Less Hustle More Coffee

With doggies in tow, we took to the road and made our way into Franklin, TN to visit with friends for the overnight. And for our “French Cuisine” focused weekend.

It didn’t take long for us all to settle in, although I think Don and Lisa thought we might be moving in for a month or two! It looked like we were set for an expedition with our cooler, boxes of food, pans to cook fondue with, our overnight bags, the dog’s needs.

The wine began to flow. And this one above was my favorite.

Roger stuck close by in the kitchen – not sure if it was to be near his Daddy or to be close to the smelling good French cuisine, or because the mat was just comfy there.

We snarfed down some cheese fondue.

Ate French pastry filled with escargot and oysters. This was my first time to have escargot. They are on the same order of mushrooms and oysters – the texture and taste are not going to be my go to foods, for sure. lol

Maisy had the right idea and found her comfy spot on the sofa while everyone was in the kitchen.

With about 6 of us sipping wine, it didn’t take long for the 2nd bottle to be cracked.

When the humans fondue and feast, the doggies get the good seats. 😉

And then came the French Onion soup – oh so heavenly. George did a great job of it and the fondue.

Hours later, as it turned into evening, Don fixed us a French martini and then we did our Christmas!

And you know that was all just the beginning! Don and Lisa fixed an awesome dinner! A lamb roast, lima beans, and then I had made the potatoes – a French type of scalloped potatoes with Gruyere cheese.

Lisa had made a gluten free bread shown above, and I loved loved loved the taste of it. I want to make some.

Then we set into coffee, French roast of course! Caffeine could not keep me awake. It was not long after before I headed to bed and the doggies joined. Everyone else stayed up later. I’m always the first to go to bed with my early to rise and early to be routines.

We had a comfy bedroom suite with our own private bath and a back door to take the doggies out. While I did have to take the dogs out around 4 a.m., the did allow us to sleep in until about 8 I think. RARE! They were patient. Once we did get up Maisy began barking until she was fed. I was scrambling to get it done, trying to find their bowls, their food etc.

We sat around this morning talking about how full we were and drank two pots of coffee. One regular French roast and the other chicory flavor. And then guess what!

We ate again!

These above were quail eggs. We had regular eggs too. And some good bacon. mmmmm. And Lisa whisking up the eggs!

French loaf of bread – yes!

And I’m just a fan of some good looking decor! Fruit and chocolate and roses! Need to throw that in there! So pretty.

Lisa had slaved away the day before making some crepe’s. The strawberries and creme and chocolate was great drizzled on it.

The husbands were serious about their portion of the morning feast. (They would make someone a good wife, we teased.) lol

We were supposed to have the chocolate fondue after dinner the night before but we were too stuffed so we had it after breakfast.

Let’s just say the chocolate fondue was really good. A shot glass of chocolate had both Lisa and I heading for bucket fulls of water a few minutes later. The sugar and the caffeine – might have sent us a bit overboard.

The girls then did the hot tub after cleaning the kitchen and had a long talk out there with Lisa and Amber and me. We came in and I took a shower and made the bed. Maisy wouldn’t let me finish.

While the guys (Don, George, and Dillon) did their hot tubbing us girls went for a neighborhood walk as it was sunny and 66!

Yes, I was facing the sun, but it captured what I was seeing!

Not long after, we packed up and headed home. The doggies have been tapped out and resting.

Our time with Don and Lisa and Amber and Dillon goes by so fast. We had a lot of fun, shared a lot of laughs and said “oui oui” way too often. We are still pondering our next theme, but we are considering a 4th of July weekend extravaganza! 😉 The date pretty much set and while it was our turn to host the next one, Lisa said let them do it so we can swim in the pool since it’ll be summer, and then we’ll host the fall one.

It doesn’t really matter where we are, we’ll have a good time. As always!

I was pretty tired when we got home. George said “are you really tired from relaxing all weekend?” Yep, I am. lol.

