The Eat/Drink Project

You might remember my blog from back in March when I purchased some letters from Michaels.  Well I finally finished painting them today.  I just bought some black spray paint from good ol' Home Depot and put a few coats on.  Because of the shapes of the letters some creative techniques were employed to get the nooks and crannies without spray painting myself but they were very easy to do and I'm really pleased with how they turned out!  Here are some pics, I'm not 100% sold on whether I like the words on the window as they are in the pic but for now that is their new home.  We also finally got around to hanging some art in the kitchen and putting up the candle sconces I found on clearance at Target a year and a half ago.  Now we just need to paint the door that leads to the garage, paint the trim around the door and paint the crown molding above the cabinets.  I'm also purchasing one of those cool leather storage benches like this one to put under the Eat/Drink window.  It will be used as extra seating when we are entertaining and it will also be used to store all of our outdoor (plastic) plates, silverwear and wine glasses.  During the summer we eat on the patio most nights so all the summer utensil wear will come in handy!  A couple of cute throw pillows on the bench should complete the look (and hide the fact it is storage)!

Ignore the ugly speaker wire.  oops!



the vintage booze posters and candle sconces we recently hung



Does the right window look too bare now?

33



I titled this post 33 because that is how old I turned on April 29th.  I think.  Whenever someone asks me how old I am I actually have to do the math  because I can't remember if I am 31, 32...When Rosa was visiting me a few months ago she mentioned she was 31 and I believed her but later we realized that she was actually 32 and had a good laugh.  I guess after you turn 30 it's either not as important to keep track or all those brain cells you killed in college finally catch up with you.  I'm going to guess its a combo of both for me.  Anyways, I digress.  My birthday was on a Friday this year and I decided I wanted to take the day off.  Lucky me, Will and Kate decided to have their royal wedding on my birthday and since I was off, I decided I might as well get up at 3 am and watch it live.  So that is how my birthday started off.  Around 7 am I woke up off the couch (I fell asleep sometime after their 2nd kiss on the balcony) and crawled back into bed with just enough time for Jeff to kiss me goodbye before he headed off to work.  I slept in and awoke to a beautiful, sunny day and decided it was the perfect day for some shopping.  I was in desperate need of new work clothes in my new, smaller size so I headed to UTC for some major retail therapy.  I decided I need to do more small shopping trips rather than these once a year large ones.  Dropping $600 in one hour on work clothes made me feel super guilty, for about 20 minutes.  But dang, I've been looking good at work lately!  That evening I met up with Jenny Mae, Jamey and Andrea for happy hour followed by sushi and fro-yo.  Perfect ending to a perfect day.

Ponte Winery

 

The next day we hopped in the Coleman-mobile and headed to wine country.  We had a work party in the afternoon and it was just a quick trip to pick up their wine shipments but we enjoyed some incredible wine at the two wineries we stopped at.  Temecula is just beautiful and of course has a special place in my heart since I got engaged and married there.  After wine tasting we knew we needed some food in our bellies as we were heading to a work party in Escondido that was going to have a lot of wine, and we were already pretty toasted.  We stopped at EZ Take Out and let me tell you, it makes In-N-Out look like friggin' McDonalds.  It was heaven in my mouth.

EZ Takeout.  Mmmmm....

After a good long day of drinking we headed back to the Boeder Abode.  Immediately upon walking into the kitchen from the garage I noticed something was amiss.  In the past few weeks we had purchased a significant amount of wine and because we had no place to put it (all of our wine hutches were already full) I lined them up on the hutch.  There were two empty spots in the line up that had not been there when we left that morning.  The funny thing is, I had posted this picture of the wine lineup on facebook that morning:

I kept telling Jeff  "someone has been in our house and they took the Rombauer!"  I told Jeff I was going to hop on facebook to study the picture to see if I could figure out if anything else was missing.  Jeff kept laughing and telling me to look to the left.  I just kept yelling 'they took the Rombauer!'  In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I was overserved.  Finally after Jeff telling me to look to the left 5 times I did and sitting there with a big red bow on top was a new wine fridge with our Rombauer Chardonnay safely inside.

