Adventures with J and A

Moving away...

2012-01-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

SIKE!

Well, I'm moving...moving to a different blog. Apparently this one has some bad ju ju or something and will not let people comment. Darn you blogger.

Anyways, so I know it's a big fat pain in the rump because if I'm on your blog roll you have to change the address and yada yada but.....sorry. Turns out I am a bit narcissistic and blogging is really not quite so fun with a comment or two. Go figure.

If this fixes it great. If not. I'm throwing this laptop out the window. (haha. That's ok, this is Jason's lappy. Mine is tucked away safe in it's case :) )

So, here ya go. http://www.sayyestoadventure.blogspot.com (I KNOW right. I am so dang clever....just say it. You'll feel better afterward) <3 See ya over there ya'll.

Picture Post!

2012-01-02T19:41:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures that have no real connection...but are pictures of the last couple months none the less!

Enjoy!

Some punk called this a "Charlie Brown" tree. Whatever. I thought it was lovely. :)

He will always take every opportunity to saw or chop something... :)

Our tree all lit and pretty...before "Our Christmas"...which usually falls the night before we leave to go down south to see the fam.

Quilt 1 of 2 (that I gave to our moms for Christmas). I was so rushed to finish the 2nd one before we went down south that taking a picture of it was the last thing on my mind. I loved them both though. :) I will never do that again. Really. :)

This year I tried to be creative with wrapping presents by using things I already had in the home. I used many a brown Trader Joe bags. I used lots of yarn for ribbon, and puff paint. I even made envelope type things out of extra felt I had to hold small gifts. It felt good to get rid of stuff from the craft bin...to not spend extra money...and to put a little more time into the wrapping process.

With the extra batting and fabric from the backside of the above quilt I made a little pillow for our bed. awe. Ain't it sweet.

Present Time. :)

Stocking stuffers (Asian candy!) My fav. :)

And to finish it all off...some pictures of our lovely hike through the redwoods today. Have a great week everyone!

By the way. Jason has a piece of candy in his mouth that he's shoved into his cheek. That's why one looks a little more chubby than the other. And I was thinking I could help carry your groceries with those bags under my eyes... :)

Adios 2011, Hello 2012

2011-12-31T10:16:00.000-08:00

2011 brought: the completion of 1 1/2 yrs of grad school, our 2 year anni, replacing everything possible on our truck, settling into the San Francisco life, embracing my love for all things asian :), pushing my sewing skills to new levels through a LOT of trial and error :), realizing I LOVE the art of pastry, falling more in love with Jesus through a different church than Grace (and loving it), glasses for me, knee injury for Jason, Jiu-Jitsu for Jason, climbing for me, sUrFiNG, trips home and realizing that home is slowly becoming this big, crazy, beautiful, broken city that we live in now, exploring amazing restaurants, hosting various visitors (moms and dads, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and etc...apparently having an extra bedroom in SF is appealing to many haha), figuring out how to do this thing called marriage when there's little time for each other...and growing stronger through it, following a STRICT budget...and failing at it sometimes, Summer in October, Winter in August, making friends, loving our library, loving each other, life, and our sweet Lord.

2012 will (hopefully) bring: Jason beginning to teach (hello 2nd income), a M.A. diploma, a few cakes for me :), a dramatic decrease in the amount of traffic when I commute (I can dream right??? HA!), deeper relationships, serving our community and church, better stewardship, the information of a possible teaching position (if we go for South America their school year starts in Jan so the reality is that we COULD move as early as this time next year for a teaching position for Jason...yikes. Not planning on it but we are open to what God has...), more reading, more cooking, organizing this crazy small house with all of our STUFF...I long to purge but Jason won't let me, haha, some thinking/deciding/praying on what it is I would like to do with my life...God willing...be a mom, but I feel the need for something...something else practical and compatible with motherhood (esp. when they're older), exploring the bay area a bit more, a snowboarding trip with friends, our 3 year anni in just a couple of months, backpacking this spring/summer, camping, surfing some more, a possible graduation trip for Jason...hoping for Italy...will probably be somewhere cheaper :), keeping in better contact with family and friends, focusing on what matters, loving all.

So, here's to a great year! We have so much to be thankful for. Have a Happy New Year everyone.

Peace y'all. :)

Christmas Already eh?

2011-12-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

Dang, I feel like in one post it went from Fall stuff to Christmas stuff. And for real? It's been more than 2 weeks since I've posted. wow. Where has the time gone? I guess it's just been a little busy round these parts.

The semester is days away from being done. I have one word for that. FINALLY! What a semester it's been. I mean, I don't think I imagined it possible for a person to ONLY do school stuff. He's either at school going to class and doing homework...or he's at home, doing homework (which is probably why I haven't blogged being we have one computer and he's always on it). He seriously has no time to do any.thing.else. No Bible study, no exercise, no nada. We managed to barely preserve Friday night date night....but I mean barely. :) So, it's almost done and though I know he is beyond ready to be done. So am I. I think we're both a little nervous for next semester as he becomes a slave, er, I mean starts his internship. He also will be a TA for a prof and add a couple more classes in the mix...it could be another nutts-o semester. I doubt it will top this last one though haha. Full-time grad school is not for the faint hearted. And to think...we actually contemplated ME starting grad school this last fall. HA. I say HA HA HA to that. There is no way in heck that would have worked. It's a good thing the Lord knew that! :)

So guys, it's Christmas huh?

And I heard SLO is stinking fuh-reezing. Haha suckers! :)
It's not like it's been warm here in SF but no freezing temps so I'm good. Ice and I are not complementing elements.

And the Christmas shopping, oh there's so much to do. And I hate trying to think of what to buy. ugh. This is what usually happens. I think "oh I'll get so and so THIS". I go to the store, go to buy it, then change my mind. 2 hours later I have nothing...for anyone. Lame. I don't know why I do this. Maybe I have trouble letting go of my money :) Who knows...?

Anyways, our tree is so pretty and sparkly and once again adorned with purple, blue, pink, green and silver. AND, watch out! We went big and bought a real star! $5 at Target thank you very much. It's also glittery...I love glitter at Christmas. Maybe a pic will be posted sometime soon of our tree that some kid called a "Charlie Brown Tree". Literally. I was holding it at Home Depot and some dad said, "Oh, how about something like that?" The kid said, "No way Dad, that's a Charlie Brown tree." Then I tackled him. :) Nah. I didn't. I may have glared at him though. In the dark. Yeah, I'm brave. I know.

Aight, I'm outta here. Have a marvelous Thursday!

Fall in Picturas

2011-11-21T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hey ya'll.

So, I've got some pics for ya. Some picturas de otono. I wish I had that squiggly thingy above the "n". But I don't. Let us pretend it tis there.

Anyways. Pure randomness, but enjoy!

For Halloween we always carve us some pumpkins and then roast the seeds. Mmm. mm. Here is a poor pumpkin with all of it guts splayed out. Don't worry little pumpkin. You will have a face soon.

Oooh, we are so cool, and I kinda look like a freaky cereal killer (HA! jk, I totally know that it's SERIAL killer. I ain't no fooh!)

Whatchyou lookin' at?

Oooh, pretty girl :) PS: Why yes we DO use paint solvent to remove the marker. Why yes we DO use a real flame to light the pumpkin. Meh. Nothing bad has happened yet ;)

And why is my Halloween cupcake picture sideways? Because I'm too lazy to delete it, go retrieve it again, turn it counterclockwise one click, and wait the 5 min. to reload it. See, it's kind of a long process. Way harder than you just turning your head a smidgen clockwise. Muchas gracias.

AND because I apparently have far too much time on my hands here are some crafty things I've done lately. A local craft surplus store has ridiculous amounts of wine corks...a bag for a $1. So, I whipped out an E monogram. E for excellent. E for enthusiastic. E for... E for Eat Everything. E for our last name. :) It came out kinda cool. Gotta love hot glue. Oh, and the dead weeds have since been removed. Have no fear.

Also, I have a TON of yarn and some extra felt and thought I'd put it to use. BTW, wrapping that ridiculous foam thing took forever. And I got a little sloppy. haha. But really, am I a perfectionist? Let us all answer together, "Nooo, Anna, you are not a perfectionist." Thank you class. Anyways, this is not the permanent home for this sucker. It's going to go on our nice white front door but I am too lazy to hang it. One day. Until then it sits wedged around this picture :)

And finally, a yummy pumpkin cake/coffee cake creation. I call it the Alton Garten pumpkin cake and it was DELishious. Yes, I know how to spell that. :) So, take THIS PUMPKIN BREAD recipe of Alton Browns. (I used 1 can of pumpkin junk instead of the fresh stuff and didn't use the pumpkin seeds). And substitute the pumpkin batter for Ina's non pumpkin batter on THIS COFFEE CAKE RECIPE. Make Ina's recipe just like she says with all the yummy fixings but with Alton's pumpkin bread batter...and you have the Alton Garten yummy fall pumpkin cake... it is SO good. And I used a bundt pan with the "bottom" as the "top" instead of the pan she has...that I don't...hence the use of the bundt. yeah.

**Tip: Make it the day before. It is so moist that there is no risk of it drying out and the flavor gains so much depth and richness with a days rest. Maybe the night before for a yummy scrummy breakfast the next day?? mmm mm.**

And THAT my friends is what we have been up to. Well, me I guess. Jason mostly just studies! Oh the life of a grad student (OH, the grad student who btw got into the internship that will give him a teaching job starting this summer. Only 4 openings and he snagged one. What a studdly muffiny man I have).

AND, it's Thanksgiving this Thursday. Doesn't get much better than that! Can't wait to see me some family this weekend! Have a great T-Day all!

A Post.

2011-11-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

This is the last push. Vacation time is in sight. I have Fri, the weekend and then, Mon-Wed. to get through. Then I'm Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 4 more working days. Ug. I am in definite need of a vacation. Where are we going you ask? NO where is where. Well, down south for Tday but that's it. I don't need to go anywhere really. As long as my going nowhere involves me not going to work I will be content. It's been far too long (You'd think I have 2 weeks off by the way I'm raving. It's just 5 days, haha. I'll take what I can get)

Last weekend I was in Monterey for work. I took many, many classes. But, our hotel was paid for and all so that was marvelous. We went out to eat a couple of times and enjoyed ourselves. Jason had a ton of homework, go figure, and so he was studying away while I was in class. It'll be nice to do nothing this weekend. Well, except clean my house, my house needs to be desperately cleaned. Wanna do it for me?

I totally jacked my neck up. Wanna know how? By putting on my shirt at the gym. Yeah, I'm a genius. I didn't want to pull the bobby pins out that were so efficiently pinning back my absurd quantities of whispys and so I did some weird neck contortion in order to get my head through the shirt hole annnnd....now I can't move my neck. ug. Switching lanes during rush hour was a bit sketch. I made it safe though and just "assumed" there was no one in my blind spot. :)

Ate cereal and chips for dinner.

Jason is doing a late night presentation preparation thing.

I took the opportunity to not cook with great excitement and ate the very first thing that sounded yummy and easy. Cereal and chips. mmmm. yum. And there's like no dishes. Oh wait. There's still the sink full from last night. Ah poop.

Alright, off to do those dishes I guess (yeah, right, I'm totally playing Wii instead).

Peace to yu'r mother. Have a fantastically amazing weekend.

20 Confessions (which ended up being a bit long) Enjoy!

2011-11-10T15:16:00.000-08:00

20. I HATE flossing and only do it about 3x's a week at the most. Don't care if my breath stanks. Don't like doing it.

19. I wear holey socks almost all the time...which makes for awkwardness in our large asian community where we have to take our shoes off upon entering a house. I almost always forget to wear my one pair that is holeless :)

18. Sometimes celebrity gossip (just spelled that word as "gosep" and couldn't figure out why it looked weird. duh.) is totally interesting to me. I really refrain from reading it as a whole but it is so hard to not be just a TAD interested in all those headlines at the grocery checkout. ;)

17. Wedgies are the worst and I pick them in public all the time...though I try to be discreet.

16. Potty humor is hilarious to me.

15. When I was 7 my friend had the brilliant (NOT) idea to play a trick on our little 5 year old neighbor. So, I, yes I peed in a cup and we told my neighbor that it was lemonade. We didn't think she'd believe us (so why we attempted this is beyond me), but she actually went to take a gulp. We were SO horrified that she was going to do it we screamed out, "Nooooo! It's not lemonade, you can't drink it!!!" She looked so confused and wanted to know what it was. Not wanting to get in trouble we refused to tell her and so she threw the cup at my friend, dumping my urine all over my partner in crime, hahaha. I think I got a little back-splash too. Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. (PS: We may or may not have bribed her with candy to not tell her mom about what we tried to make her do). A stellar child was I. :)

14. I get far, FAR too much satisfaction in completing a climbing route that a boy just tried to complete but failed at.

13. It's really easy for me to become complacent.

12. I have watched 27 Dresses about 50 times, literally. Not because it's a fantastic movie but because it's one of the few movies I own and when I used to live by myself I would fall asleep to it so that the house wasn't silent. (It had to be a movie that I've already seen so I wouldn't stay up to see what happened next, hehe)

11. Fashion overwhelms me. I like to feel "pretty" and yet I get tired of what I own so quickly that it seems pointless to try to keep up. I would be cool living in a pair of jeans, rainbows, and a white tshirt for the rest of my life.

10. Speaking of white tshirts. I go through those things like toilet paper. :) I have a serious case of YPS. You know...Yellow Pit Stains?! I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I pretty much bleach my shirts every 3rd time I wear them to keep up on it. Literally. Any ideas? Anyone else have this prob.? Probably not. I just sweat a lot. blak. Jason says we should bottle the stuff and sell it to the National Defense...that they could use it for their chemical warfare or something. hahaha. Swell husband, swell. (BTW: I think he's seriously hilarious. We have a very "unique" relationship :)

9. I don't mind working. I mean I'd be cool with cutting it down a bit...to more like part time...but working is not a burden for me...leading to the next confession...

8. Being a mom freaks me out beyond belief. A. You become HUGE. B. Said cause of hugeness exits your body some how (which is still a horrifying mystery to me). C. You don't get sleep for at least a year. D. Then said being begins to use their legs and you have to make sure they don't kill themselves. E. Then they start school and you have to make sure they learn and do well. F. They become a teenager (don't even get me started on THAT. G. College? Do you know HOW much college is??? PHEW!!! See? Freaky stuff. :)

7. About once a month I try talking Jason into ditching church. He's always so good and makes me go. EVERY once in a while though I'm successful. hehe.

6. I have no desire for a smart phone. As in zero. They're so expensive per month and I'm afraid I'll check the internet/Facebook/etc. non stop. I feel like I already do that too often. Though...the camera aspect on the iphone is cool. That you can just directly post your pictures without uploading and finding the cord and all that nonsense is some what tempting. Some what. :)

5. I was tailgated two days ago by some 60 year old guy in a sports car. I mean, he was ON my tail...I think closer than I've ever seen. I couldn't go faster though since it was 6:00 rush hour traffic and there was someone in front of me. I was so irritated that when he went by me finally I, with out thinking, went to raise my left hand to give him the one finger salute. Seriously? Who am I? I caught myself and laughed out loud. Golly-gee.

4. I feel kinda bad when I kill a bug. I know. It's so stupid but I really do. You can imagine then how I totally fell apart watching the movie "Homeward Bound" as a kid. Those poor animals getting hurt, and lost, and then they keep making you think that one dies. Ugh. It's was just too much.

3. I smoked a cigarette for the 1st time when I was 12. I talked my best friend into wanting to try it too. Then together we talked our OTHER friend whose mom smoked into taking one of her cigarette's so we could try it. Then we went into the woods and smoked it. Apparently from afar one of our younger neighbors (Yes, the same one we tried to get to drink pee) saw us and said, "Ooooh, I'm telling your moms that you were smoking" Being the quick-thinking little liar that I apparently was I told her, "No! We were smoking bubble gum cigarettes." (remember those? the one's with the "powder sugar smoke"). Anyways, she believed us and asked if we had any more.

2. I judge others far too often and don't judge myself enough.

1. I confess that I took far too long on this, wasting time, and that I think Jason is a hotty. End of confession.

Thoughts for a Thursday

2011-11-03T17:53:00.000-07:00

Did I ever mention that I think using alliteration in your blog post is totally cheesy. Thus I do it all the time. Hello, my name is Hypocrite.

Aaaaaaaand, here we go...

I have a couple of 3/4 length sleeve shirts. I have avoided pairing jackets/sweaters with them though because the sleeves always ride way the heck up...like to tshirt sleeve status and I can't stand the way it feels. Yesterday though at work I was cold and realized that I needed to conquer this problem. Solution? Scotch tape. I taped the sleeves to my arm with a long piece of tape that almost reached my wrist and slipped my awesome throw back from the 80's jean jacket right on. Sleeves still down where they belong...at the 3/4 position. Then I yanked the tape right off. What now!? My coworker was laughing hysterically at me but don't lie to yourself. It was genius. And you'll probably do it too. :)
I think I'm getting sick. Just haven't figured out if it's going to be a chest cold or a head cold...or maybe both. I'll keep you updated.
I was just thinking of how Jason would probably have a hay day with my blog. He's seriously the English language master. He knows rules I didn't even know existed. He says its because I grew up in the south and am probably inbred. So not true...just for the record. Anyways, I write like I talk and I know Jason would not approve of my poor sentence structures. P.S. in a year from now...more or less, I will have a huz who has an M.A. in English (the language, not literature). Crazy pants. I can't believe he's been in school a 1 1/2 years. (His program is a 2.5 yr program)
So this lady came in and gave me her glasses to try to fix. I realized that she was the lady who owed a nearby health supplement store (she's very...er, unique) :) Anyway, I had her glasses and noticed that something smelled weird...as in a smell I disliked...quite a bit. I then took a whiff of her glasses and they wreaked like vitamins...in all the spots that she would have them on her face. I think she takes so many of those supplements that the "vitamin smell" is seeping out into the oils of her skin, and thus making her glasses smell. ew. BTW, I hate the smell of vitamins...so much so that I gag if I try to take them. No can do. I know. It's ridiculous. Oh well.
It's Thursday, which means tomorrow is Friday. yay.
Nov and Dec are crazy busy for us. Oye. Next weekend I have a work trip to Monterey for 3 days. The weekend after, paintballing. The weekend after Thanksgiving, and so on. Sheesh.
What happened to the weather? In one day it went from 74 to 58. What?!?
I was thinking that it would be cool to try to earn our Christmas money for each other and family this year by selling things we have. Like through a yard sale, and Craigslist. I feel like we have SO much that we don't use so, to be given more, sounds crazy. It's a goal. We'll see if we can do it. :) I love a good purge. We'll see if Jason agrees, haha.
The San Francisco/Bay area has a huge homeless population. It also gets pretty cold up here in the winter. There is a need for men's clothing because go figure...women get rid of more clothing then men do. I would love to go out and buy some men's clothing to give buuuuut...we can't really afford that right now. What they ALSO need though are beanies and scarves. And I have a TON of yarn. Like a TON. Especially since Jason's gma just gave me even more. I can give my time it turns out by knitting/crocheting So, I have a goal to do 5 beanies by Sun 11/12. I'd like to do one a day but let's be real...I don't really love knitting/crocheting so that's a stretch. We'll see though.
Happy Thursday! <3

Part 4 & 5: Meet the Father & My Hopes

2011-11-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

We're doing the how J met A thing here. If you missed Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 catch up you fool!:)

We loaded my car with the boards to go home and I was probably the biggest prude ever, trying to subtly peal my wetsuit off. We got in the car and Jason started suggesting other things we could do...maybe get some breakfast? Get some pastries? "Um, no, I have some other things to do. You know...like...er." Actually, I have no idea what I said but it ended with me dropping Jason off at home. Adios amigo.

Done.

Alright.

Move on.

But no.

It didn't end there. I saw Jason at church since I was the Youth Intern and Jason had also officially come on as staff. Every Wed. and Sun. I would see him. Some how along the way it came out that my dad was in the process of building a house. He mentioned quite a few times that he was interested in meeting my parents. hmmm. Let me think. NO! The last thing I wanted was him getting an "in" with my family. I didn't want them to like him, I didn't want him to get to know them. Just wasn't having it.

So, I avoided introducing him (we all went to the same church)...over and over again there was some excuse, "Oh, I think they've left already." "Oh, I haven't seen them today." One Sunday though I was upstairs on the balcony talking to a friend. I was laughing and looking around when I saw my Dad in the corner of my eye. Something else suddenly caught my eye. I saw Jason...on a B-Line for my pa. I panicked and realized...NO! He's going to introduce HIMSELF. I quickly said good-bye to my friend and made a desperate attempt to intercept this meeting. Desperate but fruitless. By the time I made it to them I heard my Dad say, "Definitely, you should come out and help me on the house. I could use an extra hand..."

Seriously?

Who is this guy?

*******

So, Jason began going up to the wild, wild west...Creston...to help my Dad build his house. There are so many stories that go with this that would take a year to tell. You see, Jason is a perfectionist, my Dad is...not so much. I'm much more like my Dad (except baking. I strive for perfection in baking for whatever reason). I'm sure it was quite the interesting ambiance up there.

I saw that Jason liked me. Of course. He was forward, he would tell me how he felt (including something that he said to me in Italian over the phone...which when he translated it went on about my beauty and character. Romantic right? Someone saying something poetically in Italian about their affection for you? No, at the time, not to me. I totally got mad and flustered and ended the conversation abruptly) He was even willing to do manual labor for my parents in order to get to know them and win me over. He was dedicated.

I on the other hand. I hadn't been won.

There were a lot of ideas I had about dating and relationships. For one, I wouldn't have just any guy. I had hopes and dreams for life. I had things that I felt like the Lord was calling me too. I wasn't sure if I was willing to give it up for a guy. If I was going to date someone I knew it had to be a man who absolutely loved the Lord and could LEAD me. Leadership. What a role. What a trait that's so hard to find. And I don't mean that the guy has to be in front of a group leading. I wanted a quiet, humble man, who loved the Lord, would be willing to love me...love me so much that he would rebuke me when I needed it, hug me when I needed it, listen when I needed it. I wasn't going to settle. No way. I would wait my whole life if I had to...or never get married. And honestly, never getting married was not a scary thing for me. Not at all. I was actually pretty much determined to NOT get married until I was about 19 or 20. Once I entered college it became more of a "Well, whatever happens, happens." On top of all of this...I was hoping desperately to be admitted into Moody Bible College.

So, where did Jason fit in all this? Was he that guy I wanted? What about Moody? What if I got in? Really, what are the chances that it would work out long distance when I'm really not even convinced that it's worth trying for here in the same city?

I had so many thoughts and questions that were completely and absolutely unanswered.

What Makes me Feel Accomplished:

2011-10-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

So, you know those things that you hate to do...and put off until the very last possible moment. But when you DON'T procrastinate and actually do it as soon as the need arises you feel sooo good. We all have that list of things. Here are mine:

-filling the gas tank ("running on fumes" is a very familiar phrase. Jason hates it and is convinced that a huge earthquake will hit and we'll have no gas to get out of town).
-fold AND put away all the laundry. I have no problems with folding, it's the putting away part I don't like to do, as in putting it away as soon as it's out of the dryer...not after putting it into the hamper and letting it sit for a week making everything unfold since we're constantly digging through it looking for what we need. :)
-doing the dishes right after dinner (I feel VERY accomplished if I pull this off)
-preparing the crockpot before I go to work
-cleaning the house Sat. morning rather than Sun. night right before work :)
-Costco/Target runs--dislike.
-paying bills
-cleaning the shower/bleaching the shower curtain
-Premaking a meal for the freezer the weekend before
-Pulling money out of the ATM (I know I'm REALLY lazy).
-cleaning out the refrigerator
-cleaning the baseboards
-mopping (can you tell I don't like to clean)
-ironing my work clothes for the whole week (I've done it 3x's and I'm always so glad when I do)
-exercising on the weekend. I will workout during the week no problem but the weekend? Meh.
-giving Jason a haircut (don't get me started...he pretty much has to beg me to do it. As SOON as we have more money I will gladly pay to have a barber do it. When I'm done though I always feel so good that we saved a good $20).
-finishing any project that I've started within a week of starting it. (Did I mention I procrastinate?)
-doing recall for the month at work (calling to remind pt's they are due)
-washing the truck
-flossing
-blow drying my hair (I do this every day but I still feel accomplished each time :)
-OH, here's a good one...plucking my eyebrows. I'm still waiting for the day when it's acceptable to have big bushy brows because I absolutely detest doing this.
-Painting my toes before the previous paint job looks like a french manicure
-Going to the post office
-shaving my legs (apparently I also have issues with maintaining myself...along with my house)
-buying new socks and underwear (really, why do we wait so long? :0)

Ok, that's all for now. I'm glad I got that off my chest. :)
Adios.

