pink party

in high school a bunch of the girl friends used to have pink parties on new years eve. it was always at natalie's house, and she and her mom are both pretty crafty/stylish so they went all out decorating. 

 we went bowling in 2004.

six years later, 5 of the original 7 of us are married. one has a baby. 

i made little favors just for fun with the everlasting japanese masking tape. i've used it on 1 million birthday cards, envelopes, etc, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. i could cover texas in japanese masking tape and still have some leftover i bet.

happy new year a little early, pink party style!

creative every day

i'm not big on new year's resolutions because i've never been good at doing something every single day (except blogging and brushing my teeth), but i found this blog that asks people to do something creative every day, and that's something i can get behind.

gardening counts.. so on slow days, i can always count watering the garden and inspecting my baby plants for pests and progress. the lettuce in the sunny spot, by the way, is amazing. it's rained in austin the last two days, and apparently a couple days last week while we were gone, and the lettuce has quadrupled in size. it's amazing and encouraging since everything else has been at a standstill. except the turnip, which seems to be loving the cooler temperatures.

lights and music

any road trip that begins in texas must include bbq, so on our way to new orleans, we stopped for lunch at meyers bbq for chopped beef and elgin sausage.

jeff's road trip strategy was not to sleep the previous night so he could sleep the whole way there. it worked. he slept through all of our pit stops and woke up outside of the marriott in new orleans.
this isn't our hotel, but it isss the beautiful lights display in the roosevelt hotel.

we did a quick walk-through of bourbon street on our last night.
before we knew it, we were cruisin' out.
mom and dad had a room with a balcony, and we had a room on the inside. my bed dropped down from the ceiling.
one of our favorite things was the towel creatures our stewards made every night.
this is as far as i got with the resizing/renaming.

lunch with andy and becca tomorrow!

baby let's cruise

hello again! hope everyone had a merry christmas. we had an excellent time on the cruise. i've uploaded a random sampling of photos just to get started, but i'll post more in the following days. for now, time to catch up on everyone else's blog.

looking out from maj & faj's balcony.
key west beach
nassau, bahamas
the ship
towel animal

goodniiight!

out of office

headed to new orleans in the morning! i don't think i'll blog on the cruise, so i hope everyone has a merry christmas/holiday season. we'll be back the 29thish with pictures and stories.

i'll leave you with this picture of jeff and his hipster doppleganger.

idling in india

one of my friends from taiwan, josh, is on an extended trip to india. i can't remember how long he's going for.. but if you need a healthy dose of travelogue (like i do), he might be your man.

http://idlinginindia.blogspot.com/

piqued

just started using pinterest. you use it kind of like an internet bulletin board. it's actually a very cool alternative to having folders of bookmarks. you can see all of the things easily and share them with other people. i still have a whole bunch of invites if anyone is interesteddd.

so ripley went on a little adventure today to the groomer at petsmart. i went to pick her up at 11 when they said she would be done, but the woman told me she was going to take longer because it took them so long to dry her. she was so afraid of the blow dryer that it took a bit to get her out from under the table. poor pup.

when i came back an hour later, she was getting her hair cut and looking absolutely miserable. she was up on a table with a short leash to keep her from moving and every part of her was shaking. it was pretty sad.
but nowww look how fluffy she is! and they put little bows on her head. we waited until everyone in the family saw them and then jeff took them off.. i don't think she liked them anyway. this picture sums it up.
and this picture is mainly for gram and spanky, but this is me earlier this week with great grandma's necklace on. lucky we have the same taste in costume jewelry.

small world

do you remember the lamp from my room in taiwan?

look where it is nowww!

in kelly and ryan's [newly painted] room!

i really can't stay

things have been really slow around here lately. lots of reading, applying for stuff, drinking tea, cooking. we've been on kind of a soup kick. after thanksgiving it was turkey soup with rice. this week i made corn chowder that was deeeelicious. and yesterday faj and i made spanky's vegetable beef soup.

now we're just counting down the days until the cruise (9 right now) and thinking about what we want to eat in new orleans. it's always about food in this household. tonight we went to the german buffet in walburg. sooo yummy. schnitzel, purple cabbage, broccoli salad, sauerkraut, all kinds of meat with sauce..

we went to sam moon today. it's asian and everything is suuuuper cheap. i found two pairs of earrings i couldn't live without that were $2.50 each. kind of like taiwan without the haggling. seriously check out that website though. you won't believe the prices.

the angel voices

might have a job teaching Mandarin at an immersion preschool. it's only a few hours each week, but i have time while i'm job hunting. funny how things come full circle! i can't think of a better/more fun way to keep up with my Mandarin though. and we can play bai luo buo dun.

