While I have been away...

I am sorry to have stayed away for so long...these last couple of weeks about killed me, but I am back.  Sadly, a big part of the chaos was a death in my husband's family.  A Great Aunt that truly was someone special and will be missed.  I have to tell you that it really says something about you if your plumber and hairdresser come to your funeral.  I hope that I can be that awesome.

But it also brought time for travels, great memories, new experiences and meeting new people and seeing old friends.  The trip took us across the country to an adorable town on Long Island, Hauppauge.  Here we are on the approach into JFK airport at night....so pretty!

The adjoining town, Smithtown, is full of yummy pizza, fresh baked goodies, the cutest and most well stocked little grocery store I've ever seen and super friendly people.

While in NY, we had to go into the city.  The time difference messed with us quite a bit, and therefore we got into NYC later than we had hoped on a Sunday...therefore we spent time walking the city and eating, but a lot of places had closed before we could get there.  Still, we had a blast.

NYC pizza in Penn Station (talking with our new friend, Joe.)

Blurry NYC at night...

My hubby trying out authentic steamed buns.

But a few other things happened while I was away.  One, I was handed down some beautiful china tea-ware.  It is such a pleasure and honor to have these passed down and I will share pics of these gorgeous pieces soon.

The other thing is that I was given the Liebster Award by a fellow blogger!  I am super stoked, and I can't wait to tell you more about that.  But in the meantime, here is the link to the wonderful blog that gave me this award with more info on it - Sneezy Detour.  Thanks so much, Tracy for thinking of Civic Stitching for this award!

So much to tell you...so little time.  More soon!  

Ash

My hubby's jump into the food cart world...aka starting his own business!

I am super proud of my man.  After his trip to China about a year ago, he fell in love with steamed buns, or as they are known in Beijing, baozi.  After talking about how good they were, finally he found a recipe to make them for me, and they are delicious!!

He kept talking about how cool it would be to sell these little round creations on the street with his own food cart, as he can rarely find the kind he liked here in America.  After talking about this to a friend of a friend, serendipity struck.  This person had made himself a Chinese style food cart (the three-wheeled bycycle-turned-cart kind) that he was no longer using and would let Ric use it until he could buy it from him!

Isn't it a cute little cart?

Then Ric found out about this neat website that let's you do your own fundraiser for your small business.  This very cool site is called Kickstarter, and we have set up a page for Ric.  He has 8 days left to raise $600 to help .    And they make it to where you can get goodies for your donation!  Check out his page here!

He looks good on it!  So exciting!  

Ash