Easter '09

This is the second year in a row that Jerad has rocked my Easter. Early Sunday morning I woke up to a cute little box of my very own DKNY Be Delicious perfume which I have been lusting over for quite some time.
Have you smelled this stuff? Oh.My.

On the one hand, I don't like how we have somehow started this tradition of expensive presents because its really not what the holiday should be about and... just one more thing to remember to do, BUT, I played this year too:



A new bbq grill, grill cleaner, grill cover, some grill baskets, new trimmer, and homemade sweet corn muffins since we don't eat much candy.

I started out planning on getting him the trimmer which he has needed, and was going to make the corn muffins (one of his favorite), but the other stuff just found its way into my cart.

Speaking of the muffins, they ended up being a DISASTER. On Saturday Jerad ended up working and I was trying to bake while listening to the TV and manage to get everything done before I picked him up without him knowing about the "secret Easter muffins." Whelp, I accidentally tripled the corn meal and didn't realize it until I had already added the sugar (turbinado). It was the last of the corn meal and I didn't think I could pick it out and fix the whole thing, so I decided to triple the whole recipe. Ha! This ended up using allll of my eggs, milk, oil, and flour. Thank God I have a big stand mixer now or I don't know how I could have mixed it all.

Here is all 7 cups of just the dry ingredients:


Right in the middle of dealing with all of that, a Kirby vacuum salesman knocked on the door and for some reason I agreed to let him do a demonstration? Luckily Jerad worked a few hours longer than he though he would. Instead of the 18 muffins I had been planning on, I ended up with 12 muffins, 2 loafs of corn bread, and one round corn bread cake. This year the Easter bunny gave away a lot of corn bread.

Sunday morning we headed up to my mom's for her annual Easter shindig. The weather was gorgeous.





It was also Melinda's 22nd b-day.



A bunch of people went on a hike to enjoy the view



Jerad picked me a wild flower bouquet.


Hope you had a wonderful Easter also!

Oh, and our naturally dyed eggs turned out well. We used beets, spinach, grass, onion peels, orange peels and cumin.




Also, I totally had to google "how long do you boil an egg for?" Embarrassing.

Oh little Addy...

My little sister thinks its cute to pretend to be me. So when she spent the night last night, she changed around my "about me" section, and posted a few blogs of her own. So, that's that.

Service Announcment

I was talking about this post. Here are a few more pics for your viewing pleasure tho:



EWWW!!!!

Um. . .this is an apology

So any of you who check my blog regularly might have seen my sister chowing down on some pancakes. I do have to admit they were some pretty good pancakes, but i shouldn 't have blogged it cause i know if some one put a picture of me looking like a tard i would be pretty mad. Just to let you all know she does not have down syndrome. She is actually really pretty and normal. I'm not gonna lie. . . i wish i could have looked so good in my teenage years. So sorry Addy just want to let you know that you are my fave sister:)

How the crap is it Easter already?

That's all I have to say about that.

Also, I'm going into cooking withdraws. We were gone last weekend so I didn't get my fix. This weekend I wanted to make hummus (we luuuuv home made hummus), homemade pita, wheat-thin like crackers, a marinated mixed bean salad, and a bunch of whole wheat pizza dough that we could freeze. We also have cauliflower, maybe soup?

Friday after Jerad gets off work, we're going to dye eggs. We have spinach, beets, cabbage, turmeric, and red onions so we should be able to get a pretty big color variety? Here are a few naturally dyed eggs:

Found on this blog.

Or these beauties:




found here.

Looks a bit better than those store bought dyes eh? There is a list of household natural items you can dye with here.

I have a feeling our eggs will look more like the first picture. Then again, Jerad is pretty crafty so who knows?

One of my coworkers has chickens and brought me a bunch of white and brown eggs today soo... can't wait!

I also ordered fabric (finally) for the quilt Jerad is making for us (with his mom's help) next weekend. Ha, my sentence structure gets better and better! Anyways:

This is what the quilt will look like, only in black and white instead of reds:



(Quilt made by Janet Wickell)

I'm kiiiinda excited about that one:) Also I'm super stoked that Lucy told us to get a jelly roll of fabric so we didn't have to cut out all the strips, yikes!

This weekend is bake-fest '09 and Easter.

Next weekend is quilt-fest '09 and bbq with friends at our house. Lovin it!

San Diego trip of fun

We loaded up bright and early and hit the road.

For the drive down we listened mostly to The Zack Brown Band who we saw for my 24th b-day, and Randy Travis who we saw for Jerad's 26th b-day.

There was some loud singing and foolishness involved.

