Garden Walk Buffalo: Allen Street Dress Shop Window!

Perfect for a Garden Walk Buffalo Weekend, eh?

Allen Street Dress Shop

Atlantic magazine’s website called it the “best event of its kind.”

Martha Stewart Living suggested the host city may be the “epicenter of American horticulture.”

And a gushing San Francisco Chronicle writer said, “It’s more than a tour, it’s a must-see event.”

“Our gardeners are freakishly friendly,” said Jim Charlier, president of the garden walk. “Only Buffalonians would invite thousands of people into their backyards.”

Charlier’s suggestion that “thousands” will traipse through anyone’s backyard sounds fantastical, almost too hard to believe.

But John Hochadel will tell you it’s true. He had 5,000 visitors at his home on Union Place last year.

Cat Tales

I’m searching everywhere for my phone before leaving for work this morning. Cannot find it. I know I had it on the bed, but where is it? I’m now late for work searching and ready to leave the house without it when I go back into the bedroom ONE LAST TIME and see my GIANT SIMBA CAT sitting there soooo innocently on my bed just looking at me…

LIGHTBULB!

Found the phone. Simba Cat was sitting on it, of course.

simbers

Didn’t want his mama to leave this morning I guess. Too funny.

Really? Buffalo is one of America’s Economically Strongest Metro Areas?

Wow. I feel bad for everywhere else if we are considered one of the STRONG regions. Tell that to the many, many friends of mine looking for jobs.

America’s Economically Strongest Metro Areas

Strongest metro: Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Change in real gross metro product since peak: -0.9 percent
Change in no. of jobs since peak: -2.8 percent
Unemployment rate (Mar 2011): 8.1 percent
Change in housing prices since peak: -5.9 percent

Open letter to everyone who knows me in real life…

Dear everyone who knows me in real life,

Please don’t invite me to any party that sells anything: Candles, Prepackaged Foods, Pots & Pans, Hanging Things On Walls with Flowers and Landscapes, Makeup, Skin Products, Tupperware, Purses, Jewelry…all of it. No thank you. And, no thank you. Even if I don’t have to buy anything, I still don’t want to be invited. I’m 99.9% sure I’m going to ignore the invite. In that .01% chance that I do respond, I’m gonna say no thank you.

But this doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Or like you. (Ok, at least most of you…hahaha.)

Love,

Me

Baby Names

The Hottest Baby Names of 2011

My thoughts…

1. Pippa. Of course Pippa. (Isn’t Pippa an adorable name though? I love it!)

2. Luna? HOW FREAKING FUNNY? Chuck ***OMG THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I ACCIDENTLY WROTE HIS REAL NAME INSTEAD OF HE WHO MAKES ME SMILE*** said to me the night of the ridiculously freakishly large moon that if we make a baby girl that night we would call her Luna.

3. Ada, Adele, Adeline, Adelaide (GRRRRR. Really? I’ve always adored Ada and Adelaide…but since Gma Smith’s name was Alice, that one trumps the others. Although Gma Spinler is Adelaide!) Also Grrrr because I don’t want everyone else to love the names I love.  Although everyone can love Mallory, because we both like that name but his mama did NOT so…not likely to happen.

4. I have nothing to say about the boy names, none of them appeal to me really. He Who Makes Me Smile and I have a plethora of boy names we love that are also family names. Our latest concoction is odd and pretentious, but still appealing…Porter Ellsworth. Nyah, don’t worry not gonna happen, but I do think it has a nice ring to it.

What do you think of the 2011 trending names?

Ah, childhood and FAIR week…

I find myself a tad bit homesick after getting my weekly email from Cassadaga Shur Fine today.

“It’s fair week! Yippee! Make sure to support your local 4-H and consider coming to the auction on Friday@ 12 noon. It’s a good time and it is for a great cause! And, you’ll get to see Trisha bid on hogs…that could be a reality show.”

Last week of July = Chautauqua County Fair.

I’m so ready to be settled down and livin’ in the country and taking kiddos to the local fair…