That spring, the peonies grew about mid-calf height and only one flower bloomed on each of the three.

The next year after that, the same thing.  Actually, two of the three peonies stopped growing or blooming.

The third year, the surviving peony plant grew to about knee height, and again, just had one flower.

This year, I went to my parents house and I was so shocked!  The peony plant suddenly grew to waist height, so big and bushy and has 16 flower blooms!!!  I couldn’t believe it!  I never expected more than one flower to bloom.  Who knew that you just had to wait!  It makes me so happy just looking at it because it was so unexpected.

Now I want to buy some peony bulbs for my house.

For mother’s day, I bought my mom a nectarine tree at Home Depot.  I don’t know how well it’s going to do….seeing that we don’t really live in a tropical region.  The tree is a “dwarf nectarine tree” and they guaranteed fruit for one year.  My mom is going to be so excited!  I hope nectarines actually grow on it and we can eat it.  I don’t know if I can wait 3 years!

So what happened to the famous five loaves of banana bread I ordered from Maui?

Since my husband and I use the garage to enter and leave the house (rather than our front door), I tend to forget to check for packages by the front door (even amazon orders!)  So I completely forgot about my banana bread and never realized when it finally arrived on my porch.   And on a warm warm evening, a friend came over and found the package sitting on our porch and brought it inside.  How long it’s been sitting outside is a mystery.

Well, after it was brought in, I greedily began tearing away at the box.  I was so excited!  Banana bread!!  And then I noticed a couple of ants crawling on the box, so I flicked them away.  And then I noticed some more ants crawling around, and I brushed those away too.

Ants are pretty harmless…but when you’ve got hundreds of them crawling outside the box, inside the box, inside the plastic packaging, and all over the actual banana bread, it gets pretty gross.  I freaked out.  I was so traumatized.  My banana bread from Maui was ruined.  The ants were eating my banana bread!!

I ran and grabbed the vacuum because the ants were taking over our kitchen table and crawling all over the place and my husband quickly grabbed the box of ants and banana bread and brought it outside to our porch.  By the time I’d vacuumed all the ants, my husband, very cleverly, was able to salvage the banana bread.

Yes, the ants were crawling on the actual bread.  So he cut off each face of the loaf.  After examination and inspection, we decided that no more ants were on the bread (there was no way for them to burrow inside…and if so, then i guess that is more protein for us).

We tasted the banana bread and it was so delicious that I soon was able to block the ants from my mind.

But I will probably not order any “baked goods” for home delivery or perishable foods that attract bugs.  Alas!  At least the banana bread was so good!

Since we bought it, we’ve had do do some major repairs – a new roof, new flooring, painting, structural reinforcement, and yard grading.  And now we are waiting for our kitchen hood to get shipped so it can be installed!

But now comes the fun part!  Home decorating!  I want our home decor to represent us and not some cookie cutter page from a Pottery Barn catalog.   We don’t have much hanging on our walls, except some oversized clocks (that I love, especially when I’m not wearing my glasses or contacts).   I want to eventually hang up some photographs of our family, wedding, and trip to Maui, and put together some collage artwork that I’ve been meaning to put together. And I want to get my sister-in-law to paint us a couple of paintings because she’s really awesome at art.

The hard part is putting the pedal to the metal and the rubber to the road and actually going to Costco and printing out the blowups and doing the decorating.

A couple of weeks ago, while standing in line at Chipotle, I kept looking at a large black and white photo.  I realized that Chipotle is actually decorated quite well.

Chipotle - notice the black and white photos

Chipotle Interior Design

And then it gave me some more ideas:

-  Take some bw pictures of my husband’s power tools….or other things that represent him or me (like our fish).  Like really close-up shots so it almost looks abstract.

Sight and Sound Building - quite a contrast to its surrounding buildings nearby

Sight and Sound Theatres - Joseph

The show was great, we had 2nd row seats because every other seat was sold out until July when I bought the tickets.  Aside from the crick in my neck from looking up, it was neat to see the performers so close-up.  The play was really well done (Joseph even “flew” into the audience) and at the end when Joseph forgives his brothers, I almost teared up just a little.

But my favorite part of the play was the live animals!!  I couldn’t believe they even had a camel! Did they special order it from the Middle East?  The camel was huge and I wanted to ride on it!  And it was so cute.  And all the animals just walk down the aisles onto the stage.  I also liked the donkeys too because they were real cute.

Camels are cute

At first I was a little troubled because I’m not a big fan of zoos.  Or at least zoos that keep wild animals that should be living in the wild…like elephants and lions…unless a zoo can re-create like a huge African reserve where little kids can’t throw rocks at the animals and be protected by some fence.  Now if the animal is meant to be domesticated – or if it’s a farm animal, then it’s okay.  I guess a camel is like a horse and people have been riding them for thousands of years.  It’s just the wild animals that they keep locked up that bugs me.

Elephants tend to have a life span of at least 50 years.  But elephants that live in zoos die by the age of 19!!  Elephants are one of my favorite animals.  Whether it’s for educational purposes or “we saved this animal when it could have died” – I still don’t believe in zoos.  I think one of those Planet Earth DVDs are a whole lot more educational.

Anywho, the one surprising aspect of Lancaster, PA was that I didn’t see many Amish people.  I thought I’d see buggies all over the place.  But the town felt like any other Pennsylvania town.  We did go to an Amish market but I wasn’t as impressed with it as with the one down in Maryland.  Though they had a lot of pickled relishes and jars of preserves that I hadn’t seen before.

