whish list

Every year around tax season I start imagining what I could spend my return on...I always end up using it to pay off my credit card...(or I sign it over to the dentist like I did three years ago).

A girl can dream right?....aaahhh

2009 Honda Civic Hybrid

$16,000

kitchen aid mixer in orange

$275

Martin acoustic guitar

$2000
(This one's been on the list for a few years now...)

polaroid PoGo portable printer with self adhesive pictures
$50 (including photo paper)

perfect portions food scale
$50

Nikon D90 with lens

$1400

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is not a romantic holiday for me. It's a day to celebrate love and hearts and telling others you care for them...I try to do that every day, but I do love Valentine's Day for that reason. Plus, I love making all things crafty. Lately I have been obsessed with making decorative sugar cookies. I have an amazing cookie recipe, but wasn't loving the royal icing recipe it came with. It tasted good, but would turn dull and matte after it dried. A friend of mine told me she used meringue butter cream on hers. This was my first try and I loved it. I can't wait to give these to our friends today. I just use zip lock bags for the decorative frosting and cut a little, tiny piece off the corner to squeeze the frosting out. I use a squeeze bottle to fill-in with the frosting thinned out a little.

Birthday Round-Up

I made these little car cookie pops. They are time consuming.., but they are so cute and they taste really good too.

All of my favorite boys' birthdays are within one week of each other!! Robby, Isaac and my dad.

Robby's birthday decorations.

These were the "goonie bags" as Monet calls them. I used a cookie cutter here as the stencil for the red car. I also found all the Cars pez dispensers and sticker books at Goodwill for a quarter each. Score!! Our Goodwill gets a lot of stuff from Target that didn't sell.

Bowling on Robby's birthday. So much fun. Monet wants to go bowling on her birthday now. My first ball was a strike. Robby said he was worried he might have had to step up his game after that, but it was beginner's luck. Monet almost beat me.

Isaac's cupcakes. These turned out really good. Trying to spend as little as possible, I only invited a few of Isaac's closest buddies and I used a coupon for Frogg's Bounce House. Afterwords, we walked over to Burger King for dinner and cupcakes. On the way home, one of his little friends said, "That was the best party!" The kids were so cute and had so much fun. I had fun too. I love bouncing on the bounce houses and flying down the super steep slides. I didn't get any picture of the actual party because I still don't have a camera...and my phone camera is horrible, as you can see. But, when everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to Isaac, you could see the pure delight in his face. It was so sweet.

I love making those little banners for special occasions. I sent one to my dad for his birthday with some nuts and pictures. After all the running around and birthday prep and celebrating, the house is a disaster and stuffed to the brim with clutter. Whenever I get into a craft or a project, the house work piles up. I can't wait to de-clutter and clean now.

Robby turns 43!!

Isaac and I came home from the beach to find Robby and his best bud out for a little birthday surf. The sun was out and the waves were rolling in perfectly. After he finished work, we went out to dinner and then went bowling. I made him an angel food cake with strawberries. What an awesome birthday. Robby was opening his presents and Monet says, "We should get him bacon!" Ha ha. He's been making bacon everyday so this huge pack we got didn't go bad. She's so funny.

At the park. Our other home away from home.
Isaac hiding Robby during a nap.

surf mama family and other things...

Everything is a jungle gym to Monet. She loves playing on the monkey bars at the park.
Chris and the sunset.



Monet and her little friend, Layla.

One of Isaac's one-eyed grins. P.S.-I'm loving the colored wax on my board. It smells like grape bubble gum and works really well. I was sharing my board with some of the girls who are just learning. It got a huge gash on the rail...I didn't say anything because I didn't want my friend to feel bad, but decided they should probably be using a more junk board or a foam board while learning.


All week, I've been eating this amazing spicy, yellow curry chicken soup I made. I love it and found out it loves me too after discovering this perfectly heart shaped potato in it.

If anyone wants to make it, here's what I did:

Saute small onion and garlic in some olive oil until soft

add cubed chicken & cook until brown

add 1 can coconut milk

add 2 cans worth chicken stock/broth(more or less depending on how thick you want your soup)
(I didn't add any water. I wanted it to be thick)

Add spices to taste(I used 2Tbs of yellow curry, 1tsp chili powder, couple shakes of Turmeric, salt and pepper


add all chopped vegetable and potatoes or rice (whatever you like in your soup. I used carrots, celery and potatoes)

bring to boil, then turn on low to simmer for an hour or less..



My friend Jen (with the wetsuit on the left) snagged her camera just in time for a quick shot of all the surf mamas at Blackies this past week. Love this group. Everyone is so fun and down to earth. It's been super nice and hot lately. Not typical for January, so we are enjoying it. All of us were dying to get together since it had been stormy the week before and it seemed like half of us had colds or at least our kids did.
This is the view of central park from the 3rd story of the funnest slide/jungle gym look-out ever. What a beautiful day. We went here after Monet had been sick last week. We've been pretty healthy this winter. I wonder what a winter without any colds or flues would be like though...I wonder if there's a magical vitamin or mineral that would keep my kids healthy all year long. I managed to be the only one if our family to fight this round of sickies. I feel like I can possibly contribute this to yoga and working. I don't know. I also take probiotics and vitamin C daily with my kids. I use essential oils on all of us too when I think our immune systems are struggling.


In other family news, Isaac has been potty training successfully. I wanted to give up after the 3rd day of him pooping and peeing in his underwear. But, after some encouragement to at least try for a week; he is pretty much potty trained! I do have him in a pull-up most of the time especially when we go to the gym. But, he'll run up to me and say "the pee pee's coming out!!" He is so sweet and so cute and so funny. Getting him to poop in the toilet was a little harder. On one of the first occasions, Robby had sent me a text one night. I think I was out with Monet. Robby said Isaac sat on the toilet for twenty minutes and ate about 20 pieces of candy and finally went poop in the toilet. We were laughing so hard because we had been bribing him with candy.

ha ha ha-

I've been loving this little break in Newport: Blackies. It's so mellow, the water is really clear and there's always a couple longboarders who can surf really well.