Jeff had bought me this fridge a few weeks earlier and had his sister come to the house while we were out to set it up and put in a few bottles of wine.  What an awesome surprise!  Needless to say I was very relieved that there were no wine thieves roaming Mira Mesa and very excited that I had a new home for our wine!  We now have 3 wine hutches and a wine fridge.  We've come a long way from when Jeff and I first started dating and he told me he didn't care for wine!  I also had a package from Goldie and John which included a gift certificate to my fave bar in South Bay LA, Gasser Lounge.  This place is awesome and the owner/bartender happens to love Goldie and John.  It's a Johnny Cash bar!  The gift certificate is actually a painted can of PBR.  I also had a package from my Uncle Mike that contained beautifully framed pictures of my grandparents from when they were young.  Birthdays have never really been a big deal for me and I usually could care less about celebrating but I do have some awesome friends and family who will never let a birthday of mine get by them without some fun times. 

My grandparents and a Polaroid of me as a babe.

Gift Cert for Gasser Lounge

Will Run For Wine Part II

What better way to celebrate achieving a goal like running a 5K in under 30 minutes than to hop in a limo and drink the best beverage on earth....WINE!!!!  We went to 4 different wineries in Paso Robles and it seemed each one was better than the last.  My judgment may have been impaired though....


Jeff and Cyn in the limo




The owners of Per Cazo.  Their tasting room is their house!



It ended up being a gorgeous day



This butterfly was nice enough to pose for me




The gang and our limo driver, Alex



After wine tasting we headed down to the lake to enjoy some time on the dock and enjoy the overflowing lake.  It was a good day.

A Melancholy May

The last three weeks have been busy with Easter, my birthday and tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo followed by Mother's Day.  While this is all fun stuff, each one of these dates reminds me of the transitions in my family that took place over the last year.  Easter was often spent with my Grandma.  Her favorite flower was the Easter Lily and every year one of her neighbors or a member of her congregation would buy her one of the beautiful, odd smelling flowers.  When I'd go over she'd be on 'lily watch' checking the progress of it going from a closed bud to a beautiful, star shaped flower.  My grandma was also the queen of canned ham and to me Easter and ham go hand in hand.  In an email my Uncle Mike mentioned how seeing a canned ham at the grocery store choked him up and that he felt silly.  I told him I felt the same way. 

My birthday was super fun.  I took the day off and got up at 3 am and watched the royal wedding live.  I watched the wedding of Princess Di when I was 3 years old and became obsessed with her after that.  I even had Princess Di paper dolls as a kid and remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard she had died in a car accident.  Some people think the royal family is silly, I think it is a modern day fairytale.  After the wedding and the kisses on the balcony I crawled back into bed and slept in.  The rest of the day was spent shopping, we went to happy hour and sushi with the crew and I got to spend some quality time with the hubby.  Saturday we went wine tasting in Temecula and Sunday we spent the day doing some spring cleaning around the house and got the patio ready for BBQ season.

Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo and usually a reason to celebrate with friends.  This year I will skip that and instead hit the gym and come home and make fajitas for me and Jeff.  I will also think of my Uncle who passed away a year ago on May 5th and remember the phone call that night from Amanda telling me he was gone and the next day going over to my grandma's to be with my family.  One of the most painful memories I have is that of my grandma in tears after being told she had lost a son to cancer.  Incidentally, May is Melanoma Awareness month. 



My cute little Grandma


This year while picking out Mothers Day cards I still skimmed the ones for grandmothers although I no longer have one to buy a card for.  My Uncle is going over to my Aunt Pat's for the day which makes me feel better.  As sad as I am about my first Mothers Day without my grandma around, I am so excited for the friends and family that became moms this year and will be celebrating their very first Mothers Days as mommas!  I also have my own fabulous mom to honor as well as two mother in laws.  It will be a good day.

Me, Jeff and my Grandma on our wedding day 9/07/08

So this post was a little melancholy, but that has been my mood for the past few weeks.  As they say, this too shall pass and before long I'll be my happy self again.  Sometimes it feels good to be sad, it makes the times you are happy that much more vibrant and joyous.  My grandma firmly believed that death was not the end and told me that someday we'd all be together again.  Whether its true or not its a beautiful thought and I'll hold onto that for now. 



May is also th anniversary month of my Papa's passing



My family including my Grandma (front) and Uncle Steve (3rd from top right)
How cute is it that she is holding Jeff's hand?