July

Well it has been a busy last few weeks to say the least. I am preparing for our biggest KidzArt event of the summer, the week-long summer camp. Also, I've been averaging 28 hours per week for RISE - on top of my usual 30ish hours for KidzArt - I really don't know about this two job thing.. luckily it will be coming to an end soon (I am training my KA replacement in August).

The only good thing is that RJ has taken over the majority of the house-work. 

I can't complain at all because I truly enjoy both of my jobs. It just always seem like there aren't enough hours in the day.

I did take a break last weekend to go to the pool with Laura in Hudson, while RJ went to the Indian's Game with <Big> Reed, Chelsey and Trevor. They recently joined Lake Forest Country Club which is just beautiful. It's only about 2 minutes from their house, so it was just a matter of time before Reed convinced Laura to join :) They are going to be quite the golfers. I'm happy for them and needless to say, it works out pretty well for us as pool guests too!

The problem with having a home office...

I tried my hand at spicy thai peanut sauce a few weeks ago. We chopped up cucumber, carrot, peanuts and celery and tossed the peanut sauce with whole wheat soba noodles (Ohio City Pasta, of course! Thanks, Trevor). I wasn't sure if we would like it or not but it was actually pretty good!

On Tuesday's in July we take the RISE kids on education field trips, like I mentioned in my last post. On the 17th we went to Amish country (that trip I ended up in the Millersburg hospital until 6:30pm with a child who had an allergic reaction - yikes! We got to Amish country at 8:30am, so yes, that was a long day!)

This Tuesday we went to the zoo, the kids loved it! We've been having 120-130 come on the trips. It's a lot of planning, organizing and coordinating, which explains my elevated hours for July. I love going on the trips though.

Part of my job with RISE is continuing with the educational art programming at the shelters. After we went to the zoo, the next day I had the kids do a monkey project (and snack on animal crackers of course) and they were so darn cute. This was my sample:

 This is what happens when RJ does the grocery shopping. I know we usually eat pretty healthy, but last weekend we just had to make these.

What is the point of eating healthy if you can't splurge every once in awhile anyway?

Lately..

We've been going for Bike Rides on the Towpath (a beautiful trail close to our house. You can jump on it through multiple parks and it goes all the way to Cleveland! We haven't gone that far..)

 Mary gave me a lemon tree that I love!

 We celebrated July 4th at Chelsey and Trevor's with cornhole, delicious food and family (Harvey included).

We beat the heat by buying a $30 plastic pool from Target. It's been so nice when we can find time to sit in there in the backyard! RJ worked hard blowing it up. I took a few turns too.

I've been helping coordinate our Project RISE summer field trips. The first one was at the Botanical Gardens/Natural History Museum in Cleveland.. saw some beautiful creatures!

On Friday we got to go to a really cool grand opening event for Olive My Heart, a really neat olive oil/balsamic vinegar shop in Hudson. Can you tell we enjoyed it by how many bottles we bought? Don't worry, only two are for us. The rest we're giving away as gifts.

They had some fun cheese/fruit pairings with the different oils and vinegars. The food was delicious! 

On Saturday we celebrated Halley's birthday :

Trevor has RJ hooked on this "Oil of Oregano" stuff. It is pretty interesting.. it's a very strong tasting oil you take a drop a day of and it has some natural health benefits. We got some during our grocery trip.

This picture makes me smile.. so cute.

On Sunday we tried out a diner that was voted #1 breakfast in Akron.. according to RJ it lived up to it's title. I'm not a big breakfast-food person.. but I can tell you their Greek salad is pretty darn good!

Things have been busy lately trying to get things squared away with KidzArt. After August I will take on more hours with Project RISE and no longer be with KidzArt. I love the program but it's been 4 years and I'm ready for a change. I'm training the new people and transitioning out.. it will be a nice change for me!

In the mean time, I'm trying to balance all the hours I'm putting in for my new job. You read above that we're doing our summer field trips, which means during the month of July I'm gone all day on Tuesdays (and spend a good amount of time during the week coordinating!). Tomorrow we're going to Amish country and I have to leave by 6:40am to meet everyone on time.. yikes! I love it though. It will be a fun day with the kids.

More soon!

♥Rachel

Father's Day

Last weekend we celebrated Father's Day which is a very special day. Both of us have been blessed with wonderful Fathers and Grandfathers who we love very much.