This Weekend was...

2011-10-23T18:34:00.000-07:00

GLOOOOOOORIOUS!

First, it was in the mid 80's, fantastically clear...all.weekend.long.

If that doesn't seal the deal for the perfect weekend, Jason's parents came into town yesterday morning and all we did since the time they arrived was eat. Eat.Eat.Eat. LOVE.

We decided to visit Sausalito yesterday which is a beautiful, small town with a heck of a lot of rich people living there. I found my dream house by the way. All wood, perched on a hill. <3 We crossed over the Golden Gate bridge which never seems to get old (obviously I don't have to commute over the thing during the week) and played tourist.


The view of SF form Sausalito...taken with our little point and shoot. Sort of didn't do it justice. :)

Lunch was a place called Avatar Cafe that I read about on Yelp. http://www.yelp.com/biz/avatars-restaurant-sausalito. It's, get this, Indian Mexican fusion. I had the Punjabi Enchilada with Sweet Potato and it was out of this world. The flavors were amazing. It hit you in waves. I picked up this hint of Mexican, than the curry, then the sweet potato. I expressed to Jason how sometimes food just seems...boring. Like sometimes I just crave something different. Well, Avatar delivered it well and I would definitely go back in a heart beat. AND let me tell you. Their dessert is DA BOMB (oh yes, I said it). So, first, the menu doesn't tell you what it is. It literally says, "Picture the most decadent sweet thing in your mind and this is it." Surprise factor is bueno in my book. It was a cold dessert with a mango puree/syrup swirled on the plate. On top of that was a slice of "gelato pie" but the waiter said the gelato had condensed milk in it to make it even creamier and lighter. The "crust" was a layer of chocolate and the pie was topped with pistachios. Oh heaven. It was the perfect flavor, sweetness, texture. It had it all and I'm STILL thinking about it. Ok, obsessing over it. But really, you would too. :)

Also, small worlds of small worlds, while sitting outside of a cafe sipping coffee we ran into a family from Grace Church in SLO. WEIRD. We yacked it up with them for a while, parted ways and crossed back over to SF.

After Sausalito we took the parents to our local dumpling place that Jason and I love to visit. I could eat there once a week. Mmmm. So yummy. It's a total hole in the wall...as in someone converted their downstairs living room into a restaurant but we love it and its always fresh, and cheap.

Also saw Moneyball last night. Brad Pitt is OLD. What happend? Where did time go? The movie was okay. A little slow at times but I laughed a lot and it was interesting to learn about how the whole baseball drafting/trading thing works.

Jason's Fam

And....today ended with us taking the muni into downtown to meet some of Jason's extended family who live in the east bay. That was super fun. Isn't it funny though how fatiguing it is to be "on"? Sometimes being social is tiring. It was great to meet them though and Little Star Pizza did not disappoint :) They do a mean deep dish pizza.

And now I'm done. I'm going to go eat some leftovers and probably fast for the next two days. Have a good week everyone! :)

Part 3: A Surf Trip

2011-10-20T09:59:00.000-07:00

FIRST--If you are having trouble commenting (because I'm SURE there are like tons of you who are dying to comment but aren't able to. No really, maybe you're having trouble with other blogs too...I know I am. Anyways, I JUST found this comment from my mama that she left a couple of weeks ago. Here's what she said...

Suzette said...: Wow my comment went through!!!!I haven't been able to comment on your blog for awhile. So I finally looked up Comments on the help page. It said to log out and then log in again, but not check the "stay logged in" box. Didn't think that would work, but it did. Yay!; So, hope that's helpful ya'll.; Anyways, back to the story.

We're doing the how J met A thing here. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 catch up you fool! Just kidding, I love you, you're not a fool :)

I had a great time hanging out with Jenny and went home that evening to prepare for surfing. I got my stuff together, pulled the car into the garage, threw my board on the rack, and loaded my car. While doing it though I couldn't shake the feeling that this may be more than just a casual hang out time. I tried to think back to Hume. Did I give him extra attention? Did he give ME extra attention? I don't know...the whole week was kind of a blur. I knew though that I had NO intentions in pursuing a relationship with anyone. So, I'd enjoy surfing. If I got a vibe that he was thinking more...I'd make it clear in my "Anna Way" that I was not interested. There. Settled.

***

The alarm went off bright and early. I jumped in my car and followed the directions to Jason's house (I agreed to pick him up since racks are so much easier with 2 boards). He comes out with two piping hot thermos mugs of coffee. As I see him walking I thought, "Ok, this better not be a way of trying to win me over...'cause I sure love me some coffee." He gets in the car. I take a sip of the coffee and UGH. blak. I LOVE coffee...but I like it with about 1/2 a cup of cream and 1/2 a bag of sugar (ok, maybe not that much). It was nearly black and there was no way I could drink it. I didn't want to be rude though so I put it back into it's cup holder and drove on to our surf destination. Conversation happened...but rather slowly and probably with a TON of work on Jason's part. I was doing "yes, no" answers. Or, mmm hmm's. Nice. I wasn't going to be my normal bubbly self. Don't want to send the wrong message you know?

We arrived at the spot, pulled on our wetsuits and started surfing. After a bit in the water it became apparent to me. Wait a minute! He doesn't know HOW to surf (although he was annoyingly good for being a newbie). What the heck....oh crud. This is definitely not a "I need a buddy to surf with trip". This is a "I know Anna likes to surf so I will use it as an excuse to hang out with her trip." Ug. This is not good, not good at all.

I tried to ignore all these thoughts going through my head. I was in the ocean, I was on a board, it was a beautiful morning. "Shut your brain up and enjoy this Anna," I kept trying to tell myself. It really was a beautiful morning. The sun had just came up and the beach and water were blanketed in the most beautiful golden, red light. Fantastic. Eventually, I some how managed to ignore all the thoughts and feelings whirling in my brain and just SURF. I was thoroughly enjoying the fact that surfing was a rather independent sport and there was no reason to interact with one another when all of a sudden, there's Jason paddling up to me. He stops, looks straight at me...in a way that I'm pretty sure I have never been looked at before until then and says, "I wish I had a camera right now because you look beautiful in this light.".

uh.

what?

Would you like to repeat that? oh, wait. Please don't.

Who says that?

Who is that direct?

Apparently you are?

Now why did you have to go and ruin the morning?

All these thoughts were rolling through my head. I can't even remember my response. Did I just ignore him? Probably. Seems like that's what I would do.

Ok, surfing trip OVER. "I'm getting cold and the waves are getting lame. Let's go in." I declared.

You TOO can Have Hot, Fresh Bread on a Weekday...

2011-10-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

Aight y'all.

I'm here to tell you about my bread making skills. They kinda rock. No lie.

As in I'd be jealous of me if I were you (wow, that took some mind power to write for some reason.)

But, I have a secret.

It's not hard and you can rock as hard as me if you want.

And I could be jealous of you except I already know how to do it...soooo, you can find another friend who can be jealous of you instead.

And now my point.

So, Jason and I eat fresh baked bread and pizza every week. And it's not hard, it's incredibly easy. Like really REALLY easy. This idea/book was introduced to me by Jason's aunt. At first I was a little skeptical because I don't really like "quick fix" food...usually. If there's a shortcut it usually cuts out freshness or something else that takes away from the recipe. Now, this isn't always bad. I make quick fix meals all the time but for my bread....eh. I like it done right. Jason's aunt is no novice cook though and so I figured, if she likes it...it's got to be good.

It's all from the book called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

I'm going to take you through it to help convince you of how marvelous this book/recipe is. I'm not going to give specific ingredient amounts though since that seems a little sketch on the whole copyright infringement thing! :) Though you can find it online I'm sure.

So are you ready?

Got this sucka' from B.B, & Beyond

First you need to start with a large tub with a lid that looks something like this (I got a little eager beaver and already put some ingredients in, oh well). You need to have an air hole for it to rise. You can either buy a tub with a lid that allows for it (what I did) or you can drill a hole into the top of a lid.

After you have the tub you need these ingredients: flour, yeast, water, and salt.

BIG GAP BLOGGER BUGGER WON'T LET ME FILL oh well. :)

You take that lovely tub and and you barf in it...I mean, dump the lukewarm water right on in. Then you add the salt and the yeast. No need to wait for it to dissolve. You're done.

Then you add the flour.

Then you mixee mixee. I usually start with a wooden spoon, then finish it off with my hands. I LOVE the kneading process and since this doesn't involve that I have no qualms sticking my hands in and getting them all ooey gooey. Whatever method you use though it needs to be fully incorporated. No stray flour and no stray water.

The dough after you've mixed it but before the rise

When done it will look like that lumpy doughy picture there.

And then you put the lid on (WITH the air hole) and walk away. "Good bye dough. I will be back in 4 hours, mas o menos."

Dough after the rise

About 4 hours later, depending on how roasty toasty your house is it should look something like this. Fully risen and flat on top.

And then it's ready to bake.

Yep, that's it.

From here you can put it into your refrigerator and keep it for up to 2 weeks. I prefer to use it up in a week because it slowly starts turning into sourdough. Also putting it into the 'fridge makes it a bit more manageable to work with...but you can technically use it as soon as it's done with the initial 4 hour or so rise.

When you are ready preheat the oven with a baking stone already in it to 450. Then cut a grapefruit size amount off (I usually do more) and liberally dust it with flour. Then put the tub back in the 'fridge. (The dough collapses but it will rise back up for your next use)

Fold it all under making it round and the outer surface area smooth...creating a cloak.

Dust a cutting board with corn meal, or flour. Set the dough on it and get a sharp knife, cutting deep strikes through the dough at a slight angle. Let it sit out for 30 minutes ( I almost never leave it out this long since I always run out of time...it still turns out good).

Creating the cuts

*Bing* 30 minutes are up.

Ooooh, look how puffy and yummy it looks.

The dough after the 2nd rise

Take your cutting board and quickly push the dough into your preheated oven onto the baking stone(and yes, your baking stone is supposed to look grotesque)...or if you have mad skills just pick the whole dough thing up and put it in directly...I've tried this unsuccessfully :)

Now this is the key.

FIRST go back to the step where I said preheat your oven...and also put a rimmed cookie sheet on the bottom shelf, below the baking stone on the top shelf. There, thanks.

Ok, so, you have a hot rimmed cookie sheet below the baking stone with the dough on it. Right after you stick the dough on the stone take a cup of hot water from the tap and dump it carefully it into the rimmed cookie sheet, and then shut the oven as fast as possible. This will create steam which will make the beautiful crispcrust that you see on artisan bread. And wait 30-40 minutes.

Sit back and chillax. (Jason hates that "word," if you can call it that, haha. So I like to say it all the time. :) )

When it's done, it will look like this (well, actually this loaf was from the next day and not the one that I took the pictures of. Of COURSE this one was not nearly as attractive as the other one but really? We ate it, we didn't waste time admiring it :) Anyways, I like to pull it out and here it crackle as it cools and settles. Oh, crackling bread makes me so happy. Did you know that you are technically supposed to wait until bread is fully cooled before you eat it? I don't remember the reason but we ignore that tip and eat it warm...almost always.

And THAT is how we eat fresh bread all the time. Wasn't that easy??? I'd say go buy the book but I have yet to and have instead checked out and rechecked out the book about 10 times from the library sooooo...go to the library! :)

**Sorry this was so disorganized. It's rather amazing how the actual published post looks nothing like the one I just typed once I push "Publish". Oh well.

Part 2: A Call

2011-10-13T09:06:00.000-07:00

**We're doing the how J met A thing here. If you missed Part I just scroll on down a bit and find it.**

Hume was in the past and one of my fabulous friends from high school, Jenny, was in town. We were hanging at her parent's house updating each other on all the happenings of the last year of college. I heard the phone ring in the background and her sister pick it up. Then she came over to me and said, "It's for you. It's JASON EVANGELISTA" she whisperd. I'm sorry, what? Why? What is he doing calling here? I'm so confused....ok. Weird. I take the phone, "uh, hello?" Sure enough there he was on the other end of the line. He talked about how he was sorry he was interrupting my time with Jenny but that he had called my house and they had said I was at Jenny's and since I didn't have a cell phone that I should just call her house (yes, I was one of THOSE people for a very long time, haha) and how he was afraid he wouldn't get a hold of me in time. blah blah blah. Ok. Point? Oh. There it is. "Do you want to go surfing with me tomorrow morning?" Hm. Ok. Sure! Clueless to any secondary motives I agreed and arranged the time. I hung up, not thinking much of it and when I looked up...two sets of eyes were staring at me. "What?!" I said. Jenny declares, "Uh, I think he liiiiiiiiikes you! Who tracks someone down to hang out?!" I stated something along the lines of, "We're just going surfing. I always surf with guys. It's no big deal."

You see, I love to surf. It's probably one of my favorite sports. It's not really a sport though that I do alone. I HAVE done it. It's just....eh, questionably safe. If you bonk your head mtn biking and pass out, you'll probably wake up on the trail bleeding but alive. If you bonk your head on your board and pass out in the water...you're dead. Buddy surfing is a good idea if you ask me. Because of this I usually surf with my dad. I had one girlfriend in high school that I surfed with all the time which was BLISS. Then we did the college thing and lost touch. After that it was just guy friends...and my dad. So, the thought of surfing with a guy wasn't all that weird. Right? RIGHT? Hmmm.

I kept trying to tell myself this but, the truth was...I was having a little trouble believing it.

Fall is Here and a Bitty Bit of Random.

2011-10-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

I am a rock star blogger right now.

This is two in one week. Much better than my one every two weeks or so. Not too shabby don't ya know.

Morsel of wisdom for the day:
Rock climbing DOES in fact make you a better guitar player. I know, I know, before I typed that you were totally just thinking, "Dude, there's no way rock climbing would make me a better guitar player." But...it does folks. I haven't played my guitar in oh...about 3 months. I've been climbing again for...about 1 1/2 months. Just picked my lonesome instrument up and I kid you not...I was better just now then when I was regularly playing 3 months ago. I could nail out those bar codes like no one's biz...and my fingers just moved and moved without getting tired. Apparently hanging all your body weight by your fingertips from the tiniest little crevice does in fact do more than make your mama nervous. I was thoroughly excited. Who'da thunk.

I love crafts.

But the crafty, makey thing that I do not like is knitting/crocheting. I CAN do it...but I use this loosely because what I CAN'T seem to do lately is finish anything. I think that what is produced from the task is so cool. Scarves, afghans, beanies, sweaters. Amazing! I've made about 20 beanies in my life, plenty of scarves, and 1 1/2 afghans. (The 1/2 is my mom's that I still haven't finished from like 4 years ago...oops). But that seems to be the extent of my lifelong knitting/crocheting fruit. I have tried to make things. Over and over and over. I just can't finish anything though. Poop. For example, I really want a billed beanie. I found the cutest pattern HERE ----> http://thepepperminttree.typepad.com/thepepperminttree/ (and the blog in general is dang cute) I knitted 3 rows, made dinner, and now it sits on my couch. I keep glancing back at it...wishing I had a dog that could eat it or something...anything to make it disappear. But. It's.still.there. *Sigh* Dumb beanie.

And can you believe that it's practically mid-Oct?!? I keep forgetting. For some reason I feel like it's still August. Def. not. Why is my life going by so fast?

I made a fall leaf garland...out of felt. Awe. Cute. Pinterest inspired me. :)

It's kinda cheezy and would be way cooler draped over a fireplace mantle but whatever. It takes up space on our blank wall.

It makes it feel all festive and fall too. Just like my super cool pumpkins from TJ's...which Jason called pointless because they are meant solely for decoration. He kinda has a point. :) I like them anyways. And yes. I put my pumpkins on coasters. What? You don't? Weirdos.

Anyways, I think this completes my Sunday blog post. Now I shall get ready for tomorrow and play Donkey Kong on Wii.

Good times.

I will leave you with a couple of ever so random pictures. GG Bridge and Jason's yummy fig pastry.

Driving while on the phone is illegal...but taking pictures is still fair game right? This was really hard by the way! It's what I drive by though on the way to the gym...it still makes me smile :)

(Here we Gooooo!) Part 1: Introductions

2011-10-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

So, in case you didn't know, I'm not THAT girl. You know, the girl that every guy was gaga over in high school. The one that we were all slightly jealous of...but pretended like we weren't. So, because of this, I've had little "boy drama" in my life. I always did sports, had guy friends, enjoyed the company of guys...but as a whole avoided the mess and flurry of boys and the emotions that go with them...until the summer after my second year of college. Suddenly there were three, THREE guys. One ended up being out of the picture because he was moving, the other 2 sort of fizzled out (none were serious) and when I finally thought I was safe and that it was ALL over...Jason entered the picture, and not quietly might I add. Bold and Real and with no hidden intentions. Oh dear....

***
I was on the Grace Church bus counting heads, calling role, screaming my brains out trying to be heard over the gazzilion overly excited, sugar pumped kids who were about to spend a week at Hume Lake. I was the Summer Youth Intern and I too was excited for the week and what the Lord would be doing in these kids lives. There was a great group of staff that were coming as counselors (as always) and even some newbies. One I recognized. His name was Jason and I knew that he was the older brother of my friend Tyler who I hung out with in high school. On the way up my "girls" expressed to me how cuuuuuute they thought this new staff guy was. One was even doing the math to find out how many years apart they were from each other. Nice. I just laughed and enjoyed the ride to the mountains.

The trip went well, we all checked into our cabins, and settled in for the week. We had opening night and everyone was having a great time. I was enjoying my time with the girls in my cabin, the days went by, Hume was great. The Lord was moving.

Throughout the week I interacted with many different people...including joining in some pick-up games of soccer and ultimate frisbee with Jason and some of the other staff. During a free night I played some fusbol with my girls and Jason joined in. We ended up playing teams and it was Jason and I against my two Bible study girls. Apparently Jason and I were being antagonizing, and one girl prophetically declared..."You should get married! You're perfect for each other." I gave her dagger eyes. Apparently they were "sharp" enough that the crazy girl cried later on. Poor thing. (Oh, to be a young teenager and all emotion-ridden hormones). :-(

The week was coming to an end and Hume was kind enough to give us camp counselors a morning off from our kids. We all as staff were walking down to the coffee shop they had down the road to grab some much needed caffeine. As we were walking I saw Jason and called over to him and gave him an invite to join our group (gotta make the newbie staff feel welcome). We all enjoyed our independent time from the kids and chatted it up over cold blended sugar and caffeine filled drinks. The time ended, we met back up with our kids and finished the week. It was a great week, but it was now time to go home. (I was ready :).)

I felt like I met a lot of new people, new staff, news kids. I saw the Lord move in great ways. I saw kids commit themselves to the Lord and relationships with the Lord be renewed. What I didn't see though was that the Lord was moving in a different way. In a way that involved this new staff guy Jason...in a way that involved me...

I think...

2011-10-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

...I might do it too.

What's that?

mmm. Post J's and my "story". You know, THE story. Of how we met, came together, got married, and lived happily ever after.

My friend Jenny did...and I loved it.

My other friend The Pioneer Woman did it and I'm so glad I didn't have to wait to read it as she posted, but was able to read it all consecutively at one time. Have you read it? You should read it. (Ok, so we aren't actually friends. :) )

Anyways, I'm out of things to say on this here blogger-roo and I figured what the hey. Maybe I'll finish the story by our 3 yr anniversary you know...?

And really. Our story is kinda ridiculous. I mean really ridiculous. Wait. Let me rephrase that. I'M really ridiculous. I think it will be fun for me to relive it all and see God's hand in it...and also...to humiliate myself. Because this is a story about a girl. A stubborn, silly, self-righteous, inconsiderate girl who was pursued relentlessly and patiently by a guy who was none of what I just listed. So there you have it. Hopefully this won't fizzle out. If I forget and get distracted, leaving you just hanging there...feel free to reprimand me. :)

A Busted Brain Bullet Post

2011-09-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

The brain has been feeling a bit fatigued as of late. I feel super tired and forgetful and just...brain dead. Jason has an insane schedule this semester and I think it's affecting (I always get confused on when to use affect and effect) the both of us. On top of that for the last 3 weeks I've been working 9 1/2 hr days with only Sundays off. bleh. My co-worker is on vacation and I think I'm going to need one too when she get's back.
I want a new surfboard (new to me anyways). I would like a longboard. The thought of selling bags on etsy with the goal of saving up for a surfboard makes me feel much more motivated to get cracking on the sewing thing. :) Imagine that?!
SAS shoes. Have you ever wondered why almost every female over 65 wear those things? There's got to be something to it. I mean really. Since they're so very hideous they must be unbelievably comfortable, like clouds on your feet or something. I have a feeling I'm going to try them on one day and it's going to be one of those "Ah-Ha Moments". Probably similar to the moment when I realized that MPH stands for Miles per Hour. I bet I'll regret all the years I didn't wear SAS shoes and wish I could go back. I can't wait to turn 65...
I have been digga-lickin asymmetric sweaters lately...well, asymmetric jackets, shirts, anything really. Actually I just LOVE sweaters in general. So cozy, comfy. I've seen a few asymmetric beauties that have caught my eye lately but they've all been over $60 and there just ain't no way. I almost never pay more than $20 for any article of clothing...except my Ugg boots. :) Shoes are different though. Shoes are worth paying the money for. Anyways Captain Planet, I saw a lovely floppy asymmetric sweater at Old Navy that was much more affordable and I splurged. It was a little gift to myself for all the extra overtime I've been putting in. Oh yay. It's this one, but in brown...which they don't have online. :) http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=59093&vid=1&pid=851474 Some woman behind me in line was even impressed with my fantastic taste and went and got one for herself. You're welcome strange lady behind me in line. :)
3 consecutive months is all I can take of San Francisco. I like living here but I need to get out...every 3 months. Right about this time I start getting stir crazy and desiring open fields and isolation from people. I start to feel myself conforming to the SF ways in driving especially. (Just so you know, I think people in SLO drive like old people now. That wasn't the case before. Ooops.) Unfortunately we have almost 2 months until Thanksgiving where we are scheduled to go home. Oh mercy!
Today I dispensed a pair of glasses. As the guy was leaving he popped his head back in the door and said, "You sure are pretty." He was 89. ha! Nice. I like mine with hearing aides and bifocals! :)

And that's it.

No mas para tu!

Adios.

Have a super fantastic bodacious weekend. I will be working. Cry with me now. Maybe I'll wear my new sweater to console myself.

A Morning Woe and Some To-Do's

2011-09-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

**I was planning on posting this at 10:30am...when I was writing it. But, we realized all of a sudden that jiu-jitsu was at 11:00am, not 11:30am causing us to book it out of here and so I didn't post. So let us go back in our minds and pretend that it is 10:30am. Ready...set...read. Oh, by the way, when we got there we found out that jiu-jitsu starts at NOON. poo. Oh well. :)**

What shall I blog about today eh?

Well, first...I am in mourning. I woke up today and it was just like every other day. The first thing I thought of as I woke up this morning and glanced over at my sleeping husband was how much I absolutely and adoringly LOVE...

my piping hot cup of coffee.

I rolled out of bed and groggily put the coffee pot together. After the brown gold was done, sitting in it's beautiful clear carafe where I can gaze deep into it's lovely brown hues, I poured myself a cup, breathing in it's reviving scent. I poured some sugar in, went to the refrigerator, opened the door, grabbed that half and half which transforms by beloved from a beautiful rich brown to a beckoning creamy color and poured. "Drop" "Drop". As minion would say in Despicable Me, Whaaaaaaaaaaat?" (Seriously, we love that part. We mimic it all the time) But back to why I'm in mourning. And that was it. Two drops of half and half. My coffee did not become a creamy golden color but a dingy brown. And then...I cried and whined and threw a tantrum. Currently I am semi-composed enough to right this post. But I still feel a little unstable. Alright. Moving onward. Baby steps. Baby steps. (We watched that movie last night. I love the library) :)

Seriously, what the freak is wrong with the enter key. I press it and it does nothing. Why must things change? Facebook. Blogger. I am totally going to be that old person who refuses to conform with the new changes and technologies of society. "Crazy kids. Back in MY day I used to press the enter key and it moved the cursor down to the next line."

