Becky's photoblog

Long long week getting ready for commencement, followed a nice cocktail and a good meal on the Canary Square patio

A colleague sent me flowers that match my office beautifully!!

I finally got the chance to pop over to the Gardner Museum since they started allowing visitors to go inside the greenhouse, not just look in through the glass corridor. It was such a wonderful treat to smell the flowers and get right up close to see all of the beautiful details.

Photos from two weekends volunteering at the Gardner Museum

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Incredible colors at an awesome grocery store

Because it’s cold out there 🙂

I love my new coloring book 🙂

I got lots of amazing Christmas presents, and here’s one of them …. my soon-to-be brother-in-law got me a Leaning Tower of Pisa to put together. I love little art projects like this, and it was really well-made so it was a lot of fun to put together!

The pasta maker is still set up on the counter so what was I supposed to do? I took a break from playing with my new coloring book to make butternut squash ravioli, and it was delicious!

I love making butternut squash risotto, but you only need a little bit of butternut squash for that … what to do with the rest of the squash? I’ve been meaning to find a use for the hand-blender that’s taking up space in our pantry so I made my first butternut squash soup! I used a recipe that called for just the right amount of ginger, plus a dollop of sour cream to round out the flavors, and of course it needs to be garnished with cinnamon. Absolutely delicious!

Brian’s not a huge fan of pine nuts, but we both love basil, so I broke out the pasta maker for a batch of fresh fettuccine, and tried out a recipe for basil walnut pesto. Pretty good! Definitely nuttier and a grittier texture than a pine nut pesto, so it needed more olive oil. Might need to try cashews next …

On Christmas Eve, Brian took over the kitchen to make an incredible chicken pot pie for dinner, and a delicious bread pudding for dessert. He used to make his bread pudding all the time when he was younger, so his mom and sister were very pleasantly surprised to enjoy an old favorite dish!

I had a wonderful morning at the Gardner Museum attending a training session for the brand new gorgeous exhibit Ornament and Illusion: Carlo Crivelli of Venice, and I got to take some fun close-ups of beautiful details in the exhibit, and in the courtyard.

As we were saying our good-byes to family heading back to the Denver airport, we noticed that the sky had cleared up a bit and the sun was setting over the Rockies in the distance. Hard to capture, but really beautiful.

So many beautiful flowers at the Greenleaf Inn at Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

The tiger lilies looked amazing in the Gardner Museum’s Monks Garden at the first Neighborhood Nights of Summer 2015

The tiger lilies bloomed briefly and beautifully just outside our front door

Who knew there was an incredibly pleasant Mexican restaurant with awesome outdoor seating down a weird alley in Newton Center? Deanna and I caught up over sangria and delicious food … I love our date nights!