On Saturday Dad and I went to dinner and to see a local production of Hairspray at the Civic here in Akron. I was coordinating a work event and meeting some of the families we work with there, so he got to see me in action, work-wise.

On Sunday we went to RJ's parents' to celebrate with cornhole, sangria and family - some of my favorite things! Except for the corn hole, I need some practice in that department.

We had shish-kabobs (a lot of them were veggie only which was excellent!) which was the perfect meal. Chelsey made an awesome rice salad with mixed veggies and we brought a good salad too - see below! Halley brought the ingredients for ice cream sundaes which was a great idea.

Nothing better than a fresh veggie salad - our contribution to Sunday's Father's Day Festivities:

Monday was the SAYM golf outing which Dad was coordinating and RJ and his dad were playing in to raise money for the program. Thankfully it didn't rain like it did last year! I helped Mary set up some of the raffle prizes before having to leave to do my Monday evening art program.

We talked about nutrition and made prints with apples and carrots, so cute!

On Tuesday we felt a cyst on Craze's belly about the size of golfball, so it was pretty alarming! RJ took him to the vet and she removed it. They had to shave a good chunk of his belly fur and now he has some staples keeping the wound together.. poor kitty!

RJ had to leave yesterday for a few meetings and a conference in Indiana. Luckily it's a pretty quick drive and he will be back today. He didn't travel at all last week and so far doesn't have anything lined up for next week.

Happy Friday!

Lately..

A few Saturday's ago RJ and I worked Trevor's Pasta Booth at a local Farmer's Market - it was great!

Usually Chelsey and Trevor both sell pasta on Saturday mornings, but Chels was hosting a baby shower that day so they needed someone to babysit the booth at one of the markets. RJ and I made a good team, I doled out the pasta and RJ impressed customers with his friendly nature and by doing math in his head.

Don't let the sun deceive you - it was so windy that day! We even saw a few other vendors' tents blow over.. crazy.

I've mentioned before we love sitting in our rocking chairs on the porch in the evenings. So do the animals:

Sometimes Harvey and Craze have to fight for lap space.

Last weekend G-mom and G-pop Breece came to Ohio for a days and it was great to see them, as always! Last Sunday was also our 6 year anniversary! We were able to have a nice lunch-date to celebrate before cleaning the house before "inspection" and going to dinner with the family. 

On Monday Gmom, Mary and I had a lovely ladie's lunch and Gmom and I saw the movie 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'. It was really cute! 

On Tuesday Gmom and I went to the National First Ladies' Library in Canton. President McKinley and his wife Ida Saxton McKinley had a beautiful home in Canton we were able to tour through. We had a great docent and learned a lot!

The home was truly beautiful and unique. 

This weekend I had one goal in mind - work on the flower beds and plant some herbs! On Saturday we went to a local Greenhouse and picked up a bunch of herbs and some more air-plants for inside.

We I also really wanted to "transplant" (haha) some of the "tall orange flowers" (I think that's the Scientific name) in the front. See how there are a bunch of them on the left side of the house and none on the right side?

 It was bothering us me, so we decided to move some of them over to the other side. RJ dug out a nice little dirt bed to plant them in.

After we were done RJ said: "well you may need to wait a few days to take your after picture.."

I think we may have killed the plants we tried to move. Right now they're all droopy and sad in their new spot. Hopefully they will perk up!

We also needed to clear out the bed in the back where we wanted to plant the herbs. 

We got that bed nice and cleaned out and added some extra soil.  We're starting with 5 herbs and some spicy peppers. There is a lot more room so I'm going to do some research and see what else will grow well in that bed.

On Sunday I went to Toledo with a few of my local blogger friends to attend a blogger meet-up. It was great to meet some of the girls whose blogs I read! You may recognize Jessica, Lyndsey and Stacia from my pictures from the swap here.

The photographer, Kathy, did a great job - she's from Photography by K.

Happy Monday, here's to a great week!

Clothing Swap, etc.

Well after all of our hard work the 330-Swap & Shop was a big success last weekend! We had 4 rounds of about 20 people and were there from 8am – 6pm! Our first round started at noon and we had our vendors swap at 11am, so we were there as early as they would open the doors for us to set up and make sure we had everything ready to go. A Goodwill representative came at 6 to pick up the leftover clothes which was so helpful.

This is Jessica, Lyndsey and Jessie, the three girls I helped coordinate the event with. 

We had drinks, snacks, goodie bags and also an alterations specialist on site to take orders for adjustments on the swapped clothes. We also had girls selling jewelry, Vintage clothes and handmade soaps.

