Thursday, October 18, 2007

Try Again?

So, I keep trying this blog thing. The honest to goodness truth is this. I LOVE reading other people's blogs about what they are doing, what they are going through, etc. It's a great way of keeping in touch and feeling like you are closer to people. But, for some reason, I can't seem to keep motivated to write on my own blog.

So, here's the quick update on me! I have a new job! I start on Monday, after meeting the team tomorrow at a lunch. I'm not sure exactly where I fit on the team, so I'll let you know more about it later. But that's the good news anyway :-)

Seattle is great. We've gotten mostly settled. Caught up with some old friends, and have even managed to stay fairly in touch (though never as much as we'd all like, I'm sure) with people in PDX.

My current 'creative outlet' is our wedding album. I'm hoping to be done with it (yes, 2 years later...) before I go back to work on Monday! It is an attainable goal, I think.

After that, it's on to Christmas cards. And Christmas gifts ;-)

How nuts is that - it's the middle of October! Can you believe it?!?

Last night I went to a card making class - 6 easy-to-mass-produce Christmas cards in 2 hours. It was a lot of fun and I learned some things too! I think I'll check out more of their classes.

We're supposedly in for a big storm here today. Rain, wind, etc. Hopefully nothing too serious. It's cooler today - wasn't even 50 when I got up this morning. Our apartment would stay a lot warmer if someone would move in below us. You want to move? We'd love new neighbors! ;-)

Anyway...I'm off to work on the album, and cook a pumpkin. I know it's easier to make pumpkin pie from canned pumpkin, and it probably tastes just as good, but...sometimes it's fun to do it the old fashioned way, right? I think so anyway. Got the pumpkin at Smith's Berry Barn last weekend. It's a fun place. Lots of fun gifty stuff in addition to the seasonal produce.

Hope you have a terrific Thursday!

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Packing Packing Packing

I've been packing lately...well...some anyway. And other than that, I've been hanging out with friends and family. Adam's away in Mt. View, CA, until sometime around the 21st, and has left it to me (haha...don't you think you're funny, ;-) ) to do the packing. Hopefully he'll be around to help with the actual moving.

Speaking of moving...if anyone's available...we'd LOVE to have some help on either end (or both if you want to take a trip! :-)

I've been taking photos of the packing as per a request from Adam so he can see it. Haven't gotten them off the camera yet though. I need to keep taking them throughout the process though.

I'm going up this weekend with my parents & sister, it's a combo weekend for all of us - my dad's riding STP, sis has a wedding, mom and I are going to hang out at the new apartment. We'll take as much of a load up as we can - no big stuff though. It should be fun. Adam and I didn't get much of a chance to explore, so I'm hoping we can do a bit this weekend. And I hope the pool is nice! :-)


I'm grilling salmon w/ my parents tonight. And having homemade blueberry cheesecake ice cream for dessert. YUM. Oh - if anyone has a spare $175, I'd LOVE a White Mountain electric ice cream maker. :-) I'll make you ice creammmmmmm...

Ok, that's all for now. Happy Tuesday.

Monday, July 2, 2007

A New Place

We found a new apartment this weekend. It's small and expensive, but cute. Don't have pictures yet. And no one would see them if I did, cause no one took me up on the coffee offer from the last post. Oh well. I guess you have to have a lot of friends to make it so someone reads your blog eh? Or just be more exciting? :-)

Anyway...more later about that I'm sure.

Monday, June 25, 2007

So much stuff...

The last few weeks have been pretty busy. We went up to SPU for my sister's graduation the 2nd week of June. I took lots of photos, but haven't finished going through them yet to decide which to post, etc. We also got to see Anne in The Seven Keys of Baldpate at Taproot, which was awesome (as usual)!

Last weekend we hung around home and spent Father's Day with my family, which was a lot of fun.

This weekend we went camping with 3 other couples from our small group at Cape Lookout, near Tillamook. We had a lot of fun just hanging out & talking. We were lucky and got a whole afternoon of sunshine on Saturday. We went to the cheese factory, and then spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach playing around. Had a great bbq followed by yummy banana boats (smores in a banana instead of a graham cracker!) and smores. Saturday night it poured. We stayed mostly dry, cept for a few things left outside, but didn't get much sleep. Rain on a tent is surprisingly loud! All in all...we can't wait to go camping again!

Here's some photos from the camping trip.

We're going up to Seattle this weekend - for a wedding reception and to apartment hunt.

Have a great week. And if you're reading this...let me know & we'll go out for coffee. Ha.

Monday, June 4, 2007

It's been a month...

Sad! I like writing stuff. But, I don't ever think anyone's reading it so I'm not too bent on keeping it updated I guess. Yesterday we hiked Dog Mountain. It was rough. Beautiful though! Here's a slideshow of the photos I took. (Yay Picasa!!!)



