Ideas A-Grundle

This past weekend I spent time with my sister in Washington, DC. Our adventures naturally took us to places I'd never visited before so I had lots of opportunities to come up with three ideas I can implement in my work and life. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Blueberry buckwheat pancakes are served fresh every Saturday morning at Eastern Market, close to the Capitol in DC. Though I've made thousands of pancakes in my life, I've never made any with blueberries or buckwheat in them. That definitely will change going forward. Yum!

2. We went to lots of museums, particularly those in the Smithsonian family of museums. This was great from a personal enrichment/educational perspective and from a work perspective because my team creates kiosks and exhibits located in LDS Church visitor centers around the world. The Museum of American History had a cool area for kids that I particularly liked because it contained many interactive exhibits. One exhibit highlighted American inventors and gave kids lots of opportunities to create things out of various materials. The Sparks lab was one of those invention/creation stations where kids could literally conduct their own experiments. Another station provided a place for kids to create their own pinball "obstacle course" out of regular household utinsels. My sister and I thought the "obstacle course" we created was pretty cool. My takeaway from that experience is to work with my team to devise ways to incorporate more interactive elements within our exhibits as a result of my DC museum experiences.

3. Another great idea I learned from my sister was to create novel stir fry compilations. One night we had a stir fry medley of eggplant, green beans, asparagus, green olives, and baby tomatoes sautéed in olive oil and a little apple juice concentrate and lime juice. The, to me, unusual combination turned out to be entirely delicious. I'm definitely going to be more creative in my vegetable compilations in the future.