We stopped at an Island Burgers and had grilled veggie tacos:


Then it was time for the Flower Fields!

Since it was Bluegrass day, we chillaxed and listened to a few bands:


Then got some fresh squeezed lemonade and kettlecorn and walked around. There were so many gardens of flowers, sweet pea mazes (the smell was soooo delish!), and a ton of things to look at. But I came for the 50 acres of ranunculus:





We walked around for a few hours looking at all the flowers, craft booths (there was also a craft fair going on) and just taking pictures. Fun times.





Then back in the car for MORE driving. We got to San Diego an hour or so later thanks to traffic and checked into our hotel. I really wanted to go to Mexico since we were only 4 miles away, but Jerad reminded me he still didn't have a passport. Since we have been dating, him not having a passport has stopped him from going with me to Panama, stopped us from going to Canada, and now Mexico. yet, still no passport. Get your damn passport!

We immediately started making a million plans. Lets take the ferry to Coronado Island! Lets eat at such and such place! Lets get in the pool! Lets find a club!

Then we remembered we had been in the car for over 7 hours, were tired, and are inherently kind of lazy.

So instead we stayed in the room all night. We ordered a pizza AND chicken wings, and ate it all. Hey, we were on vacation right? About 11 o'clock Sex In The City the movie came on which Jerad had never seen. So obviously that had to happen too...

After a lazy night, we woke up and drove to San Diego Harbor for our brunch cruise!



The weather was PERFECT.

The carpet had stars:


The food was amazing.

The Mimosas were endless.

And it lasted over 2 hours.




I wish I took more pics of the inside of the ship cause, gorgeous. After that we headed back up north and towards home. We stopped at a Whole Foods and had some sandwiches made planning to eat at the Lake Balboa park in Van Nuys and look at the cherry trees which are all blooming.

It was kind of disappointing.

There was some HUGE Persian concert going on, roads were blocked off, most of the park was closed, LAPD was there...you couldn't go on the lake, there were people EVERYWHERE. Bleck. It was still beautiful tho.





We found an empty table and tried to eat our sandwiches in peace. Hmph. A flock of Persian kids decended on us, sat at our table, drew on it with chalk, fought... their ¿dad? came over and instead of asking them to leave, gave them more chalk.

We gave up and left.

All in all the trip was SUPER fun and I can't wait to go back to Bluegrass day next year! I hope tp make it an annual event:)

tweet tweet

I did it.

I signed up for twitter. I was watching The Colbert Report and he was interviewing one of the twitter co founders and it pretty much cracked me up into opening an account.

So, I'm new and needy and need more people to follow. Help me.

Thanks.

Dear Jerad,

I went to Ross on my lunchbreak today to pick up a new tart/quiche pan. You know, for that tomato tart that we both like so much.

The good news is, I found a pan. And it was only $6. Yeeaaayyy!

The bad other good news is, all these other dishes just JUMPED into my cart! I really can't understand it either. One minute, I was looking at a mug thinking about how nice it would be to sip my cappuccino out of in the morning. Because of COURSE if I had this mug I would like, totally, make cappuccinos for us every day right?

Anyways, so I'm in Ross, happy that I found what I was looking for, admiring this mug, when all of a sudden these two ladies swoop in and start admiring the dishes too. Well babe, I just didn't have a choice but to grabthemall right? I mean, there wasn't time to think about it, because if I waited, I could have missed out! I didn't have time to stop and think that they only had service for 4 and we clearly need 8-12. I didn't have time to process that we already have a full set of service for 12 every day china, 2 service for 12 fine china sets, and a service for 6 Mikasa stoneware square dishes. Because you see, dishes are my weakness. For some girls its shoes, or handbags. For me its dishes. And they were puuuurdy.

I know you'll like them because they are stoneware. Which is much manlier than the china we were using before.

The other good news is, the whole purchase totally fit in our monthly budget!!! If you're having trouble finding it, just look in the "gas" section, and the "food" section ledgers. I used gas to go to the store, and we eat food on dishes right? Thanks for understanding. Besides, the less money we have left for food, the less time we'll be spending grocery shopping right? And our rice and beans will look soooo yummy on these new dishes. Cross my heart.

Your [normally] fiscally responsible gf,
Steph

PS, since I went through all the trouble of going to Ross (which is a chooore) to get the pan, its all you at the market tonight buddy. I'll email you the shopping list. xoxo

I'm finally waking up...

... its 2:00 in the afternoon. I've been at work since 7am, but I'm just now waking up. Oh internet, we had a busy weekend! I'll post pictures and what not later, but gosh it was fun!

