Quick Takes: The "How Can It Almost Be May" Edition

Seven snippets of life right now.  Too long for Facebook and too short for a full blog post, at least for now.

1. The herb garden is rocking.  It's filling up the deck with lots of sweet smelling goodies.  Added ginger mint, sage and orange thyme the other day when Heidi and I went to Gordon's in Yelm.  I started lemon basil and purple basil from seed inside, and I have a ton of growth coming up.  Here's hoping some make it all the way to the table!
2. We lost the last of my favorite Nuby sippy cups today.  Jonathan found one destroyed in the yard and another in the living room.  Seems that Maggie the dog enjoys milk in plastic.
3. Which is good, because Thomas should not enjoy it.  We got the results from Thomas's allergy panel last week.  The results showed an allergy to milk, egg whites, soy, peanuts and cod fish.  I scheduled an appointment for him with Larry Larson at Mary Bridge to find out exactly what we're dealing with, and we'll be able to see him in Olympia.  In the meantime, no eggs or nuts for the Wee Ski to avoid the possibility of anaphylatic shock.  Hoping that we'll end up with an EpiPen and that he'll outgrow the allergies.
4. Lots of fun projects around the house right now.  Working on refinishing an awesome file cabinet.  Not quite sure why I picked bright orange paint, but I think it will turn out well once the coats are on.  Painted the back hallway of the house last night (light taupe) and started our bedroom (light blue).  Loving how they are turning out.  Paint is the quickest 'face lift' for a wall!
5. Lemon birthday cake.  I made a layered lemon cake for our birthdays last weekend.  While I cheated using a white cake mix, I added a 1/4 teaspoon of fiori di sicilia (a lemon-vanilla blend) to make it less box-cake like.  Made a homemade lemon curd and a tasty lemon & cream cheese frosting. 
6. Finian Road has been crazy busy.  In the last week, finished and sent to print a beautiful wedding ensemble of invites, response card and reception details, in the process of finishing the edits of three shoots (one to come on the blog later today -- from the shoot that I can only title "I'm so glad we didn't stop the shoot after she went face first into the mud".  It is awesome.), and sent two sets of graduation announcements + a grad party invite to print.  Loving the balance of shooting + design work. 
7. Speaking of Finian Road, only three more days to get tickets for the Shoot to Fight Cancer!  Win a sweet grand prize -- a photo shoot from Finian Road,  the digital negatives and two gallery-wrapped canvas!  Tickets are just $25 -- don't wait -- the drawing is at 6 pm on Friday!  Get the details here and buy your tickets!