Power-washing.

Power-washing may have just replaced vacuuming as my favorite household chore. Except I'm not re-staining the deck on a regular basis – nor do I have a power-washer at my disposal for use on a whim. But talk about gratifying! This is what the deck looked like when I started:

It's so precise! The water shoots out of a little wand at 4000x pressure so exact you could write your name with it (see the swoop below). So it takes a while to cover a surface, but the results are like instant.

I remember when Dave got one a while back and called me to tell me to go get one – that I'd love it. He was right. Now I want one. Check out these spindles. The ones on the right are done, the left not. One straight concentrated swipe up and bam! practically new lumber.

I really can't get over the results. I want to power-wash everything! It already looks like new. I can't wait to see it with the stain.

Pizza Party.

We had a "build-your-own" pizza party on Saturday night. The idea was to bring ingredients and roll out/build pizzas for everyone to sample. Lindsey kicked it off with a truffle oil/truffle salted crust topped with arugula and pear and walnuts. Clay made one with carmelized onion and fennel, goat cheese and tomato. Another good one had sausage and gorgonzola, and another was a classic – pesto, garlic and tomato.

Steve made one with eggs, peppers and cheese, dipped in salsa (good, but we all sort of agreed it needed some meat). Katy made her spinach dip with parmesan cheese appetizer pizza. I loved Lindsey's dessert pizza: mascarpone blended with honey and spread over the crust, then topped with apricot, cranberries and pine nuts. Wow.

But for sure the show stopper was Dave's Fried Chicken Pizza.

On top of the crust he put a layer of provolone cheese, spread a layer of gravy, and heaped on a pile of mashed potatoes.

Then he added the shredded fried chicken, and finished it off with a layer of cheddar cheese.

After it came out of the oven, we garnished it with cole slaw. I've had cravings for it every day since. YUM!