Oooh, it worked that time.

But not that time. baaaaah!

Anyways, plans for today involve going to San Mateo. I'm dropping the J-Man off at the Jiu Jitsu academy there so that he can train with a guy that he likes...he usually goes to the San Fran one since he can walk there. I shall be going to the gym while he's doing that since it's like 2 blocks away. They rerouted the whole bouldering "cave" and it's so fun to be challenged by new routes. Bummer part though was that I have been working on one route for a while and they stinking took it down. Boo. Now I'll never finish it and will die thinking about "the route that beat me". Ok, that might be a tad dramatic. But yeah. After the gym/jiu jitsu we're heading to Costco to eat pizza, get our tires rotated/filled, and buy ridiculous quantities of things that we probably don't need THAT much.

I also NEED to:
-wash the car
-buy fabric
-sew and fill my empty etsy shop...but I'm feeling very unmotivated. hmmm.
-clean my house
-do laundry
-grocery shop
-plan a menu for this week (homemade raviolis are SO in my futuro)

Things I WANT to do:
-not wash the car and just buy a brand new clean one.
-not clean my house and hire a housekeeper
-not do laundry...and just buy whole new wardrobes for us both.
-well, I like meal planning and food shopping...but I'd like to NOT work within a budget and make highly expensive gourmet meals every night.

I feel so conflicted (by such highly realistic alternatives).....

Anyways, I guess that's it. A incredibly informative blog that probably kept you at the edge of your seat.

Adios. Happy Saturday!

F-O-O-D spells Food.

2011-09-17T21:15:00.000-07:00

Food.

This is a blog post all about food.

Why?

Because I think about it far, far too much. I LOVE food.

This love for food/cooking goes back to when I used to make "dinner" for my family in middle school. I wanted to start making dinner so my mom handed me a box of Hamburger Helper and said, "go at it girlfriend". Well...maybe not those words exactly. :) When cooking up the ground beef I used to pull chunks out and experiment with our seasonings...chili powder, garlic powder, pepper...you name it. I'd sprinkle different combos on it and eat it up...judging whether I had created something successful or something that was a flop. Good times. I have now graduated out of Hamburger Helper meals but I feel like that was the beginning for me. I have spread my wings and fully embraced organic, whole foods, and yet also love to cook something fried, unhealthy, and oh so yummy. It's all good in my book.

Dinner cooking is not a chore I dislike or begrudgingly do. I love it (usually). :) ... I thoroughly and completely and most utterly deplore dishes. Terrible combo. Cooking creates dishes. It's sorta like loving to surf but hating to rinse your wetsuit...oh wait, yeah, I don't like to do that either. So, it's like...loving to mountain bike but hating to clean your bike...yep, can't stand that either. (Apparently I just have issues with cleaning in general :) )

So here are some random thoughts I've had in regard to food lately...divided into categories.

Cost: I feel like in general we should be paying more for our food. Like super discounted meat and vegetables sorta creep me out...especially meat. I would rather NOT eat meat then eat meat that is pumped full of junk. Because of this I only get the good expensive stuff, and because of THIS we don't eat meat often. Keeps the cholesterol down I guess. :) If I could, I would raise our food budget. But I can't. Oh well. Maybe one day. 'Till then we will be nominal vegetarians.

My "Tastes": So, as I said, I love food. With that comes a very heightened level of what I call snobbery. Some people like to call it being a "foodie". I call it snobbery :). Two things though. If I pay money for the food i.e. restaurants...I'm a serious snob. BUT if food is made personally for me (by my mom, Jason's mom, anyone's mom, neighbor, brother, stranger) it tastes so much better than anything I make or go out to buy. Not sure why. My own food preparation seems to diminish the flavor for me...slightly. I've heard of people that totally have no appetite to eat what they prepare. Not me. But it does rob a little of the joy. Not sure why. Maybe the surprise element is gone since I know exactly what I put into it. If I don't make it and go to someone's house for dinner...those are some of the best meals ever. yum.

I have food dreams.

Dreams about food. When I'm asleep and when I'm awake. The sleep one's usually involve me cooking something weird and eating it. The latest? The leaves from my tomato plants. Jason convinced me that we were supposed to eat them and I believed him. Oh that sneaky instigator. When I'm awake, I kinda sometimes dream about opening a cafe' of sorts. Oooh. Deep dark confession. I don't usually share my dreams...at least the one's I aspire to attain (ie. NOT cooking with tomato leaves) :) Feel privileged. I know you do.

Warring Factions Within: I feel torn though about the fact that we live in a world of plenty and yet there are those who barely have enough to survive/do not have enough to survive. That breaks my heart. I often feel guilty turning my nose up at something. Really guilty. Every.single.time I ever throw something out that's old...usually something we just didn't "feel like" eating I think about someone who needs that very unwanted food to SURVIVE. ugh. I want to make a difference...some how...and have it involve food. I've had some grand, lofty ideas. Maybe one will come to fruition one day ;).

And a completely random thing. How do you like your cookies? Soft or crunchy? I like mine chewy I think. Chewy in the middle with a slight thin, outer rim of crunch. There you have it. Anyways, made cookies tonight and I found a recipe that actually attained such a texture. Amazing. The difference? It has you add corn syrup and water...just a bit. Interesting.

And there you have it. Random thoughts on food. Not sure why the heck I just wasted a half hour of my dear precious life enlightening you on something that it probably NOT up your alley buuuut...take it or leave it. And I mean, it IS my blog so I can write whatever I darn well please. :)

Come back next time for recipes with "Tomato Leaves".

"Saaaave the Liver!!!"

Seriously, you should check out some old Julia Childs videos from the library. Hillarious! She's sort of a disaster/genius in the kitchen and it makes me laugh.

All right. I'm really done. Adios amigos bonitos.

The BEST 7 minutes of your day...I promise!

2011-09-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

Olay Hola!

I have dinner in the oven and I was thinking. Wouldn't it be cool if you had an oven that was an oven AND a refrigerator all at the same time. Like you could make your lasagna the night before, put it in the oven but on the cold setting and then have an automatic timer that turned the oven on at certain time...allowing for dinner to be done and piping hot when you get home! That would be awesome. I want one. Do they already make one of those? I bet. I'm not particularly "inventful"...that is so not a word. So, if I came up with it than I KNOW someone else has. Although when I told Jason about my freakishly awesome idea he sort of just looked at my like I was some sort of fool. Speaking of fool.

Two of my new favorite words to call people. (And they are SO positive and uplifting)...

Tool and fool.

For example, I'm in traffic, some maniac cuts me off...I proceed to tailgate him and yell, "You crazy Fool!"
.....Why is it that when I press "Enter" it goes to the beginning of the paragraph that I was just typing?....

This blogger is a Tool! :)

Good example, no?

Ok, in all seriousness.

There was a bird on the highway today that got hit. Whenever someone drove by the wind picked the wing up and made it flap. haha. It made me laugh.

Oh, and have you seen The Help. Oh my gosh. Loved it and I cried like a baby. I won't give anything away but let's just say I have a serious soft spot for old folks and it took all that I had within me not to blubber and "ugly cry" right there in the theater at one part. ugh. If I think about it I can make myself cry again. I proved this thoroughly well to Jason. I think he was impressed. :) Anyways, you should see it.

I wonder if dinner is done. I shall check. Mmmm. Que rico. It 'tis done and I shall go eat. You are very welcome. For what? For my most awesome blog post ever! Adios! Don't be such a Tool!

27

2011-08-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I turned the big 2-7. Weird how close I'm getting to 30. The even weirder thing...sometimes I think I'm older than I am. I, for a split second thought I was over 30 and was thinking about what it would be like to turn 40. Then I realized I hadn't even hit 30 yet. It was a pleasant surprise.

So, we brought in my 27th year of life the right way...with the consumption of BOOZE. Nah. Just kidding. With the consumption of SUSHI! Jason "thought" he didn't like sushi but I was stubborn and insisted...since it was my bday. Jason obliged and ended up really liking it. haha! Won him over!

Well, let's back it up a bit.

First I came home to this...

Then we went out and ate....this!

And this...

And this!

Wow. This new blog picture adder thing is L.A.M.E. I am totally not computer savvy and this blogger thing is making a point of rubbing it in my face!

Anyways, then I received this gift that I was ever so surprised to get. Look! Look at my look of surprise...and my demon possessed eyes. :)

And then I made a cake.

Awe. It's so cute. The outside is all fondant...in case there is any question on that one!

And now I'm going to publish this thing because from what I'm looking at it, this is going to be one seriously chaotic, disorganized post. Let's see...

Bullet Post

2011-08-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while a "bullet post" is all I can muster. Today is one of those days. This allows me to throw up partial sentences/thoughts...which take a lot less thought...and time...which I like. Here we gooooooo...

We have the cutest teenie baby tomatoes. When I bought the plant I had no idea what the breed was. Breed? Is it called a breed? Anyways, they are way smaller than cherry tomatoes. I don't like cherry tomatoes in my salad unless they are cut up. But the whole POINT of cherry tomatoes is to not cut them up...since they're so small. The problem lies not in the flavor for me but the way they explode in your mouth when you eat them. SICK. I just can't take it. These are smaller and don't do that. Perfect for salads :)
Went to the gym on Sat. Bliss. I ran, I climbed. I took a shower there and used their water (seriously, they have no idea to what degree I WILL get my moneys worth out of that place). 20 minute showers are in my future. I am also sore. And I totally and completely held back on purpose knowing that I would pay for it if I didn't. I still paid for it but I think I will be recovered enough to go back again tomorrow.
Yoga mats (still on the gym topic). I'm in the market for a yoga mat but had NO idea that there are like 500 different one's to choose from...ranging from $10-$80. I think I need a thicker one than normal though. You see, I broke my tailbone...sometime at the latter end of high school (I think I know when but I'm not 100% sure). I never went to the doctor though. (I really wanted go to State for pole vaulting and I thought a doc might interfere with that). Anyways, it grew/healed weird so that it sticks out a bit more that the average Joe's..or Jane's. I was having lower back probs and I had an x-ray done my freshmen year of college. That's when they told me. haha. So, my "tail" as Jason calls it starts to hurt if I sit on something hard for too long. There you have it. I have a tail. Oh well. Which yoga mat should I get? :)
I just thought I'd tell you that I can stick my fingers into a pot of boiling water and pull some spaghetti out to test it to see if it's done (if it's close to the top haha). I know right? I need to get out of the kitchen and do something worth while with my life. (Honestly I think it's because about 3 weeks ago I moved the shelf up in the broiler. I store extra cookie sheets in there. I used to be able to turn the oven on and then quickly pull out the cookie sheets. They were hot but manageable. Then I moved the shelf up, putting the cookie sheets quite close to the flame. I forgot about that fact and grabbed that scalding sheet...that was probably about 400 degrees. No more fingerprints. haha. Now I have calluses :)
I'm making my own b-day cake and I'm a little excited about it. :)
Jason starts school tomorrow. I can't believe that the summer is over. Wow. It flew by. I'm going to miss summer immensely.
I want to play the guitar again. I just can't gain the will power to practice the thing though. So it sits in the corner of my living room. :( Poor lonely guitar
I love Lucy is totally funny. We've been renting them from the library and I absolutely crack up. I think I find it much more funny though than Jason does. Not sure why?! ;)

That's it. I'm done. I think I'll go watch I Love Lucy...or play the guitar...or dip my fingers into boiling water. Adios.

SLO Bound and Back.

2011-08-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't been able to figure out the "not able to comment" thing...oh well. I can just have a "read only" blog. :)

I changed the header thingy-ma-bob so maybe that will do the trick.

Anyways, Jason and I did a quick spontaneous trip down south and it was GLOR.I.OUS. Oh the warmth made me ever so happy. These San Francisco summers...well, let's just say it how it is...they SUCK. Constant gloom and doom with a light layer of mist to keep you damp and cold. blah-o-blah. I complain about the weather far too much BUT...if you think I'm a whiner it's because you've never lived in dreary ole' SF and you have no room to judge. What now!? :] Ok, I'm done with my pity party.

SLO was mighty lovely on Sat but Creston on Sunday...? SO warm I almost cried when it was time to start the drive home to San Franny...and Jason literally whined and threatened to throw a temper tantrum...because he wanted to keep swimming and enjoy the sun and heat. We're really mature huh? We ate icecream, drank southern sweet tea, and enjoyed the pool and my family immensely. Ah! So refreshing.

In other news.

I sold another bag yesterday. Cool yo. I was just going to let the etsy posts expire and probably not renew them again. But selling one produces more money to make more...and since Jason is heading off to school again next week. Looks like I'm back in the biz :) Might as well! We also did some back-to-school shopping last weekend. Can I just say Running Warehouse is amazing? We got the same shoes Jason was planning on getting for $30 less than at other places. Wow. I was totally impressed.

Also, got a HUGE bday/Christmas gift. Tall Chestnut Ugg boots. Like the real thing :). Not fakeys. I know right? Remember that whole, "SF is the coldest place on earth and it makes me want to cry" rant. Well, I think I'll whine less with these fantastically beautiful Ugg boots. Just so you know...those stupid things NEVER go on sale. Unless you're cool with neon pink sparkle Ugg boots. Not I. I like 'em tall, and brown. Like the rest of the world. And if you have the gall to even ASK a salesmen if Ugg boots ever go on sale they WILL look at you with a smug expression, mockingly laugh, and educate you on the fact that "the Ugg company produces less boots then there is a demand every year so that they can keep the prices high, and so no...they don't ever go on sale." Ok, fine. Just thought I'd ask.

So, I was spoiled this year. yay. I can say though that they will be used plenty...certainly not a waste. I don't get to use them though until my b-day. poo. Good thing it's actually some what warm today...or I might cheat and sneak them on when Jason's not looking. :)

Alright folks. I'm off. Have a good week. Peace.

Stumped.

2011-08-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Well, J. I'm glad YOU were able to comment. But NOW I can't comment. Stupid blog. I have no clue.

This is a test :)

2011-08-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

So, I've had a few peeps tell me that they can't comment on my blog. Can you try now? I was thinking that it may have to do with my header from before. It was a predone template that I tweeked...maybe that glitched up the system? I know nothing about computers so I threw up (no, I didn't puke) my own header pic to see if it makes any difference. It's totally out of proportion with the blog but whatev. If this solves it then I'll do a more permanent, different header. Grass-ee-us.

PS: Side note: I checked out the gym with Jas yesterday (the one I mentioned in the previous post). To die for AWESOME! I'm so excited. This was the smaller one of the two and it was so freakin cool. Can't wait to see the SF one that I'll be going to on Saturdays. (With the membership you get access to all 3 locations) The one by my work I'll do on the weekdays and the SF one I'll do during the weekend. yay. Time to go down south and get my climbing shoes and chalk bag from my parents house! :) (I think Jason was jealous...but he chose his martial arts gig! Can't have everything in life :) haha.

Why is tomorrow Monday?

2011-08-07T21:49:00.001-07:00

I should be going to bed buuuuut...here I am.

Where did the weekend go? Where does EVERY weekend go?

So, you remember that ridiculous food journey Jason and I embarked on. Yeah, the homemade own. The one that in the end In'N'Out won over the day and made us fail completely and miserably, not even making it to the 2 week mark. Well, we're unofficially back on it. I know. We're crazy. But here's the thing. The fruit of my labors were so beneficial that I hated going back to our old habits. I had more energy, I slept better, my errr..."digestion" was better. ;) The food tasted better. So we're slowly transitioning into making it more of a sustainable lifestyle. Homemade pasta...a go. Homemade chili made from canned beans once in a while...still okay. Not going to kill myself over it but we're going to keep it rolling. So that's that.

Exploring the gym option as of late. With a little extra income rolling on in from the J-Man...we're exploring some options for us to get off of our butts and get some movement going. Exercise has been a HUGE issue here. A.) I don't really love running in the city. People literally don't stop at all for pedestrians and I'm a trail runner to the core. Road running is not my thing. There is the rustic part of Golden Gate Park to run through buuuuut...not so sure how safe it is in the end to do alone, and it's not that long...and I'd have to drive there and SOME how find parking B.) The weather sucks in the summer...when the days are longer C.) The weather is great in the spring, fall, winter...but the days are short and so it's basically dark by the time I get home. Not safe to run in the dark. D.) Even if it WAS sunny, and beautiful, and lovely outside when I got home...it's really hard to make myself go once I'm HOME. There's always something to do...like lie on the couch and read. You know, priorities.

So, with Jason starting school it looks like I may be starting a gym. He has some evening classes and so I could go after work...or better yet...BEFORE work. It's a yoga/climbing gym. I know can it GET any more hippie? But, it's totally my thing and I'm pretty excited. They have awesome climbing walls (both boulder and belay) and yoga classes all through out the day. There's also a cardio/weight area like a typical gym. So, we'll see. Jason is going to check it out with me and if it looks bueno I think I may go for it. Jason wants to do some martial arts apparently. But, we have to save up for his and get a little creative with budgeting as his exercise endeavor is just a tad more pricey than mine :). I think we can pull it off though.

Ahhh. Exercise. How I've missed you.

And that's it.

Now, off to bed! Hope everyone have a great week! Peace! :)

F.A.I.L

2011-07-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

Yep, a big.fat.FAIL. Seriously. We couldn't even make it 2 weeks. Nope.

It doesn't help that Jason has already been a big fat cheater head, eating the food at camp that definitely had preservatives/wasn't made from scratch DESPITE the fact that I would pack him a lunch. Cheater.

So, last night when we were driving by In-n-Out (mind you, you can smell it from the freeway) I said casually, "Ug, I want In-N-Out right now." Jason of course retorts, "OKAY!" I gave the lecture on no we can't do this, we are eating from scratch /no preservatives, we still have like 4 days left, In-N-Out is DEFINITELY not preservative free...blah blah blah, Yeah, THAT lecture. Jason said, "But I've already cheated, we can start over, this will be our last hoorah before we start again." Well, let's just say his protesting was totally UNconvincing and so I don't even have the ability to say that I caved because of a good argument. Nope. I caved because I was tired and knew that I needed to stop by the store on the way home to buy pine nuts for pesto and that there were a ton of dishes in the sink that I would have to wash before I even started cooking...and then they would have to be washed again after dinner (yeah right, who am I kidding, I would have left them there for the next day). So, a fake meal sounded fantastic. There you have it. We ate In-N-Out. And I had a TERRIBLE stomach ache and awful gas from it (TMI? haha). Let's say In-N-Out is not the best way to re-enter into the processed food world. And I don't even eat the meat there. (I have a grilled cheese with grilled onions :) ).

AND, no! I'm not starting all over like Jason suggested haha. We're done, "officially"..though we'll finish out the last few days.

But here is what I got from this whole thing.

1) Real pasta is very easy to make/freeze (with the machine)and tastes about 500 times better than the stuff from the bag. I will probably no longer buy prepackaged pasta...avoiding the preservatives but also having a better tasting meal in general.

2) No more processed snack foods (except for a special occasion like throwing a BBQ). I used to never buy nuts, such as almonds because I felt they were so expensive (at least for us). The almonds were $6 and I could get a bag of Honey Wheat pretzels for $1.50. A bag of Honey wheat pretzels lasts about 3 days tops though. It doesn't curb the hunger but just tastes...empty, so we eat a ton in one sitting. The bag of almonds lasted a week at least. We ate only a handful here and there and it seemed to do the trick. On top of the protein, good fat, and no preservatives...it was far more economical then I thought it would be. (we buy the roasted, unsalted kind).

3) Greek yogurt is fantastic. You have to hunt to find the one with no preservatives but they do have it (at Costco even). In a one cup serving you receive 30% of your protein. Amazing. I prefer the plain fat free one. I think the whole milk one has an absurd quantity of fat...I'm not sure how much though...that and whole milk in general doesn't sit well for me. I think we've decided that I'm allergic to milk fat? Who knows. :). It's fantastic topped with honey, almonds, and dates (my personal favorite). It seriously fills you up too and it's so much better than the sugary, empty carb yogurts that are out there.

4) We've always loved fruit but I think we lost sight of it, haha. It's like I forgot it existed. Weird right? Well, we are consuming very large quantities of fruits. Figs, oranges, bananas, blueberries, dates, etc....yum.

5) Homemade cereal is totally worth it. So much better for you and it lasts a surprisingly long time. Jason still has some of that granola left from when I made it a week and a half ago. It's great on top of yogurt too :)

6) The hardest thing to kick was quick-fix sweets. I.e.: prepackaged cookies and stuff like that. I really only buy one thing every week but I must confess...A vanilla Joe Joe was sounding pretty dang good around day 3 or so.

And I think that's it. It was a fun experiment even though we FAILED.

Oh well. I don't want to be legalistic about it you know :)

Day 4: Only from Scratch

2011-07-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

It's my 200th post yo. Just thought I would educate your mind with this information.

Anyways, it's day 4 and I can officially say that I have kicked the "cravings" for something processed and yummy. I'm no longer thinking about the dish of candy sitting on my desk.

So, Sunday night was lasagna...like I said. Monday I used those homemade refried beans I made on Sunday and made these incredibly EASY flour tortillas for burritos (with cheese of course). And YES! I do use lard. Bring on the lard. I also use lard in PIES. Yeah. It's better. Seriously. If I made you a pie crust with lard you'd freak. And really... lard's natural! :) I know it's all fatty good and all but how many times do you actually eat pie in a year? Use lard! (Though you can use butter too.) I've quit using the Crisco stuff altogether...siiiiide note tangent. Sorry. I'm done.

No pics though because it's apparently hard to take pictures AND roll out tortillas and cook them. Yummy though. The refried beans though...they turned sweet sometime between when I cooked them and when we ate them. Weird. So my recommendation...eat those puppies fresh! They weren't bad, I just had to add some salt and red chili pepper flakes to get rid of the odd "sweet" flavor.

Last night...I used the chicken broth and the chicken from the broth on Sun. and whipped out a chicken pot "pie". Pie is in quotes because I didn't make a crust (that takes way to long for this working lady) but used "drop biscuits". Way faster and super yummy. The filling is from this recipe (I used cut up fresh green beans instead of the frozen peas...keeping it fresh folks). Then I dumped it all straight into a pan and made the biscuit dough and dropped that on top of the filling. Cook it as 450 for 30 min more or less and you're done. I don't have a recipe that I use for drop bizkitz but this is a fine one and quite similar to what I make (though you might want to double it to cover the whole casserole dish thing).

So, the question. Do I feel different?

Hmmmm.

-So, honestly, the first 2 days we started this I had pretty bad cramping and stomach aches. Both Jason and I. I can't figure out why. Weird. Not sure what this tells us but we feel fine now.

-I am sleeping like a baby. I feel like I sleep really solid since I've started this. I think though that it's because I'm so tired from cooking, haha.

-There is a lot of satisfaction had in cooking completely from scratch but it is pretty tiring and time consuming...not going to lie.

-Homemade granola is SO good. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Ok, I guess that's it. Tonight we are having leftovers maybe??? The chicken pot biscuit thingy went a little farther than I anticipated! woohoo! No cooking! :)

And it Begins

2011-07-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hung out with Jason this morning and ate what was possibly the yummiest pastry EVER. It was an almond croissant from Thorough Bread Pastry. Good grief. So amazing. I am still thinking about it. Really. Then we walked around, enjoyed the...SUN (something SF hasn't seen it at least a week), and then went home to begin cooking.

Today (in preparation for the week) I made...

Refried beans (for tomorrows burritos)
Granola (for this weeks cereal in the morn)
Lasagna noodles (for tonight's meal)
Spaghetti noodles (for Tues' meal)
Chicken Stock (for Wed. soup and my chicken pot pie...where I will also use the chicken from the stock)
Spaghetti Sauce (for tonight's meal...which there was supposed to extra of BUT...no go. It's all gone. oops).

