Blackberry Goodness

I love tasty desserts.  I try so hard to not eat a lot of sweets....but some things in life are not worth passing up, life is too short!  This dessert is one of those things.  Angel food cake, marionberry pie ice cream, and blackberries on the side...melt in your mouth goodness!!!  Saturday night Brent and I got together with two of our good friends, Mike and Juliane.  We topped off our night with this little number.  What's your favorite dessert?  I LOVE hearing new ideas!!! Please share!
 

Weekly Gratitude

I was inspired by You Say it Best to do this little exercise. Throughout my 24 years here on earth I have learned it's extremely important to tell others around you, and those who are important to you how much you appreciate them, and value the things they do.  A little gratitude goes much father than we think! Plus, I have a feeling it will open my eyes to even more things I take for granted, that I should not, life is too short to let the positives go unrecognized!

-Running...I may loathe it some days when I'm feeling sluggish or grumpy, but after a solid run I always feel refreshed, revitalized, and have a clear head.  I haven't realized it until now, but I use it as my meditation time.  I'm alone with my thoughts, I can focus on me, and decompress.  

-Audio books...most of my friends now that I am a "reader".  I love a great epic novel full of adventure, mystery, magic...etc.  Not until recent, I have always physically read my books.  But, Brent suggested a few books to me that he thought I may enjoy.  One of them being, "Outliers".  He had it on his itunes (since he only listens to books) and had me sync it up the last time I updated my phone.  I found listening to a book was fantastic.  I could listen to and from work (and at lunch), within 5 days I was done!  It was calming and was able to "read" two books at once. 

-Hawaii Five-O...this show makes me so happy.  Not because it's the best produced of all time, or most mysterious, or extremely intriguing...to be honest, it's because it takes me back to Hawaii in an instant.  I first think, WHY did my parents EVER move back to the mainland.  Secondly, I close my eyes and there I am...laying on Kamaole 3 with Brent, our home away from home. 

-my sister...she is amazing.  There are no other words for her.  She just graduated with her second degree...BSN in Nursing.  Not only is she brilliant, she's a fabulous sister.  We have 13 years between us, but I never felt too young, juvenile or out of place around her.  She has always always made me feel special, and now that I'm older we connect on many more levels.  This winter she and I, along with her husband were able to coach a basketball team and it was a blast.  We both played for the same coach, same school etc...but never together.  It was fun and exciting to collaborate our personal strengths and put them into a team.

-personal challenge: In honor of weekly gratitude...call, text, or send a card to a friend/family member and let know how much you appreciate them!  A little of that can go a long way. You never know who needs to feel appreciated or just needs a friendly hug or smile. 

I love food.

I'm sure there have been sandwiches made that have basil, pesto, mozzarella, chicken, tomatoes on them, but the one I whipped up last night on a huge slice of ciabatta bread was to die for! 

Ingredients:
Loaf of ciabatta bread (I bought mine at Trader Joe's), basil leaves, avocado, mozzarella, tomato, grilled chicken breast, pesto, mayo, salt, and pepper.


Mix two tablespoons of basil based pesto with one tablespoon of mayo.  I added a bit of salt and pepper, mainly more pepper...I like things with a kick!  While I was making the mixture I had the chicken preparing...I seasoned with chicken with onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.  Also, make sure your ciabatta bread, tomato, mozzarella, and avocado are sliced. Then spread your pesto mixture on both sides of the bread and layer up the sandwich! It was a menagerie of fabulous flavors, messy!, but delicious!!!


Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! I hope you wore green, I sure did!!! This Irish girl couldn't resist :-)

March Madness and Vino!

Yesterday was delightful.  Minus the arctic conditions in my office, and the monsoon situation outside! When I ran errands at lunch I thought I might blow away, thank GOODNESS everything calmed down and there were no tornadoes in West Linn.

After work I was able to meet up with Courtney for HH.  We had a delicious spread at Bugatti's and a sinful dessert. Yummmm.  I think I've hit my chocolate quota for the week! 