jeff: "majjy's out there talking to the neighbors like one of those lame people. and i think she's wearing elf pants."

and i know i'm an 80 yr old woman on the inside, but how cute is this cake stand from sweet and saucy supply?

we never change, do we

andy and i have sort of been working our way down the austin's best 38 restauraunts list for october. it seems they never did come out with november unless i just missed it. but last night we went to #35, woodland. i had the chicken pot pie and he had meatloaf. pretty good. the beeest part was the hey cupcake trailer afterwards. we both ordered a red velvet cupcake but there was only one so he let me have it. the guy behind the register said that's love and commented on how guys never give up their cupcake.. and with good reason. those cupcakes are so yummy. 2/3 cupcake and the rest icing.

we played scrabble at his house and he played:

-suavely for all his letters and landed on a triple word score aaand connected to another word resulting in ONE HUNDREDD POINTS.

(directly after that)

-carbines for all his letters again for 78 points

i think his final score was 370something. crazy!

well in the last few days, we've been trying to plan a christmas cruise and it was looking impossible since jeff and matt both need their passports. it was going to cost something like 300 each to get them expedited. but maj called a travel agency her dad used to use for cruises and we found one leaving from new orleans that goes to key west, nassau and the bahamas. so we'll spend a couple days in new orleans and then go.

jeff and i are pretty excited. yesterday he started to make a list of crazy things we should do:

sing 'my heart will go on' in karaoke

reenact a scene from titanic

find someone to elope with.. though we were questioning whether or not it's still eloping if your family is there. we decided yes, as long as they don't know about it

should be fun though. now we just need to find someone to take care of ripley and kitty.

cold and damp white mornings

on thanksgiving we realized that all of the big plates were in the dishwasher, so we ended up eating off of random china that gram had sent when maj thought she wanted to have a plate rack up for decoration. if i thought i could get any straight man to go for it, i would scrap normal dishes and have all random girly china patterns.

kitty and i don't usually get along. my family thinks i'm afraid of him. they don't understand because they don't wear pajama pants that are kind of swishy around your ankles which makes the cat chase after you and swat at or bite your legs. and if you stop petting him, he bites.
but tonight we shared a little moment. jeff went running for the camera since this was a 'once in a lifetime picture.'

head over heels

kelly is teaching at guei shan which was one of my schools! and they discovered the breakfast stand and had danbing this morning. she needs to start a blog. i'll keep pestering.

we went to the lake this weekend. it was beautiiiful on the porch in the sun even though we got a cold front (which has brought it down to the 60s during the day. gotta love texas "cold fronts").

time for bed. what a boring update.

easy to love her

kelly and ryan arrived in taiwan this morning! not sure if she's going to do a blog, but i'll let you know.

it has made me super nostalgic telling her all about what she needs to know about the dorm and taoyuan, so i've spent the last 2 hours reading posts from blonde in taiwan. miss it a whooole lot, but i wouldn't want to do another whole year in the same place, i don't think. done that. but i'm so excited for kelly.

it was 75+ degrees in austin today. take that, december!

applied for a job that i reaaaalllly want this week. fingers crossed.

rain on my parade

lovvvving man who ate everything. he had me at the first chapter which is all about his obsessive foray into baking the perfect bread.. which has evaded me for over a year now.

beat maj and jeff at scrabble tonight because i played 'headline' and hit the triple word score anddd used all of my tiles for 80 points. !

dog days

had dinner at jill and zachs. they're two of my favorite people on the entire planet. we have soooo much fun. tonight jill made chicken parmesan, and they're out of paper towels and napkins so we used one potentially eggy towel, one wet kitchen towel and one washcloth as napkins. she's 7 months pregnant and they're all excited about the baby and have funny stories about stupid things people in the general public tell them.

beginning a book called the man who ate everything by jeffrey steingarten tonight. seems like it'll be good. food nonfiction. almost as good as travel books.

sniffy squad

jeff and i both need to find jobs soon, but in the meantime we have a whole lot of fun doing things we probably wouldn't do if we didn't spend all day together. this weekend we played a game where we sang songs and changed all of the words to 'sniffy squad' and we had to guess what song it was. really dumb, really fun. we did it with rhapsody in blue, alanis morisette's 'ironic', hmm i can't remember the others.

thanksgiving was nice except that maj was chatting while making pumpkin pie and switched the sugar for salt. when it came out of the oven, it had what looked like apple pie crust on top.. and it was kind of sparkely. i tried a little pinch of it and it kind of tasted like pumpkin pie playdough. so we went to the grocery store and bought our very first storebought pumpkin pie. not bad.