And here are some pics. Enjoy.Refried beans. Made in the crock pot. Super easy. I literally through it all in and left it be for the day. Here is the recipe from allrecipes.com that I used. I tasted it before I put it away and it was pretty darn good. Much better than the can that's for sure...and it took very little work.After the beans I started in on a pasta sauce that was so unbelievably yummy. I used these onions and basil above from our garden. No actual pictures of the sauce but I used this recipe from food.com and highly recommend it. The alterations I made to the recipe are a) I certainly did NOT peel 12 tomatoes. Yeah right. Seriously, there is no need to peel tomatoes. I don't know why they tell you to peel them. I also at the end of it all put about 3/4 of it in to my Cuisinart and pureed it. Made for a creamer sauce that was more compatible with lasagna. Good either way though.

Next up...granola!Here are the ingredients and here is the recipe. Changes I made were a) could not find wheat bran so...oat bran it is! b) Did not want to pay $8 for a thing of wheat germ so I skipped it. c) I baked it for more like an hour at least. In the oven it goes! And out it comes! Golden, delicious, and crunchy yummy. Oh look, there's my sauce in the background. :)

And then I started my pasta. Have you ever seen one of these?

I sure as heck never had till I went to my parents house one day and my mom pulled it out and said I could have it. It makes pasta. Like for real. And it's really easy. You mix flour, water, and olive oil...and that's it. It does it all...out of little cut out thingys that will make any shape you want...spaghetti, lasagna...whatever. It's amazing. Look at it whirl up all the ingredients.And look at it make lasagna for my lasagna tonight.And look at the spaghetti it made that I dusted with flour, threw in a ziploc, and put in the freezer for our dinner later this week. Yeah. It's cool.And then we ate this. There's no recipe. I make up my lasagna. Really though, it's homemade noodles, the spaghetti sauce recipes above, ricotta, and mozzarella, all layered. And let me tell you. This was TO.DIE.FOR. I mean, I don't want to toot my own horn but holy cow I will never EVER (okay I probably will) but I will TRY to never ever eat non-homemade noodle lasagna again. I've tasted the dark side. And I am in love with it. Seriously, it was amazing. Jason and I pretty much said, mmm. oh my gosh this is so good. mmmmm. the whole meal. It was ridiculous. :)

And then there's the chicken stock which is really boring and it would be gross if I took a picture of a chicken carcass floating in the broth. I'll spare you. But it's good and if you want the recipe I use this one. I like the added twist with the ginger.

And that my friends, was my first day of all scratch cooking. And I'm going to be really honest. I'm exhausted! :) I'm off to bed to dream about the croissant and lasagna I had.

Preparing For the Week

2011-07-16T19:28:00.001-07:00

Welp, if you haven't heard...We're gonna be eatin' a little different around here for the next couple of weeks. Here's just HOW different if you missed the post. We're going to go ahead and kick it off tomorrow night...rather than Mon.

So, I did the shopping for this week and let me tell you. It took for freaking ever.

First, when you make everything from scratch...you have to buy a lot more things. Good grief.

I also had to go to more than one store. I can sometimes make do with going to just Trader Joe's but there was no way I was going to pay 80 cents a pop for tomatoes...I needed 12! haha. No thanks.

Here are some very surprising "preservative" discoveries.

1) Couldn't buy our fav ABC (mostly almonds, blueberries, and cranberries...with some raisins too) trail mix from Trader's. Would you like to know why? Because apparently, they put a preservative in it to preserve the color of?...of raisins. What? I'm sorry. So, what color do raisins change to as they sit on the shelf? Blue?

2) Canned tomatoes have preservatives...thus the reason why I bought 12 Roma tomatoes. They were only $3.30 though. And I think it will make a bit of sauce. So, not bad.

3)I feel dumb looking at the back of all the packages in the store. Want to know why? Because I feel like someone's looking at me thinking, "Oh, that poor skinny girl. She must me worried about the fat content in that...oh look, she's putting it back...oh sad." Skinny girl complex I guess. Just checkin' the preservatives peeps....which is in everything apparently.

4)There is a preservative in pre-grated cheese...that keeps the cheese from sticking. bah. So, I had to buy a whole chunk of mozzarella.

5)Every cold cereal has SOME sort of preservative...from what I could tell (though I didn't venture to a whole foods store...because I didn't want to spend $10 on cereal) So, I'm making my own. That's right. Who's cool?

And that's what I have to share thus far.

Tomorrow night it begins. Tomorrow is a HUGE cooking day for the week. You shall see. Tomorrow night I will show you our absolutely from scratch dinner meal...and the menu for the week.

I'm expecting "preservative withdraws" to be rolling in around 1pm on Monday afternoon. Headaches? Nausea? We'll see. hehe :)

Off to eat Ben and Jerry's "Everything But The" icecream. Less that 24 hours left you know ;)!

It's-a-growin'

2011-07-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

For Jason' mom...who asked for some new pics of the garden.

To really appreciate it...once again. Here is the BEFORE. Nothing but seeds, flowers, and a few teeny tint tomato plants and squash.
And HERE are our highly neglected plants now... Some onions hanging out on the line. Did you know you have to dry them? Yeah. Me neither. But you do if you want them to last longer. We did red onions...but apparently there was a rogue white one there in the middle! (We have so MANY onions. Fortunately they aren't all ready at the same time.)These are all dry and ready to be grubbed on...Group shot! Everyone say "cheese". Yeah. I'm dumb.Here we have our fabulous french cut green beans on our very cheap trellis. This plant has been great in the bay area. Little work...it just grows and grows......and grows. It grows up whatever it can find. Even neighboring, unsuspecting, onion plants. Oops.Another great plant for this area...artichokes! So easy, they grow so well. They like the fog. Golden. Things that are bad...SQUASH! They've pretty much all molded over. They just need more heat. The tomatoes are fruiting but man they are sure taking their sweet time. Again, we need more heat. Maybe we'll get a big crop in Oct!? haha.This here is a Brussel Sprout plant...from the top. We are actually getting baby Brussel Sprouts too. Super cool. This one has been the most work. The weather here is fine for the plant but the PESTS that like this sucker are unbelievable. sheesh. There has been quite the war waging in the backyard the last few weeks. We've lost a few plants for sure but Jason has been putting up a good fight! :)

And THAT is our garden.And THIS is a reject carrot plant. It looked so promising, so full, it crested and looked to be the making of a glorious carrot. Then we pulled it out...to find this. We laughed out loud when we pulled it out. :) Nice.

The Great Food Experiment 2011

2011-07-07T19:57:00.000-07:00

So, labeling it 2011 makes it sound pretty hard core eh? Okay, so it's just two weeks. I originally wanted to do it for a month...but then changed my mind because really...a month seems nearly impossible.

So, what is this "Great Food Experiment"?

Well, let me tell you.

Beginning this Mon...for two weeks, Jason and I will be cutting out all prepackaged foods from our diet. As in ALL of them.

Like?

-any and all frozen foods bought from the store (we pretty much only buy Trader Joe's frozen french fries and Orange Chicken...but you get the point).
-bagged pasta
-cereal (from the box)
-bagged bread
-chips
-cookies
-canned sauces
-anything that has an ingredient list with weird things you aren't 100% sure on...i.e. preservatives and etc.

The idea behind this non-sense?

One, I've always wanted to try to eat...for a while anyways, mainly and primarily things that are made from scratch.

It's sort of an experiment. I want to know if we FEEL any better. If we notice more energy, clearer skin :), better attitudes, better BM's (haha, jk), and etc.

Also, though I work full time...I'm not all that busy...not like the type of busy I would be if we had kids. So, why not try it now?

So, here's the small print:
-when eating meat (though we literally are almost unintentionally vegetarians, we eat meat maybe once a week at the most) it will only be free-range, grass fed, etc meat. It's what we eat now. It's what we'll eat during this two weeks.
-we will be eating cheese. Since I have no idea how to make cheese...or desire to stank my house up with the process (though I do have a small, random dream to have a "Cheese Hut" in my backyard where I make my own gourmet cheeses...I know...FREAK)...we will eat organic cheese. I love cheese.
-I don't have a cow in my backyard...so milk will be consumed (by Jason) in the mornings with his cereal...I will buy organic milk this two weeks...even though I usually don't. I buy Trader Joe's brand. I don't drink milk because it tastes "thick" and weird...so this doesn't really concern me :)
-We will use things like butter, olive oil, sugar, salt, flour, vanilla, eggs, coffee, half and half, and other ingredients .
- Certain things in the package are fair game. Things that list one ingredient...like...almonds. :)
-Also, if we go to someone's house for dinner we're on "break". Because we won't be those people who say, "Oh, we don't eat THAT." :)

And yeah, I think that's it.

So, we'll see.

Basically the idea is...if I can make it from scratch...I will do it rather than buying it from the store already made. OR, if I can't make it...figure out another meal that I CAN make.

And there you have it.

So.

That's it.

I'm taking you along with me on this journey. I'll share my menu...whether it was easy or I wanted to pull my hair out, and etc.

So, there you have it. 6 days of gorging before it begins. Bring on the Oreos and Doritos! :)

Renaming this Confounded Blog.

2011-07-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Seriously, this blog should be called the un-adventures of Jason and Anna. And really? Jason doesn't even write on this thing anymore. Apparently he doesn't deam walking to and from school and attending class blog-worthy. APPARENTLY, he's not a girl. A girl could totally find something worth recording....I think. :)

No really.

Also, I'm already bored of my blog background. I know right? I just changed it. Yeah, try living with me. Now you can have a taste of what Jason goes through with our furniture and room arrangement.

Anyways, thought I'd let you know of some awesome craft happenings this weekend.

FIRST, me and my ladies are hitting "Scrap" in San Francisco. It's a non-prof store that collects used craft materials, selling it at a cheaper price for teachers, artists, and etc. AWESOME! Here's the webby addy if you would like to check it out.

http://www.scrap-sf.org/

After Scrap I shall be paying a visit to the long awaited Renegade Craft Fair at the Fort Mason Center. It's basically a gathering of all the best handmade makers in the Bay area. I've been waiting 2 months to go! It's free to enter, there are workshops, and lots of goodies to spend my hard earned money on...though I'm excited to just walk around and look at all the creativity! :)

http://www.renegadecraft.com/san-francisco

Sunday afternoon will involve some crafting with the ladies...with the loot from Scrap.

And there you have it. I will be so crafted out from the weekend. I'm okay with that though. :) It seems like a good ailment to have.

Sunday

2011-06-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

Today I heard a sermon that challenged me. We go to a great church where they love the Lord, and His people. The church is involved in quite a few city ministries and outreaches. City Church loves God and therefore loves San Francisco.

My confession though is...

...sometimes I don't love San Francisco.
...sometimes San Francisco bugs the crud out of me.

Sometimes I feel really jaded. Of the pushing, the shoving, the city bustle, the extreme in your face liberalism, the narcissism, the incredible wealth that just seems...wasted (on things like $1500 Louis Vuitton bags). Sometimes I'm numb to the homelessness, the poverty, the need. There you have it. The honest truth.

I feel like in a city that has so much need...I have served less here than in SLO. I have the excuses, like getting home late from work, and etc. but in the end...I usually don't want to do it. Well, I do, but I can easily talk myself out of it.

So, today I was challenged deeply. To love when all around is unlovable. To do this because Christ has done this for me. Who am I that I should judge or withhold love from anyone? Who am I.

The sermon isn't posted online yet but I will link it up as soon as it is. I think you should listen. It even includes a street fight. haha. Does that perk your interest?

Anyways, I was encouraged...challenged. So good.

Have I Ever Showed you My Livtching Room?

2011-06-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Oh. What's that? You don't know what a Livtching Room is? Weird.

:)

Wanna know why you don't know what that is?

'Cause you don't live in SF.

Yeah.

We have one. It's a Living-Kitchen-Dinning Room all wrapped up in one.

Sometimes it drives me nuts. It can become cluttered and messy in .2 seconds. Usually though, I'm a fan. With the 2 of us... It's enough space. Usually. :)

One down side. The kitchen is tiny. Itsy bitsy. I need about 3 x's the counter space and I have enough kitchen stuff that I could open my own small gourmet restaurant. Seriously. BUT...I've made cakes, pies...and I'm about to make chocolate eclairs in it. So it does the job. :) AND, AND I have a full size oven. Pretty much unheard of in a small rental like ours. But I have one. And love it. And I may or may not blow it kisses every night. "Good night oven. I love you." You see, when we were looking at rental units about 90% came with an electric cook top and a toaster oven. Em. Hmmm. I was actually resolved to be okay with it and accept it. Then we found our current house and when I opened the door to the Livtching Room and I saw that oven it took about all I had to not hug the landlord and say, "You beautiful woman, THANK YOU for choosing to put a beautiful brand new full size oven into this unit. I will love you always." (We are the first to live here since they remodeled it so all is new).

So without further adieu...here is our abode.First we enter into a door next to the garage which opens into a room where we keep our outdoor activity toys. Then we walk down this ridiculously long hall...where the floors still aren't finished. eh. Doesn't bother me. So this is our "third" front door...the main one that actually leads into our house. **Side note: Don't attempt to walk down this hall with the lights off, figuring that you'll know where the door is since you've walked it a bazillion times. If you do, you may walk flat, face first into it. That is all.**
Then we enter into the Livtching Room. There's our couch, our 500 year old, 300 lb. TV, the edge of our kitchen table that we eat on, and the refrigerator. The 2 doors lead to our own separate bedrooms...totally kidding. :) No bathroom though. Kinda a bummer but we've grown to love our outhouse. Totally kidding on that one too. You just can't see the door for it. :)Here is the kitchen part of our Livtching Room. Pretty oven. Oh, and yes I DO have 3 jars full of cooking utensils. And yes I DO know I have a problem. But I use them...and I'm pretty sure I've only bought like one of them, haha. :)
And a blurry picture from the other angle (from our bedrooms). The door you see is the front door.

So there you have it. What it's like to live in San Francisco....and utilize an itsy bitsy space. We have rearranged a ton and moved things here and there. I think finally though we are some what satisfied. :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Call Me a Nerd, Call Me a Bookworm...

2011-06-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

But ONE of the top five reasons I love living in San Francisco is.... drum roll por favor...

LA BIBLIOTECA.

So, back in the day when I was a wannabe Southern Belle living on the East Coast we visited the library all.the.time. The library was amazin. We could get any book we wanted. Fantastic.

Then we moved to SLO. SLO is beautiful, it has outdoor activities galore, I love SLO, BUT...the library sucks. Seriously. It's hard to find a book you want and when you do, all the books for some reason seem to be in Lompoc. The transfer system is slow as molasses and thus, I quit frequenting the library. (granted this was all about 4 years ago so maybe it's changed).

When we moved to SF I thought, hmmm, big city, I bet the library is better. Sure enough. Who needs Netflix when you have the SF Library. They have hundreds of movies...and most all new ones. They have EVERY book you can imagine. AND they transfer it quickly and efficiently to your small local branch. yay.

I was noticing though, as I was reserving my 29 books :) (don't worry, the max is 50) that a lot of them needed to be transferred from the "Main Branch". I thought. Hmmm. Where is this "Main Branch"? I want to go to this "Main Branch." So I Google Imaged it and THIS my readers....is the "Main Branch".

*The Choir Angels Sing*

Pictures not mine....but no one to give the credit too. Boo. So, picture credit: unknown but not mio.

We live in a society where we would rather spend 2 hours at the mall then at the library (give me a pocket full of money and I'm right there with you ;) ). No wonder! Our libraries are so drab and dismal sometimes. But this one is beautiful. I think I shall live their forever. Yay. I'm so excited to go.

I Came Home with a 20 lb Bag of Flour

2011-06-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

20 Pounds

of Flour

=

BLISS.

My mother knows how to win my heart. :) She also may have possibly given me a 2 lb. bag of yeast to go with it. Oh my. Watch out.

So, obviously, lots of breads/cakes/pastries are in my future. Did I mention that I have a father with an amazingly fast metabolism? Thank you Father. I appreciate you passing that gene off to me.

Anyways, the huz and I went down south last weekend. We headed out Friday afternoon and got back last night. It was quite refreshing to have so many consecutive days with no work. I will say though...it's HARD getting back into the swing of things again. I felt ready to go home today at about 2pm. I also kept forgetting to do random things at work. My mind was obviously still off surfing/mtn. biking/pigging out on Dorn's pancakes. Dorn's pancakes. There is a post-worthy topic...all on it's own. So, in Morro Bay there is a place called Dorn's. The BEST pancakes ever. I mean, melt in your mouth, buttery, flaky/fluffy fantastic-ness. Pancakes are pretty high up there on my "favorite foods" list. I may or may not be able to list off every b-fast place in SLO that has good pancakes...and all the places that have so-so one's. Yeah. I think I've tried them all. Anyways, we splurged, and made ourselves feel sick but it was so worth it. You should have breakfast at Dorn's. And get pancakes.

We occupied ourselves with family, friends, and outdoor activities. Surfing, mountain biking, walking. Good times. Loved being away from the ridiculously crowded city. Seriously. I kept saying to Jason while in SLO, "Is it always this dead? Or is this normal?" Weird. I didn't like that I was becoming "used to" crazy amount of cars and people. blak. I also have apparently taken on the Bay area aggressive driver techniques. That didn't seem necessary in SLO. Oh well. So, sorry if I cut you off...it's not my fault. I live in the Bay Area! :)

The Not-So Mine Garden and Some Other Stuff

2011-05-14T21:59:00.001-07:00

So, I really feel guilty saying "My Garden". Because...it's not my garden. I don't maintain it. I've planted some things but Jason keeps it going. It's like when I say "my truck". It's not REALLY my truck. I didn't buy it. Jason had it before we got married. He maintains it. (But I make the money to fill it with gas!). But still, I think...it's MY truck. I've claimed it. I love it. It will be a sad day when it dies...or we have to sell it. I love the garden too. I like to go out on Saturday and look at it. See how big the plants have got (it's usually been a week since I've seen it last) :) haha. So, I say it's MY garden. :) So look. Here is a pic of the garden when we first did it...Remember this one?Now look at it. So big and bountiful. The flowers are way bigger now.
Our tomatoes. Lookin' good. In the pots are tons of french cut green been sprouts....which I just transplanted. Yay me! :)

And the weird squash plants. I can not for the life of me figure out why it goes from small, medium, to large. They were the same stinking size when I planted them. Weird. Also those spindly things are red onions. (which come in a month we are going to have a TON of.) I wonder how you know they are ready... Also that row of leafy things are radishes. Mmmm. I love radishes. Not sure if I love them THAT much though. There are a lot. haha

In other news. Here is the latest cake...for my co-workers b-day. She's a fan of Hello Kitty. I had a lot of fun with this one...and I totally accomplished black frosting! yaya! I hope she ate it. haha. She told me she wouldn't. It's weird. You put all this time into it but...it has to be eaten. That's the point. And it's yummy! Why waste something yummy?!? I like my cakes to be eaten. **Side Note: Isn't it so fun to give things to people who have great reactions? It's not about the giver obviously but when you give something to someone it's so fun to have the person get REALLY excited. That's totally my coworker. Love her.**
Ok, I think that's it. Really. It's all I can muster for a post today folks. Hope you enjoyed. Off to lay my head upon my pillow and dream of...hmmm. Speaking of dreams. Did you know that when I was a little girl, before bed, I used to pray to God that I would, and I quote, "Have good dreams tonight with lots of unicorns". The memory is so vivid that I'm a little worried to find out at what age I QUIT praying this. 13? 16? hmm. Some things are better left unknown. Welp, Good Night! I hope you gave good dreams with lots of unicorns! :)

Random. 2005-now.

2011-05-09T18:32:00.000-07:00

Haha. Look at me. I was looking through old pics and was REALLY noticing how young I looked....just say 4 years ago. Here's a progression since 2005. I look like a little girl. I wish I could go back even farther but this is all I have! It's harder to see a difference in the later years but I WILL say...I see a few extra lines and bags that were not there in 2005 and 2006. :) I also slimmed WAY down in 2009 apparently. I didn't mean to but maybe the combo of gettin' hitched, LOVING Kennedy Fitness, AND consistently mountain biking shrunk me down. (although I literally have ALL of those clothes still...and they fit the same. whatev') Ugh. Anyways, I miss the gym.

Summer 2005

Summer 2006 (with the retainer that I was soon to dump into a McDonald's trash can where I literally DUG through people's half eaten Big Mac's and fries...and didn't find it)

Summer 2007---why is this underlined?--I miss that tank top...
Summer 2008
Summer-ish 2009

Summer-ish 2010

Today-2011

I'm all grown up now. :)

Alright! Let's see it peeps! Your turn...go back as faaaaaaaar as you can though :)

**Oh my GOSH I need to seriously get a new hairstyle. It's the same...just up or down the WHOLE time. ha! Nice. I'm totally going to be that mom who's still rockin' the "do" from the 2000's. **

The Quinoa is a cookin'...

2011-04-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

And so I thought I'd squeeze in a little bloggy posty while making dinner. J-Huz is out transplanting our Brussels sprout plants (I chose to grow them only because I want to see what they look like as plants...though I do like to eat them...when they're cooked in a certain way). The success of our garden so far is solely because of Jason. He waters, maintains, weeds, goes on slug and snail quests (and smashes them, blak). Yup. The garden would be a big FAIL if it were up to me. Currently, the squash and tomatoes are growing really big, our carrot seeds are almost ready to be transplanted, our radishes are off the hook, the red onions are going strong...but no lettuce. Not ONE seed sprouted. boo. Oh well. Oh, and the haricots verts are about ready to be placed on a vine. I had no idea I married such a green thumb. :) yay me!

In other news. I busted out a cake for Jason's B-Day. I didn't have time to make a fondant cake and had to squeeze it in after work. I put it on facebook buuuuut...here it isSo fun. This is my first time "sculpting" something. SO freaking hard. Gum paste doesn't give like clay. You can smooth clay out and cover any imperfections but not gum paste. The creases are impossible to get rid of...though I'm sure with practice it's do-able. Anyways, Jas loves fishing and so it's been the theme for the last couple of years. This one came out a little better than last years...haha. Hey! It was like my first cake ever. Anyways, this was my fastest cake yet. Baking and sculpting one night, and frosting and assembling the next night. Not bad.

I'm also loving the new grass/hair tip I got for the cake. It's super fun!

Well, anyways, I guess that's all for now. The quinoa is probably about done and I need to get my tush up to finish dinner...or we'll be having JUST quinoa for dinner.

Free Coffee

2011-04-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

FREE and COFFEE are two words that I will never get tired of seeing together.

Apparently for Earth Day tomorrow...Starbucks is giving away free coffee if you bring a tumbler from home to fill.

Tumbler.

ha.

I'm bringing my 1-liter Thermos baby!

:)

Ok, I won't get greedy. But go get ye' some free coffee...if you fancy things like that.

Vanity

2011-04-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Did you think this was going to be a post of the downfalls of vanity. How it pulls you in and can consume you?

Nope.

It's about my hair.

So, I used to have great hair. Seriously. Totally straight. Did what I wanted it to (except curl). Laid down nicely...not frizzy. Looked nice down (though I hate wearing it down). Looked nice up. yada yada.

And then something changed.

Is it that I'm getting older?
Is it the constantly damp SF weather?

My hair now frizzes like nobody's biz. Now, if that was all I could deal. But the part that is driving me bonkers is that my hair now "curls" around my ears...just around my ears. And I wouldn't really call it curl...more like wavy. Wavy that sticks straight out of my head. So that my hair is literally horizontal to the floor. If I bounce up and down, they flap...like little birdie wings. Nice.

So, this is my rant.
I can now join the masses that say "I hate my hair".

(Obviously wearing it down would solve this prob. But, come on. Me? Wear my hair down? That would be undoing like 20 years of habit. Em, no.)

Any suggestions on how to tame the mane?

Saturday Buh-liss.

2011-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Yo yo peep-a-rooni's!

Oh thank you, thank you, it's the weekend.

Yay.

Which means...no work. And that I have to clean. And that I would like to run. And that I have a few new ideas to bring to light on bags (so dang-dern cute). And that I can make a pot of coffee any time I darn well please and drink the whole thing if I want (no coffee maker at work). I love the weekend. :)

Jason and I had a lovely "date night" last night. We did a small splurge and went and grabbed some dumplings which I'm pretty certain is my new favorite food. Good grief, so yummy. I love SF and the food choices it has to offer. These fantastic people...from just about every country you can imagine have brought their delectable yummies to this city...and it's all at our fingertips. Mmmm. How I love comida.