Having grown up in small apartments, I’ve been quite used to tight kitchen spaces.  And you make do with what you have.  Actually, maybe I was okay with them because my mom was the one who did all the cooking.

Our newest home-improvement project is getting a kitchen hood installed over our stove to remove fumes.  I’m really excited because this is much needed.

So just for fun, here are the key elements of my dream kitchen:

Gas burners:

- we currently only have electric in our house and our “coil” burners are a little lopsided so sometimes the pot or pan tends to tilt and not lie flush against the burners.  Makes it hard for making pancakes when some pancakes get more cooked then the others and I have to rotate the pan around for even heat distribution.

A major exhaust fan

An island:

- I heart islands!

Vinyl floors:

-  I love vinyl floors because cheap as they are, they’re so easy to clean.  We have tiles in our bathroom and vinyl floors in our kitchen and believe me, tiles are a pain to clean.  The grout gets stained, and it’s just a headache.  I hope we can get new vinyl floors for our bathrooms.

Tips on Saving Money:

Do not watch HGTV…or else it’ll make you want to renovate your house!

Traditional HGTV Kitchen

In 1981 there was a big baby boom.  (I have no proof of this but I think someone told this to me).  Not as many babies born in 1980 or 1982 compared to 1981.

And I believe it.  Because at my work, I have about 4 co-workers and they all have kids born in 1981.  (of all years!)  And I was like, hey, that’s when I was born!  So I always felt a bit of a kinship with them.  Also, I remember when I was in high school, it just “felt” like there were more of “us.” 

Anywho, I just learned that I know 10 people who are having babies this year!  That’s a lot of people (some from high school, some from my old church, some from my new church, some who are friends of friends, haha).  Last year, I knew like one person.  So this is like a 10 fold increase.  Therefore, my conclusion is, 2010 is a new baby boom. Like 1981.

I ate a green banana, thinking it would taste like a yellow banana, but it’s still too early.  I think the green bananas tomorrow will taste better.

I ordered 5 loaves of banana bread from Maui.  They’re being shipped today and should arrive…sometime this week, I’m so excited.  Hawaiian banana bread is completely different from regular banana bread.  They use “apple-bananas” which are stubby little bananas that taste really tart even when they’re really ripe with brown spots.  Sometimes they’re called strawberry-bananas.

When we were in Maui for our honeymoon, we’d eat like 5 of these apple-bananas every day for breakfast.  Too bad I can’t find them anywhere here.

The banana bread batch is almost like 95% apple-bananas.  It’s so moist and almost doesn’t “feel” like there’s any flour in it at all.  It is quite tasty and now that I discovered that a banana bread place delivers banana bread, I am not so sad anymore.

Hello, globalization and carbon footprint.

Yesterday, I pulled some tofu out of the fridge and was mushing it with my hand to make tofu burgers.  And the tofu was sooooo cold that as I pulled my hand out, it felt like my heart was hurting.  Then after a while, it went away and I went back to mushing the tofu.  And it happened again.

The other time this happens is when I soak black beans in water and leave them in the fridge.  Then when they’re plump and ready, and I fish them out with my hands, the water is so cold that I have heart freeze.

Has this ever happened to you?

They’re not made of wood, so they’re really light.  Maybe out of aluminum…maybe plastic!  Anywho, they’re not even nailed to our house but attached by a clip-on mechanism which makes it easier for the wind to pick up.

Yesterday, we had dinner with his two sisters who live on campus, and then they treated us to yogiberry.

Omg.

Okay, so I’ve been to Pinkberry and Red Mango in New York, Angelberry in DC and another Yogiberry in Olney…and frozen yogurt has always been just aiight… until this.  Nothing compares to the College Park one and I’ll tell you why:

1.  They have like 10 different flavors!!  Oreo, coffee, lychee, taro, chocolate, strawberry…

- usually the other places only carry like 3 flavors max.

2.  It’s self-serve!!!  They have a wall of all the yogurt flavors and you just walk up and choose any flavor (and any combination of flavors) to your picking.  You control how much of what you want.  You can even fill the cup half-way to leave room to load the rest with toppings!

The next time I go, I’m going to try to put 5 different flavors into my cup!

I think this is the smartest thing especially since it helps speed up the line especially if a huge crowd comes in and you don’t need as many workers to do it when you can do it yourself.

It’s so much easier to tailor your own yogurt yourself instead of giving the yogurt person behind the counter directions and worrying that they’re going to spit in your cup.

3.  They have little sample cups and you go and try any or all of the flavors!  (again, self-serve!)  Like they trust us!

4.  Toppings!  You can put whatever you want however much you want!  I love the oreo and the strawberries but again, next time I’m going to try to put 10 different topping flavors on my 5 different yogurt flavors.

5.  Price!  They charge according to weight.  And it’s still cheap!!  I had a huge cup of yogurt swirled high and loaded it with toppings.  At other yogurt places, it would have costed like $8 but here it cost $3.50!!  I was won over.

- so smart again!!  This is what keeps us coming back!

They do have some rules where if you’re caught eating from your cup, you get charged and I almost found myself licking that pointy “peak” just out of habit while standing in line, but I spied the sign and stopped myself.

Conclusion:  Must go back!