Spending the weekend away together made me so thankful for Jerad. Not in an ooey gooey "I can't imagine my life without him, he completes me in every way, for the rest of our lives everything will be roses. And rainbows. Maybe some unicorns?"

Cause honestly, I could live without him. And he could live without me. Our very existences are not dependent on each other. I know that he doesn't "complete me," because I am completely my own person who is capable of taking charge and care of my own life. Also we've been dating 3yrs and 4 months now and I have yet to see a single flippin unicorn.

However, although I'm sure we could both go on to live happy, healthy, full lives without each other... why in the world would we EVER want to? This weekend I was reminded how much FUN we are together, and can have together. There is nothing as therapeutic as being trapped in a car for 7 hours with no distractions.

We made fun of each other, sang loudly, made a million plans and just got to be GOOFY. Which is nice, because in our "real lives" there just isn't enough time for that.

I LOVE how we have known each other for so long. I am so thankful that we got to be friends for 7 years before we started dating. We got to see each other grow up. Literally. I have known Jerad since I was 13 years old, and been friends with him since I was 14. Its so nice to be driving down the road and point out a Borders that I helped remodel when I was 19 and him to remember me doing it. Or pass an exit and say "that's where Jane lives!" and him to know just who Jane is even though we haven't spoken in three years.

It is such a relief to be with someone who has seen me at the happiest, saddest, angriest, hurtest (yes that's a word:), at the best and worst times in my life and who just.gets.me.

Someone who gets me enough to know how much more excited I would be to get a Kitchenaid for Valentines Day than a pair of diamond earrings. Someone who knows I would rather camp than stay in a hotel if possible, and who likes camping even more than I do (good thing too cause one of us need to be able to build fires and work lantern, and its not me!). Someone who doesn't care when I randomly go get a foster dog. Twice. And then decide to keep one. Someone who can consider a "date" taking our dogs to the beach and watching them play. Because really, it doesn't get any better than that.

So, we might not be all huggy/kissy/licky faced all the time(although that has been known to happen), but I am dating my best friend. And he kind of likes me too. How cool is that?

*disclaimer: I'm not trying to say just because I'm dating my best friend everything is 24/7 peachy. Jerad is known on many occasions to be an asshat. And I can be quite the bitch occasionally not 100% perfect girlfriend myself.

The reason I keep him around....

Jerad is rocking my socks off lately.

Besides kicking our house into shape (last night he finished the heating and AC in the back of the house, woot woot!), he is taking us on a mini va-cay this weekend.

Saturday morning we are driving down to Carlsbad to go to Bluegrass Day at The Flower Fields. Concerts, and 50 acres of ranunculus flowers, one of my favorites!


We'll spend the night in San Diego, and then the next morning, are doing a San Diego Harbor champagne brunch cruise.


Since boats are one of Jerad's fav things, and breakfast is one of my fav things.... this will be basically the best thing ever.

After that we are leaving and heading back up Van Nuys to Balboa Park, home of the 2000 cherry trees which are all blooming.

The lake there also has paddle boats, kayaks and all sorts of other goodness.

I am soo excited because it has been awhile since we've taken a trip just the two of us. I guess since my birthday in August? Also Jerad planned the whole thing by himself, usually it is the other way around.

We waited until there was enough saved up (left over from previous months) in our budget for gas, "entertainment," food, and spending, so the whole trip is sort of free. That makes it even sweeter!

April Fools

Duh.

Weird news

I got this in my email today:

But my birthday is not until August?




















Also:


I know that's really zoomed in, but it says "pregnant." Hmm.

I Like You

From I LIKE YOU
--Sandol Stoddard Warburg

And I like you because when I am feeling sad, you don't always cheer me up right away. Sometimes it is better to be sad.
You can't stand the others being so googly and gaggly every single minute.
You want to think about things.
It takes time.

I like you because if I am mad at you, then you are mad at me too.
It's awful when the other person isn't. Phooey.
They are so nice and hoo-hoo you could just about punch them in the nose.

I like you because if I think I am going to throw up, then you are really sorry.
You don't just pretend you are busy looking at the birdies and all that.
You say, "maybe it was something you ate."
You say, "same thing happened to me one time."
And the same thing did.

If you find two four-leaf clovers, you give me one.
If I find four, I give you two.
If we only find three, we keep on looking.

Sometimes we have good luck and sometimes we don't.

If I break my arm and if you break your arm too, then it is fun to have a broken arm.
I tell you about mine; you tell me about yours.
We are both sorry.
We write our names and draw pictures.
We show everybody and they wish they had a broken arm too.