above 60!) called for a fun adventure. Amelia was in school for the morning so Elsa got a special trip to the zoo with her friend Bria. It was the perfect zoo day. No crowds and lots of animal action. Elsa loved every minute. Especially laughing with Bria.


Checking out the panda. (As a side note, one of the pandas was recently sent back to China. This was huge news around here for a long time. Actually, it still is. I just saw a follow-up report yesterday on how the panda is doing in China. One day while watching the news, Amelia yelled out "I AM SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT THAT BABY PANDA!!)

But they are adorable:



The elephant trainers were out making the elephant do some tricks.


If Elsa looks scared in this picture, it's because she was. I propped her up there and she started to slide off. She was holding onto that nose for dear life.


Elsa and Bria were very excited about the construction happening behind us.




The orangutans were out on the "O line." This guy was carrying his blanket with him as he crossed.

Founding Farmers

Monday was another beautiful spring day. I left the girls with our awesome friends across the street and I headed downtown to meet Ben for an early birthday dinner at Founding Farmers which is right next to his office.


I made Ben pose in front of his office (The World Bank).


An interesting mix of architecture across the street.



Founding Farmers is a LEED certified "green" restaurant that serves farm-inspired American food. It has some very cool design elements throughout the restaurant from the furniture to the silverware.


(As you can see, we nearly had the place to ourselves at first...early dinners are nice that way.)

Some friends had strongly recommended the southern fried chicken and waffles, describing the waffles as being "clouds put in a waffle iron." So I ordered it and when I stuck my fork in the waffle, they were completely hard. I could hardly cut through them and it hurt to eat them. I was pretty sure it was the exact opposite of the cloud description. So I asked the waiter if they were usually so crunchy and he immediately brought me some freshly made waffles (I scored an entire plate of them). Apparently, they had given me some older ones leftover from the lunch service. But the fresh waffles were FABULOUS. Slightly crunchy on the outside and definitely cloud-like on the inside. The meal also came with the best macaroni and cheese ever, delicious chicken, and some brown sugar carrots. Ben got the meatloaf which was also good.



Dessert was equally fabulous. Freshly fried donut holes with three different dipping sauces. We devoured these way too quickly.




The view out the window at our table...the sun was casting some cool shadows on this church.

After stuffing ourselves, we walked to Utrecht where I bought supplies for my next screen printing adventure. It was so nice to walk around without being bundled up.

Summer feet.

The warm weather inspired a sandal shopping spree.







And a few photos of my favorite blue-eyed girls before church on Sunday:

Now this is March.

It finally feels like Spring. This weekend was so lovely and the warmth is continuing through the week. We spent all Saturday afternoon working in the yard. It felt so good to be outside. We mostly did some mulching and cleaned up the yard a bit. And the car. I stepped in dog poop almost immediately upon being outside and couldn't figure out why it smelled like poop everywhere I was working. We also broke out the grill and cooked up some brats. And I even took my bike out for a spin. Hooray for Spring!








Elsa pulled the snow tube out of the shed and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working.

Spring is Here!

It's not quite spring, but close enough. Spring in D.C. is one of my favorite things. A few of our favorite activities are coming up.

The Smithsonian Kite Festival is happening on Saturday, March 27 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Washington Monument. The atmosphere here is always so carefree and fun...how can you not be happy while flying a kite? There is an actual competition, but many people just show up to fly their own kites for fun. Click here for more information.

And of course, the Cherry Blossom Festival. For a complete list of all of the events, click here. Last year, we really enjoyed attending the fireworks at the end of the festival. This year, they are at the beginning of the festival on Saturday, April 3 at the Southwest Waterfront. We watched them from Hains Point and there were hardly any people there. It's a great display.

Another great place to see blossoms is the National Arboretum.

Printing with handmade stamps

A little while back, I got a wonderful surprise in the mail from a fabulously crafty friend of mine. It was this book:



I love trying out various printing methods and this book has some fantastic ideas. I recently attempted some handmade rubber stamps. I'm having fun experimenting with the whole process and I'm excited to try some other printing projects soon. I have a plan to screen print a new duvet cover for our bed, although I'm a bit intimidated by the prospects of printing on something so large.

Here are the results of my attempts with the rubber stamps. I carved two different stamps and printed a few bags and some stationery:

My official declaration of Spring.

The weatherman said that meteorologically, spring begins on March 1. TODAY! I'm going along with that. It almost, ALMOST, feels like spring. It's still a little cold for my liking, but my tulips are poking through the ground and almost all of the snow is gone from our yard, thanks to living on the sunny side of the street.

Saturday was actually tolerable and did feel like the beginning of spring. We watched our neighbor's kids Saturday afternoon and everyone had fun playing on our bikes and big wheels outside.

We headed to the National Harbor Saturday evening to play around a bit and check out Elevation Burger. The burgers were pretty good and the set-up was a lot like Five Guys, minus the peanuts. And with the addition of shakes. (Elsa was a HUGE fan as seen in the photos below.)