It was a great day and everyone seemed to enjoy it!

The swap was last Sunday and needless to say that weekend was pretty busy. This past long weekend was much needed and one of the best weekends we've had in awhile!

We went on a hike, many walks, a long bike-ride, breakfast dates and even went with Big Reed and Laura to our favorite Indian restaurant. They were so brave to try it with us!

Cooking for a group:

Last week, I hosted a meeting for a group I'm part of, OAFCS (Ohio Association of Family & Consumer Sciences) at our house. We usually meet at Panera but for this meeting I wanted to hold it at our house and I had the crazy idea that I wanted to make dinner for everyone. It wouldn't have been crazy except for the fact that RJ was out of town that day! So I was cleaning and preparing all by myself, which was actually a great learning experience. This may be obvious, but it's so true: do everything you can ahead of time! I made salad, whole wheat pasta with mixed sauteed veggies and toasted almonds, quinoa salad with mixed beans and veggies and fruit salad with whole wheat rolls. There were 6 of us all together, so I had a lot leftover! I figured better safe than sorry and I knew the leftovers wouldn't go to waste! (Now it's almost a week later, they didn't!)

It turned out great and those beautiful purple dahlias above were a gift from the group members. Many of the members are Family & Consumer Sciences teachers (they teach the home ec., child development, financial planning, lifeskills, etc. classes) and some of us are like myself, who have FCS degrees and use them in other ways. It's a great group of people!

Tonight I did an art project with the girls from South Akron Youth Mentorship, the group that my dad is very instrumental in coordinating and RJ volunteers with on Monday nights. We did a summer scratch-art project, they did a great job!

Tomorrow I am going into the RISE office. It is so nice to have RJ at home again! He only has two 5-day conference or tradeshows a year, and last week was one of them. This week he isn't traveling at all which is nice! He usually only has to go a night or two every other week, so we're not used to long trips! Thank goodness for cell phones.

A Long & Overdue Update!

 It has been awhile since I've given you an update so I'm going to go back all the way to May 3rd when I turned the big 2-7!

RJ and I made sure to carve out a few hours in our schedules that day to go to Lowe's and get some hanging baskets and flowers.. something I've been wanting to do since we moved in! I really love flowers and plants and having fresh flowers around the house.

We got 4 hanging baskets and a bunch of pots to put on the front porch.. I love them! One of our favorite things to do is relax in our rocking chairs on the porch (I guess that's what happens when you get into your mid-late 20's), so having the plants and flowers makes it even nicer.

 That evening RJ accompanied me to a Humane Society Boutique Night I had been invited to attend. Proceeds from whatever was bought at the boutique that night went to the Akron Humane Society, so it was an important cause. I got those pretty rosette earrings for only $7! I've been wearing them almost everyday since.

After going to the Boutique night we went to our favorite Indian restaurant and had the best dinner. It was a great day!

On May 5th I got to go to a local fashion show for one of my favorite local boutiques called NOTO. Some of my other blogger friends and I had front row seats which was fabulous!

It was really fun to see a preview of what the store will have coming out this summer. The show also featured work from some local designers too which was really cool.

I've told some of you about a big clothing swap some other ladies and I are planning.. there are around 80 people coming! It was definitely a learning experience for the 4 of us planning an event for this many people. We collected all of the clothes before hand so we could "tag them" (kind of like pricing them) and tally people's points according to how much they gave. They will then use those points to "shop" with on swap day. We have a few vendors coming to sell jewelry, vintage clothes and locally  made soaps. We have a few sponsors on board which is really cool - there are multiple businesses that donated items for our "goodie bags" and donated snacks for the event. We have had a lot of fun planning it but as you can imagine it's been a lot of work! We (naively) didn't put a limit on how much people could donate, so we had some people giving up to 5 bags of clothes! We go through each item individually to give it a "price" and tag it.. then sorted them all into tag/size boxes.. it's been a lot of work but we've had fun with it. 

We did all the clothes sorting here at our house, since we have the most space. Luckily, since we just moved in we had a spare bedroom that wasn't being used for anything but storage yet. That room (and the attic) became the swap storage room. Here are all the sorted clothes: 

The attic is our "work space" and we have extra storage up there too. 

As you can see, it's a lot of stuff!

If we do the swap again next year we've already agreed we'll have to do things much differently. It's been fun but we all agreed it's just been too much time to spend when we all have lives and (multiple) jobs! The girls are great though and I've loved getting to hang out with them a lot over the last few weeks. 

