Vacation Time: Cozumel Spring Break

One island. 8 days, 7 nights with four fabulous couples. 

 Drinks, memories and sunsets galore. 

One new engagement, a few bumps in the road, and 30 SPF sunscreen. 

Two fancy reservations, one beach shack dinner and too much buffet food.

18 holes of golf and 40 liars dice.

New adventures with old friends. 

Two sea turtles and three rays seen, gallons of salt water drank. 

A few bug bites, scraped knees and books read. 

5 new nicknames and endless new Spanish words.

An absolutely fabulous, relaxing, perfect spring break get-away. 

This trip was exactly what I needed right before I embark on the toughest course of the entire year. A huge thank you to J and our amazing friends for making the trip so special!

(Yes, my spring break was at the end of February. I'm lucky to have great friends who didn't mind. We stayed at Iberostar Cozumel and booked through Apple Vacations for those of you who are curious. We will do things differently next time but it was still a fantastic trip.)

See Ya Later, San Diego I

Literally the first thing that came to mind when thinking of items for our See Ya Later, San Diego list was taking our sweet Ollie boy to the beach. He just loves it there. Off-leash, splashing through the waves, digging for rocks, becoming a sandy, slobbery wet mess. We're super excited to be able to take him to lakes once we move home but there's just no substituting the ocean now is there? So to start our list off right, we ventured to the beach yesterday morning. 

Thing #1 I'll miss about San Diego: sun, sand, waves and sea breeze in February!

He was absolutely pooped for the rest of the day and I am so glad he got to go! Hopefully we'll make many more trips to the beach with or without the pup in-tow before the move. Also, I am seriously LOVING my Nikon D5100 that J got me for Christmas! This is the first time I've used it with my 55-200mm zoom lens and I'm in love with it.

2011 In Review

2011 has been one of those years that I will remember for the rest of my life. I am so happy I decided to do this post because it made me look back at all the pictures, stories and memories I've created in the past year and how special each and every moment was. 

So take a look back with me....

+ Our after-Christmas/New Years vacation to Waikiki on Oahu, HI. I feel so blessed to be able to go to such a beautiful place with someone I love so much. 

 + I celebrated my 22nd birthday (the 4th one celebrated with J) and was spoiled rotten! 

 + Our poor Ollie got horrible blisters on his feet but did so well as they healed and

+ We spent far too long without furniture waiting for the new stuff to arrive

 + J's birthday was spent with friends from out of town, lots of margaritas and days spent relaxing by the pool. 

 + We graduated! It was a long four years with lots of stress, studying, and wondering when it was going to end but I finished my bachelors degree and J finished his masters. 

 + We spent lots of time taking our pup swimming in the ocean. He loves it so much it's hard to get him out. 

+ J and I celebrated our 4 year dating anniversary! I cannot believe how quickly the time has past and how many amazing memories we've created together. I love that man!

 + We got to spend some time back in CO this summer to celebrate the wedding of two of our great friends. While the drive from SD to CO is never fun we wouldn't miss trips like this for anything.

 + After a lot of stressful paperwork, specific deadlines and lots of finger crossing we finally bought and moved into our first house! We have loved being able to do whatever we wanted in the new house and there's nothing quite like home. 

 + We've done lots of work since we moved but it is all so worth it. A yard for our pup to play in and a guest room to host family and friends.

+ Now that we have this amazing new house we decided to host Thanksgiving for my mom and sister. Our turkey was a big success, I made homemade gravy for the first time ever and we spent some time at the beach. Noting says Thanksgiving like the sun and the sand!

+ The holidays are definitely my favorite time of the year and I was so excited to finally be able to decorate outside as well as inside wherever and however I wanted. I can't wait to make holiday traditions in our new home. 

+ And last but definitely far from least.... J and I got engaged on Christmas Day 2011. I promise that I will do a post soon specific to the details about this but lets just say I have never been happier in my whole entire life. I cannot wait to start planning this wedding and continue to grow our lives together!

Thanks 2011.... 

for an amazing, spectacular, whirlwind year that I'll never forget. 

How is is November?

Unintentionally it seems as if I've taken a bit of a blogging-hiatus. I haven't been overly busy, nothing huge has happened in my life nor have I been out of internet/had a broken computer or anything like that. I guess you can say that I've just been enjoying my life away from the computer. Working, tutoring and spending quality time with my little family has been enough for me and I can't say that I'm not happy about it.