As promised, Brent arrived home with a surprise for me!!! The sweet man bought me one of my FAVORITE bottles of wine, Winters Hill Pinot Noir and a very sweet card (the kid made me tear up!) I'm a BIG wine fan so I was pumped!  The best part is, I didn't know he had brought it home until 15mins after he arrived.  He had set it up and hid it sort of on our fireplace mantel.  I was milling around the house minding my own business, we sit down to relax on the couch and then I saw it!!! I shot up with excitement hahaha, he got a good laugh out of it.  But, he was thrilled I was so happy and yes, surprised!

MARCH- The madness is officially here...tomorrow (as well as St. Patrick's day)!!! I filled out my bracket this morning; I'm ready to go.  Not that I'll be watching many of the games...since Brent and I have opted out of cable.  I've honestly only been following UofO (duh) and Vanderbilt.  Now that UofO will not be in the tourney (big sad face), I want Vandy to win it! For the sole reason that Brad Tinsley plays on the team and I love him dearly, like a brother.  His sister is one of my bestest of friends, we're more like sisters, since we've been friends since "the womb", and Brad is like a little brother. GO FUZZ!

Shamrock!

SHAMROCK RUN! Was on Sunday, March 13th.  It was a lovely rainy Portland day for 15k race!  Kelly and I were water bottled up and ready to go.  We were especially excited to cross the finish line because the "finisher medals" were sweet beer bottle openers! Here are a few pictures from the event.  My mom was amazing and stood outside in yucky conditions at the finish line, camera in hand, and orange slices in the other.  Despite the fact that it was FREEZING after we finished it was very fun and I enjoyed race, even though the OHSU hill tried to kill me. 

On a different note, last night was Brent my anniversary. :)  The poor man didn't get released from Academy until 10pm!!! He was not thrilled with it. It's good we did our celebratory dinner on Saturday night!!!  However, I had still made him a delicious meal, ravioli's, because I wanted something yummy and a little special.  He wanted to bring a surprise home last night, but the length of the class prohibited him from that :(....he told me I get my surprise tonight.  I love surprises!  I'm excited already for tonight when he gets home!!!  To the left is little snap shot of the home made garlic bread I made last night.  I'm going to toot my own horn on this one....it turned out so FREAKING GOOD!  I honestly didn't have much of a direction on how to go about making this.  BUT, a little research mixed with my genius, tahhh dahhh! Amazing garlic bread.  Amazing enough for Brent to say, where in the heck did you buy this, this is soooooo good!  And with a huge grin I proudly said, I bought the bread plain at Trader Joe's, and did the REST myself.  He was extremely impressed.  He told me the dinner I made last night was so delicious that he would fight for my food. Hahahahahaha.  He broke it down in terms of: If there was one serving left, and I wanted some, and someone else wanted to try and eat some...I would fight them for it.  Oh his chivalry. hahaha.  

 
One more little tid bit.  A sad thing happened to me last night.  I was at Macy's checking out to leave and the teller (young teenage girl) looks at me and smiles, then says: "Aren't you excited for Spring Break?! Do you have any plans?!"  I wasn't sure how to read this comment.  One of two things took place...both of which could be negative or positive....1. I look like I'm still in high school. (could be good, or could be bad?) 2. High school girls now look older than they should ie: 24ish? (most likely not good---at least not for them). Or....3. The girl asking the question was just an idiot (not good for her).  I'm not sure which scenario I want it to be, I'm going to go with, I look youthful and high school girls wear a lot of make up these days....and give the dumb high school girl the benefit of the doubt on her intelligence...? hahaha.  Either way, I was bent out of shape because I do NOT get a Spring Break. LAME. 
 

Cake Pops!

Let me start by saying...I LOVE Starbucks.  If I had the budget, I would be there every day. No exaggeration.  And now, they have CAKE POPS.  If you have not tried one of these delicacies I suggest you start now.  I got the Rocky Road cake pop today.  And, OH MY GOSH....it was decadent.  They have a fabulous recipe and I adored it.  Clearly chocolate is a definite avenue to my heart.  I cannot resist me some GOOOOOODDDD chocolate!

Words and..... Police Chases?

