Well Hello, Summer

I think Official Summer is trying to tell Unofficial Summer who’s boss by bringing the heat — literally. I’m thankful I work in an air conditioned building, but also couldn’t wait to throw on my bathing suit and go for a little walk over to our neighborhood pool after work. Hope you’re finding ways to stay cool!

Oh, and PS, I’m so late to the Instagram party and just last week realized that people actually follow other people on there. Yeah, it was a real lightbulb moment. I’m such a square. Anyhow, follow me at dianatroese, and I’ll follow you back. Pinky swear.

The Best Plans Are Unplanned

I’m a planner. I love my lists. You know this. But I also love a certain amount of ‘fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-ness’ in my life. That being said, lets circle back to the Summer Kickoff Bucket List and see how we did:

2012 Summer Kickoff Bucket List

• Grill!
• Eat watermelon
• Go to the pool
• Get to spin class (hello bathing suit season!)
• Buy something new to wear in NYC
• Take a hike with the dogs
• Get things prepared for Kacie’s Baby Shower! More on this coming soon!
• Install new closet system Ok, technically it’s not DONE, but my carpenter (aka Joey) is running into some challenges. It’s getting checked off for being in the works though.
• Donate old clothes
• Get travel plans together for Georgia Trip Flying down with the bros for a wedding this month. Never been to GA!
• Start a new book that doesn’t have the words “50 Shades” in the titleThe Pam101/DSpot Book Club is making a comeback. More to come.
• Take lots of pictures

Not bad at all! I’m actually surprised a trip to the pool hasn’t happened yet. As for the hike with the dogs, we did have an impromptu Yellow Lab Party, so that sort of counts.

The Lab in the middle is Moose’s legit half-brother, Cooley. And Cooley’s two-legged sibling just happens to be Joey’s godson, Owen (have I lost you yet?). Their whole family came over for a last minute visit recently, which then led to an impromptu barbeque complete with food, friends and the above pictured tiki torches. But seriously, how squeezable is this little guy???

The baby’s not bad either. Ba-dum-CHING. I love Owen’s little man pose. Justin & Amee, you made one cute kid!

Moose and Riggo were pretty fond of him too. And Owen was pretty fond of Moose’s tongue.

Hey, if you were surrounded by that many dog tongues, you’d try to grab one too!

While it was good to check things off the bucket list, I will say my favorite parts of vacation were the unplanned things — our BBQ/Dog Party, meeting Sara & Eric in Annapolis, a S’mores run with Alex and a shopping trip with my Mom. I’m looking forward to more unplanned plans this summer, with a nice sprinkling of the planned things too. You know I’m all about finding the magical balance.

Chip Off the Old Bucket List

I’m taking my thickest black sharpie and crossing “Grill!” off the Summer Kickoff Bucket List. Since Friday, we’ve grilled (and eaten) steak, chicken, turkey burgers, zucchini and tamales.

Oh, and we ate watermelon. Lots of watermelon. (Check!)

One thing I should have put on the list was “Dine Al Fresco” because we did that too. All of us…

And another gross omission from the list was “Meet Sara and Eric in Downtown Annapolis When They Call You Out of the Blue to Say ‘Hey We’ll be Downtown Today’ and Get Dinner and Then Go for Ice Cream and Sit By the Water.” Ok, clearly this was one of those happy accidents when all the stars aligned and we didn’t have to plan for weeks to make it happen. I love happy accidents!

Now about that ice cream. It’s up there with cake for me in that I love ice cream like a fat kid loves ice cream, so I ordered the scoop and a half, when everyone else ordered just a scoop. The good thing about ordering the bigger size was that it came in a cup called a “Walkie”…

We quickly understood why they called it a “Walkie”, as we determined the one scoop size cup should have been called a “Stopie” because as soon as you get outside it starts melting everywhere and there’s no good way to walk and eat it. So you have to stop.

Whoops!

Back to the Bucket List though, to balance the eating of grilled food and sweet things I did get my butt into spin class (check!). And to round it out, I also did a little shopping to pick up a new dress for NYC (check!).

