Beauty in our Backyard

A little late on my blogging...

Last Saturday the hubs and I headed to the Huntington Library & Gardens in San Marino. I'd been here a couple of times back in college back in the [cough] 90's [cough]. The hubs has never been and I've always wanted to take him there. So we finally went. Last Saturday was a beautiful weekend in So. Cal and the perfect opportunity to take advantage and head out to The Huntington. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the day




We enjoyed ourselves so much we opted to purchase an annual membership. So for the next year we can head out there anytime and as often as we want. :-)

January 20, 2009

What an amazing day in our country's history. A moment that I hope one day to tell my children and grandchildren about. NFT.

Home Cookin'

So in the hopes of eating in more and saving some extra $$ I planned out this past week's previous dinner menus. Sadly, I didn't accomplish this 100% as I had hoped. But not too shabby. Out of 7 days, we successfully ate in 5 of those days.


Sunday - Spaghetti. Pretty much a staple in our household and I cook this at least once a month.

Monday - Sweet & Sour meatballs. This was a recipe I had never prepared before. The sauce was tasty but the meatballs were meh. That was my fault. I cheated and used the frozen pre-cooked meatballs rather than making my own. Next time I'll have to go ahead and make them myself.

Tuesday - cheat day. :-( I picked up dinner on the way home.

Wednesday - Chicken w/ stuffing and mushrooms. This was also a new recipe I tried this week. The hubs seemed to like it so I'll have to make this again in the future.

Thursday - was a repeat of Wednesday. We had so many leftovers and the hubs didn't mind having it a second night.

Friday - cheat day again. Picked up dinner at Rubio's.

Saturday - Roasted Pork Loin w/Mushroom Risotto. The pork was tasty as was the mushroom risotto. But don't think I made the risotto from scratch. I cheated with a frozen package of the stuff from Trader Joe's.

This is this week's menu. Hopefully I'll manage to be successful this time around.

How do I spell relief?

For the past month and a half I have been in agony and pain with severely dry and chapped lips. The chapping (is that even a word) was so bad that whenever I opened my mouth I could feel the skin on the corners of my mouth pulling and ripping apart. I tried every imaginable lip balm out there as well as vaseline. Nothing was working. Until one of my patients mentioned "how about vitamin e". Duh! Why didn't I think of that sooner? Bought a bottle of vitamin E pills over the weekend, popping a capsule open and rubbing the oil all over my lips. Not very attractive looking but it's doing the trick. At least I don't have the need to pull my lip balm out every 5 minutes. I'm hoping this thing clears up by the weekend.

Planning Ahead

I've decided that I need to plan ahead when it comes to making our meals. More often than not I throw in the towel when it comes to preparing our meals and end-up ordering take-out or going out to eat. This gets old after awhile. So I bought this little menu planner for our fridge and am going to make more of an effort. This will definitely be much easier on our wallets. The plan is to still include my staples in there that I cook on a regular basis but also try some new recipes. The plan is also to do all the grocery shopping on the weekend so I won't need to worry about having to pick up anything after work. So here's my menu for the week and we'll see how things turn out by the end of the week. There's a "?" by Saturday because we usually eat out on Saturdays. so that will be my day off. ;-)

Resolutions for 2009

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions but decided this year I would. So here goes:

1) Get in better health - I've definitely gained post-wedding weight and need to get back on track with my eating and exercising on a regular basis. The hubs and I have talked about this and if and when we decide to try having kids it would be best for me to be in good health before I get pregnant.

2) Give golf another chance - The hubs is a HUGE golfer. When we first started dating I knew nothing about the sport and learned a lot from him. He's taught me the basics and I have my own set of clubs he gave me years ago. Unfortunately they've been collecting dust in the garage. I'd like to give it a try again.

3) Learn to take better pictures - No dreams of being a professional photog here but the hubs does have DSLR and I'd like to learn how to use it so I can take better pictures.

4) Try out different restaurants - This is a continuation of something the hubs and I have started doing for the past few months. We get in the habit of going to our usual restaurants and know we're missing out on some great places. So our plan has been to try out at least 1-2 new restaurants per month.


This is the list I've come up with so far so we'll see how things go as the year progresses.