Happy 4th!!!

(A few days early...!)

I don't know about you, but I seriously love Independence Day! Great food, high energy, and you end the night with beautiful fireworks exploding in the sky. It is the absolute epitome of summer.

This 4th of July I'll be hitting up my church's pancake breakfast in the morning, heading over to the in laws for some amazing food, and then watching the fireworks down on the National Mall!!! I have wanted to go to the Mall to watch the firework display FOR YEARS but every year it hasn't worked out for whatever lame reason. Finally, I'll get to enjoy the nation's firework display from right underneath them. It's pretty much as patriotic as you can get!!

P.S. Be sure to check out these articles to make the most of your photos on the 4th! This one will help you take those awesome sparkler photos, and this one will help you capture the firework displays as they light up the skies. Enjoy!

4th of July Recap

I hope you had as amazing of a holiday weekend as I did! Living in America's Capitol, I pass the monuments every day and am still in awe of their beauty. But when I know the whole nation is feeling patriotic, and especially on the heels of another sojourn overseas, I feel an even greater sense of just how amazing this nation of ours is!

When it comes to celebrating America, we take the Jim Gaffigan approach. (See 2:10, but you should really watch the whole thing and laugh until your sides hurt.)



Layne grilled corn and steaks,  and he also made his roasted garlic mashed potatoes - because there is nothing more American than sweet yellow corn, a huge slab of meat, and some taters. I made some mixed berry scones for breakfast, and a cheesecake with more mixed berries for dessert. I essentially only wanted to eat sugary delights in red, white, and blue. #Murica

But, with our appetizers, we took a break from the All Americana, All The Time approach to the 4th.

Please don't shame us, but these apps were really good!!! The best part about all of these apps is how little effort they took to whip together. The figs required no heat or cooking, and all you have today is fry the bacon, toast the crostini, and call it a day!

Robiola Stuffed Figs with Pomegranate
I used brie instead of robiola since that's what I had on hand, but I'm a huge fan of both cheeses! I'd recommend a little less honey and a heavy hand with the pomegranate seeds. Not only do the soft cheese filling and luscious fig need the texture, but the burst of tartness is a perfect balance!

Fondi di Carciofi (Bacon-Wrapped Artichokes)
These were just - WOW. Certainly not diet friendly, but the salty, smoky bacon with the sour, juicy artichokes was amazing. We will be making these again.

Goat Cheese Crostini with Strawberry Bruschetta
I am a sucker for each of these ingredients individually, and they came together nicely. It didn't knock our socks off, but we are usually partial to savory crostinis. I'd use about half as much balsamic to macerate the strawberries, and don't be shy with that tangy goat cheese! 

What did you have for the 4th? I'm always looking for new recipes if you have a good one to try!

D.C. Bucket List

As I mentioned here, some things are possibly changing for us. There has been a fair amount of uncertainty for us this past year, a few tentative steps forward, but we’re not quite at the point where we need to take the plunge into turning our world around. In this calm before the storm, we have often talked about moving away from our city. There are a number of factors at play, and we still have not made a final decision, but I thought it best to make a Bucket List in case we end up packing our bags on a whim (much like we did when we moved out here). Since making the list, we are already leaning more toward staying, but I decided to stick with my list and make the most of whatever time I have left in D.C.

This is not a comprehensive list of touristy things to do in and around our Nation’s Capitol. This is just a list of things I have heard about or wanted to do and somehow have not gotten around to. I have already crossed a few off the list since I made it last month, but I’ll try to chronicle my journeys here and let you know what I would recommend. For his part, Layne made a D.C. Restaurant Bucket List, so I may chronicle some of that, too.

1. Montrose Park
2. Pentagon Memorial
3. Hike Great Falls Park
4. Picnic on Theodore Roosevelt Island
5. Fly kite and picnic on the mall
6. Gettysburg
7. Mount Vernon
8. Monticello
9. National Arboretum
10. Paddle boats on Tidal Basin
11. Williamsburg & Jamestown
12. Caverns in Shenandoah
13. Elevator on Washington Monument
14. National Cathedral
15. Newseum
16. Dulles Air & Space Museum
17. Watch planes at gravelly point
18. Concert at WolfTrap (July 5!)
19. Library of Congress
20. National Geographic Museum
21. Rock Creek Park Planetarium
22. Dinner cruise on the Potomac
23. Dumbarton House
24. The Mansion on O St
25. Fallingwater
26. Baltimore
27. Ford's Theater

Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America

That's right. This weekend, we rocked a monastery. We went because Andrew heard about it on the radio and it had catacombs and how cool does that sound?

Way, way, way cooler than it actually was.

The monk who gave us the tour droned on. And on. And... oooooooon. The tour was supposed to be 45 min. It was an hour and half! And it ended up being of the church as well as the catacombs, so the first hour was just spent going through this Catholic church as he described every detail about every single stained glass window, wood carving, and bas relief. And then he would throw in a few Biblical stories that he felt might somehow be slightly related to the story that was actually being depicted. It probably would have been a little more interesting if I was Catholic...

When we finally got to the catacombs, our excitement was at an all time high. Those hopes were quickly dashed. Little did we know, they were just a modern replica of the catacombs in Rome, made entirely of plaster and cement. It was another half an hour of slowly walking through rooms with no dead bodies, skulls, bones - nothing!

The afternoon was only salvaged because while we were waiting for the tour to begin we spent some time in the gardens and they were beautiful, so that's the part I'm sharing with you.

Absolutely amazing fall colors.

They had this really pretty dome thing - not sure what it was about.

And some arches by a rose garden. It had rained earlier, so they were still dripping.

They had this tomb down in the lower gardens, and a really cool statue of a saint up on a wall.

We Missed the Cherry Blossoms!

On my blogging, um, hiatus (we'll call it that instead of a batch of extreme laziness), cherry blossom season happened. Cherry blossom season is nothing short of magical. If you have never seen our National Monuments sprouting from the thousands of blossoms of pale, pale pink, you have never seen beauty. I loved it so much last year that this year I actually took a vacation day so I could start taking photos at sunrise and walk the whole Mall. It is my favorite thing about living in D.C.

Get ready for a photo heavy post!

 

This should show you how dumb the National Parks Service is. Right before prime tourist season, they begin work reinforcing the Monument, visible from basically every spot in D.C. Hence, all my shots are in silhouette.

Look at just how thin the blossom leaves are - they are so incredibly delicate!  The wind blows, and petals dance in the air on the way to the ground.

The blossoms grow in clumps and feel so soft they could melt away in your hand,

I loved how still the Tidal Basin was all morning, before the paddle boaters are out.

 

By the time I made it around the Basin, the sun had fully risen.