What I hate about spring/summer: the extreme heat and blaring sun (oww, my eyes).

What I love about spring/summer: fresh herbs and veggies.

As a celebration of what I do love about this weather, I made some fresh mint lemonade.  I made mint simple syrup by bringing equal parts of sugar and water to a boil.  As soon as it did, I took the pan off the heat and threw in one part fresh mint. After I let it come to near-room temperature, I took out the mint leaves and transferred the syrup to a small bowl and put it in the refrigerator to cool.  I just made one glass of the lemonade, using the juice of half a lemon, ice, water, and the mint syrup to taste.  Quick, easy, and delicious.

On my family’s pilgrimage to Wisconsin the day my Grandma died, I do believe that Grandma told God to make a beautiful sunset for us.  The picture is a tad blurry due to the fact that I took it in a moving car.  I actually think the picture is pretty that way, in an artsy kind of manner.  When I look at this picture now, I realize that it couldn’t have captured the emotion I felt seeing it in person.  The colors were amazingly vibrant, and the peace that this nature-display emitted soothed my broken heart.  It’s the kind of sunset about which I knew my Grandma would talk for minutes on end.  I can even hear her voice raise in pitch slightly as she exhaled in amazement, “Oh, my land!  Would you look at that?!”  Her hushed and humbled excitement at such things was truly contagious.  I do believe that I inherited her love and amazement for the little things in life.

 I made this to go with my mom’s pleated purse.  I based it off of Martha Stewart’s “pattern,” but used regular fabric instead of felt.  In doing so, I had to attach some fusible interfacing (one of the best inventions ever) to the fabric.  I also had to modify the pattern to fit the measurements of the little hem I made on each side where the tissues come out.  Also, I sewed the short ends together wrong-sides-together, that way I flipped the holder inside out to have hidden seams rather than the seams sticking out and using pinking shears for the edges.  (Yes, Martha, that’s fine for felt…but would have looked awful with the fabric.)  I just realized how confusing that must be to read.  But that just goes to show that I have no idea how to put into words what I do with sewing.  In other words: don’t expect tutorials from me anytime soon.

Since I take my pictures close up with no other objects to create scale, this tissue holder might look gigantic.  But really, it’s a travel-size pack of Kleenex.  This little booger (hehe! a pun!) was fun and fast to put together.  It doesn’t take much fabric to make one, so it’s a good use for scraps of fabric that might be vegging out somewhere.

I’m introducing a new post category/series of mine called “Why I Love It.”  The concept is this: I have a ton of random things that remind me of certain people, places, or memories, and I don’t often take time to really stop and think why I value the objects or keep them around.  So I’ll take one of these said objects, post it here, and write a little bit about it.  Simple?  Yes.  First up:

This ceramics piece (I quite frankly don’t know what to call it) was made for me by my fiance (then girlfriend) Sarah.  When we were seniors in college, she took a ceramics class.  I would often tag along with her to the studio in the evenings, partially to act as her bodyguard (ha!) and to take advantage of the materials that I could use as well.  (The instructor gave permission for this, don’t worry.)  I think this particular ceramics piece came about because she was showing me how to use slabs of clay to create various things (tiles, plates, etc.).  She then carved my name out of the extra clay while I was taking forever working on something else.  After firing the piece, she glazed it in one of my most favorite colors.

I still keep this on my bookshelf, and I nearly laugh out loud every time I see it.  To me, it captures the whimsical side of our relationship and the spontaneous joy that I love so much about her.  And that’s why I love it.

P.S.  She made some really beautiful pieces while she was taking Ceramics.  I didn’t do her skills justice with just this post!  With her permission, maybe I’ll post a couple of the super-nice things she gave me that she made.

My mom received a homemade Mother’s Day gift this year.  The sewing machine my parents gave me for this past Christmas seems to be a gift that keeps giving!  To make this purse, I used the same pattern that I used to make one for my fiancé a couple of weeks ago.  For you sewers out there, it’s a great, easy (and free) pattern.  I am a beginner sewer, and I did just fine.  (Well, after threatening the lives of pleats far and wide the first time I made one.)

The purse came together a lot faster this time, but it still took forever to cut out the fabric.  I definitely need more patience in the fabric-cutting department.  Even though I made the patten before, this was the first time I used magnetic snaps.  They were incredibly easy to attach, and I like the way the close/open.  Please don’t look too closely at the stitching around the magnetic snaps.  I meant to switch out the brown thread for the tan so it wouldn’t show up, but I forgot.  It looks a little bad there, but it’s not like anyone really sees it.  (Except for now, when I’m putting it on full display for you.)  But, hey…have you ever tried to sew a circle on a sewing machine?  I need practice.

If you were wondering, my mom really liked the purse.  She knew that she was getting it, because she picked out the fabric.  But it was nice to be able to give a gift that I knew she would like and appreciate.

I almost called this post “My Weed Garden,” but then I quickly realized that the title could have terrible and misleading implications.  As a Kentuckian, I already have to deal with enough idiotic stereotypes.  I don’t want to have to start dealing with the notion that I would be home-growing illegal substances, please.