I tried to read often, not always to do I make it to my book in the evenings...but lately I've been plugging away.  I'm on my way to finishing the Lord of the Rings trilogy and it's been great.  Even though I'm not done with with Return of the King (book 3) I have to admit the Hobbit, the first book before the trilogy, is my favorite.  It's altogether a fabulous written series and Tolkien is a master of his art.  I'm excited to keep on so I can start something new, I always love a fresh story or adventure!  If only I had all the free time I needed/wanted on my hands.....I could read and work out all day long!  Odd combo, but I love both, and if I could get paid to work out and read, I would have been a millionaire LONG time ago. Dang it...where do you get job with that description?

I've also been playing Words with Friends a lot lately...maybe I just like learning new words, or I'm distracted all the time at work, or....I have a lot of free time on my hands?! Ummmm I'm not sure which, maybe a little of all three? I'm going to go ahead and say I like a challenge and like learning new words.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it! Ha :)   In between the Words with Friends moves I've been playing tonight I've been listening to the live police/fire radio feed Brent has playing since we heard about 100 (maybe 4) police cars ZOOM past our house in pursuit of  possible felon dumbshit running from the law.  Now the police are gaining on him, wait....he threw something out his window....weapon?, now they're seizing his car and puncturing the tires with a road block, the car is on fire, drug dogs were let loose to sniff the car...it's a shit show out there, this guy is in deep.  He was being pursued from Hwy 43 all the way to the Carmen Dr. exit on 1-5!!! Idiot.  In between that loony parade, I've been making hard boiled eggs.  Geez, I lead a SUPER exciting life, I know you're jealous. Duh, I would be if I were you. Who doesn't want to play words with friends, listen to a police chase, and boil eggs on a Tuesday night? That's right, everyone wants to do that. 

UPDATE: Click on this link to the story of the dumb dumb I was rambling about.  

Hall Pass

This weekend was great and it went by too fast!  Friday night a bunch of us got together for dinner, we were supposed to go to Toro Bravo; but the wait was over an HOUR long and we weren't willing to wait.  Graham rescued the evening and suggested Mint820 which was right down the road from Toro Bravo.  To our surprise the venue was just what we were looking for, and the food/drinks were even better!  Tessie and I decided it was necessary that we try as many of the cocktails on the menu as possible, each and everyone looked amazing and they were extremely unique. They also offered pepper vodka if you wanted a little kick in your cocktail, and it was worth it, I would say pepper vodka has turned into one of my new favorite things! 

On Saturday evening all of us got together and saw Hall Pass.  OMG, it was hilarious...really awkward, and there were quite a few, Noooooooooo don't show that moments; ESPECIALLY the girl sneezing moment, BARF.  But altogether, very funny!  I'm also looking forward to the Adjustment Bureau...maybe this coming Friday we can check that one out?!   

 

Hello Friday, I'm so happy to see you again.  So far so good....I got a mocha this morning and now I'm finishing up any and all loose ends at work so I have a wonderful stress free weekend.  Tonight we're going to dinner at Toro Bravo.  It sounds delicious and came highly recommended to me...I hope it lives up to it's reputation!  I will make sure to update about our dining experience, just in case you would like to dine there as well!  Happy Friday and Happy Weekend :)
 

Thirsty Thursday?

I know, wishful thinking.  Now that I'm a real person there isn't Dollar Beers on Wednesdays, or Thirsty Thursday doesn't exist, nor do those two events pop up in my vocabulary for any real purpose other than to reminisce about fabulous college memories......sigh.  "You are at TAAAYYYYLLLOOORRRSSSSS with DJ Simi!" Ok ok I'm back!

Instead of dancing the night away, this eventful Thursday evening I'm looking forward to making dinner for Brent and I, and getting my hair cut, woo hoo! Since today has been SO exciting, I have also been dinking around thinking about things that I really enjoy. Here are just a few...

1. Red wine
2. Pink Lady apples
3. Brent's fake monster noises he makes before bed (we kid there is a monster under the house).
4. Painted finger nails.
5. Fresh coffee 

What do you really enjoy?  I believe it's the little things in life, there's always a reason to smile. 

HAPPY THURSDAY!