A Little Birdie Told Me...

There is a giant blank space above the bed in the guest room begging for some art work.  I've been on the lookout for some wall art that would go with my black/white, Parisian, damask themed guest bedroom but never really found anything that would be a fit.  I thought about putting some floating shelves with knick-knacks above the bed but we are in earthquake country and our guest bed gets used quite a bit.  I can just imagine a piece of wall art or a shelf full of decorative candles crushing the skulls of my peacefully sleeping guests...I follow several DIY and decorating blogs and came across a post on House*Tweaking where she had this beautiful, large monogram above her TV.  I am currently obsessed with monograms and using letters for decor and decided I just had to have one of these monograms above the giant blank space above my bed in the Master Bedroom.  While searching the website mentioned on House*Tweaking for the perfect letter 'B' I came across this set of decals which finally gave me that 'this is it!' excitement.  These little cages and birdies would be perfect for the guest room.  The best part is that they are not permanent and easy to apply.  If I decide later I don't like them, they peel right off!  Also, they are earthquake proof.  This afternoon I put them up (we have guests coming in tonight and getting the guest room all purdy takes priority over making the master purdy).  It only took about 45 minutes and was super easy.  I'm really happy with the results.  Below are some before and after pics.  You might have to click on the picture to maximize it to really see the decals.  Now, off to get the master nice and monogrammed!


Before




After with Dali Decals

The kit came with lots of extra birdies so I'm contemplating where to put some more of them.  I'll keep you poste!

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?

Will Run 4 Wine

In 2010, I didn't work out and I ate whatever I wanted.  It all started with the house and not having a kitchen to cook in for the first few months and just not having time to workout.  Once we did have a kitchen and I was cooking again, I just didn't care about the working out.  I got into a pattern of laziness.  I knew I had gained some weight and half the clothes in my closet didn't fit me anymore, but even though it depressed me that I wasn't my usual fit self I just didn't really care to do anything about it.  It wasn't until I saw this picture of me on our company facebook page that I actually realized how much weight I had gained.  This picture was taken in late August and it pretty much horrified me.  I realized that Hawaii was just 2 1/2 months away and I did not want to look like a beached whale!  I got back into my healthy eating habits, joined the gym and really started trying to get back into shape.  Weighing myself that first day at the gym was depressing, I had gained 12 lbs but by the time we went to Hawaii in November I had lost half of the weight I had gained.  It was challenging after Hawaii to get out of vacation mode and I kind of stalled with the 'getting in shape' thing until New Years when another team at work challenged my team to a Biggest Loser Challenge.  I took it seriously and dropped another 5 lbs leaving me just 1 lb away from my 'normal weight.'  Once the work challenge ended (my team won by the way), I needed something else to keep me motivated.  My friend Cynthia had an app that posted her running distance and time on Facebook and that gave me an idea.  I called her up and suggested that I go up there for a 5K and she come down here for a 5K.  I looked into races and found one few months away in Paso Robles which is where Cynthia lives.  The Wine Country Runs 5K looked perfect!  I have had a goal of running a 5k without stopping in under 30 minutes for years but have a pattern of signing up for the race and then finding some excuse not to go.  The first 5k I completed in college I came in just over 30 minutes and the 2nd 5K I did a few years ago I had to stop and walk for a few minutes after 2 miles and did not break the 30 minute mark.  Here was another shot at achieving my goal!  I didn't really train, I just incorporated running into my workout regimen once a week.  About 6 weeks ago I decided to see how far I could run without stopping and surprsingly ran 3 miles.  The next few weeks I ran 3.5 miles once a week up until race time.  I've always hated running.  I was a sprinter and I am built for short bursts of speed, any kind of distance was always difficult for me...even when I was an athlete.  I was pleasantly surprised when running 3.5 miles became routine for me and I actually looked forward to my Tuesday runs at Miramar Lake. 