But I digress.  Even though you know I love the color green, I do not declare that I have a green thumb.  I don’t really have enough experience in gardening to know, but I don’t really have a deep-rooted interest in it, anyway.  (Sadly, that pun was most certainly intended.)  But as I was helping my mom weed her flowerbed in anticipation of planting new flowers, I found some little weeds that I thought were really pretty.  So I decided to try to save the lives of a couple of poor botanical pests:

One of them looks a whole lot like flat leaf parsley to me.  (It’s not, though.  I tasted it.)  The other reminds me of some sort of clover.  I’ll probably end up accidentally killing them anyway, but I wanted to offer them a second chance at life.  I am often a fountain of stupid ideas, and I’m afraid that this is one of them.  I’m going to put the planter inside by the kitchen french doors and see what happens.  I’ll keep you updated.

I think I’m going to give this blog another try.  And this first post of a new generation of chortles is inspired by the recent death of my grandmother.  I don’t think I’m ready just yet to process into words what I’ve been feeling, so I won’t even try.  I do hope that soon, I will be able to write a memoir of sorts that will document my fond memories of the sweetest lady to ever have walked the face of this earth.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of knowing my Grandma knows that she was truly a special woman.

In the past few years, she suffered from a progressive form of dementia.  In fact, nearly all of my memories of her are from after she started losing her short term memory.  As I take this time of grieving to remember her, I find that the concept of a memory is so bewildering.  And I am confounded by the irony of me recalling memories, which became increasingly difficult and impossible for her.

While in Wisconsin to attend her services and visit with my family, I was able to bring back these beauties:

Yes, as a male, I will not be adorning these vintage treasures on my clothing.  But I will save (display?) them to remind me of the grandmother who helped to shape me into the person that I am today.  As she has moved on from this world, she has been released from the prison of her confused mind.  She is truly free.  And the (above pictured) pins serve as tokens of her memories.  She may have not been able to store memories over the past few years, but they continue to live.

Oh, and a quick, related side story, which I find to be simultaneously heartbreaking and precious.  Toward the end of her living days, she was found with the pearl pin around her finger…she thought it was a ring!  The image of her slipping that around her finger makes me so sad, yet I find it adorable.  I will choose to categorize that as a cute/funny anecdote.  That’s how she would want me to think of it, I know.

Sure, probably none of the pins are made of overly valuable materials, but I can’t even describe how much they mean to me.  I plan on keeping a couple of them and sharing the others with special people in my life who deserve a token of my grandmother.  (And who might use them for their intended purpose: to be worn!)

Perhaps the better question for this post should be, what is to become of chortles?  There is a simple (yet somewhat problematic) answer: I don’t know.   As you can tell from my four-plus month (unannounced) hiatus from my blogging, I’ve been rather uninspired for this blog.  I think I bit off a bit more than I could chew, really.  I knew what I wanted to do with this blog when I started it, but I feel as if I limited myself in its contents.

Let me elaborate a bit.  I wanted to make a blog that highlighted my adventures with food and design.   This is what my favorite blogs did, so surely I could emulate.  And therein lies the problem!  I tried to emulate my favorite blogs.  I soon ran out of ideas, and my posts became unauthentic.  Looking back over my most recent blogs, I realize only a couple stick out as feeling genuine to who I am.  One of these posts is entitled “Tales of a Wandering Tenor.”  I went outside of my blog’s main focus, and I took a second to rally through my emotions.  I’ve always enjoyed reflective writing (regardless of its level of true depth), and I think I need a blog outlet that allows me to do this.

Which brings me to my next point.  I think I’ve decided to officially stop this blogging venture and start something new.  I’ll definitely post here when this new blog has come into fruition.  Until then, I will be deciding exactly what I want to do in order to write an authentic blog.  There will always be elements of this blog in my future blogging, for sure.  I don’t think I could write about my life without mentioning things I find aesthetically pleasing.  But trying to focus on those things only?  I just don’t think I can do it successfully.  I’ll probably keep this blog up, also, in order to preserve a snippet of time in my life.

In closing, thanks for joining me on this journey!  Soon, I’ll have a new outlet for myself, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

This weekend, Sarah and I went Gallery Hopping. We split dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Alfalfa. It’s a downtown restaurant that specializes in Vegetarian fare, but they have delicious meat items as well. I love that they have a seasonal menu, so you can always get the freshest tastes. Friday, we very much enjoyed their Trinidadian Doubles. I would summarize what exactly it was, but their description does a much better job: “A spicy island chana with onion, potato, chickpeas, garlic, ginger, cilantro and spices folded inside fry bread then topped with mango kuchela and chopped scallions.”

I think this meal had the perfect balance between savory and sweet; the mangoes added just the right amount of sweetness to the dish. I also love how they always plate the food so beautifully. It sure makes eating a holistic experience for your senses!

I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but I had this one ready to publish on Friday.  So, of course, I forgot to post it.  Woops.  Have a great weekend!

While doing some grocery shopping, I came across some relatively well-priced ground chicken and decided to make burgers. I had access to a frying pan, and the process was painless. I mixed in red curry power, a bit of garam masala, seasoning salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. The latter two seem a bit not-that-great, but I wanted to add a bit more flavor with my limited kitchen resources. They turned out quite tasty!

After mixing in the seasonings with the chicken, I formed the mixture into patties and fried them in olive oil over medium heat, 5 minutes each side. I cut the patties in half and put them in whole wheat pita bread with sweet baby lettuces and plain yogurt.

I like having a quick fix but delicious meal on a week night. Now on to the much-anticipated weekend!