Hope you’re enjoying your summer kickoff weekend! Check in tomorrow to learn about the fun I have in store for the coming week 🙂

One last little photo update. Instead of keeping with the weekly Project 52 Themes, I’ve decided to try a new weekly photo ‘link up’ at a blog called Simple As That, where the idea is to take photos that celebrate the simple moments that make you smile each week. I love the creative freedom it offers. Feel free to join me in this new weekly adventure!

It’s Unofficially Officially Summer

I know the official First Day of Summer isn’t for a few weeks, but for me, summer starts when you make your first trip to the beach. And tonight, we head for Ocean City!

We’re fortunate that Joey’s mom has a fabulous beach house in OC, and even more fortunate that she lets us bring the dogs (we’ve never taken them both, so this should be interesting). It’s amazing how just a quick weekend trip can relax your mind and melt the stress away. I know the second we pull out of our neighborhood I’ll already be feeling that Vacation Zen.

Ahhh Summer,  how I love thee…

Listy McList-erton

You all know I love me a good list, and with Memorial Day right around the corner (which, can I just say is totally crazy! Where is this year going?!), I thought it was high time to make myself a List of Things to Do This Summer. Ahhh, just writing the word “summer” makes my heart flip a little.

Kick-Booty Summer of 2011 List

1. Play tennis semi-regularly
2. Go snorkeling
3. Get Rita’s water-ice/custard on a hot day
4. Beat Joey in mini-golf
5. Take a trip with girlfriends
6. Go on a wine tour
7. Read a book (bonus points if it’s by the pool or on the beach)
8. Take the dogs into Annapolis (bonus points if we sit outside and have a meal w/ said pooches)
9. Two words: Crabs & Beer
10. Take an impromptu road trip
11. Plan something awesome for Joey’s 30th Bday!!

11 things for 2011 seems like a good place to stop. There’s also a new page for my lists to live, where I’ll keep better track of it all, and link to the checked off things I’ve posted about. While it has been far more than 6 months, the 16 in 6 list still isn’t completelllly checked off (to which my mother is breathing a sigh of relief over #13), so you can find that one there too. My favorite is still the 6lb milkshake 😉

Happy weekend!!!

Is That Banana On Your Face, or…

…Are you just happy to see me?

This post is for the newest D-spot fan, Catherine Rose Lacey. Cathy and I have been friends since middle school. We used to live in the same neighborhood and spend entire summers make forts in the woods, riding our bikes and pretending we were chefs. We were each other’s go-to people during ‘the formative years’ – see Cathy went to private school and I went to public school, so when girls got mean, or boys got messy, we had each other to escape to. I could go on and on about all our shenanigans, but what I wanted to highlight in this post is something Cathy and I discovered way back when: The art of homemade beauty products.

In the 90s, YM and teen magazine were gospel to us and the one thing we used to pull from them were recipes for homemade beauty treatments like foot scrubs and mud masks. Ooook, so maybe we used fiber cereal when we couldn’t find oatmeal and apple sauce when we didn’t have enough bananas. And YES our mothers made us go into the backyard with a bucket and hose to apply and clean ourselves up. It wasn’t the most glamorous operation, but man did we laugh and have fun.

So in honor of Cathy and friendships and summer and beauty – here’s an easy peasy recipe to help cleanse and rejuvenate your skin.

Total Time: 3 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp oatmeal, finely ground
• 1 tbsp live, organic yogurt (skip the flavored stuff)
• A few drops of honey

Preparation:

Add the yogurt to the oatmeal in a small bowl and mix together.

Warm a few drop of honey. To do this, warm a spoon under hot water for a minute, then add a few drops of honey to the spoon.

Stir the honey into the yogurt and oatmeal mixture.

Apply the mask to the face. Leave it on for 10 minutes, then rinse off with several splashes of warm water. Follow with a warm washcloth.

Apply moisturizer.

Recipe from http://beauty.about.com/od/soap1/r/oatmeal_face.html

Wonder if you still need a bucket and hose past the age of 25?

(( Picture is authentic Diana + Cathy circa summer of 1998. And yes, that’s banana on our faces.))