Our crew freezing our buns off before the race

Last weekend Jeff and I packed up the car and headed up to Paso Robles.  My brother Peter and my cousin Amanda who live in the area also decided to join us for the 5K.  The night before the race was spent eating delicious Carbonara Pasta that my brother made for us and drinking a few glasses of wine.  Race time was early so we got up at 6 am to get ready and headed over early to pick up our bibs and find parking.  It was freezing!  When we parked the car Cynthia's thermometer said it was 36 chilly degrees.  
The race started and our group dispersed pretty quickly.  There were so many people it was hard to keep track.  I had no idea if they were ahead or behind me but I had my Ipod and my running playlist going and very quickly got into 'the zone.'  I was surprised how quickly the mile 1 marker came and realized I felt good and was already 1/3 of the way done!  After the second mile the course became unpaved roads and dirt and hilly.  The hills were a little challenging being at the end of the race but I persevered.  There was a large and long and very daunting hill and my legs were finally starting to feel a little tired but when I looked up I could see the finish line.  I could see the timer clock at 28 and knew I had to book it to make it in under 30 minutes.  My sprinter mentality kicked in and I hauled butt up the hill and finished in 29:21, less than a minute behind my brother!  It was pretty neat to hear them announce my name at the finish line and between the endorphins and the high of knowing I just accomplished a goal, I could not stop smiling.



Peter was the first to finish in our crew.  Notice the unemployeed look he is rocking.  Nice facial hair Pete! 

 
I finished next with a time of 29:21.  I actually finished 7th overall for women in my age group!

Cynthia came in next and with a time 10 minutes faster than she usually runs!

I am super proud of my cousin Amanda.  She decided just a week or two before the race that she was gonna do it and started running to prepare.  She ran the whole thing except for a tiny part of the giant hill at the end. 

We were all smiles after the race!

 Did I mention we had shirts made for this wine themed race?  We were Winos With a Running Problem.  We got several compliments on our shirts both during and after the race and had inquiries on how to join our club.

So I kind of like this running thing and think I might want to keep it up.  I have no desire to run anything more than a 5k, but would like to work on improving my time.  Cynthia is down to come to San Diego and run a race here.  Can't wait for the next challenge!

Beautiful Downtown San Diego

I am lucky in that I work in beautiful, never-a-dull-moment, downtown San Diego!  I work on the 11th floor of a high rise right on the edge of the historic Gaslamp District with bars, restaurants and shopping right outside our lobby.  From our building you can see all of downtown, Petco Park, Coronado, The Bridge and The Bay.  Unfortunately I get so consumed at work that I often forget to turn around, look out the window and soak in the beauty that is my city.  A few years ago Andrea and I decided to utilize our lunch time for walking to fit in some exercise and break up the day.  We have a 3 mile loop that takes us 45 minutes, gets us just a little sweaty and burns 260 calories just during lunch!  We've been walking this route 3 or 4 days a week for years and I never get tired of the route.  I decided to take my camera phone with me the other day to capture a little bit of what I see everyday at lunch....

My walk begins in the shadows of the skyscrapers downtown. 

We walk past Dogs in the City and everyday there is a dog or two 'people watching' in the window.  This little guy is always in the window napping

Once I get to PCH it's time to shed the sweater because the first mile is done and the heart is pumping.  The Midway is tourist central and the next mile I'm usually dodging pedi-cabs and avoiding being in the background of pictures.

 

I then stroll through Seaport Village which is full of shops and restaurants and sits right on the water.  The Marina runs along the walking path and is full of yachts.  It's a popular running/walking spot.  I'm beginning to recognize a few fellow walking peeps.

There is also a beautiful view of Coronado. 

The last mile begins with the Convention Center stairs.  First I run up this flight....

And then this flight...

And this is the view from the top!

More from the top of the Convention Center.  The Coronado Bridge is in the background.

I then run down the stairs on the other side and the rest of my walk is through The Gaslamp

The Gaslamp is my last mile and then it is back to work I go!  After I get back to work and clean up I feel accomplished and refreshed and ready for the second half of my day.  I am so lucky to have such a beautiful lunchtime walking spot!