Other than that...not much happening here. Jason's birthday is in about a week and I have a super cool cake planned. So excited. yay. It's always so easy to picture though...carrying it out is the hard part! :)

Well, have a great weekend all.

Ta da!

2011-04-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Alright, so here you go.

What I've been alluding to.

With terrible pics and all. (I took them). How'd I do? I'm so so SO bad at photography. blah. Not my thing.

Anyways, I guess it's an "experiment". I have free time since Jason is studying his brains off so often. Why not be productive with the time? Why not stay home WITH him and keep him company, even if I'm in the next room whirring away. So there it is.

Side note: It is REALLY intimidating to sell your stuff. At least to me. sheesh. What if people don't like it? Or think your quality is lame. Or sees every SINGLE mistake you made ('cause I'm no perfectionist people). Totally nervous. But kinda excited too, hehe. End side note.

and here it is. in all of it's glooooooory....

http://www.etsy.com/shop/hugawillowtree

Amen and Done.

OK I lied...

2011-04-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

...but not on purpose.

You see, I was all ready to come out with it...almost done and then BAM. Broken needle. Seriously? Again? This is my 2nd one...and of course my last one. (Yes, there's a hint. It has to do with sewing). Literally had about 4 stitches left. ugh. Figures. Being it was 6pm on a Sunday night and there is no such thing as a "quick run" to anywhere in SF...I'll finish today and post tonight. Hopefully :)

So there ya go. 'Till tonight mis amores. <3

So I've been busy...

2011-04-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

been busy working on something neato bandito. cute. fun. usable. handy...

something similar to a thing that I use every day and love...

but with a little "anna, handmade" flair...

been flexing my creative muscles... been embracing a creative outlet...

because sometimes, an office job just doesn't fill all those heart niches (but it pays the bills! :o)...

so, maybe i'll show you in a few days. maybe on sunday? ;)...

Mi Jardin...and a craft.

2011-04-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

Oooh, blogger on a roll! I'm actually posting lately.

So. We have this rather large plot of weeds...well, now dirt. The plan was to one day de-weed it and plant a garden. I was feeling a bit ambitious this weekend and so we went for it. Jason cleared the 1st third. I cleared the 2nd third yesterday and the last part today. Sheesh. I am not used to manual labor. It felt so good though to be outside, in the sunshine, doing something productive. (Note: there are some icky nasty things that live in the dirt. blak. I'm not a fan of THAT part of gardening.)

Here's a few pictures of our progress and our weekend in the dirt! I have to say that I find it funny that we have yet to have this type of land/yard...that is, until we move to San Francisco. Aren't you supposed to have less space in SF? Apparently not :)...and yes, our neighbors house is falling apart there in the backJason had done the 1st part that is all cleared. I'm starting on the 2nd part.Our Home Depot loot. Oooh, action shot. Apparently Jason is a creeper who likes to hide behind Calla Lillie's and take pictures of his wife. Oh my gosh. There were SO many weeds. I can't believe I spent my whole weekend hoeing (hehe...I know I'm real mature) those things out.But look. Now there's no more weeds. And there actually are some things planted...though it's hard to tell from the photo. We currently have in the ground some flowers, red onions, crookneck squash, and a couple of different types of tomatoes. We are doing seedlings of carrots, radishes, lettuce, french green beans, and brussel sprouts.

So yay! My garden. I hope I remember to water it. ;)

And now my craft...

Take this here ugly $1 picture frame that I originally bought to paint and then got bored and changed my mind. It was feeling like a Modge Podge day.Cut some strips of fabric and some strips from an old book page (that you don't want to read again ;). Don't measure and make them even though. Life's too short for using a ruler.Some of us like to take the Modge Podge and dump it immediately on to our shoe. I don't recommend this one.In some random pattern stick those strips on to the frame. Let the Modgey Podgey do it's magica.After you've done three sides. It has to dry to do the 4th. I know. Common sense? You would think. I tried to do it before having it completely dry. Didn't work. Call me stubborn. Also make sure you turn on the flash when you take the picture. Makes for a great, shiny, washed out photo. Yay.And once you're done with your 4th side...and it's dry. You get THIS! yaya! Now the question is....put a photo in it...or leave it open and put it on the wall. I'm leaning towards leaving it picture free and putting it on the wall....somewhere.....

10 Things About Him and I...

2011-03-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm joining up with this pretty mama of many because...it's a cute idea.
I'm also at a loss for things to blog about so this topic will keep this bloggy blog going for just a little bit longer! :)

So, here you go. 10 things about J and I.

1. First off and most obvious to me...Jason and I's affection levels are completely different. Jason is very affectionate and I am...um, not so much? He insists that I kiss him as soon as I wake up, when I leave, when I come home, and etc. I would probably never do it if it wasn't for him. Isn't that horrible!!!! Sheesh. I'm a terrible wife. I just "forget" though! The Lord knew who I should marry that's for sure. (I'm so glad that he brings the affectionate side out of me...I think that it's actually changing me to be more affectionate in the long run. Probably a little like training a dog. Eventually it will bring you the paper without you asking it to. :) )

2. As far as interests and things we enjoy doing, we are pretty much the same. As far as personality, we are pretty much the opposite.

3. When we first met I thought he was super cute and funny...but wasn't sure if he was "deep enough". Now I'm pretty certain that he is 50 x's more "deep" than I. :)

4. If we see a homeless person Jason is always the one who wants to buy him/her something to eat/drink. I'm always the one who hesitates (I think this thing is revealing far too much about myself, yikes).

5. My favorite day of the week is Friday where I make pizza, we borrow some super scratched up, barely watchable library DVD, and we curl up on the couch. Simple. Sweet. Love it.

6. We dated for 3.75 years, were engaged for .5 years, and have been married just over 2 years. That means we've been together for almost 6.5 years! Crazy weird.

7. Marriage was a very easy transition for us. Maybe because we'd been together 4 1/2 years once we got married???? I'm not sure what to attribute it to. I know though that I was expecting a lot of "surprises" and well...there weren't that many (though there were some). It turned out that I knew a lot of his flaws already...and I think he knew mine too! hehe.

8. Because of Dave Ramsey we've permanently deemed ourselves "The Nerd" and "The Free Spirit." It fits us perfectly. Can you guess who's who? :)

9. Though he's affectionate, we both are totally not into pet names. Like, "Babe, Baby, Sweetie, etc." Totally not our thing. Though we do ham it up and gush jokingly with pet names on occasion just for fun. (I have a friend who says that's it weird to call her husband by his name...because they only use pet names! Cracks me up!)

10. Honestly, I'd say neither of us married who "we imagined we would". And yet...it's just who the Lord knew we should marry. We are really a perfect fit. We are soooo so so different and yet soooo so so right for each other. We are best friends. BFF's yo! :) I think we may get matching necklaces even! :) Ok, maybe not...

A Neglected Blog

2011-03-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is a very much neglected blog wouldn't you say? I'm having trouble finding motivation to keep it up and running...as in the thought has crossed my mine to abandon it all together...at least until I enter a more "blog-worthy" stage of life. Now what stage that would be? I have no clue. Maybe when I start popping out babies or something...in like 25 years when I'm finally a grown up. :)

Things have been pretty good around these parts. Jason is still working away at school. I'm still working. Last weekend Jason came down with a flu/cold. Three days later he graciously shared it with me. I have had a lot more trouble kicking it then him. I've been going to work through it though which has probably kept me from healing in the way that I should. I've been amazed as of late with modern meds. For instance, DayQuil Cold and Flu. I can have a full on fever but if I take that...I feel half way human, at least until it wears off. What did people DO before this stuff? They probably actually stayed home and rested rather than going to work, haha. I decided to stay home today though and slept in till 11:30. Oh yeah! Everyone needs a good 13.5 hours of sleep every once in a while.

What else? What else?

I have a friend from Chile in town. She was a 4 month volunteer in our city. She is from Texas but has a cousin in San Francisco. She just came into town yesterday and I am super excited to see her and hang out. (Part of the reason I opted to stay home today...in hopes I'll feel well enough to actually be ABLE to see her).

Que mas?

Hmmm. Well, I've hit the wall. I think I need a nap.

Good night.

Home for a Partay, I Brought Cake :)

2011-02-20T21:25:00.000-08:00

We are back. We went down south for a couple of days to do things like go to the dentist, eye doc, get haircuts, and also to celebrate Jason's g-ma's 80th birthday. We all gathered together at her house to play games and to just enjoy each others company. It was super fun.

I was deemed the cake baker this year. I thought a lot about it and knew the colors I wanted and that I wanted daisies on it. Everything else was a bit fuzzy but figured it would come together as I went. I also knew that there was no way I'd have time to bake and decorate the cake all in one day. So, I made it a week ahead and froze it. I was worried that it would end up dry but it was still pretty moist when we ate it. (I LOVE cake...but I cannot stand even slightly dry cake, haha). The recipe is Martha Stewart's white cake which I highly recommend. It's both moist and dense, two things I love in a cake. Jason's g-ma LOVES lemon and so I layered the cake with Ina Garten's lemon curd (easier than Martha Stewart's). I am really not a lemon fan but I was told it was yummy.

So, the blue part of the cake is a fondant recipe that I use (this was the first time I colored the fondant that dark...SO much kneading). The white and green parts (including the 80 cake topper)...oh, and the daisies are all gumpaste. It was my first go with this stuff. It's amazing. It's like "sugar clay" that you can mold and form...and then it dries and holds its shape. Super fun to work with. So, technically everything on the cake is edible...though the gumpaste isn't all that flavorful.Here is Jason and I with the birthday girl! Doesn't she look amazing for 80. I'd say not a day past 39 ;).

Anyways, we had a great time seeing family...on both sides. I was super excited to have the chance to gather with my fam as we were heading out of SLO...even for just a few hours. Nothing better than time with the ma and pa. :)

Weekend Plans and This Weeks Menu.

2011-02-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

Mornin' to all.

Any interesting weekend plans?

We are having some friends over tonight. Well, Jason's friends. haha. You see, I LOVE to host. Completely my thing. The part that I love is the meal planning/carrying out part. I literally think about it for days before. What should I cook? What should we have as a side dish? Dessert? etc etc. Kind of funny. Jason though is the one who keeps meeting all the new friends since he's in school. So, he invites perfect strangers (to me) over and I cook for them. :) Good times. Anyways, the last people we had over were from S. Korea. The wife spoke little English. It was fun to have them over and to go over to their house also...kind of a cultural exchange. It will be nice though to have a couple over who both speak English! :)

Monday is Jason and I's anniversary. We're going to celebrate Sunday though by ditching church (ooooh, so naughty :) ) and just spending the day together exploring more of San Francisco. A hike would be nice too...maybe we can find one some where around here.

On a totally different topic, lately I've heard a huge theme on "meal planning" and how big of a pain it is! :) I've found it's lame too sometimes but totally necessary when on a tight budget (not a lot of room for, "Oh, let's get take-out tonight") I don't like cleaning or decorating or many things that have to do with the "home" but meal planning is always something I can carry out and stick too. Have no idea why. So...here is my "Meal Plan" for the week. Maybe you'll like some of the recipes. Some recipes are more complex and some are very fast (I get home from work between 6 and 7 sometimes.) To ensure meal planning success I shop for the whole week on Sat. morning and put the menu on the 'fridge. Sometimes I switch days and make what I was going to make on Thur. on Tues. instead...just because it sounds better that day. So here you go and I've included some notes since I almost always tweak a recipe.

Sat:
Portobello Mushroom Lasagna I make this one as is. Our friends are some-what vegetarians so we're keeping it meat free. I always make tried and true recipes that I can prepare ahead of time. That way I can chat with everyone and I'm not busy cooking.
Roasted Asparagus I actually don't use a recipe for this but this is the closest I can find. I skip the lemon and parm. cheese on this one. Just use evoo, salt, pepper, and a little garlic. Toss, lay on a pan in a single layer in a 425 degree pre-heated oven. Cook for 15-20 min. yum
Peach Cobbler I was looking for a crumb crust rather than a bread crust. I found this one. I will omit the fruit and nuts in this crust. Everything else looks good. Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Sun:
Anniversary. Going out!

Mon:
Spaghetti and a veggie.--I buy jarred Trader Joe's sauce. I'm incredibly picky with jar sauce. I hate it when it tastes "jarred". I've found that Trader's cheapest Tomato and Basil sauce is good. Before I do the sauce I usually saute some fresh garlic, onions, and mushrooms before hand, then throw in the jar of sauce. I also like a little kick so I toss in some dried chili pepper flakes and some dried oregano. It's the closest I can get to homemade without all the work. (If I have diced tomatoes on hand I also through that in too...drain the juice though first).
For the veggie on this night...I really love fresh French Green Beans. You can steam them or boil them. We just add salt and pepper to them

Tues:
Garlic Soba Noodles This is super good/fast/healthy. Love Heather's recipes. Very whole foods oriented. If you aren't a tofu eater you could make the recipe exactly the same but use chicken breast. Tofu is incredibly cheap though so we tend to eat it. Breaded and fried it's really good. You should try it! As far as alterations...I almost always double all garlic in EVERY recipe I make. :) For the greens I prefer kale rather than the others but it's a bit of a different taste. You could leave out the greens all together if you want and serve a steamed veggie on the side...or even mix it in. I also find that one egg beaten is sufficient for the tofu (not sure if it would be enough if you used chicken)

Wed:
Stir-Fry Veggies over Couscous. I get tired of rice so I'm using couscous (whole wheat!) this time. This recipe uses chicken...we're scrapping that since it's expensive (and I have another recipe I want to use my leftover frozen chicken from last week for) and instead using a big bag of mixed veggies. But...chicken does make this yummier so I'd recommend going for it if you can. On this recipe...the only change is that I use fresh grated ginger and fresh garlic rather than powdered...but I'm sure it's good with what they call for too.

Thur:
Garlic Chicken and Broccoli Pasta---I don't use a recipe for this...let's see if I can find one that's similar...hmmm. It's not all that unique but no go. Ok, so....here you go.

Generously salt a pot of water and cook you up some pasta.

Generously salt another pot of water and cook you up some broccoli...but not until soft. Just until you take the "snap" off of it...just barely soft.

Meanwhile, cut up 3 chicken breasts into some what small pieces.
Pour some olive oil into a big pot/pan on md. heat...cook chicken thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper. When chicken is almost done add 3-4 diced garlic cloves (less if you aren't a garlic luvah, more if you would like to "wreak" havoc the next day ;) ). Cook until garlic is just golden.

When pasta is done. Reserve some of the salty water...maybe 1/3 c. and pour it into the chicken garlicy goodness.

Add the some-what cooked broccoli and cook for a minute or two.

Throw in the drained pasta.

(This is where things get really fuzzy) I'm a "throw a bunch of stuff in until it's just like what I pictured" person...which usually does not entail measuring anything...or remembering even what actually went in. In this case I pour a lot of grated Parmesan in, usually some red pepper flakes (my go-to seasoning)...and some more salt and pepper if it's still a little bland. Stir it all up. Done.

WOW! I could never write a cookbook. haha. That was really hard.

I'm so done. This post took way longer than I though. Stupid Thur. meal. Oh, and Fri is date night which as of late has involved homemade pizza. I use this quick crust dough. So easy...and no rising involved. Yay. After our pizza we curl up and watch a movie form the library! :) ...or RedBox. Doesn't get much cheaper than that.

Happy Weekend everyone.

I Guess I'll Give Him Back...

2011-01-23T16:52:00.000-08:00

Well, Monday I gave Jason back to the university system. :) He had 5 WEEKS off for winter break and it has been mighty nice. I know he has been bored off and on but it has been wonderful having his company on the weekends, his help with cleaning and dishes on the weekdays, and just having overall fun with no homework and studying worries to distract us.

He started the beginning of what will be his second semester....putting him about half way through. Cool stuff.

Anyways, this weekend we had some fun and played tourist! Here are some pics!We went to Cafe Trieste which is apparently the first cafe that served espresso on the west coast. It kind of looked like it too, haha. A little old and crusty but it was in the Italian district which was cool. It was an experience for sure but I think I'm still partial to Blue Bottle. Their espresso is a bit more smooth. Anyways, it was fun either way. I always love experiencing a new cafe.
Just up the way from Cafe Trieste is Coit tower. We couldn't go up to the top because it was being renovated but there are lots of pretty views and about 50 parrots flying in the tree tops.After all our walking we were a little fatigued and decided that we were in need of some nutrition...or baked goods. This bakery had caught Jason's eye before and so we stopped in to grab a little morsel.

Aren't these yummy looking? Oh but wait. There was one that was BEYOND what my wildest dreams could imagine in a pastry...Laaaaa! (Church organs playing). Take a look at this beauty. So, let me describe it. It's a flaky pastry dough with a vanilla honey cream. They candied the top a little bit so that you have the perfect textural combo of the soft pastry and silky cream with the crunch of the top. Seriously. I think I can now go to Heaven. Especially if they have more of these things there. The only bummer was that Jason picked it and not I so I was not able to inhale it all by myself. Next time. I enjoyed a pecan sticky bun which was also pretty yummy.On Sunday after church we went walking...again. Jason has been wanting to show me the cathedral at UCSF. It was very pretty. I really love cathedrals.Finally I have yet to see the famous "Full House" houses at Alamo Park and so we took a stroll and checked them out. Below that picture is beautiful intricately painted house that really reminds me of San Francisco architecture...at least the old houses that have survived.And this concludes Jason and I's latest tour around San Francisco. The weather has been AMAZING. So...it may be a while before it's like this again. Glad we were able to get it in when we could!

Post #166

2011-01-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

Been a while eh?

Really...there is little to nada to update on. We went down south and had a great Christmas with both sides of the family. We have no pictures though because our camera charger was M.I.A. for a while. Got some really rad, generous gifts though including some extensive cake decorating goodies and also an amazing book called Advanced Bread and Pastry. One word...AMAZING. It doesn't even use measuring cups. It measures everything by weight! haha. I need a kitchen scale before I can do anything but those aren't too expensive so I'll try to scoop myself up one. It's the text book for the baking institute in San Francisco (which is fantastic). That place only costs two arms and a leg to attend soooo...since I can't glean their wisdom in the classroom...I will glean from the 50 lb book that they produce (seriously...it's the heaviest book I think I've ever owned!) Totally exciting though.

What else?

We bought a dehumidifier.

Yeah.

That's exciting right?

Not really. Those things are darn expensive but the mold really has become more of an issue lately so we broke down and just bought one. Everyone else in SF seems to have one soooo...
'tis our turn to also take part in this new appliance purchase.

I've totally become a "gamer" lately. The bro and sis in-law bought us Donkey Kong for our Wii and it's amazing. I play almost every day when I get home from work! :) Although it's really hard and I end up getting really mad at it...which involves a lot of whining and yelling. Oh well. :)

Que mas?

It's cold in San Francisco. Enough said.

Oh, and I have another cake in the works. This shall be the best yet I do believe. I'm excited for sure. I have a month to brush up on some non-existent skills that I don't possess as of yet...but I'll learn, have no fear. You shall like....you shall like.

And that's all.

Tomorrow's Friday! Yah!

Post #165.

2010-12-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

Today I am thinking about...

-food
-last minute Christmas gifts I still need to buy
-last minute Christmas gifts I still need to make
-how our tree isn't sucking up as much water as it once was and now seems to be slowly dropping pine needles...will it make it to Christmas?
-how I'm almost done with my book and should have taken my ma-in-law up on the offer of taking the other books in the series too
-the meal that I ate last night at my work party...seafood etouffe. Yum. Scallops, oysters, clams, shrimp...all on top of cheesy grits. Fantastic.
-one more full week of work, followed by a half week...and then Christmas! Seriously? Time flies.
-what am I going to wear tomorrow? I really need to iron but MAN do I hate ironing. blak.
-tomorrow's trash day
-Jason is almost done with finals and then he has 5 weeks off...I'm slightly jealous of the fact that he can sleep in for 5 weeks straight. :( I like sleep.
-I don't have a title for this post yet. I really hate thinking of a title. It always ends up being some cheese ball "catchy" phrase like, "Today's Happenings." I think I am just going to title every post by the number that it is for now. So much easier. :)...you think I'm kidding...

Anyways, today I utilized puff pastry and Jason's left over steak from last night. The product was a hot flaky buttery glorified "hot pocket". I cut two sheets of defrosted puff pastry (bought at Trader Joe's...though you can get it anywhere) into 4 quarters. On one quarter I slapped some mustard on it, some thinly sliced steak, and some...ok, a lot of... cheddar cheese. Then I put one of the quarters of the puff pastry on top and pressed the edges together. Then repeated it three more times to make 4 yummy savory lunch pastries! :) After that I slit the tops, beat an egg and brushed it on top of each "sandwich", and popped it into my 420 degree oven for 25 minutes or so. Finished. Yum. Seriously, it's so easy and so yummy (healthy? ha. I laugh in the face of healthy). I've had the puff pastry in my freezer for quite a while but kept forgetting about it. I think you could substitute nearly any sandwich meat on hand and it would probably still be good. So there you go. Our Sunday lunch. Way better than a cold sandwich :)

Now it's time for bed. I prefer to be in bed around 9:30 and it's now after 10. good night.

'Tis the Season Fa La la La la"

2010-12-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas time. Yay. My absolute new favorite thing is to turn out all the lights, plug in the tree, light a candle...and read on the couch. Jason took one look at me last night when I began to prepare for this and said, "You are going to fall asleep in two seconds." Yeah. I did. That's ok though. It was undeniably too cozy to keep those heavy eyelids from falling. So here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.Here is our lovely tree. Sparsely adorned but that's ok. We don't have many ornaments between the two of us and since we are on a budget I took advantage of the $1 tube of Target ornaments. Sparkly! The star? Also a $1 ornament from Target. It's actually a snowflake. It came with two and so I just tied them back to back at the top of the tree.

As you can see in the 1st picture...Jason has a lovely stocking that his ma made for him back in the day. I have had a new stocking every year. haha. Where they go, I have no clue. Stockings though are a huge deal...for both of us. Growing up there were the presents which were great but there was always the stocking full to the brim of things that you didn't really ask for but that your mom knew you'd love none the less. Things like fancy shampoo and the really good expensive razors! :) And lots of candy. Anyways, so I needed a stocking...but once again, minimal money spending was key. I saw a felt one that was a model in the store that was similar to the one I made and decided to go for something like that. It was way easy to make...and for like $3. Not too shabby.And finally...here are some pictures from Thanksgiving at my fam's house...The Thanksgiving meal. Yum.

Target shooting is a Lyons Family Tradition on Thanksgiving Day. And just in case you're thinking "Who is this guy and why does he have so many guns?" My dad is a cop and in SWAT. Ease your worried mine. :)

Pictures like the one below remind me of how much better Jason is at taking photos then me. I took the one above. He took the one below. I'm a true blue "point and shoot". He always finds a way better angle. haha

And, what's Thanksgiving with out a little go-cart driving...without brakes. haha. No really, there were no brakes. We had to grab the cart to stop each other. It makes the down hill part way more exciting! haha :)

I'm done.

2010-11-29T20:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I'll say it like it is...I'm a quitter.

The photo thing was a good idea...I had good intentions buuuuuuuuut...I'm done.

It's just tedious to search through all the pictures upon pictures. Also, some of the pictures at the beginning were easy buy some of the more recent one's are a little more interesting and hard to come by...like a drunk picture? hahaha. Not sure that anyone has ever snapped a picture of me during my many times I've been drunk. Ok, so maybe I haven't been drunk before. I was a little buzzed once. I downed a glass of really yummy red wine with out eating first. My lips went numb and I decided that it was a good idea to tell my father and mother in law this new development in my physical state. Let's just say they thought it was hilarious and I have yet to live that one down. haha.

Anyways, T-Day was quite great. We went down south (we were one of THOSE people who had to drive somewhere on the holiday, WEIRD!). We spent a couple of days with my parents and a couple of days with Jason's parents. I got a little bit of Christmas shopping done while down there because it is CRAZY up here. I can't even tell you how many times I have been rammed with a cart and not a peep comes out of the mouth of the perp. Maybe a sorry? Nope. This is before Christmas shopping started so I would like to avoid shopping up here if I can.

We're getting back into the swing of things after 4 days off. Jason only has a couple of more weeks of the semester left. It's weird to realize that he's half way through his first year. Crazy how time flies. I'd imagine too that the rest of the time is only going to go by faster.

