Nora's Shower

After my two posts yesterday, Barb reminded me that I really should do a post about the shower last weekend in Queens.
Maggie took care of arranging for details, found the funky studio space to rent, coordinated the evites, and had some firm ideas about the menu.  Barb did a lot of preliminary legwork, locating recipes, serving dishes, probably most memorable, hunting for bellini mix!
I flew to Plattsburgh on Tuesday and Barb and I shopped and cooked and baked and we loaded everything in boxes and coolers and drove to NYC on Friday.  The shower was a brunch on Saturday... and everything came out perfectly.
There are quite a few pictures, so I will try to keep the comments to a minimum.
Barb did an incredible job on dessert, making four types of gourmet cupcakes which made a great display on the cupcake tree.

Let's see if I get this right.  There was a chocolate mocha garnished with a dark chocolate covered coffee bean, a lemon-lemoncello with homemade lemon curd and a raspberry on top, a double chocolate with peanut butter frosting, and a margarita infused with tequila and lime!  It was hard to pick a favorite.  We supplied Chinese take out containers so everyone could enjoy one at the party and take another home.

The food buffet included fruit skewers (arranged artistically), curried chicken salad (Nora loves chicken salad), a tricolor tortellini salad, skewers of tomato, basil and mozzarella, deviled eggs, bagels and croissants, cream cheese, lox, a danish ring... and some crackers and cheese for snacking with the first bellini.  We also had coffee, iced tea, and infused water to drink.

 Here is Nora greeting some of the first to arrive.

You can see that the space Maggie rented was a very interesting spot... but one that we all agreed was "very Nora."

Nora started the buffet line for us.

Maggie assisted Nora at the gift table.  Blog readers, you will notice the banner I made on the railing behind the gift table.

At the appropriate time, Ari (Nora's fiancé) arrived with a bouquet of flowers for her.

Nora had fun with the bouquet of bows!

Well... Nora just had fun!  She loved the party!

Before everyone left, the bridal party posed for a shower picture.

That's Patricia, Maggie, Nora and Kate... minus Gretchen who lives in Key West and couldn't come this weekend.

In case you were wondering about what Ari looks like, here he is posing with the creepy stuffed dog that was in front of the fire station across the road from the shower.

(He's the extremely good looking one on the right!)

Dish Garden

 If you've been following my blog for a while, you might recall that last year my friend Barb and I exchanged birthday gifts, only to discover that we chose very similar things for each other.
I had purchased this garden "flower" from a vendor in Hendersonville at the Memorial Weekend Garden Festival.  I chose it for it's color, since I know that blue is Barb's favorite color and I thought that she would like it for her garden.

Ironically, she had gotten a very similar "stacked china" flower for me and my garden through a dealer on easy.com!  You can look back on my blog and find a picture of that.

I just spent the last week at Barb's and discovered that the china flowers are spreading!

She studied the construction of these and has been searching for flower parts on her travels to antique shops during the winter and spring.  She now has some of her own creations in her garden and I have to say they make the original look pretty blah.

These two combine blue with yellow, a lovely combination that compliment the daisies nearby.

I took a photo looking down on this one so that you can see that it is really five layers.  The individual layers are held together with a weatherproof/waterproof epoxy or caulk.  A hockey puck that has a hole drilled halfway into it is sealed onto the back and then the hole in the puck can be placed over the end of a piece of rebar that she has painted green.  

 This one catches the sunlight nicely.
Do you recognize the star shaped candlestick holder in the center?  I think I have some of those somewhere!

 The flower above and the one below both have plates that have a lace like design.

 She says it has been fun searching for inexpensive glass and china items that can be combined to make these flowers.  I'll end with two shots of another of my favorites.  The pale pink glass tray that forms the base of this flower is lovely, but it almost disappears into the surrounding foliage.

 That pink and blue "trumpet" is perfect for this flower!

  I hope you enjoyed seeing Barb's clever creations! 

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AS SEEN ON GC (golf course)

Today was a really nice day to play golf.  We were at the course by about 8 AM, which seemed early, but really it was the perfect time to start.  It was a little overcast and cool at the start, but there was no one on hole #1 and no one else seemed ready to tee off, so we coasted through the 18 holes in record time with no one ahead to slow us down and no one pushing us from behind.  The course also appeared to have been freshly mowed and I think was in remarkably great condition.  

I had my two golf buddies with me.

The first one, of course, was Russ.

The second one is the Golf Buddy that rides on the visor of my cap.

That little square device is a GPS unit and she talks to me, tells me what hole I'm playing and tells me how many yards it is to the center of the green!  I try to remember to bring her every time we play.

On hole #14 there was an unusual growth of fungi that I just had to show you.  

The bright orange-yellow was visible from a long distance away and I wondered what could be piled up on the edge of the fairway.  As we got closer, the individual clusters visually separated and we could see that it was some sort of mushroom clustering around an area where there had once been a tree.  Each of the mounds were about the size of a large cauliflower, maybe even bigger.

                                      
Russ remembered seeing this last year, but I don't think I have ever seen this particular variety of fungus.  I thought this last picture resembled a pile of pancakes!
                                            
You never know what you are going to find on the golf course!
By the way, I did find three pars today, which is remarkable in itself!