And....I'm back!

Craving: My computer screen and flickr pictures to update my blog!

Had a little blogging hiatus.
Last weekend Charlie had a bachelor party weekend with guys from out of town, and then he left for Alabama on Friday, so last week was spent:
a) cleaning after the bachelor party
b) getting loose ends ready for the AL trip.

Then, this weekend, my mom and I drove to LA to go to my very good friend and "big sister" Emily's baby shower. I posted about Em's creative belly pics the other day, and hope it inspired some creativity!

I will catch up in short(er) posts than one long one, but for now, this is what's been going on.

Last Thursday: I surprised Charlie after having worked SO hard and having no time to spend together with a date to Ferraros, the amazing Italian restaurant where we had our first date. I even put my extensions in for the night! We asked our waiter to snap our picture and this is what we got:


Funny flash and Charlie looks like hes about to get out of his seat. Oh well.

Friday - guys arrived. Bachelor party, aka, not enough hours to clean the house since I am ocd and there were like 6 guys here.
The good news? I had to keep myself occupied so I finished my wreath! Are you excited to see the pictures of it all hung up and pretty on my door? Here's a preview of the finished product:

Saturday and Sunday were bunco and Jaren's baby shower which I told you all about.

Later on Sunday my mom and I went to the park for a celebration of "Shavuot" which is a Jewish holiday I like to refer to as "the cheesecake holiday".

We were late because of the shower but here is a lot of mostly eaten dairy food - blintzes and bourekas and cheeses and just lots of cheesy goodness. I will post about Shavuot and the holiday's meaning soon.

Charlie's friend Paul stayed an extra day and gave Odge, my grey dog, a lovely mohawk. Look forward to a post coming soon titled "Paul Calhoun: Future test pilot? No, future dog stylist.

What did I do during the week, besides last minute stuff for the trip to Al?

Well, I decided to go deposit all this foreign money Charlie had laying around. I figured most of it would be expired because of the Euro, but you know what was accepted? Croatian money! That's right! It was worth about $6, score!


Also had some loved ones' birthdays:
May 31: My sister who is 25 (weird how my little sister is now older than I am since I am still 24.....)
May 31: Emily, my "big sister"
June 2: Katy, one of my best friends and bridesmaids
June 2: Sarah, Charlie's sister, who I can't wait to see in Alabama!

Below is me and Katy at the yard house (with some round of guy that paid for the round of drinks we ordered, so we allowed him to be in our picture).


Saturday, my mom and I drove out to Ventura County. We went to a restaurant and met about a dozen of Emily's friends for her birthday celebration and then today we went to her amazing baby shower. I will post about it all later but will leave you with this picture. Her sister in law did all the decor from scratch, including cake pop "trees" - she even baked the cake pops!!!


Okay actually I lied, I will leave you with this picture: me and Shayna!

I'm showing her a picture of the last time I saw her, over a year ago.

See you soon with all my updates :-)

A night downtown

We both love Vegas and no matter where the AF takes us we know we want to end up here (maybe not permanently but for a long time). I know now we're going to get pcs orders within the year, now that I've put it out there for the universe. But we'll be back here.

One thing we dont like about Vegas is its lack of a true downtown where you can around, shop, have a coffee, a beer, etc. Every major city has one and we don't. I know we have the strip etc but there really isn't the down to earth jeans and flip flops bar area, or the places where you can just randomly walk around and explore new stores and restaurants.

The Andersens (Jeff was Charlie's roommate in UPT and are our business partners now) decided to get a babysitter and go out and invited us to join them. SOMETHING MADE CHARLIE GO OUT!!! Thanks Jeff and Allison!  Although it's not the downtown we crave, it was fun and different. There are definitely interesting people there. As we were walking around the arts district Charlie made certain that we agreed on private school for our future children :-)

It's first Friday so they had all the local artists at the arts district. We saw this and thought my parents would like it for their house with the copper.

What do you think mom?

I had a very pink drink that was blood orange and something with champagne:


Picture came out good so I wanted one of me and my man:

Something was funny but I don't know what. Look at what a gentleman holding my jacket!


I like this picture because you can see the Stratosphere in the background.

There was a car show type thing and this van was just too funny:


We wanted to go to fremont and do the zip line but we ended up eating at Hugo's Cellar and got stuffed and then Jeff and Allison had to go home for the babysitter and me and Charlie have to wake up early to go hiking with Nikki at Red Rock. The restaurant is very cute and delicious and although it's not inexpensive, it includes sides and an AMAZING salad and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.

Here is a picture of Jeff and Allison w/their food - Jeff got the smaller of the two options for his steak and I don't think this picture really does it justice.


I was stuffed although my portion was much smaller, I had a seafood trio so Charlie helped and I only had a bite of his steak, so I felt okay. I also had a total vegan lunch so I felt better. Last night I put veggie ground in the slow cooker with several of the green chilis the Mountains left us, one whole onion, tomato paste and two cans of water, one miller light, 1 tbs cumin, 2 tbs chili powder. Cook on low all night. I added one can of black beans and one can of kidney beans today. Yum!


Not sure it's the most aesthetically pleasing picture but it's chili, come on! Katy came over to help finish the bookshelves and she and I couldn't tell it was vegan, although Charlie claims he could. Maybe next time I'll add bacon grease. (oh wait......)

My yogurt died

Well that's not entirely accurate. I tried to make homemade greek yogurt using this recipe and modifying it with a few others I read online.  I bought nonfat milk (half gallon), and microwaved it for 15 minutes (stopping every 5 to stir). I checked with an instant read meat thermometer until the temperature was about 185, and then let it cool to 120. I then stirred in a tablespoon of nonfat greek yogurt in, and let it sit outside for a few hours (covered of course). The temperature it's supposed to incubate in is about 100-110, and the temperature dropped below that, so I moved it to my crock pot. Like an idiot, I put it on low, not realizing that obviously that temperature is high enough to cook chicken (so probably around 200 degrees) and then when I took the temperature after an hour, I reduced it to warm and uncovered it. This morning it was still milk with a few chunks of yogurt. I guess the higher temperature in the crockpot killed the bacteria that needs to spread to make yogurt. Okay, take two going on now - I will report back!

Last night Nick and Jess came over. It was SO nice to see them. They are a wonderful couple. Jess is pregnant and due in the end of August, but unless you look directly at her belly, you can't tell, skinny little thing! She moved here from Germany in November. The other day we went to see the x-men prequel movie with them ( loved the movie!) and last night had them over for a bbq. I marinated chicken and turkey breasts and Charlie grilled, and we had salad, gazpacho (which was a bit too salsa like), and rice "meat balls", which Nick thought were actually meat! Success! I am very excited about the friendship with this couple. My parents joined us for dinner, and then after the four of us played scattegories. We allowed Jess to use German and English to come up with words. Very, very fun.

Yesterday we started cleaning out a lot of the storage in the garage. Phew, what work! We moved my temperpedic mattress up to Adva's bedroom which we are currently sleeping in because the AC in my room is very weak, and it's really hard to get a good night's sleep in this heat. We both slept so well, I love that mattress!

Today, besides fixing yogurt (and by the way Jess told me about a greek curd like cheese called quark which will be my next experiment!!!), I am going to go to the gym, read Water for Elephants, continue to clean out the garage, and clean out my office, because I am moving to a different one on Monday. I had a pretty discouraging week at work last week and just felt very unmotivated, but have snapped out of it. We wanted to go look at more houses tonight when Charlie is home from work but Mike, our realtor (who is amazing!), is busy and so we can hopefully go tomorrow evening.

Next week going to Boston which I am so excited about!

I will update on the yogurt situation soon!