Life

My dog is adorable

I can’t help myself sometimes… I just need to share pictures of my dog. He is adorable and I pretty much adore him. He’s our test baby and we spoil him like crazy. This weekend we took him to the river to swim. As you’ll see from the photos, he had a truly wonderful time.

Rem and B

Cheesin’ it.

s

“S” for “Smith”

… except I didn’t carve it. I would feel like I’m hurting the poor tree.

Smiling b

Handsome hubby!

smiling rem

Happy, happy, happy dog.

smiling b2

“Stop taking pictures of me!”

stripe trail

The trail to Doggy Beach. Red Stripe Trail fo lyfe.

Swimmer Dog

Swimmer dog 🙂

Swimmer dog1

Wet dog.

swimmer dog3

Content dog.

swimmer dog4

Check out that form!

swimmer rem

Get the stick, get the stick, get the stick!!!!

He sure is a pretty dog.

Garden, Graphic Design, Life

Farmers Markets — Eat local!

This post is going to ramble a bit. Consider yourself warned.

I am not a huge fan of summer weather. Maryland summers are humid, hot, sticky, stormy… I am more of a spring and fall weather kinda girl. That being said, summer really is the best season ever. The days are longer, schedules free up, activities are more active… and my favorite… the food! My garden has been doing really well this year. And just like last year, I want to really expand my planting area in the future. I only did a little expansion this year, mainly because I didn’t want to fork over too much cash money.

I’ve got 10 tomato plants, peas, strawberries, green beans, lettuce, peppers… all sorts of goodies. And what I don’t grow in my garden, I have been really enjoying shopping for at local farmers markets! It’s great to eat local foods and to support small businesses and farmers.

I am so lucky that we have a farmers market ON CAMPUS at the University of Maryland. Every Wednesday I walk over and buy delicious, fresh goodies. This week I bought blueberries, raspberries and tomatoes. Did I mention we also have a sustainable food truck!?! I bought a lamb sandwich and fresh lemonade. It was AMAZING. The vendors sell so much yummy stuff (hormone-free meats, fresh-baked pastries, dipping sauces, fresh eggs…). You name it, you can probably find it there — well, as long as it is in season.

As if that wasn’t awesome enough, Howard County offers a traveling farmers market. I’ve only gone once at the beginning of the season, but it too was a great experience. I bought fresh eggs and some yummy greens. Fresh eggs are amazing. I want my own chickens… too bad my dog would probably play with them to death.

I’ve really gotten into eating fresh, organic produce lately so I am going to interrupt my own post to share some awesome blogs I’ve stumbled upon recently and I love. If you are interested at all in eating organic or less processed foods, check out these three awesome blogs: Food Babe, 100 Days of Real Food & Deliciously Organic. I’ve got a whole organic chicken in our crockpot cooking for dinner tonight using a recipe from 100 Days of Real Food. My step sister also has an impressive blog about eating healthy: Fuel My Family. They are all awesome — check ’em out.

Also, don’t worry. I’m not about to turn this into a health food blog. Just figured I’d share since I started rambling about vegetables today 🙂

OK, back to farmers markets.

The real reason I wanted to write this post was to talk about how Dana, my bff, has started selling her baked goods at a farmers market in Laurel! That’s right, Little King’s Confections will be at the Main Street Farmers Market EVERY THURSDAY! I am so proud of her 🙂

Little Kings

Little Kings Farmers Market

Little Kings Confections

Little Kings Confections Market

OK, ramble almost over. See that logo on Dana’s booth? Yup, I designed it. It was really simple to do in Adobe Illustrator. I used the fonts Lavenderia for “Little King’s” and Code Light for “Confections.” The crown was a free clip art that I swapped from black to white. It is adorable 🙂

 

Little Kings Confections logoo

Happy ramblings & happy Friday!

Life

SNOW!

Guess who got snow last night!?!?! WE DID!

photo-46

While it wasn’t that much snow, it was the perfect amount to blanket the ground and make our house look so pretty and plenty of snow to make traffic horrendous. But that’s OK.

photo-47

It was also the perfect amount for SNOW DOG.

photo-43

Remmy loves the snow. Love. Love. Love. He would have stayed outside all day if I would have let him.

photo-44

And the best part is when he does come back inside from playing in the snow, it gives him a doggie high and he runs around the house with snow on his muzzle like a crazy man.

Snow Dog

Yes, that blur of a dog is my crazy, crazy boy.

Snow Dog

Basically, snow is dog crack. Well, for Remmy at least.

photo-45

He is such a pretty snow dog. And he might be in luck because I think Maryland might be getting some more snow tomorrow! #winning