We rode our bikes to dinner and enjoyed beers at our new patio table. I've found my all-time favorite drink from The Bucks and Ollie and I spent Halloween at the beach. Nothing says October 31st like sand and sun!

We've been slowly making more updates to our house and I love every one of them. I went to IKEA and got us new bedding and made some custom art for over the bed. We also got custom artwork done by Jeff's talented cousin to hang in the dining room.

We went bowling on a Saturday afternoon, put together a lawn mower together and tried new recipes (all of which have been a success). I started making a Christmas gift list because I'm trying to go all handmade this year and I successfully made some of my first items on said-list. Who doesn't need a key fob, right? Mine coordinates lovely with the inside of my clutch!

Now that it's November (which, by the way, how did that come so quick?) I've started thinking about decorating for the Holidays already. I've been adding to our Christmas decor slowly but surely and every time I walk past the craft room and see all the red and green I get excited about winter. That plus  cuddling under blankets with spiked hot chocolate and a movie with my favorite man when it rains. (Because rain= winter here, in case you didn't know) 

This might be the most content I've been with life in a while. 

And that makes my heart soar. 

Turn Pictures Into Animation

I found this web site.

It's called Gif Ninja,

And it's awesome.

It turns your pictures into an unique animation

And of course I had to try it out

with some shots I took of O-dog running on the beach.

Now go check it out for yourself!

Blueberry Picnic Cake

I'm here again with another fabulous and summery baked good. There seems to be an endless schedule of BBQs, pool parties and beach days this time of year and this treat would surely please everyone who tastes it. Plus, berries are in season right now and it's hard to pass up a good deal at the grocery store.

This ladies and gents is the

Blueberry Picnic Cake

Recipe:

(for 13 x 9in pan)

4 eggs

2 cups + 2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2/3 cup milk

2 pints fresh blueberries, washed and dried

(recipe can be cut in half for 8 x 8in pan)

To prepare, heat oven to 350 degrees and grease pan. Wash blueberries and allow to dry. Separate egg whites from yolks.

Beat egg whites until stiff in medium sized bowl. Gradually add 1/2 cup sugar until blended. Keep this mixture separate until needed in later step.

In separate large bowl cream butter until fluffy. Add salt and vanilla. Gradually add 1 and 1/2 cups sugar. Add egg yolks and beat until light and creamy. Add 2 and 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and milk. Fold in beaten egg whites from before.

Toss clean blueberries in 1/2 cup flour to coat completely. (This keeps them from all falling to the bottom of the pan when cooking.) Fold berries into batter and pour into pan. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar on top of batter.

Bake 50-60 minutes until cake pulls away from sides.

Allow to cool, cut and enjoy!

I cut the recipe in half when I was making it but the instructions are for the full recipe. For example, I only added 1/4 cup sugar to the egg whites where the directions say 1/2 cup. (I hope that didn't confuse anyone, sorry.) Also, I had to show you my fabulous hand mixer that I use for all my baking because frankly, I think the retractable chord is the coolest thing ever! If I can't have one of these big mixers then I'll settle for the cool chord of this one. The only bad thing is that it freaks Ollie out when I use it, oops.

Are you baking anything with the seasons berries yet?

O-Dog Goes To OB

J was out of town for this past weekend so I decided to spend some more quality time with my pup while I wasn't working. On Saturday afternoon we headed to Ocean Beach.

We'd never taken him to this dog beach before but after being there I know we're definitely going back. The beach is situated right where the San Diego River exits into the ocean (I know there's probably a technical term for that but I don't know it) which made for water with no waves perfect for pup swimming. Ollie likes jumping over the waves but never actually swims when we take him to the other beaches and this time he was quite the water dog.

He was obsessed with trying to get the pieces of seaweed from out of the water. He'd bob for them off the bottom and didn't realize that some of them were too deep until after his whole head was submerged. The pieces also made for great throw toys, who needs a tennis ball when you've got seaweed :-)

He ran and ran, up and down the river, in and out of the water and we both had a blast. He is the funniest swimmer (video to come in a few days) and it was great to see him finally do it.

We hung out on the grass near the parking lot for a little while to dry off and drink some water before getting in the car and heading home. Thankfully he never sat down in the sand so we avoided bringing home a sand castle which is always a plus with a fluffy dog.

OB is definitely my favorite dog beach now and I think we're going to go back next weekend to show J Ollie's swimming skills. I love spending time with my O-dog, he's definitely a girls best friend :-)

Have you done anything new lately you'd like to share?

*photos may be clicked to enlarge*