Oooh. We have a tree. We spent a whopping $20 on the tree, $4 on the lights, $3 on ornaments, $1 on the star...oh and $1 on the candy canes that we're just going to eat anyways. I love Target and I love Home Depot who sell small Noble Firs for $20. I thought we'd have to settle for a Douglas Fir since usually those are the cheaper ones. Anyways, our camera is dead and we can't find the charger but as soon as we find it we'll post a pic.

Adios :)

A Catalytic Converter and A Barbie Cake

2010-11-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

What do these two things have in common? Not much...other than they were both a part of our weekend. So...let's start with the catalytic converter.

Last night around 5:30 or so my co-worker went out back to throw away some trash. We park our cars behind our office building and she noticed two guys next to my truck...one was bent over beneath it. She yelled out, "What are you doing?" and came and got me. Then I said, "Um? What are you doing near my car?" The guys were all, "We're just working on our car." They had their car hood open. It seemed weird and I told my co-worker to keep the back door open. I foolishly thought, "What could they want with our old truck, I'm sure it's fine. Maybe they dropped something under my truck." As soon as they realized that we saw them though...they took off. My co-worker said that she thought I should go check my car and turn it on. I looked around, the doors were still locked, everything looked alright. I then got into the car, turned it on...and wow, what a sound. They stole the catalytic converter. Apparently it has platinum in it and they can trade it in and get a whole whopping $50 or so for it.

So, after calling the cops, Jason, and my dad we made the decision that I would go ahead and drive the 20 miles home and my co-worker would follow me. The truck was so embarrassingly loud. It was like a ghetto rice rocket times 10. My ears were ringing. Of course to top it all off there was an accident on the freeway that made the whole trip stop and go. It took me an hour to get home and I drove primarily in 1st and 2nd gear...the loudest of them all. haha.

Today we had it fixed and $215 later we have a car that no longer sounds like it's on the verge of blowing up. Really sad though being that we don't exactly have a lot of flex money. :(. Oh well. 'Tis life.

Anyways...

So I made a Barbie cake. Well, a "Dollar Tree Barbie Equivalent" Cake. My co-worker's niece turned 4 today and she was going to spend about $100 on a Barbie Cake. (Apparently her niece went to the bakery with her and that was the one she picked out) I told her I could do it...for nothing :) It may not be quite so perfect as the store bought one but it would certainly be cheaper. It was my first go at significant piping. I made the light pink and white parts out of fondant (oh, and her hair tie haha) and the rest is good old butter cream. It was pretty fun...and VERY pink!***(Added the next day) And in case you weren't sure as to whether I have a cake baking problem...I made a baby turtle for Jason the next day with the extra fondant. I was going to make a bigger cake but it fell apart (awesome) and so I mixed it all together with a little buttercream frosting...smashed it into balls, through some fondant on it....BABY TURTLES! Yay. (Pardon the dusting of powder sugar still on him...apparently he hadn't been cleaned off before the picture...the very blurry picture)****

I already forgot I was doing this! Day 7

2010-11-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

Day 7: A photo of someone you love
Alright. So, I'm going to do the obvious because after looking through my pictures I have realized that I don't have many pics of family. I was also hoping for a pic of my dear amigo Cliff who I used to take care of but lo' and behold...none of him either.

So...I love this man! He's athletic, tan, buff, and good at so many things it blows my mind. He's also incredibly sweet and patient with me and seems to fill in where I lack just perfectly. Yay! What a guy and he's all mine mine mine.

Day 6:

2010-11-15T20:10:00.000-08:00

A photo that makes you laugh...

I'm not entirely sure why this is funny to me...or Jason. Maybe it's because we have deemed the photo "Fat Anna". In other words...what my legs would look like if I had a bit more meat on my bones (ok, a lot more meat on my bones). This is the fruit of a nearly 48 hour traveling trip to Sri Lanka. It was my 2nd trip and this certainly did not happen the 1st time. It took about 2 days for my ankles to finally go back down to a normal size. It was REALLY uncomfortable...especially in the 90 degree weather with 100% humidity. blak. It's a small taste of being pregnant! ;)

Note: this has never happened since this time either. Whenever I'm on the plane though I make sure that I move my ankles and legs a lot. I think the coma inducing sleeping pill helped my fat leg syndrome a great deal. I wasn't exactly moving around and keeping the circulation going during my 12 hour snooze! (ha! 12 hours! Can you imagine?!) Slept great...and woke up 70 lbs heavier in the legs! :)

Photo Challenge? I'm in.

2010-11-14T17:35:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm catching up so I can be on the same photo as this hot mama!

Day 1: My facebook profile picture.
This picture was taken quite some time ago. I put it up on my facebook profile for two reason. #1. I like that shirt. #2. I feel like I look noticeably younger. It's weird to be looking at pictures of me as an actual adult and still be able to say, "Wow, I was younger looking then."

Day 2: A photo of yourself a year ago.This was literally about a year ago to the day. We were at the bus station in Copiapo saying goodbye to everyone. We were on our way to a much needed vacation in the south of Chile and then....back to the USA. So strange to realize that it's almost been a year since we were living in Chile. It sort of feels like a dream.

Day 3: A photo that makes you happyThis picture was taken in New Orleans during demo that we did after Katrina happened. The BEST trip I think I've done yet. It's funny to me that out of every where I've been I was most fulfilled and blessed right here in the USA, helping the people of my own country. Now the reason why I look like I'm going to rob a bank is because I had just ran up to the guy on the ladder and pretended like I was going to rob HIM. It actually scared the crud out of him! hahaha. Good times. We were all laughing pretty hard.

Day 4: A photo of the last place you went on holiday.The south of Chile! I'm modeling my butt-pad that I'm about the slide down the face of the volcano on. :)

Day 5: A photo of you.
This photo was taken in Sri Lanka (I think I'm like 19 or something...maybe 20 tops) and is pretty much the ugliest photo ever. haha! So, there you go. Don't you like my bedazzle? One of the girls at the orphanage gave it to me and it would hardly stick because my face was so oily from the humidity. I remember them being puzzled on why it wasn't sticking and kept trying over and over to push it on my face. Obviously their skin was a bit more acclimatized to that weather! :)

Bullet Post

2010-11-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I love "bullet posts." I'm pretty sure I think in this way. No real, clear transition from one thought to another. Just thought. Thought. Thought. Anyways, so here are some of those thoughts for your reading enjoyment.

I have homemade pizza in the oven which is my go-to meal. It's somewhat fast and oh so good! Date Nite involves us staying in tonight. We already spent our date night money earlier in the week to get burritos so we could watch the last game of the world series on their big TV.
I have realized that the majority of our lives involve "waiting," waiting for SOMETHING always. So why are we all still so impatient? It seems like we'd be used to it by now.
The pizza will be done in 4 minutes! Yay!
I got a tip today. From this incredibly cute and stubborn old lady. She told me to get coffee with it...$10. haha. I told her $10 was too much for coffee. She told me to go get really good coffee. All that for changing out her nose pads. Nice.
Today we got a thermostat so that we can turn the heater on...when we eventually need it. I guess that's good but being I love the heat and heat is expensive...I'm afraid it may be too much of a temptation. Hefty heating bills are definitely no bueno.
It's now the next day....Saturday morning. I got tired of typing, wanted to eat my pizza...an then we watched Toy Story 3.
Jason is off getting the truck smogged. Is "smogged" an actual word? I'm a little nervous because the "check engine" light has come on a couple of times. We got it diagnosed and they said that it was most likely some dumb little gauge that is slowly failing. That dumb little gauge is about $200. The light always turns off though so we haven't done much about it. The guy told us how to reset it so it won't show up when we get it smogged (I guess it can read if the check engine light has come on). If it doesn't pass...we can't register it. Blah. Oh to have even just a "newish" car. I LOVE the truck though. It's named and everything so it will be a sad day when it has to be retired.
San Francisco is in general cold and damp. Especially where we live. Mold has become and issue and Jason FREAKS over it haha. Poor guy. SLO has no mold issues...it's nice and dry. The only real experience he has had with mold is doing demo in New Orleans which was mold to the 10th degree. Good gosh. SO MUCH and SO THICK from the floor to the ceiling. So, the slightest amount wigs him out. I have a little more experience being that we lived in North Carolina and it's nice and humid there. I still don't like it either way. Lame. It takes a fair amount of work to keep on it.
I am so excited for Thanksgiving. To go home and escape the big city. My parent's house is the epitome of escaping the city...about 20 minutes outside of a not so big city, nestled in the middle of 10 open acres. Nice. I'm ready for some good food, family time, and just to...relax.
I love bleach. Yep. It helps with mold. It also cleans my plastic shower curtain but most of all...it whitens my 15 white t-shirts and my white duvet cover for our down comforter. I love white. My favorite outfit involves comfy jeans, rainbow sandals, and a white tank top...or any white t-shirt for that matter. White is so crisp and clean...especially with the aid of bleach.
I've been playing the guitar more and I am hoping to take a guitar playing class at the local JC. I think I've hit the wall on what I can teach myself. I've also been playing worship for our small group (well, I've done it once). It's REALLY stretching for me. I'm not an on the spot performer. I like to make people laugh in an impromptu setting....no problem. But when it involves me being serious...I feel like that is way more vulnerable.
I am determined to do some deep cleaning today soooo...I'm off. Have a great weekend guys. Sleep in! Oh wait. Most of you guys probably have little kids. Hmmm. Welp, better you then me! hahahah. Ok, that was mean. Sorry. My deepest apologies! :0)

Pumpkin Carving and a Little Somethin' from the Garden

2010-10-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

Jason and I decided to carve pumpkins. Today. Yep, a day before Halloween. Oh well. At least we don't have to worry about the pumpkins rotting before Halloween comes. We ventured on over to the nearby pumpkin patch and it turns out that a decent size pumpkin is $10. Um. yeah. I probably would have considered it except for the fact that I had just been at Trader Joe's where they are selling the same size pumpkins for $2.99. So...off to Trader Joe's we went. We first picked out our two lovely pumpkins and prepared what we needed to carve them.

Then I considered just leaving my pumpkin like this. It looks rather hard core and brutal...
After that I decided that maybe I'd actually carve it instead of brutally stabbing it...so we started to cut the top off.

Next we scrapped and got all the guts out...
Once we were done with that we picked our design and carved away (which we have no pictures of that process). Then we proudly displayed our works of art...

Finally we stuck candles in them and watched them glow. Yay. I love Jason's! It's the classic Jack 'O' Lantern look. :)

Once that was all done I went inside and roasted the pumpkin seeds that we saved from the pumpkins. I little bit of vegetable oil sprinkled on them with some salt at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. Yum.

As you can tell they were good...being Jas couldn't even wait for me to take the picture before he stuck his hand in the bowl :)

At the end of it all I made a pumpkin cake. In a bundt pan. Because I thought that it kinda looked like half a pumpkin...with a hole in it. Anyways, the cake was not made with the pumpkin guts. It was made from a can. My mom made both types of pumpkin pies once (one from a pumpkin and one from the can). They both tasted the same and yet the one from the pumpkin was 3x's the work.
In other news. I thought that I would show you this fall season's bounty from my garden. Take a good long look...

Yep. That's it. One radish plant. And it was a tasty radish plant. You see, I actually planted lettuce, radishes, carrots, and Brussels Sprouts. Because we aren't rolling in the dough I bought seeds which wound up being a whopping $5. It turns out though that I don't really like to water plants. Especially ones that I can't see. Like little seeds that will apparently and eventually turn into actual plants. But, some how this one little radish plant made it. I have no clue how but it did. The funny part is that now that it has rained...I have all of my seeds sprouting out there. Hopefully they will make it before the frost comes. I think come spring I will break down and by the actual plants rather than the seeds. I'll probably be better about watering it if I know that it cost me more than $5. :)

Our Estate Sale Finds...We are so Weird.

2010-10-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

Today, on the way home from grocery shopping I spotted an estate sale about 2 blocks from our house. When I got home I asked Jason if he wanted to come with. He said yep and off we went.

It was totally old, and dirty but so fun. The funniest part about it was how naive I was in thinking that I would actually be the one to take longer. HA! Yeah right. Jason was the one that probably had the most fun. It was an old man who passed away and his kids were selling his stuff. He had a ton of old tools and random fishing stuff so Jason was having a good old time sorting through all of his stuff. I found an old 1900's illustrated Little Men book. Also, for $1 I bought a press for the stove top grill I'm hoping to get for Christmas. ;)

Jason is getting more and more into wood working and he bought about 9 wood files for $3. We also found a super old "Rock Cod identifying" book for Jason (Some Rock Cod are illegal to catch but it's really hard to find any literature with good illustrations and descriptions. This book had it!) And some old heavy duty jigs and hooks.

I thought we were done after a while and then Jason went BACK to the table to look through all the tools one more time. All of a sudden he said, "Whoa, Cool!" From beneath a pile he pulls out a rusty metal thing. I realized too what it was and.....It was an old antique animal trap. Hahahahaha. Even the kids that were selling it didn't know it was there. They are completely illegal to use because they are very inhumane but it's still pretty cool. Jason was out back for a while trying to engage the thing. It took a lot of strength and struggling but he finally set it up and proudly showed me how an animal (his wooden stick) could get caught in it. I don't know where our camera is so here is a pic of one kind of like it from google. It's similar to this but ours is probably quite a bit older by the judge of the chain...and that it was made in the USA. I mean, do we make anything anymore? ;0) Good times.

Last Week and Weekend In Bullet Form

2010-10-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Friday Night Date Night was great fun this last Friday. We went to a place called "Kingdom of Dumpling" to have, you guessed it...dumplings! So, it's basically the Chinese ravioli. Soooo good. It was a total hole in the wall where we were practically the only white people. We ordered some super yummy chow mien and two types of dumplings...pork and cabbage and pork and corn. Pork and corn...random huh? It was really good though. All in all we had Chinese food for 2 people (and it was a lot of food) for $21. What a deal!

This afternoon Autumn, a friend of mine who recently moved up to the Bay area came on down and we went thrifting. We went to this place in the Mission district that was HUGE. Literally ginormous. Two stories. Autumn found a rad wall hangy thing...and some funky plates to go with her growing collection that she has. We got some yummy coffee and overall just had fun catching it up and enjoying each other.

Church has been going great. I have really grown to love it and look forward to going every Sunday. We are in a small group that is super cool. It has a few young married couples in it...of which we are meeting up with on Monday to have dinner. It's really nice to be getting plugged in and creating relationships. The church is very solid and I would love to get more involved in ministries.

So, update on the whole "what am I going to do with my life" thing. I have done some thinking and talking with Jas...and Jesus :) and have decided that nursing is something that I may be interested in...but not enough to really pursue it, at least right now. I think that for now I'm content with the little skills I possess and if the Lord one day gives me the opportunity to go to school then I may go for it. For now though, I'd say I'm way more passionate about food then I am nursing sooooo...nursing just isn't calling to me. It was an easy thing to go for. Highly practical, the schooling was affordable, the pay afterward is good. In the end though I think you should be passionate about what you do. Not just do it because it's convenient. I'm not going toward a career in food or anything. Just not going for nursing as of now. So there you have it. :)

Jason has been enjoying school. He seems to be learning a ton...including some Chinese. I have to admit that I laugh sometimes when he's practicing because...it's just such a different sounding language. Both my doctors at my work speak it though and about half the population of SF (ok, maybe not that many) so it's becoming not quite so foreign of a language! :)

Plans for tomorrow...church, wash the truck, pull some weeds, work on our Chile scrapbook, maybe see what's happening with Fleet Week. The Blue Angels are in town and it's been super cool to see them flying around in formation!

HAPPY....

2010-10-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!

Today is my mother dearests birthday and I can't be there... :(

But...

Thanks for being such a fantastic and great mom! Hope your day is special and you feel loved.

Love,

Anna and Jason

We Walked...

2010-09-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

A LOT! Does it bother you when people smash "a" and "lot" together to form...alot. ???? Yeah. Totally not a word. I remember the moment I learned that alot it not a word. It was 4th grade. It rocked my world. Seriously. I felt like I had been dooped. That I had spent all almost 5 years of my primary school years as an ignorant person. Yep. I'll never forget it.

Any whooooo...

So, Jason and I had a great day. FIRST...brace yourself. It was SUNNY and HOT. Yeah. I was shocked too. Gosh. The even better part is that supposedly...it's just going to get hotter. Or more hot? What's the proper way of saying it? Baaah. This whole "Jason in grad school becoming an expert on the English language" thing is really throwing off my speaking groove. I find myself second guessing everything I say.

So, we started the day by doing some work outside. There's something extra fulfilling in working outside. I have no idea what it is. Maybe the same feeling that a farmer gets. Not that I'd ever want to be a farmer for a living. My dad's stories of his Minnesotan farming days has kicked that desire swiftly out of me and yet...I love working outside, getting dirty, gardening, and etc.

After work we played. We went to a bakery that had homemade pizza and pastries. I loved the pizza. Jason didn't so much. I am a HUGE fan of sourdough while he isn't quite so fond of it. We didn't know it but the pizza crust is sourdough...making me a very happy camper and him...content with the pizza yet not in love. Oh well. You never know till you try it.

After the bakery...we hit some Blue Bottle which is THE BEST COFFEE ever. Well, sort of. It turns out there is a coffee drink on their menu that I'm not a huge fan of, it's called the "New Orleans style Iced Coffee". We wanted something iced and so I decided to get it. It was tweeker coffee to the max. So strong. I added a ton of sugar and half & half to it and still could not finish it. Blak. I'm sticking with the latte's. Oh well. :)

Once our (or my) coffee was chocked down, I mean drank...we decided to walk to the Embarcadero. It took a little over an hour each way. We were in our Rainbow's...which we haven't worn much lately and we both ended up with blisters. It was bustling with tourists and actually was rather unappealing. Not sure why. I think we know more of the real SF now and so it just wasn't as fun as exploring the places that the locals go to. Oh well. We got to be outside, with each other, and get some exercise.

Overall it was a fun day. It was nice to spend a whole day with Jas where there was no homework, grocery shopping, cleaning, and other such responsibilities to separate us. I think we all need those days every so often. Tomorrow though...it's back to business. ;)

Weekend and a Gas Pumping Story

2010-09-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

Well, there was very little playing done this weekend. Honestly, it was about time we decided to be grown-ups and act like we have some actual responsibilities to do...like MOVE-IN! hahaha.

Our living room/kitchen/bedrooms are just about all put together. Jason is putting the last finishing touches to a jewel of a table that his lovely aunt gave us. She's into the shabby/chic antique look. She had this super cool wooden table and had left it outside for a long period of time to give it a "worn look". I totally liked it the way that it was. Jason though...Jason saw more. He decided that he was going to sand down the whole thing, take it all apart and re-glue it, and stain it. Well, the table turned out to be mahogany. It's super cute and we stained it an ebony which turned out A.MaZ.Ing! The kid is such a "fix-it" home do-it guy. So, I think by this next weekend we will be dining on our lovely kitchen table...making our kitchen/living room area complete.

This weekend, since the weather wasn't all that lovely I decided to finish up some looming projects. So I...

-Finished our couch pillows.
-Took a really hideous beige blanket and added a row of cute fabric squares to each end making it about 602 x's cuter.
-Finished the curtains in Jason's study room.
-Hung pictures on our really naked walls.
-Ordered pictures of Chile to finish/start our Chile book.
-We put new windshield wipers on the truck (holy cow, I didn't know such clarity existed). Fantastic.
-Made a sewing machine cover for my sewing machine...because the house we live in is SOOOO dusty. Seriously. It's dusty. And I'm tired of taking it in and out of the box it came in.

So, the weekend was productive. Thus, we voted that next weekend be WAY more fun. We can only handle so much of this responsible behavior you know! ;)

Oh, and now for a story....

So, I cursed. Yep, loud and clear for all to here. Then I tried to fix it by saying "I mean, oh shoot" To which the old man next to me pumping his gas said with a laugh, "Yeah, you better clean up that potty mouth." :) Well, you know. Anyways, what was the occasion that the lovely word referring to fecal matter came out of my mouth?

I will tell you...

I went to get gas. I fill the tank once a week and it will get me through from Sun to the next Sun. But it has to be full. So, I had a little gas in the tank already and decided to put in $27 cash (that's what I had). I pumped the gas and it didn't click off on it's own so I figured that it still needed more. I then swiped my card and put in some more gas. Well, it stopped at 42 cents. Nice. So, annoyed that it was only 42 cents I decided to go up to 50 cents...you know, make it at least a somewhat round number (I know, "topping off" is bad). To my great surprise (obviously since I busted out some sailor talk) gas began to pour out of the truck when I took the nozzle out...I mean, like all over the place. Thankfully, it had rained and so you couldn't tell that I had just destroyed the SF table water with my gas spillage. Anyways, some how, by 8 cents, I overfilled the truck with gas. From my little bit of auto shop I knew that such a thing was not a good thing and thus called Jason to make sure that the truck wouldn't explode when I turned it on or something like that. He assured me that it was fine and that I should step away from the car with the gas all over...since I was on a cell phone. (hmm, yeah, that's right.)

Anyways, so, my truck gas gauge has been PAST the full line for quite some time now which means that I either broke it...or overfilling your tank and dumping gas all over the parking lot does have some sort of benefit after all...a full tank for a very long time! ;)

PS. Being that I HAVE driven away with the gas pump still in my car I believe that I have now experienced most all "do NOT's" when getting gas. Nice.

Where Did the Weekend Go...and some added pics?

2010-09-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

I can't believe tomorrow is Monday. aaaah. The only bad thing about a 3 day weekend is how short the next regular length weekend feels in comparison. Oh well.

Anyways, I have a few pics to post but I will have to put them up later...too lazy to upload them to this computer (**I actually just added some to the bottom. Not so lazy after all eh?). Last weekend Jason and I decided to ride to the Golden Gate Bridge from our house. It was such a beautiful, warm day. The ride ended up being about 25 miles though. haha. I definitely felt it considering I haven't exercised in quite some time. It was so beautiful out though and we had a great time zipping and weaving through the busy traffic of SF. Those drivers probably hated us. hehe. Oh well. The bridge was awesome to ride across. We got to witness some kite surfers while there. It's so windy in the bay that they can catch the wind out to the middle and surf off the wake of the boats. I'm pretty much convinced that this is my next sport to try. It was soooo cool! Anyways, we never brought the camera so there are no pictures of that.

As for this weekend....not too much was done...just the regular "get ready for the week" thing. I lOvE me some opera and there was a free concert being put on today by the San Francisco Opera in Golden Gate Park. The plan was to go but by the time we got out of church the place was packed out. We would probably have had horrible seats. It just didn't end up being enticing enough for us. Oh well. Maybe next time.

I think we may be settling down into a church. It looks like we will be joining a small group. Kind of cool. It's all tentative...in the sense that we are still feeling the church out. The best way to really get a feel though is to continually go and also get plugged in. I honestly didn't love the church the first time we went but...I've warmed up to it and I was actually pretty excited to go this Sunday. If you want to check it out it's called City Church. Here's their website! :) I LOVE their worship. I will say that! They mostly sing hymns but they have a contemporary twist. The lyrics of hymns are so...God lifting. I feel like some of our more contemporary Christian worship songs have more to do with the way WE feel about God then about God Himself and His greatness. Not that this is necessarily always bad...I just love hymns! :)

Anyways, that's all for now. Pics of our weekend to come...and my curtains and bed skirt I made, house, etc! :)

Just Kidding. Here are the pics now. So, here are my curtains. They have quite a bit of color. :) I'm more into neutrals with pops of color usually. The room was just soooo...white. That and the continually gray sky showing through the windows....I decided some color was needed.After the curtains I decided that a bed skirts was definitely needed. The box spring was showing and these plastic things were falling off of it...making it look a little...um, ghetto. Thus, with my last $20 from my birthday I decided to buy some fabric. I didn't use a pattern. (seriously, I have used a pattern once or twice and it never turns out fantastic. My confession is I'm terrible at reading them). Anyways, the things not perfect but it's better than before. It's a brown and white pattern...similar to the curtains but a little different.
And...here's our house below! Yep, that WHOLE thing. In the city of San Francisco. We're rich don't you know!?! Ok, so maybe not. Basically our door is next to the garage...which you can't see. It's broken up into a downstairs and an upstairs. The people who own the upstairs don't live their permanently. Apparently they live somewhere else in the city and come to this place once in a while. So, it's like we have the place to ourselves practically. We are free to garden the backyard, use the washer and dryer, and use part of the garage for our stuff. Nice! When we get more of the inside of our house put together I'll take pics of that too! :0)

This and That

2010-09-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well, Jason and I are still enjoying our life here in SF. I have found that I really enjoy the big city. I'm guessing that it will get old eventually but I actually like the fact that there are SO many people, haha. It's interesting. Driving back and forth from work though...mmm, not certain that's my favorite thing in the world. Overall I'm not an "angry" driver but I would say that I definitely get annoyed. Mostly over simple things, like merging. Not sure why that's such a difficult concept for some but...apparently it is. At least there are a lot of good radio stations up here to listen to while I drive. There's one particular morning talk show that has me laughing pretty much every morning. Then again, the morning commute isn't so bad. It's the evenings when I get off at 6pm (3 days/wk) that it takes me about 50 min. to go 18 miles. Nice. Oh well, what can you do?!