So, as far as everything on the personal front – I’ve been trying to work on some projects as I get time. I have been working on getting my photos from the phone drug over into my iMac files which I’m doing by year.

And then I realized I still had most of my videos from our November vacation last year. And I temporarily (or permanently) got side tracked and began doing an iMovie video. Clearly I need more skill. And for the life of me I cannot remember to turn my phone sideways to video. So I need to finish dragging all the photos and videos over to my files and will need to watch some iMovie videos on YouTube to learn some more. I have done the iPhone version but the desktop one is quite different. I kinda have a goal to do some periodic “Vlogging” – and do our vacations and other than that do some videos seasonally as we have enough built up. I want to integrate that into the Blog and create a channel to go along with it, just for fun. I’m quite taken with the video creations I see and I love what I’m learning and I’m just evolving in that direction. I’ll also be able to put those on the blog itself as well.

So, it should be pretty fun and will likely end up being a new hobby. It takes HOURS to put these videos together. But I have enjoyed the ones I’ve done in the past and I’m looking forward to trying to learn how to do them where they look professional in quality.

So I’ll have to quit doing the iMovie work until I get these photos over to the iMac so I can delete a lot from my phone for my next trip – Why? So I can put more photos on the phone! The problem with doing the iMovies is that they will be put together as I have time and will be published much later – not as quick as the blog photos. But that is ok. I’ll be learning and doing them as I have time and I think it will be something I’ll enjoy but I have a LOT TO learn. And they won’t be perfect. I also have to find out where to get music from. Hopefully free at first. I don’t mind paying a little bit for a site to use loyalty free music (or rights to use it or whatever the term is) if it’s something I’m going to be doing ongoing.

I finally got my THAT SHAKE/SUPPLEMENT COMPANY I USE’s 1099 downloaded for George. But I still have a lot of things I have had on the list that I’ve not done yet. George needs to get me my documents (they are locked up) for my updated drivers license. I need to send Mom Fancy’s ribbon for her hair since her hair dresser can’t find pink ribbon (I guess she doesn’t use Amazon). I need to make sure I still have my graphics files (tubes) and we need to start planning things for the Amelia Island trip. However, soon I will be meeting Katy in Tulsa – not this week but next week. And I have a lot of other projects around the house to do, and when I get back from Tulsa (Susan and I )- we need to plan the shower for June and I need to start getting the house in order also. So not really making a lot of progress on much. Slow and steady with these photos slowing me down. At least I’m almost to 2020!

I was so excited to have all my photos synced automatically. It’s great for when I blog! No downloading or uploading of photos. But, if you delete off your phone, it deletes off your photos on the iMac (on the cloud). So I’m having to drag over the ones I want to keep off the cloud so they permanently stay. I had a lot of things on my phone too. So there is quite the many photos to transfer. Then I get off on tangents as I said earlier of doing iMovies and such and – well, it was fun. I also have been known to get off task by playing video games as they are fun to me. I found one that mimics Sim City – the very old version I love it! So yeah, I get OFF task sometimes. Anyway, I love being able to do these kinds of things. I love being geeky. I love planning new things and working toward them. So the to do list still looks the same as it did last week, pretty much!

I’m thrilled that it is March! Spring will be popping soon! And I’m so glad to have my life back! No travels, no open enrollment time, I get to enjoy some time with my daughter soon and all this makes me happy. With warmer weather coming, I suppose that the Corona virus will rid of itself. I sure hope so. It’s a bit scary doing air travel in the next few days. That puts you in a higher risk zone for sure. But I’m not cancelling my life over it. I’ll take the risk to see my girl.

My food tracker journal arrived and I’ll be starting that up this week. I’ll take a pic and show you what it is like as the week progresses. But what a wonderful weekend we had. Now I need to do laundry and all that I normally do on the weekends during the week as best as I can. But tomorrow night I’m getting a pedi so I can wear sandals in the next week or so. And I’m so ready for a spring shopping spree. Might need some more sandals! 😉 Hope you all enjoy your first week of March and I’ll pop in for some short little blog posts this week!