Backyard Picnicing

Date night  - Dinner at Eight - picnic in the backyard.
So lovely!

I set up on the lawn with quilts, pillows, pot stands for tables & flowers from the yard.

And, our white cuffed candle jars.

Champagne.

Cold cut meats, crackers, caprese salad, artichokes.

I made these crab cakes with lemongrass aoili & the pickled honey dew.

Scott found the recipe, cuz he loves lemongrass, remember?

Plus, crab cakes are kind of a date food for us.  

We always try the crab cakes at a new restaurant, to see if they are better then the last.

We had crab cakes at some really great places.

But, I don't think we have ever had better than the Cafe Cruz crab cakes.

Pickled melon?  Sounds weird, right?  We were both unsure.

Until we tasted.  SO good.

Scott said they were not fabulous.  They were better than fabulous.

We had little Lemon Lavender Cupcakes for dessert. 

And yes, there were a few breaks in there, to attend to the young ones.

Kendall had to nurse again.

At the time, it was still light out, so Scott took that to watch the hummingbirds in his garden.

And, Moira was running around her room causing a rucous again.

The older two have begun taking date nights really seriously, though.

They were strongly rebuking Mo, for her craziness, during date night.

Peyton even hit Moira for getting up.  Not good, I know.  

But, still a tiny bit funny.

He & Gillian didn't want the picnic disturbed.

(And Gillian was glad when she saw me setting up outside,

"Oh good!  Now you won't be bothering us while we try to sleep!")

We enjoyed the lovely outdoors, far into the evening.  

And talked about how we want to do it again.

And the next morning we were SO tired.  

Then I was down for a day.  

Ended up I gave myself food poisoning with poor handling of raw crab.

That was not fun.

We'll do something like this again soon, sans homemade crab cakes.

Loving Dinner at Eight.  

Link up with Andi & Rebecca if you want to have your own picnic date this month.