Father's Day Weekend

Above image of my frontyard flower patch has nothing to do with this post. I just wanted to include a picture

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This weekend ended up being quite different from what I imagined, which was lots of quilty things happening. Aside from about an hour of piecing on Friday night, NO quilty things have taken place. Instead I have had my family room turned upside down trying to clean out a coat closet and a wet bar. My efforts have resulted in many trips to the recycle and trash cans, a pile of giveaway coats and assorted objects and some much-needed reorganization, but the job is unfinished. Getting distracted is all too easy when faced with a pile of "this, that, and the other", all of which needs to have a decision made about whether to keep it, where to put it if I keep it, and how much room it will take up. A lot of this is related to art and photos and keepsakes, all of which consume a lot of storage space. So I have a card table loaded with stuff yet to make a decision about and a half-finished organization job. This is the reason deep cleaning of storage gets put off for years, ya know? Sigh.

We had a BBQ this evening for Father's Day and it was smaller than our usual gatherings due to my two brothers being out of town for the weekend. That's okay, feeding 10 is somehow feeling like a small gathering to me lately! I made this great rice salad recipe from Carol's blog, only I added twice the amount of rice and balsamic vinegar, half the onion, and no bell pepper. I also used a frozen corn that is available from Trader Joes that is roasted. It sure added a lot to the flavor. The salad came out quite tasty and I can think of a lot of other adaptations to try in place of the bell pepper that I don't really care for--like diced tomatoes, or blanched asparagus tips, artichoke hearts, or diced cucumber. We ate tri-tip, baked beans, fresh corn on the cob, rice salad, watermelon and cantaloupe--a very simple and yummy meal, followed by store bought cake.