Mom. I was NOT expecting that they would give us t-shirts! But now we match the other volunteers. I LOVE MY SHIRT. Can you please fix mine tonight or tomorrow so that I can wear it next week?

Last Wednesday, we leveled-up in the volunteer world: Wyatt and I were invited to choose "Golden Gate National Parks Native Plant Nurseries" t-shirts. We both went with the smallest ones they had: Adult Small.

Today, I leveled-up in sewing alterations. The volunteer shirt was the third in the stack of shirts I had promised to alter for Wyatt over the last six months. This tutorial was a really helpful starting point. I saved the volunteer shirt for last because it was the biggest, and I needed to work up to it. I won't lie; things got a little stressful, and I had to improvise beyond the tutorial. Part of the way through the volunteer shirt alterations, Wyatt said, tearfully, "I AM IN A PIN TRAP. Mom, you need to go read your tutorial again because this shirt feels DUMB." But we stuck with it (ha!) and now it looks, as Marc said, like I popped the shirts in the oven and shrank them perfectly. One detail that went a long way towards making the alterations look less like a hack-job was my double line of stitching along the new hems. Fancy!

I have decided that getting three shirts off the mending pile and into rotation is as good as clearing out drawers and closets today (and for the last three days). It isn't, really. But I cannot help bargaining (with myself) and attempting to refine "the rules" so that I still feel like I'm on task. I guess I'm a puritanical six-year old at heart.

We cooked up a storm this weekend! Friends were in town! We started with the citrus sorbets (Grapefruit-Champagne and Tangerine) that would end our dinner.

Dinner itself was whole Tai Snapper baked in pounds (and pounds) of salt (an astonishingly fun, impressive, and easy process--read about it here), herbed steamed rice (which I actually forgot to serve anyone), white mushrooms with garlic and parsley, as made in Logroño (out of Tapas, a taste of Spain in America, but very similar to this recipe), and a salad of dandelion greens with almond vinaigrette and dried ricotta. I recommend making as much of this dinner as you possibly can, and remember, if you forget the rice, too, it reheats really well.