Mer's World

Yesterday was a great day!

Although I will admit to be a bit tired today!  Probably all the activity combined with a 40 bloodsugar in the middle of the night, that I’m having a hard time shaking even now!

Argh.

Anyway, yesterday.  We started the day by playing in our homegrown pumpkin patch…

I loved finding Lynn playing in the ‘pumpkin patch’!  We are headed to MIT’s glass blowing studio today to find out/watch how they make them…

Breakfast! Half a bagel with cream cheese, two eggs (sunny side up completely fried, Brian!), 3 strips turkey bacon… I added the bagel because I knew I would need the energy for shopping!

And, did I mention, this is not regular low-fat cream cheese, this is we-have-guests-time-to-splurge cream cheese.  Hazlenut from Panera Bread.  Amazing

Since it took so long for us to get ready we left at 11:30, I also grabbed some pretzel chips and tea for the road!

We headed to a great needlepoint shop in Wellesley (I’d heard some not so nice things about the shop, but they proved all the expectations wrong!).  Love supporting your local needlepoint/craft/book stores!

I felt a bit like I was cheating - first with my stylist, now on Needle Nicely, but it’s fun to shop at different stores- they all bring a unique perspective to the art.

There were also a few cute shops along the way that we HAD to stop into… MOM!

From there, we headed to C Bar, the test kitchen of Legal Seafoods in Legacy Place.

As the link indicates, they had the Best of Boston clam chowder in 2010 and 2011..

Yep, I’d agree!

I tried to be good (knowing we were having a party later..)

Damage:

Pumpkin Beer x2

Cup, Best of Boston Clam Chowder

Field Greens with Grilled Squid

Nibbles of: Pumpkin ravioli (AMAZING!), onion straws, oysters

Oh, did I mention the beans?  Amazing- I don’t know if they were fried, I’m guessing they were, but they were awesome!

After lunch, we hit up the usual stores:

Williams- Sonoma (lots of hand lotion,candle and gadget purchasing, espresso sampling…)

Lunette Optical (3 pairs of glasses later..)

Yankee Candle (oh yeah, who remembered the coupons!  6 FREE candles later..)

Whole Foods (does this really need an explanation?!)

While Mom and Rose took glasses shopping very seriously…

Lynn and I were impatient  patient and decided to have a little more fun…

Hmm.. And, that seems to be where the photos end for the day!

HA!  I was tired when I got home and I also enjoyed just relaxing with friends and family.

Here is a run down of the dinner party menu (and I can assure you that I ate ALL of it!):

Crock-pot Lemon Chicken with Broccoli and Mushrooms

Parmesean Quinoa (and brown rice for the less adventurous )

Chopped Salad with iceburg, tomato, onion, blue cheese, vinegrette

Asiago Cheese bread from Whole Foods (to sop up that yummy lemon white wine sauce!)

I think I’m forgetting something… oh yeah, WINE!

We tried our first bottle of the Hanna Crazy Dog Vineyard Chardonnay- it was surprisingly good for a first attempt at wine making and bottling.. sounds like CHRISTMAS PRESENTS to me!

Meghan and Chris joined us for dinner (Hi, Meghan, one of my most faithful readers!) and they brought these yummy, gooey Pudding Chocolate Chip cookies.  She pointed me in the direction of the recipe, and I think I’m going to have to bake some to see if they really get the Mer’s World seal of approval…

I’m thinking it might take more than one batch.. maybe a few tweaks to the recipe and I’ll have to bake another and another and another… they were SO good!

We finished off the evening working on stitching projects!  Finally got Meghan roped in to my obsession hobby.

It was a wonderful day and evening!  I’m so happy to be able to spend time with friends and family this weekend! I was in need of re-charging my batteries and this seemed like the perfect recipe for unwinding..

Today we are off to MIT to glass pumpkinland, lots of good eats, probably more shopping.. oh, and a foot of snow.

Have a great day~