Zombicon 2011

Last night I was fortunate enough to cover Zombicon for The News-Press. It's an annual event in downtown Fort Myers where zombies invade the streets. Each year it has gotten bigger, and the costumes have gotten more elaborate. There was even a real, legal zombie wedding.

The bride and groom cutting the cake, complete with a Jello brain topper, with a chainsaw.

Our online producer told me today that we haven't had 500,000 page views on a Sunday in a while and the Zombicon photo gallery went a long way to making that happen. So check out the photo gallery here to give it more hits -- please!

Here's a couple more gems from last night.....

Stinnett Visit

I took a much-needed day off this week and spent a few days celebrating the nice weather with the Stinnett family on vacation on Fort Myers Beach. It was my first time on the beach when I wasn't working in more than a year. Sad, I know, but true.
I promised Amanda I would try for a family portrait before dinner Wednesday night. I believe we succeeded, but after the first "pose," Mattie decided she was done and threw up all over herself, Amanda and Robert while Evan was wading into the water and getting his shorts all wet. It's an exercise in patience doing a photo shoot with a one-year-old and three-year-old. Actually they are great kids, and I miss them already. Can't wait to see Amanda and Robert in a few weeks for the UNC-Wake Forest football game!

Bye-Bye Crazy Palm Tree

We have had a crazy ponytail palm tree by the front door that has outgrown it's space and got taller that the roof. It was making the front porch look junky. I finally saw that when I took the photos for the last post. The splotchy paint and moldy buildup on the steps weren't really doing it for us either.

So we borrowed a pressure washer, and Scott had a fun day last Saturday stripping the paint off the porch. Yesterday we also did the back porch and patio. I need to get me a pressure washer. They are awesome. Look at the amazing difference on the steps.

Then last Sunday between football games we removed that crazy palm tree. I don't take too kindly to removing perfectly good trees, but this one needed to go.

 Voila! No palm and much less digging than I thought. We just had to roll that sucker out to the street.

And now the porch looks so much cleaner and open. Next we'll paint the concrete....

Painting the front door

About a month ago, I bought a Living Social deal for 2 hours of handyman service for $49. He helped us deal with some exposed wiring from where we removed some light fixtures and replaced a window sill and the trim on the front door. We put in a new front door about 4 years ago, but never finished the trim. Ghetto, i know. I didn't even bother to take any before pics because these things should have been done long ago....
So after we got our fancy new door trim - well, not really fancy at all - we decided to paint the door. We settled on blue and found a nice color at the hardware store a week ago, but had to find the next best thing at Lowe's. Since it was Labor Day our trusty neighborhood hardware store was closed.

I also found a shot of the house on google maps before we even painted the exterior. When I bought the house it was dingy white with Christmas-tree green trim. Check it out.....

Pretty sweet, huh?


We think the new color looks much better, but the curb appeal still needs work. This is with our white door.....

 This is after one coat of blue. A little streaky, but after three coats, it looked pretty good. But when we removed the painter's tape as seen above, some of the door paint peeled off with it around the lock. boo! So the next morning I put a few coats over the bare spots and called it done.

Next we desperately need the pressure wash the gooey mildew/mold on the stairs and paint them. And of course, weed-eat around the castle wall around the flower beds and pressure wash them. And rip up our stupid piece of a sidewalk and install a new walkway. And I think the ponytail palm might need to be cut down. I hate to kill a tree, but now it's taller than the roof. One day at a time, right?

Fantasy football draft party

Today we had our fantasy football draft party at our house. It's the only party we've thrown since last year's draft party. But it was a good excuse to use some of the serving dishes we got for the wedding. I even got to break out our beautiful tree trunk cake stand.

It was an even better excuse to cook some barbecue and other goodies. I had a lot of veggies from our order from The Good of the Land. It's kindof like a co-op, but the woman orders organic produce from a distributor as well as from local farmers. This week we got radishes, green onions, an avocado, a mango, grapes, two starfruit, a cantaloupe, bananas, collard greens, mushrooms and lettuce for $22. I made some radish salsa, guacamole and stuffed mushrooms for the party and also some oatmeal cookies from scratch. YUM!

Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos because I was running around the kitchen all day. But I got the mushroom recipe from The Pioneer Woman. And here is one of her photos......

Photo from The Pioneer Woman

Ya'll, they were soooo good. The oatmeal cookies were also a hit.


Now, onto my team.

 -- Michael Vick
 -- Arian Foster
 -- Darren McFadden
 -- Hakeem Nicks -- go heels!
 -- Dez Bryant
 -- Owen Daniels
 -- DeAngelo Williams
 -- Jeremy Maclin
 -- Tony Romo
 -- Kenny Brit
 -- BenJarvus Green-Ellis
 -- James Starks
 -- Ravens Def.
 -- Pierre Garcon
 -- and Neil Rackers is my kicker

Not bad, but it's only an 8-team league this year, so everyone's team is good.

Our Honeymoon: Day 1 - San Francisco to Point Reyes National Seashore

Lately I'm feeling uninspired about the blog. I've been a little sad because my external hard drive stopped working and it has several years worth of pictures locked on it. I've tried everything I know to do, but I'm still holding out hope. In that spirit, I decided to begin working on the honeymoon photos so I could feel better about the photos I do have left. Luckily I was able to make a book from Blurb out of the photos from our engagement trip, but now they seem to be gone. Here's a link to the book. It's similar to our Maine book. Maybe I'll get a wedding and honeymoon book made eventually. In the meantime, here's some photos from the first day of our honeymoon. There are more than 3000 pictures, so it's taken a while to edit them down.

Point Reyes National Seashore

These first photos are from the first real day we had in California. We woke up in San Francisco, crossed to Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito, and hopped on California Hwy 1 to follow it up the coast. I can't say enough how beautiful and thrilling this drive is. We stopped at Muir Beach first. There was a hill to hike for a great view of the beach and a few homes.

Muir Beach

an overlook near Muir Beach

Hwy 1 coming in to Stinson Beach

Then continued on to Stinson Beach where we stopped at the best little beach snack bar. We were stunned at how good and fresh the food was. Unfortunately it was really windy, so we couldn't hang out on the beach at all.

Stinson Beach

  Up the road a bit, we stopped to see a harbor seal pupping site along the side of Hwy 1.

Harbor Seals beside the road

Then we continued to Point Reyes National Seashore to spend the night. Before checking in, we made the long slow drive to the tip of the peninsula to see the Point Reyes Lighthouse. The scenery was amazing. Everything was wild and beautiful. And the only residents in the park are dairy farmers living on historic ranches. There were lots of cows just roaming free and looking happy, but we also saw deer, elk and elephant seals.

Point Reyes National Seashore

View of the beach from up high near the Point Reyes Lighthouse

Point Reyes Lighthouse. 308 stairs feels fine going down, but terrible coming back up.

The happy cows here are free roaming. The only residences around are diary farms.

A mule deer

A beach filled with elephant seals. Point Reyes National Seashore.

Elephant seals

Elk from afar

Drakes Beach, Point Reyes National Seashore

Our cottage for the night. so cute and right on the water.

The view out back. The water eventually went under the cottage at high tide.

And our fabulous hot tub with a view.

After getting back to the cottage, we went to dinner in town, which is home to less than 500 people. And the restaurant was A-MAZING! So fresh and yummy. It was crazy how good the food was in all these small towns. And it was so refreshing to be in the middle of nowhere to close to San Francisco.
After dinner we came back to enjoy our hot tub with a view. I wish I was back there right now......