Wine Festival: Part I

This was not the email I wanted to get this weekend:

Noooooooooo!  The Highlandtown Wine Festival is just blocks from our house and definitely one of the highlights of the year.  We had been looking forward to it for weeks.  But after seeing what the weather has been like today, postponing it was definitely a good call.

However we did not let this get in the way of some good times this weekend.  We had leftover crabs from last Sunday's dinner so the Hubs made his mom's crabs and spaghetti recipe and invited some friends over Friday night for our own little impromptu festival.

It was all kinds of good, too.  I wish I could share a recipe but the instructions are a whole lot of "just add enough until it tastes right" steps.   Any attempt to document it would just result in me leading innocent souls astray.

We didn't have dessert prepared, but thankfully another friend arrived just in time. And his name was Mr. Tasty:

Nothing like seeing a couple of grown men excited about the ice cream truck

And I engaged in a whole new kind of double fisting:

Since our friends usually end up coming over to our house after the wine festival anyway for dinner and the inevitable visit from the ice cream truck, this was the perfect way to tide us over until May 20th.

Man, I really love it when a Plan B comes together.

Adventures in West Palm

When you live in Baltimore, and it tends to not go over 50 degrees from December to March and someone asks you if you want to go to West Palm in February, you say YES!  That's what happened when my parents, L&B, asked us this past fall if we'd like to join them at their timeshare the following February.  You see, usually by this point in the winter, my soul is yearning for just some little, small, tiny hint of summer.  If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, I will take 100 degrees over 32 any day.  I love my warm weather, y'all.

So this past weekend was the big trip.  Although the winter has not been quite as frigid as other's in the past, shoot it's been downright balmy some days recently, I still could not wait for some fun in the sun.  However, the forecast for the weekend looked kind of like this...

Not actual forecast for that weekend, but close enough

Ugh, seriously??  It's going to rain and then it's going to get cold.  I was none too pleased.  Especially considering our past history with bad weather.  But the tickets had been long booked, so what were we going to do?  Just had to hope for the best.

When we arrived to L&B's condo on Thursday night, the weather seemed fine and the place was uber fabulous.  A beautiful two-room suite on the 19th floor right on the water.

However by Friday morning this was the view onto the balcony:

Not the sunshine I had been expecting.  Thankfully though the sun finally came out that afternoon and we were able to walk on the beach and hang by the pool.  Even got a semi-sunset in.

L&B

M&M

And the next day was GORGEOUS!
Before:

After

Can you believe it's the same place??  So beautiful..

Sailboats (top left); Lunch on the balcony (top right), Happy about lunch (bottom left), View of the pool from our balcony (bottom right)

The only thing that made me as happy as the much improved weather, was the fact I could go to Publix (which have not yet made their way any further north that Tennessee) and get this:

 Oh yes, Tiramisu ice cream and the beach.  I am in heaven.