Last week was my birthday and my birthday gift was $$$. Wohoo. I got to enjoy some SF shopping...including shopping at one of the best Marshall's ever! So fun. I also went into a place called Nordstrom's Rack which is apparently Nordstrom's, discounted. That place was INSANE. I'm pretty sure that more than half of SF's female population was there. My gosh. They had things like True Religion jeans for $90. hahahahaha. Sorry, I would never in my LIFE pay $90 for a pair of jeans (though I would certainly take them as a gift :) ). Those things are $250 normally though so I just couldn't understand why you would go to Nordstrom's to buy them for $250 when you can buy them at The Rack for $90. hmmm. These things I ponder.

I'm also about done with some curtains that are literally the happiest curtains in the world. They brighten up the room a ton. Since there won't be much sun shining in to brighten up the room I figured some bright happy curtains were the best solution. **Note: We STILL have boxes to unpack in our house, haha. Maybe one day...**

Hmmm...what else...

Ah, my future. So, I've been thinking and praying a lot lately about a possible career for me. Jason is the priority right now. I'm working and getting him through school. Yet, there is a part of me that would like a "skill". One that can be used in the work force. I know that when some kidd-o's come around they will be my number one priority but what happens when they go to school? (I'm thinking we will not be a homeschooling family. Especially if we are living abroad with Jason's work. The kids would be in school with other native speakers of the country). Anyways, I've been kicking around some ideas in my head...and with Jason. I'm leaning toward something that can be done through a community college with minimal debt. It also needs to be something that is usable abroad. The medical field is very intriguing to me and I've been leaning toward nursing or radiology. We will see...

Anyways, I know there's the "stay at home mom" vs. "career woman mom" debate. I'm a bit in the middle. Especially when the kids are little pre-kindy age...I want to be home, caring for them and molding their little brains into what Jason and I want. :) But, once they go to school...esp. when they're gone from 8-3...I feel like, knowing me and my personality...that I'm going to want something to do outside of the home. Honestly, I really love working. I mean there are days when I would surely rather sleep but overall...going to work isn't hard for me. I like interacting with and helping people. I also enjoy a paycheck every now and then. I guess there are other thoughts behind all of this too. I like the idea of having my income as a backup. It's funny because I always envisioned that if I did work we would try to not use much of the money for day to day use. Invest it, save it, use it for retirement, give it, use it for kids college education...awesome family vacations. Weird yeah? Anyways, these are some thoughts of mine. So, I'm praying and seeking the Lord. Trying to see what's of "me" and what's of "Him".

Well, that's all for now. I will say that we are very much looking forward to the three day weekend. Yay. Plans for the weekend...maybe a trip to REI, unpacking and settling more into our house, a trip or two to some thrift shops, RUNNING. There's The North Face Half-Marathon Trail Race in SF that I would like to compete in this Dec. We will see. :)

Last Week in Photos

2010-08-23T20:30:00.001-07:00

THE CAKE...So for those of you who don't know my grandparents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I wasn't able to make it to the party and so as a "gift" I made them an anniversary cake. Grandma wanted to have it look just like a little wedding cake. So, I went to work. I had so much fun! It wasn't perfect by any means but it was worlds better than the last one. Can't wait for cake #3! :) The cake is a white fondant cake with white buttercream piping here and there!

Putting a few finishing touches on it...the thing took WAaaaaAy longer than I thought it would. So fun though and totally worth it!
TADA! All finished. It turned out the most stressful part of the whole thing was transporting it the next day. ugh. My truck has no AC and so I was terrified that it was just going to melt into a puddle once I got into Atascadero. It didn't. hehe

SF FOOD FESTIVAL...We went last weekend and it was great fun. We ate Malaysian food (including rose milk) and Chilean empanadas. We also found Tartine! The bakery I have been raving out and it was as AMAZING as I thought it would be! Yum.

There were so many people! Seriously we had to wait in line forever and a day...only to find out that they were out of empanadas and we had to wait an EXTRA 20 min for them to make more. They were worth it though for sure...
Yum. Ok, got to go! The library is closing and it's time for me to check out my 12 cookbooks! hehe :)

Two Things I'm Excited For...

2010-08-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Thing #1:
The SF Street Food Festival
http://www.sfstreetfoodfest.com/
Blocks and blocks of good food from all over the world. It's this Saturday and I am really excited to go get my grub on. Yum. Top on my list to try are Kasa and Sabores del Sur.

Thing #2:
My oh so lovely friend Autumn aka as my maid-o-honor and her hubby are moving to me. She really missed me and talked her huz into uprooting their life in SLO to come live near us! Haha Ok, maybe not. In actuality he got a job about 20 min. from where we live...NICE! I'm superty duperty excited to have me an amiga here in nor-cal. Yay! :) They are moving in a couple of weeks. I see many a shopping trips and coffee dates in our future!

SiGh, the SUN!

2010-08-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

So, big news...

The SUN came out in our SF 'hood yesterday! Jason sent a me a text telling me. He was slightly excited. First time in just about 3 weeks. When I drove back into SF after work the sun was still mostly out. Some observations...

1. The ocean is really close and really beautiful. haha. Didn't really realize it until yesterday. You stare directly at it as you're driving down our street toward our house.

2. Everything looks better with the sun. Our neighborhood is so cute. haha.

3. The sun is a real mood lifter. I swear people were more courteous drivers with the sun shinning.

So, that was exciting.

In other news, Jason has orientation on Fri and then next Tues. I ship him off to school! :) Aaaw, his first day of grad school. How cute. Definitely a picture op if you ask me!

On Sunday we are going to pop over to the City Church. It's our first time trying a church up here. I'm excited. The church seems super solid. It's had many great recommendations. I love that they believe in preaching the gospel to both nonbelievers AND believers. They have incredible outreaches. Ministry to the homeless, those with AIDS, and etc. It seems like there are some huge opportunities to be stretched far beyond our comfort. One difference though...there are female deacons AND elders. It's funny because this totally rubs me weird even though it seems that there isn't explicit Scripture against this. I know Grace is possibly moving toward this...maybe. :) (Oooh, ooh, soap box time! Watch out!) I guess to me it seems that we are in a culture that is so dominated by women already. If we have them take these roles also than it seems possible there will ONLY be women in these roles...that the men will just slump away. Woman have decided that the typically male roles are better...therefore leaving men to feel "purposeless" since there are so many women occupying what previously was their role. So, the seemingly male response? Backing off and choosing to have no role at all. Does that make sense? Anyways, there are actually more male then female elders (I counted, haha) and so this theory isn't correct in this circumstance...which is good!

All in all, I'm excited to hear the Word! It's been 3 weeks since we've been to church and I am missing me some preachin', that's for sure.

What else? mmm. Oh I did another cake this last weekend. It was my grandparents 50th anniversary. So I baked a two tier cake. Grandma wanted it to look like a wedding cake...and so it did! It was super fun, and also super time consuming (I'm thinking it took about 6 hours). Honestly, I LOVE baking and decorating cakes. I have endless ideas in my head and I'm pretty certain that I'm going to bake MYSELF one for my birthday, hahahaha. Just to practice. Theirs's was a white fondant cake. I will post a couple of pictures as soon as I have our camera and the internet in one location. Maybe this weekend.

Anyways, I learned a lot and made huge improvements between the 1st cake (the fish cake) and this last cake. For example, you HAVE to hand carve the whole cake to make it perfectly smooth...filling in the holes with frosting doesn't cut it. hehe. The carving is super time consuming too. The time spent is well worth it though....you have a nice and smooth fondant coating if you do it right. Also, refrigerating the fondant does actually make it more manageable (go figure since the recipe SAID to do it). Also, TV is so beneficial. Watching Ace of Cakes has done wonders, hehe. TV isn't always a complete waste of time! ;)

Alright, so, I'm done! Hope everyone has a good rest of the week! <3

Road Mysteries and Such

2010-08-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Well, I'm actually writing a post...and not a title. nice. Anyways, things are good here. I've been at my job now for about 2 weeks. There was a bit of an adjustment period but overall I really like it. The commute is about the same as the one from Morro Bay to SLO. Although, on the way home it takes longer...more people on the road for some reason. You would think that those same people would be GOING to work also in the morning but apparently not. One of those mysteries.

Speaking of mysteries. Have you ever been driving on the freeway and looked to see a dead ground squirrel. The one's that really get me thinking are the one's that don't look flattened by car wheels and are on the SIDE of the freeway...not in the middle of the lane. I've noticed this down south on Highway 1 also. I'm just trying to figure out how this works. It wasn't' killed by a tire...and if it was, how in the world did it get to the side of the road? Did some one stop and drag it to the side after they hit it? Did some one see it start to cross the road and then swerve and yell out, "Squirel! 10pts!" in order to hit. All of these things make no sense since the squirrel isn't FLAT! It literally looks like it stepped out onto the asphalt and had a heart attack right there. Maybe it was the heat of the road???? Ok, so this is what I think about on my commutes. :)

Our house is great. A bit small and so it's taking some creativity and a few trips to IKEA to figure out how to arrange everything. All in all it's good. What's not so good is the weather where we live. Not a sunny day yet. As in...the sun hasn't even APPEARED! Pure and solid fog. With bouts of mist. Blak. Apparently we live in a little micro climate because last Sat. we took the muni to the downtown area where we took part in what will now be a weekend ritual...Blue Bottle Coffee. To. Die. For. Yummmm. Anyways it was sunny there while it was cloudy where we lived. Oh well.

We also got to see a free ballet down the road from our house. Awesome. I love how big cities have so much to offer culturally. Super fun. I REALLY want to see an Opera though. Can't wait for that season to come around.

Anyways, that's all for now. Hope all is well with ya! :)

No Internet. We're in SF. We're alive. I can't write in the blog text box for some reason. End post.

2010-08-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

We Chose...

2010-07-31T15:35:00.000-07:00

House #2!
(I totally feel like I'm on "House Hunters")

The two main reasons were the proximity to Jason's school and the washer and dryer! :) It will cost more to live there since we will be footing our own utilities and what not, but all in all I think we will be much happier not spending our Saturdays at the laundry mat. I think Jason will appreciate not having to ride a bus for an hour each way every day for school too!

So, our moving truck is all ready! We finished packing at 12:30pm (pretty good eh?). Jason's cousin came and helped us move the heavy stuff into the truck which was AWESOME! Tomorrow morning we head out at around 7am and begin our life in San Francisco. Crazy stuff. We're super excited. It feels pretty surreal as of now but I think it will all set in once we role into our new drive way. On Monday I start my new job! Lots and lots of change. But, change is good...usually :) The good news too is that we really aren't that far from home so...we can visit if we need a break from the fog!

In other news...a blog post from about 2 months ago of mine was taken down...by the copyright people who manage the blog world. :) hehe. I think I copy and pasted a pretty picture from the Internet of Morro Rock. Hmmm. Oh well. So, watch out! Big Brother Internet copyright man may come to get you too! Unless I'm the only one in the world who's done that. ;) Probably not huh?

**Tip of the Day: When moving to a new city where you will be driving two seperate vehicles, do not pack your cell phone chargers (both of them) at the bottom of the truck in some unidentified box unless you are 100% certain that your phones have a full battery. If you don't heed this advice you may realize that both your phones are dead and you suddenly have no way to tell the handsome man in front of you in the Budget moving truck that your 3rd cup of coffee has finally caught up with you and you really REALLY have to go...NOW! :)

No worries, this scenario never played out but it was certainly a possibility until the smart female in this relationship thought to go to the Verizon store and tell them our pitiful story. Pat my own back! They're charging right now and will be ready for pick-up in one hour! :)

I Have...

2010-07-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

an eye twitch.

Because I'm so tired
From packing...
aaaand packing...
and packing...

packing things that I didn't even know we had.

Only to not use it in the next place we live.

Seriously folks! We have no kids. We've been married a year and a half...10 months of that we lived abroad and literally bought nothing! How in the heckety heck can we have so much stuff? I don't think of ourselves as material people but after this move...I'm thinking a little differently! hehe :)

Anyways, we have a lot to do...
Time to geter dun.

SF here we come!

2010-07-25T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I have a job! Yay. I'll be working about a half an hour south of San Francisco at an optometry office. I got the call on Friday. The doctors offered me the job and I accepted. It's funny. It's kind of like my first "big girl" job. They pay more than I've ever made before (the cost of living in SF makes up for that though), I get paid vacation/sick days, 401K, and benefits. Well, they help pay your premium on your health insurance each month. Better than nothing though! :)

Anyways, I start Aug 2nd. Yep...in a week. haha. We don't exactly have a house but we have actually made some serious progress on that front. We have looked at houses two other times outside of yesterday and let's just say that we were a little disappointed. Then yesterday I lined up 6 places to look at, out of the 6...I would live in 4. Out of the four one was a bit higher in price and too far for Jason so we scratched that. Another was ok but it required me to commute down a road that was a little nuts on Saturday...so I can't imagine what it would be like on a Monday morning. So, we scratched that one. This leaves two REALLY good options. One is in Daly City. The other is in a neighborhood close to SFSU. We wish we could combine the two and make one perfect option but...it can't happen. So, what do YOU think is better?

Option #1: Daly City
1 hour commute on bus for Jason
25 min. commute to work for me
-1 bed/1bath
-$1300/month with utilities including wifi
-no washer and dryer
-no real place to store something like bikes
-comes with some furniture
-no oven, just a cook top
-all new remodeling, fresh paint, etc
-owner's of the house upstairs
-back entry...through the side of the house
-sunny open house

Option #2: SF City
prob. about 20 min. commute for Jason on bus
maybe about 1/2 hour commute for me
-technically 2 bed/1 bath.
-$1300/month w/o utilities
-no wifi-and we'll prob. need it for Jason's school
-includes washer and dryer
-can use some garage space to store bikes
-beautiful new oven :)
-remodeled and new interior
-weird entry but it's a front entry
-nobody living upstairs

So, what do YOU think? What would you choose? It's really a hard choice if you ask me!

Also, Jason found a Asian type bakery in SF. We went in to buy a treat and we were the only caucasians in that store, haha. That place was crazy! Anyways, we bought a mochi cookie and HOLY COW...yum o yum. It was so good. So, here's to moving to SF and eating more of those mochi cookies!

Some thoughts on Northward Moving...

2010-07-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

I seriously can not figure out how in tarnations (how do you spell that?) it's been almost 2 weeks since my last post. Crazy beans. Where are the days going? Oh wait. Maybe between driving up to SF for interviews (what feels like every other day) and looking for a house (what feels like every waking second of my day), time has just escaped me.

So, this is going to be short but sweet.

We are out of our current, fantastic, lovely, and beautiful house on the 31st. The goal is to find a job and a house in SF by then.

We could use prayer. Prayer for patience, contentment, faith, love for one another, and just...just trusting in our Lord that He will provide all that we need in His good timing. It's hard not to dwell continually on looking for jobs and housing. Sometimes though, I just need to stop. Stop searching, stop thinking, stop hunting, applying, looking at Craigslist. I need to stop, and just meditate on our Lord. We need to trust and allow His peace to come over us.

Honestly, we are really nervous to move up to SF. You all who know us are probably totally aware of the fact that we are in no way big city peeps. We would choose open space over a bustling city any day. Yet, it SEEMS this is where the Lord is taking us...

So, tomorrow. Tomorrow I vow to not hunt for housing, not dwell on upcoming interviews, and not stress about what's to come. Tomorrow I take a break. Tomorrow I will pray more than I worry and praise more than I stress.

:)

Interview Madness!

2010-07-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, that's right I DO have a blog. Shoot dang, I totally forgot! :)

Anywho, I have been interviewing. Up in 'Frisco. :) hehe. I really don't like it when people call San Francisco, "Frisco". I have no idea why. It just sounds dorky. Do people from SF actually call it "Frisco"? I would imagine not. Who knows.

Anyways, the first interview was up on the Embarcadero at an optometry office. It went well but I really felt like the doctor needed someone with more experience as an optician. (*Note: There are three "opto titles". Opthamology deals with the health of your eyes and eye surgery. Optometry deals with the health of your eyes but more the prescription and vision portions of your eyes. An Optician is someone who adjusts glasses, fits them, fixes them, etc. They are not a doctor. That's more what I do...though I'm not highly experienced. *End note). So, I'm assuming I didn't get the above mentioned job because well, she never called me back, lol. Usually a bad sign. :)

Ok, so then I had another interview last weekend. Wow, that was interesting. Let's just say I thought I was interviewing for one job and it ended up being a different one. Don't worry. I figured it out BEFORE I walked into the interview. hehe. Crazy though.

And now it's Monday and I have NO work today which makes me very very happy. Hope everyone had a great 4th. Have a great week all! :)

10 Things I've Learned...

2010-06-25T23:10:00.000-07:00

Jason has been in Mexico with the youth for the last week. This is the first time we've been apart since being married. There are a few things I have learned about myself and our life together while he's been gone. So...here's the 10 things I've learned....

10. The Office is about 16 x's funnier with someone there with you to watch it.

9. I am completely content eating oatmeal, cereal, or grilled cheese for dinner every night (I <3 to cook but it's just not as fun when it's a meal for one!).

8. Some how Jason and I together produce 4 x's the quantity of laundry then when I'm by myself. I just don't get how that's possible...we're adding only ONE more person to the picture. hmmm.

7. I talk to myself...a lot.

6. I have trouble sleeping with out him and yet thoroughly enjoy the full rein of the bed.

5. Friday date night is totally lame without a date! Although I got to choose what the movie was with no one saying, "Ug, not a giiiiiirl movie!"

4. I enjoy pushing the snooze button about 3 times because there's not a soul around to think about how lazy I am.

3. I am totally not a huggy person and yet I really REALLY missed his hugs. They're just so cozy and nice.

2. Jason is such a disciplined person and he adds a ton of structure to my life...i.e. earlier bedtimes, balanced meals, etc :). In the end...it's a better life style! hehe

1. Life is so much sweeter with my main squeeze by my side. I'm incredibly independent (often to a fault) and I enjoy my alone time but all in all...life's so much bettah with the huz! <3

Yay! He's home!

ONWARD!

2010-06-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

Well, some of you may know that Jason has been applying to a bunch of grad schools. It was quite the process. Literally the day we returned from Chile (practically) Jason started studying for the GRE. He studied for about a month and took the test. He then applied to 3 grad schools...and was excepted to well, all of them. haha. The choice came down to Arizona or San Francisco. So after much deliberation and thought I think it looks like good ole'...

SAN FRANCISCO!

Crazy.

We are moving.

To another city in California.

And we are about 10 times more nervous about it then we were when we moved to Chile.

Another country in the WORLD. Go figure.

So, there you have it. I am applying to jobs like mad. And we are looking for an abode. And this is all supposed to happen by oh, mid August at the latest. If you think about it you can certainly pray for us. We are in need of the Lord and in need of His provisions! It's hard to pick up and go...especially when there isn't necessarily a job and everything set up before you. Yet, there are so many things that have brought up to this point and it very much seems like this is where the Lord wants us. Also, if any of you are from that general SF area or know of any great evangelical churches we would love to know about them.

So, there you have it folks. It looks like we're trucking it up north. Time for the next adventure! Time for some more edu-ma-cation and time for me to find a job that pays a tad more than I'm currently making! :) I'm going to be the sole bread winner ya know! Well, for a little while at least.

Oh, and Jason will be receiving a Master's in Teaching English as a Second Language...did I mention that before? Probably.

AND...I really want to go to this place...

Tartine Bakery!

It's in SF and supposedly it's to DIE FOR good...as in wake up before it's open on Saturday and stand in line for hours with a bunch of food crazy peeps...sounds like my kind of thing. Can't wait!

Summer at Last?

2010-05-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks (please oh please let it be true) like we may finally be moving into summer. Some warm weather. Where you wear shorts. Where you wear tank tops. Wear I live in my Rainbows and pretend like I possess the capability to tan. Ugh. One word. FINALLY! So, I've heard a lot of people complain about our fickle, not so May almost June weather. It seems like we've been stuck in February...well, since February. Now normally, this would be annoying for this hot weather lover. But this year, it's particularly and completely annoying. Because, in case you forgot, we went south of the equator...right before it started to get warm here. So, we had fall, then winter here at home, then we went to Chile and had fall, then winter, then we came home and had....you guessed it...fall, then winter. Add that up peeps and that's close to two years of FALL AND WINTER! Aaaaaaah! So, we have absolutely relished in today's hot weather!

I love a day where you have pretty much lived in a bathing suit. We surfed, kayaked, and now we are going to close out the day by BBQing some cheeseboigahs (my dad always says it that way). Yum oh yum. Jason also brought home a load of fresh veggies from the school garden. Sweet, eh?

Anyways, I haven't blogged in a while so I decided I might as well throw some words up on this pathetic blog. So, I hope everyone enjoyed this weather as much as we did and I am so completely stoked that there's no work on Monday! Yay for 3 day weekends. Woot wooht! Alright, I guess I'm done! :)

I went to the store in Styyyyyyle!

2010-05-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Well, my dear huz and his cuz hit the ocean once again to try their luck at fishing. Normally, Jason's cousin borrows his parents Tahoe and they transport the kayaks that way. This weekend though his parents needed the Tahoe and so they needed to use the truck. Thus leaving me with no wheels. Really, I was fine with it. I thought I'd run, clean, and just lay around the house. But then, the unthinkable happened. Jason's cousin said, "Well, if we take the truck I'll leave Anna with MY car so she can still drive." Um, YES PLEASE! Because....THIS is Jason's cousin's car....

A PORSCHE BOXSTER! HECK YEAH!

So, I drove it, I loved it, I'm pretty sure I drooled on it, and for a day I pretended that it was MINE! All mine! I'm actually pretty certain that God WANTS me to have one. He just hasn't realized it. So, if you see one floating around with out a home. It's mine. Don't touch!

Ok, so I love to drive. I really do. I have always had a dream to drive something really REALLY fast...like a Ferrari on a windy twisty road. I didn't push my luck on this car since I know the owner pretty well, haha, but I certainly gunned it on the freeway like no one's biz! Did I go 50mph in only 2nd gear? Why yes, I did. Did I accelerate at a rate that was faster than I have EVER experienced behind the wheel leaving everyone behind? Why yes I did. Did I go probably way too fast on the freeway (I know, SO bad) just because the car could? Why yes I did. Did I partake in way TOO much pleasure today? WHY YES I DID and I loved it. There's nothing like a really fast car to get one going!

Anyways. It was fun. Thanks Bryce!

Saturday Went Something Like This...

2010-05-09T18:46:00.000-07:00

First, there was no cleaning done. I mean Zip, Zero, Nada. Now, this probably isn't that big of a deal to some but for this lady who works full time...not much cleaning happens after 8 hours in the office. Thus, the weekend is a key time to clean. So, now that it's 7pm on Sunday...I'm slightly regretting this choice that I made. Hmmm. Oh well.