Chicago

RJ had a work conference this Wednesday in Chicago, so we figured it would be the perfect time to visit Drew for a few days. We brought Tina along with us, since Drew has a bigger place now (and even an outdoor space) and could use a little friend. 

She was so good in the car!

We got there late Saturday and picked Drew up from the restaurant. It was so nice to be able to stay at his place this time instead of at the motel this time around. He has a really comfortable couch and futon so it worked out perfectly. I think Tina will be happy there with him, she even has a patio to explore!

We ate a lot of delicious meals, including the nicest late lunch at Drew's restaurant while he was working. We went to the beach one night and I read my book in the sand while the guys threw the frisbee.

We loved hanging out with Drew - this was at a restaurant we tried called the Green Zebra, a vegetarian restaurant that was so good! Since they knew Drew was a special guest (they knew he's the sous chef at Province), they kept bringing out extra things for us to try on the house which was so cool! It's nice being connected with people in high places. One of the things the chef sent out was a dessert port to have with our dessert. I took one tiny sip and decided to stick with the wine - too strong for me! The food was so delicious though.

We got there late Saturday and I flew back to Ohio on Tuesday morning, so it was a quick trip for me. On Tuesday Trevor picked me up from the airport (thanks, buddy!) and I picked up Harvey from their house. I drove right home to drop off the dog and then went straight into the RISE office. We had a big event on Wednesday night I helped coordinate, part of the reason I left early. 

RJ had his conference there on Wednesday and left pretty early on Thursday to drive home. He's busy busy catching up today. I just have one meeting this afternoon but otherwise planned today to be pretty light since the rest of the week was so busy! 

Tomorrow is crunch time for the swap - we have to bring all of those clothes over the the hair salon/spa area where we are hosting the event on Sunday. More soon after the event, wish us luck!

Lately

From the pictures:

* Last week we went to Aunt Lynn's house to help Chrissy before her move and hang out with them. Always fun to hang out, they are so much fun. Aunt Lynn's downstairs bathroom is the prettiest color of clue (pictured above)

*We have been taking lots of walks around close-by neighborhoods. We really love this area and love taking walks. A lot of trees and flowers are still blooming as you can see. 

*Harvey and I - he came with us when we were finishing up at the duplex - the tenants are in now and that is such a relief! 

*A fruit carving at the vegan/vegetarian fest Mary and I went to at Kent State yesterday, it was awesome! 

*Breakfast from our shnazzy new blender. We've been making smoothies at least once a day - we add lots of vanilla protein powder, fruit and even kale for extra vitamins. They are delicious!

*A rug I got for the attic space, everything is starting to come together!

General:

We have been keeping busy these last few weeks. We are so relieved to be done over at the duplex. The tenants moved in on the 15th, so that entire week before that was pretty hectic. There were lots of last minute projects to be done (like putting all the closet doors back on upstairs) and cleaning to be done. RJ was awesome that week and did most of the project solo. It was also the week before the last session of KidzArt classes started, one of my busiest times of the year. Luckily I got everyone set by Thursday so Friday and Saturday I went over and cleaned it up really good - I told RJ to stay home since he had done so many other projects that week. He also finished getting all of our stuff out of there too. So getting the tenants settled over there has been a big relief! We felt like we were both working around the clock because unfortunately our jobs weren't "on hold" while we were getting the duplex ready. 

The Friday before the tenants moved in we went Reed and Laura's to help Halley and Shawn move out.. we are so excited for them! They have a great apartment downtown Cleveland where Halley can walk to work. I can't wait to see it! All 8 of us went over that night to help load up the moving truck. Saturday they had a few movers unload the truck which was good because Saturday was also our last day before the tenants moved in!

Last week RJ was able to catch up on work and visit customers for a night. He has only been having to travel a night or two every other week which has been so nice. I love having him home all day! Even though we're both in our offices working it's nice to have lunch together or take a break to take a walk. We are so lucky!

Last week was busy busy with Project RISE because we have a big grant due soon. My boss estimates it takes about 80 hours to compile all the info and write the grant - it's the biggest one of the year. Needless to say everyone was asked to help out a lot. I  usually only put 1 day in the office but last week I did 3! I love helping out but I also have to get the KidzArt work done too, so it was a busy week! I will probably go in 1 or 2 days this week to make sure we get everything in on time.

More soon!