thankfully

meet the babies of the garden..

lettuce above and in the foreground below
beets
radishes
little baby radishes

the lettuce is taking off the most because it's in the sunniest spot. pretty excitinggg.

time to make crepes. happy thanksgiving :)

gleefully

just waitttt until tomorrow when i post new pictures of the little baby lettuce and radishes. baby plants are arguably just as cute as baby humans. speaking of those, this afternoon i got together with stacy and her 1 year old, drew, for coffee. he is adoooorable. and of the 3 times we've hung out somewhere, he's fallen asleep on me every time for half an hour or so and i just get to chat and cuddle. love him.

well it's been in the 80s all week in austin and it's bordering on ridiculous. we turned the air conditioning on yesterday. but it really was hot and stuffy inside the house. thankfully it's supposed to be in the 40s or something on thanksgiving as that giant cold front makes its way down from canada. feeling bad for everyone who's already gotten it. although it's kind of nice to be really chilly around the holidays.

ps just feel like i need to comment on how awesome it is that glee has taken on the issue of bullying gay kids in high school and how serious and scary it is for them. go ryan murphy.

weekend

so this weekend jeff and i made a feast of greek food. falafel. tabouli. tzatziki (which i challenge you to type. it's hard.) all of it was relatively easy. in the great purge of 2010, i convinced maj that we never use the food processor and could therefore get rid of it.. but i was kind of missing it as i blended chick peas for the falafel in the mini chopper. but it worked out.

jeff and i were unprepared for how the oil temperature shot up when we threw the falafel in. maybe because of the baking soda in them? or is that normal? i've never fried anything.
but yuuuum was it tasty.
easy tzatziki. yogurt, sour cream, cucumber, dill, garlic, lemon juice, oil, vinegar, salt & pepper.
and i've been pestering my friend dave for ages about what to do with bulgher wheat, which he's a big fan of. he suggested tabouli (which is what started the whole idea of the feast). it is so easy and fresh and good. i had a huge bowl of it for lunch with a big dollop of tzatziki.
and maj and i planted some more of the front beds. neither of us really like how it turned out. but i'm just glad we got rid of the creepy vine that took over the beds.

kitty's favorite spot is the pot. he doesn't care if there are flowers in it or not.
..and now for the most exciting news of all! we have little baby lettuce coming up in one section of the garden. i don't know if the rest isn't getting enough sun or what, but only one patch has sprouted so far. they're very cute though.

recipes via foodnetwork.com:

falafel

tzatziki (from ina garten!)

tabouli

movember

met a fellow who's very into gardening and cooking at a friends house a couple of weeks ago. he formed a supper club and tonight was our first meeting. the theme was northern italian and many courses. the first was arugula salad with arugula picked from his garden that day. i won't go through them all but suffice to say everything was delicious. even the sausage, which i'm not usually a fan of.

but more than just eating delicious food, it was fun to sit at a table of 12 strangers and rediscover my mingle a little bit. the nice thing about always having had (nearly) lifelong friends in austin is that you don't have to continually do all of that getting to know you chit chat. but now most of them have moved away so lately i've been doing a lot of hunting for new friends.. which is a lot harder than it seems like it would be. but tonight was fun and i was reminded that strangers aren't all bad and it doesn't take long before they start to feel like friends.

i have lots of pictures from this weekend but i'm too comfy in bed right now to go get my camera, so that will wait til tomorrow.

harmoniously

i wish everyone in the whole entire world would watch harmony, the documentary made by prince charles about taking cues from nature and taking nature into account in everything we do. it is inspirational.

do just fine

whenever i need a recipe for something, the first place i search is smitten kitchen. deb, the woman who runs it, picks delicious recipes from gourmet magazine and other cookbooks and magazines and almost everything i've tried from there turns out really well. the best part is that they all require some real cooking. no silly shortcuts or 15 minute promises.

it was laughably messy to rinse/dry/chop two bundles of swiss chard. i was covered in water, the island was all wet, the floor was wet. but it was a lot of fun.

so no one in our family has had swiss chard before and since we have two giant plants in the garden, i wanted to find out what it tasted like before i harvest my own. i made spaghetti with swiss chard and garlic chips and it was delicious. really garlicy. the chard is really yummy, and somehow it seems healthier than spinach just because it tastes earthier or more mineraly.
the recipe calls for green chard, but sprouts only had red, so mine doesn't look quite the same but i can't imagine the different varieties taste too different. maj and i decided we would make it again.
next time you need a recipe, try something off that website and let me know how it turns out. her recipe page is organized so well. you can look at recipes by season, ingredient, type of food, etc. it's great.