Well, anyways. Yesterday Jason was supposed to go kayak fishing. His partner in crime was not able to make it and so I volunteered to kayak out with him and have him fish while I messed around. I have kayaked a couple of times on lakes and rivers before. I have NEVER kayaked on the ocean...especially where you start from the beach and have to make it out passed the waves. The wind was howling and I didn't even realize that I was being pushed way down shore. Anyways, it was a struggle but it was invigorating and definitely a challenge. I felt good, I felt like I made it pretty far. The waves started getting a little bigger and a little more frequent though. I knew that I would be fine as long as I kept the kayak pointed out toward the ocean. I figured the only way I would flip is if the kayak became parallel to the waves. Well, it didn't take long before the wind, tides, and waves pushed me side ways and of course at that moment a wave broke on top of me and down I went. I lasted about 10 minutesout there, haha. AND I lost a pair of sunglasses. I was struggling to tread and try to flip my kayak back over when I realized my feet grazed what felt like sand. Seriously? There's no way. I paddled so hard...I felt like I was pushing it to the limit...I can STAND UP?!? Yep. Sure enough. haha. Oh well. Anyways, Jason made the call that it was way to windy and rough to go out. Another day, another time. Hopefully tomorrow! :) I feel like I need to conquer it now!

Then I volunteered to go pier fishing with Jas later that night (I'm such a good wife!). Because it was windy and cold I decided that it would be a good idea to wear a beanie and my hobo gloves. Yup. We weren't 5 minutes into fishing when I realized that I had some how hooked my beanie. I looked up at Jason and said, "Um...a little help." He of course thought that this was hilarious. Especially the fact that I was trying to take the hook out with the beanie still on my head. Can we say dumb blonde? Yes we can. So, he helped me out of the dilemma and we kept on fishing. It wasn't 5 MORE minutes when I realized that this time I had hooked both my sweatshirt AND my glove. The glove was hooked so badly that I had to quit because we needed to cut the barb off of the hook to get the glove off. So, I walked back to the car sheepishly...with my glove hanging from my pole. Jason pretty much laughed all the way to the car. You know, I can hold my weight in a lot of outdoor activities but I'm thinking fishing isn't one of them. haha. So, needless to say, I was a poor replacement for his normal fishing buddy. Oh well, I tried.

I actually STINKIN' did it!

2010-05-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

So, I'm really proud that I actually carried this out. It was a cute idea, I wanted to do it...and yet I doubted myself and my real ability to follow through. Granted, just about all the pics are at the end of the day...right before I put on my PJ's, but I did it none the less. This lovely lady came up...or maybe she saw it somewhere else, well whatever, anyways, what you do is you take a pic of what you wore everyday for a week to show others what YOU wear and also so you can see what other's wear too. I'm SOOOO not a fashionista and yet, yes, I like clothes in general. Looking cute always feels good and I love seeing what other's are sportin'!

Also, my absolute favorite part of this is the laundry in the background. The hamper gets more and more full, then the clothes pile moves to the floor, then it disappears. Oh, and in case you're thinking that I'm a "dressing overachiever" I work in an office M-F. Thus, I need to look somewhat nice. Except for Friday which is the best day ever invented...JEAN DAY! OH...and one more thing. Yes, I am standing on a step stool to get my shots everyday. Yep, that's dedication. And enough jabber, here you go...

THURSDAY

Hippy Flowy Pants (hence the Peace Sign): a boutique downtown

White T-Shirt: Old Navy

Brown Sweater: Target

White Flat Sandals you can barely see: Old Navy

FRIDAY

Striped Shirt: Gap

Jeans: Old Navy

Awesomly Awesome Dansko Clogs: REI

SATURDAY

Ugly Old Jeans: Old Navy

Shirt: Target

Toms Shoes: Boutique Downtown

SUNDAYUndershirt Tank and Yellow Sweater Thingy: Forever 21

Jeans: Old Navy

Sandals: Target

MONDAY

White Shirt: Forever 21

Black Skirt: Forever 21

Red Shoes that I wore as my wedding shoes: Payless

TUESDAY

Turquoise Shirt: Forever 21

White Capris: Express

Most Comfy Ever Moccasins (and like 7 years old): Boutique Downtown

WEDNESDAY

White Shirt: Old Navy

Khaki Skirt that is really in my opinion ugly and frumpy and yet I wear it anyways: Gap

Black Sweater: Boutique Downtown

Shoes: Target

THE END

My Menu Could be Your Menu.... :)

2010-05-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

Alright folks. Here is my menu for this week. These are tried and true and super yummers. So, if you want to join me this week in my cooking venture...here ya go! :)

Monday (Today):

TJ's Orange Chicken with Rice

--You go to TJ's, walk into the frozen isle, pick up the bag, buy it (this is key, they get a little ticked if you don't!), take it home, and cook it. Very complicated. And I love it on a Monday...because who wants to cook on Mondays???!!!)

Tuesday:

Double Broccoli Quinoa

You can find the recipe here.

Wednesday:

Chicken Enchiladas with Tomatillo Chile Salsa (Seriously, the best enchiladas I've ever had)
You can find the recipe here.

Thursday

Homemade Quick-Crust Cheese Pizza with Fresh Basil (perfect quick meal)

You can find the crust recipe here.

**I like to top it with tomato sauce, an absurd "you taste it still the next morning" amount of garlic, mozzarella, and fresh basil. Keepin' it simple but so yum!

Friday

Date Night!

No cooking for me!!!

Saturday

Tempeh Curry (actually, I haven't tried this one yet but I LOVE curry and the site so I have high hopes!)

You can find the recipe here.

Sunday

Chinese Chicken Salad with Red Peanut Chile Dressing (We LOVE salad, and YES...we will eat it as our only dish for dinner...usually with a side of bread or something)

You can find the recipe here.

Here's to eating! Because I'm pretty sure that I have officially become obsessed with food. I know Jason's not complaning, haha.

Our Life Lately...Uncensored! :)

2010-04-27T06:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, so uncensored makes it feel a little scandalous. Really though, all I meant is that the pictures I am about to post are all me. Not edited even slightly. It's so easy to make photography look good with programs like Picnik but...that takes time. Of which I have very little of now. So, here are some pictures of our life in all of my horrible picture taking glory. (Seriously, I am a REALLY bad picture taker. I'm the notorious "blurry picture" girl. I can't just push the button. I have to move the whole camera when I do it. Nice. Oh well.)

Ok, so here are a couple of views from our lovely abode in MB. Loving the GREEN hills. This is our back view.

The picture below is a view from another direction, from our balcony actually. We also get a sweet view of some power lines and a weird hotel. hehe. Can't get it all eh?

The picture below is another little view and this is where I look to tell what the surf looks like! SO NICE! In SLO you had to drive to really know. Here, I look out my window. haha.

The picture below is some evidence of our more whole foods diet that we are on....
And here is some MORE evidence of our whole food diet...chocolate's a whole food right? :) (Note: These were the most chocolatey and yummy cookies. They were crisp on the outside and soft and yummy on the inside.)
And HERE is Jason's birthday cake. It was my first go at fondant. The fondant was smooth and cool to use. The recipe was REALLY easy too. The fish I molded from marzipan. My actual cake part was a bit lumpy...so, the fondant didn't lay as smooth as I wanted. REALLY cool to use though! So fun. And it actually DID taste good. Jason loved it. He actually peeled it off just to eat it!

And this is a close up of "Franky"...the fish. I named him. So, it was supposed to be a "fishing cake" but that just got to be too complex so it was a "fish cake" instead. Anyways, can't wait to make my next one.

And now I'm done! The End.

Plans for the Day and Some Stinkin' Cute SuNGlaSsEs...

2010-04-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

Today, is overcast :( Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, double :(. But despite that, Jason and I are about to hit the surf. *GASP*. Yeah, I haven't touched a board since I started mountain biking....PATHETIC! It's just too hard to do both. We usually go mountain biking in the morning and normally, you go surfing in the morning. Well, now I'm free to explore other "morning sports". We'll see how I do. haha. Is it a bad sign that my left arm is already sore from me holding a pile of clothes for a long time at the thrift store??? :) Maybe.

Welp, I'm excited to do another sport with The Jas. We haven't had anything to do together (sport wise) in a while. He doesn't really love to run...especially when he could just hop on his bike instead! :) Anyways, kinda stoked. Later this afternoon we are taking a drive up north and hitting a new Vietnamese Restaurant. I'm so excited! I'm going to have a Vietnamese Sandwich. yum!

Finally, I am investing in some absolutely CUTE sunglasses. I have never paid more than $20 for sunglasses. Did you know though that when you buy cheapy sunglasses that the lenses are actually not good for your eyes...that it could hurt them more than they do good. When sunglasses are cheap they use a cheaper material for the lens which in turn has a lower optical quality. Some people are very susceptible to it. It takes me forever to find a pair that I can tolerate because the low optical quality actually makes me feel sick (as if I were to put on an Rx pair of glasses that weren't my own). So, I usually don't wear them. Then one day I put on Jason's mountain biking Oakleys and...perfect. They were just fine. Even if you don't FEEL like they are doing damage...they are. Especially if you have good eyesight! haha. And there's my 2 cents that I learned from working at an Optometry office. So, we got me some glasses and they are SOOooooOO cute. And I definitely didn't pay the $150 retail for them haha. Here they are! My girly aviators! Love them.

A Visit...

2010-04-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, two blogs in one week! Not bad eh? I remember when I was a Bloggin' Queen! Welp, last night Jason got back from a stint in San Fran. He has been gone for two days in S.F. checking out a school. This is the one that offered him the money honey. When he first got home he was too mind numbingly tired to even think about whether the school was a legitimate possibility. The main down sides at this point are the California budget cuts that are affecting all public schools. Because of this they are offering less courses per semester. This may cause for him to finish something that would normally take 2 years in 2.5 year. We aren't in love with that idea. We'll see.

You can definitely be praying for him as we need to make some serious decisions in the next month...um, more like in the next week, haha! Crazy but cool stuff! :) Oh, and Jason also just got an acceptance letter from University of Arizona today. haha. Apparently Obama did the graduation speech for the Master's students last year. I think he went there or something. I don't know. It's a very good school though but it's just a little too "research based" where are we are looking for a more hands on program. Who knows. We will be praying for sure and will fill y'all in when WE know! :) Oh, and I also got a Timbuk2 bag today at the thrift store for $3! Dang darn awesome! :) (If you dont know what a Timbuk2 bag is then...nevermind. It's not worth explaining. If you do know then you will join me in my happiness. The bag is in GREAT condition and has a laptop holder in it. Neat-o bandito! If you want to know what they are then go to their website timbuk2.com :)

Me Gusta mis Zapatos Nuevos!

2010-04-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I bought these...because I am running THIS run...

http://www.pctrailruns.com/Montana_de_Oro_Fall.htm

with THIS person...

MY PA! :) Sssh, don't tell him but I'm planning on CREAMIN' him! :) I think he'll leave the guns behind though.

Anyways, we're running the 25k which is about 15.5 miles. It's in about 4 months. I kind of wanted to do the 50 k but my dad said..."that's just not healthy." haha. Yeah, 30 miles is a bit much. I'm thinking too that it's just going to be two loops of the 25k and so it may get a little...boring. Also there's the small fact that I probably couldn't actually COMPLETE a run that long! :) 15.5 miles in Montana de Oro is going to be a lot tougher than 15.5 miles on road. I've rode those trails back there and there are some pretty steep places.

As for the shoes...

So, I am an AVID Asics user. I have some-what narrow feet so for the most part NB's don't work, they are too wide. Nike's are ok but I feel like the sole doesn't last as long. So, I wear Asics. They are great. Recently I have discovered Mizuno. These are also really REALLY nice shoes. I love the support they give, the flexibility and the rigidness...all in a nice neat package. So, as for road shoes I choose those two brands (usually Asics though since on average Mizunos seem to be about $90 where are Asics seem to be about $75.)

Recently though I have moved away from road running and have been trail running. It's better for your joints, it's beautiful, and it's a tad more challenging. When I took up mountain biking I basically abandoned running because it fulfilled those reasons just listed. Well, since mountain biking is out of the picture I've turned to trail running and just LOVE it.

I was looking for a pair of shoes that would work more for trails (my running shoes are about toast). I wanted it to be stiffer. I tried lots of shoes and honestly some of them were so stiff that it felt like I had tied a set of bricks to my feet. So, I ventured out to Salomon which is a great outdoor brand. The best part are the cinches for laces. No more untied shoes while running! :) Honestly these are possibly the most comfy shoes I've ever had and they were worth every penny!

So, in a few months I'll be running that race above. I'm really excited. If I can do that I'd like to do a marathon...but a trail marathon. There is a great one in the Redwoods...we'll see! :)

I love warm weather! :)

2010-03-28T20:23:00.001-07:00

Well we just finished up a BEAUtiful weekend. Ugh, it was so warm...so nice...I got a little sun...a great weekend. Yesterday Jason and I basically did a lot of chores around the house. I organized the garage and sorted through everything. I made a "yard sale" pile and also separated and organized our camping stuff. Jason made a ton of kindling for a camp fire and deep cleaned his mountain bike. We were talking about how funny it is that as an adult doing "chores" is kind of nice. It makes you feel accomplished and good. So, we did lots of chores. At the end of the day we rewarded ourselves with BBQ chicken and corn on the cob. Jason is quite the BBQer. The chicken was SO good and moist. Mmmm. Yum.

Today we went to church and later hiked through Montana de Oro. It was beautiful and we saw quite a few pretty wild flowers, including some awesome purple irises. And now we're home and I'm getting ready to go to work tomorrow while Jason is getting ready to enjoy his TWO WEEK spring break. bah. So not fair. Oh well, it gives him the opportunity to go visit SFSU. Jason received an email a couple of days ago that told him what he would receive from SFSU. The first year they are going to pay $6,000 of his $6,800 tuition. AWESOME! All that volunteering paid off last year huh...in more than just personal satisfaction. I guess THAT'S why they wanted a reply so quick. haha. They want to give that money to someone else if Jason doesn't want it. It was nice becuase everyone told us that as a grad student you receive little to no aid or grants. It was a very pleasant surprise that's for sure! :) So, Jason will go up in a week and a half and then we will have a better guess whether or not SF is a viable option. The Lord knows all! :)

Other than that not too much is happening. Next Friday we are going north to Big Sur to go camping and do some ocean kayaking. woohoo. We are both feeling a little...mmm, not sure. Stir crazy? Not sure how to describe it but we figured that a little camping trip would serve us well. And yes...we'll be back in time for Easter...I think :) hehe

Well, have a good week everyone!

"Yes" #2!

2010-03-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

What's happening all? Not a whole lot here but life is good! :)

Jason got his SECOND acceptance letter! woohoo! This one is with SFSU. San Francisco! It looks like he will be going up in about a week and a half during his TWO WEEK SPRING BREAK to meet with the profs and sit in some classes. The program seems really good but there is no way to tell but by going. Also, randomly, one of the heads of the department is from Sri Lanka! Weird. You just don't come across people from Sri Lanka very often. One of our BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) involves us one day going back to open an English school! :) We'll see though...the Lord willing of course. hehe.

So, we're waiting on one more school to get back to us. We're still waiting for USC to even OPEN there app process. If they wait too long we may just have to not apply to them. They are appealing because they are a one year intense program. Jason would like to just finish school and get going with life but we'll see. Schools who accept you don't wait around for a long time for an answer. They want a commitment surprisingly fast...or so it seems. Maybe that's just the case with Master's degrees. So, it looks like we're going to have to make a decision pretty soon. Weird to think that it's not just a school that we're choosing but a location where we're going to live, work, etc. I will say though that Jason got pretty excited at the fact that he could dive for abalone in SF. haha. You can do it north of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can't do it any where else in CA!

Welp, plans for today are to RUN in this gorgeous weather. I LOVE Cali....or anywhere warm for that matter! (Hmmm. I think Arizona is warmer than SF). Jason will probably hop on his bike for the first time in a long time. Also, tomorrow Jason's g-ma and cousin are coming over for a little BBQ. I get to plan a meal! yay! Honestly I love hosting little gatherings and cooking for people. So fun!!!

Alright, hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

Becuase I'm lazy....oh, and a yUmMy recipe!

2010-03-06T09:27:00.001-08:00

I am going to post a picture of what my hair looks like...on someone else. haha. It's in the morning and currently my hair kinda has a "pebbles from the flintstones" look...a pony tail sticking straight off my head. Since it's Saturday and I make my hair look presentable all week, I plan on NOT doing my hair today. Thus...no pics of it in the near future. So, here's what my hair looks like, minus the bangs. I think bangs are cute but my forehead is way to greasy to have bangs. blah. So, this is basically my hair more or less...at least what it looked like when I left the hairdresser! :)

Anyways, there you have it. It's quite fun. It's short and I love me some short hair. So much more manageable. Also, when the hair's short it actually looks like I have a EVER so slight amount of body. haha, What a concept! :)

In other news. We had a friend over last weekend from San Diego. He was in Chile with us. It was fun to see him. When he was over I tried out a new recipe. I've been exploring a woman named Melissa d'Arabian from the Food Network. She does meals for under $10. She does it well though. I've been looking for something like this but I find that most of them take a cheap boxed base like, mac and cheese, or Hamburger Helper and then add ingredients. That's fine and all but it's not exactly what I was looking for. This lady does it though exactly as I was thinking and so far...almost all her recipes I've chosen have been so good. So my latest jewel is called North African Meatballs over Couscous and YUMMY yummy it was. It was different too...not a normal flavor you would find in your home cooked meal. We all three loved the fact that it was different and ... it was decently easy and fast! I would highly recommend it! The recipe list may seem long but it's really a pretty fast meal.

North African Meatballs over Couscous

Ingredients
For the North African Sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lemon, zested
1/2 cup pitted and chopped briny olives (I didn't use this because I didn't have it!)
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup chicken stock or broth
1 (14-ounce) can crushed or diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes (I doubled this because we like it SPICY)
Pinch ground cinnamon
salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the Meatballs:
1 egg
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch ground cinnamon
3/4 pound ground beef
1/3 cup finely ground rolled oats or fine bread crumbs (I used the bread crumbs)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 to 4 tablespoons vegetable oil, for cooking (I used olive oil)
4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves (I think I put in 1 tbl. dried parsley)

Couscous with Dried Dates, recipe follows

Directions
To make the North African Sauce:
In a large saucepan heat the olive oil over medium heat and saute the onion and garlic until soft but not brown, about 3 minutes. Add the lemon zest and olives and cook for 1 more minute. Add the white wine, deglaze the pan, and let it reduce for a 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the stock, canned tomatoes, sugar, red pepper flakes, and cinnamon, and simmer to blend flavors, about 7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

To make the Meatballs: In a medium bowl, add the egg and tomato paste and stir until smooth. Add the cilantro, ginger, cumin, and cinnamon and mix until well blended. Stir in the ground beef and oats, season with salt and pepper, to taste, and combine gently after each addition. Do not overmix. Rolling with your hands, make about 32 meatballs, about 1-inch in diameter.
In a large saute pan, heat 3 tablespoons vegetable oil over medium heat, and brown the meatballs in batches until golden on all sides. Add more oil, as needed. Transfer the meatballs to the pan with the sauce and let simmer for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve over the Couscous with Dried Dates.

Couscous with Dried Dates: (I didn't use dates because they are pretty pricey and we also used whole wheat couscous. Loved it!)
1 cup water
1 cup chicken stock or broth
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup finely chopped dried dates
1 cup quick-cooking couscous
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring the water, stock, and oil to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the dates followed by the couscous. Cover the pan tightly with a lid, remove from the heat, and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Transfer to a serving bowl and serve.

Yield: 4 servings

Two Bits of News...

2010-03-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

#1 We have received Jason's first ACCEPTANCE letter from one of the schools that he applied to. Yay! Can you guess where the school's at? Arizona! That could be interesting eh? We are still waiting on the other schools but it will be interesting to see what happens and where we end up. We celebrated by going out yesterday to Taco Temple and splitting an incredibly delicious, incredibly HUGE piece of carrot cake! So dang darn good!

#2 I cut my hair! Pretty short. I think I like it...

Other than that...not much is happening. I have little to no drive to blog anymore...to be honest. Not sure why. Just don't have a lot to say, nor very much time to do it. Kind of in a blogging slump. Actually, I've felt it since returning from Chile. Maybe it felt like blogging in Chile had more of a purpose (to keep friends and family updated) and now I feel kind like...blaaaah. I mean how many times can you write, "Today I woke up early, commuted to work, worked for eight hours, commuted back home, cooked dinner, and relaxed," before you put your readers, and yourself included, to sleep? Catchin' my drift!? :)

Anyways, I will try to keep this puppy goin' despite my complete lack of motivation!

Earthquake in Chile

2010-02-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

We saw the news this morning on the earthquake. Crazy stuff to realize that we were there about 2 months ago. We were about 17 hours north though of where the epicenter was. We have been in contact with some of our Chilean and American friends and all is well with them. In Copiapo they felt it for sure but there was no damage. In Santiago our friends there describe it as "minor" damage. Its apparently worse farther down south in Concepcion...which is a BIG city. We don't really know anyone there. We do know of one family who lives on a farm out there and they are probably there for the summer (that was the family that we went down south with during our winter break and Jason got sick...and then we stayed on our 5 star hotel with the extra money we saved...hahahaha) Anyways, we haven't heard anything from them but since they are out in the country I'd imagine that they are ok. Hopefully. We are praying for them none the less.

What a contrast to see the difference between Chile and Haiti. I believe that Haiti was a low 7 earthquake...Chile an 8.8! It just goes to show the difference in infrastructure and preparation (and money!). Jason and I experienced small little tremors the whole time we were there. We went through one that shook us pretty good but nothing like what they just experienced. Crazy. About 8 months before we arrived they had a pretty good earthquake too. The government is very, very aware of how likely earthquakes are there and prepare themselves appropriately with building standards and the such. The fact that there are a bit over 100 deaths is heart breaking and yet...you almost feel like, "Really? That's it?" Maybe it's just because it is seen in contrast to Haiti....and probably always will be even though an 8.8 is one of the largest earthquakes on record. Still we are praying for that country and the families that HAVE lost those that they love!

So, that's a little update! Thanks! :)

***Update/Edit: The death count is climbing and thus...there are probably still more to be found. I just didn't want to play down the value of each of these lost lives. Be praying.

Adventures with J and A

Moving away...

Picture Post!

Adios 2011, Hello 2012

Christmas Already eh?

Fall in Picturas

A Post.

20 Confessions (which ended up being a bit long) Enjoy!

Thoughts for a Thursday

Part 4 & 5: Meet the Father & My Hopes

What Makes me Feel Accomplished:

This Weekend was...

Part 3: A Surf Trip

You TOO can Have Hot, Fresh Bread on a Weekday...

Part 2: A Call

Fall is Here and a Bitty Bit of Random.

(Here we Gooooo!) Part 1: Introductions

I think...

A Busted Brain Bullet Post

A Morning Woe and Some To-Do's

F-O-O-D spells Food.

The BEST 7 minutes of your day...I promise!

27

Bullet Post

SLO Bound and Back.

Stumped.

This is a test :)

Why is tomorrow Monday?

F.A.I.L

Day 4: Only from Scratch

And it Begins

Preparing For the Week

It's-a-growin'

The Great Food Experiment 2011

Renaming this Confounded Blog.

Sunday

Have I Ever Showed you My Livtching Room?

Call Me a Nerd, Call Me a Bookworm...

I Came Home with a 20 lb Bag of Flour

The Not-So Mine Garden and Some Other Stuff

Random. 2005-now.

The Quinoa is a cookin'...

Free Coffee

Vanity

Saturday Buh-liss.

Ta da!

OK I lied...

So I've been busy...

Mi Jardin...and a craft.

10 Things About Him and I...

A Neglected Blog

Home for a Partay, I Brought Cake :)

Weekend Plans and This Weeks Menu.

I Guess I'll Give Him Back...

Post #166

Post #165.

'Tis the Season Fa La la La la"

I'm done.

A Catalytic Converter and A Barbie Cake

I already forgot I was doing this! Day 7

Day 6:

Photo Challenge? I'm in.

Bullet Post

Pumpkin Carving and a Little Somethin' from the Garden

Our Estate Sale Finds...We are so Weird.

Last Week and Weekend In Bullet Form

HAPPY....

We Walked...

Weekend and a Gas Pumping Story

Where Did the Weekend Go...and some added pics?

This and That

Last Week in Photos

Two Things I'm Excited For...

*SiGh*, the SUN!

Road Mysteries and Such

No Internet. We're in SF. We're alive. I can't write in the blog text box for some reason. End post.

We Chose...

I Have...

SF here we come!

Some thoughts on Northward Moving...

SiGh, the SUN!