The trail is steep, with about a 3600ft elevation gain in a little under 4 miles. And then steep going back down too...of course :-) We did the 'less difficult' trail. Apparently the more difficult trail you use your hands a lot to grip the trail, it's so steep (according to a guy at work...) I am thankful for my friend Sara who suggested I get a camelbak to go inside my backpack. We went to REI, where a great salesperson helped me pick out what I needed. I ended up getting a 3Liter reservoir (the max my daypack can take), because it was the same price as the 2liter, and we decided I could just not fill it up all the way. Well, I ended up filling it all the way, and taking 2 waterbottles, one of which we left in the car. So, Adam and I had 4 liters of water between the 2 of us for the hike. Glad I filled it up. We ran out about 30min from the bottom on the way back. And that was after my mom gave Adam another 1/2 bottle from her water, and we shared her last 1/2 bottle between the 3 of us. So...we were glad we had that extra bottle in the car. :-)

We ate at the Charburger on the way back. Yum as usual. Had coconut cream pie with my burger :-)

In other goings on...well...there's not a whole lot :-) Work, sleep, play. We've been gearing up to play some disc golf - got a driver and a putter for both of us - there's a 9-holecourse about 3 blocks away from our apartment!

The pottery continues, Adam's class at PSU is almost done (boy will he be happy!), and my sister graduates from SPU next weekend.

That's enough for now. Happy Monday :-)

Friday, May 4, 2007

Lots of Bowls...

Taking pottery for the last 3 years has left me with an awful lot of pots and bowls sitting in a box in my closet. Why don't I use them, huh? Well...the box in the closet are the ones that are not so functional, or that I don't want to display. Most of them are from the first couple classes I took, and I would rather make something new for people than give them the leftovers that aren't as nice. Cause now I can make nicer looking, lighter, more useful stuff! My new plan is to try to make things that are either specifically for someone, or will be useful to us personally. Cause otherwise, we will be taken over! However, the stuff in the box isn't that bad either... I take pottery at the local cultural arts center - come join me sometime :-)

Yesterday I brought 4 larger bowls home - 2 big ones and 2 that fit inside them. I would like to start taking pictures of stuff when I get it back to keep in my pottery journal. So far, I've been using the journal to keep track of glaze combinations. Since I've written them down, it seems like it'd be nice to have a photo of how they turned out.

Ok, enough rambling for now. Oh, except to mention a new coffee shop near us. If you're in the Hillsboro area, check out Insomnia Coffee Co, on the corner of Baseline & 53rd Ave. (coffeeandmusicinhillsboro.blogspot.com & www.myspace.com/insomniacoffee)

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Tilapia is awesome

We've been eating more fish lately than I've eaten in probably the last 5 years. Maybe more. We found we really enjoy tilapia, it's easy to cook, tasty, and doesn't leave the apartment smelling like fish for days. We've bought it at Costco and Trader Joes in frozen varieties, and at Safeway fresh (they don't have it frozen I guess).

Here are my two favorite menus including tilapia lately. Adam created one of them, the other is from Cooking Light

Menu 1: Tilapia with vegetables, Pasta. Serves 2

bit of olive oil
2 fillets of tilapia loins
1 zucchini, sliced
1-2 cups of cherry tomatos, cut in half
1-2 cups of sliced mushrooms, we used crimini
1 cup chopped green onions (think it was 4-5 onions)
pasta - we used too much, it was about 1.5 cups, uncooked
fresh parmesean cheese, grated

Put oil in large pan on stove, on medium heat. Add tilapia when hot. When tilapia is about 1/2 done, add veggies. In a separate pot, cook pasta. Cook till fish is done and veggies are soft - the liquids from the mushrooms and zucchini come out to make a nice sauce. The fish will get pretty soft, ours broke into 4 pieces, but those stayed together pretty well. We took out those 4 pieces, 2each, put those on plates, then put the veggies on the pasta. Top with parmesean cheese to taste.


Menu 2: Spicy Tilapia with Pineapple-Pepper Relish, Rice, and Romaine Salad with lime dressing.
The tilapia recipe is pretty quick - the relish takes longer than the fish. Of course, we made it from a whole pineapple, not from the pre-chunked pineapple it suggests. It would also make a terrific salsa with chips, you would just have to cut the pineapple smaller. I cut the pepper and onions in pretty small pieces, and the tomato too.

Rice: The recipe suggests coconut rice. We tried this and couldn't really taste the coconut milk at all. So I would just go for some good basmati rice instead.

Lime Dressing: 1/4 cup fresh lime juice, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp sugar, enough for 4-5 small dinner salads. We put it on a romaine salad with cucumber and tomatos.

For dessert with this, we had a scoop of raspberry sorbet and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It went perfectly with dinner :-)

Happy Eating!

Monday, April 30, 2007

Numero Uno

I thought I'd check this out, and see how it works with picasa. I'll have to check that part out later though. I'm not sure I like the title of the blog...seems kinda mundane. But I'm not creative, so there you go.

I like the colors and stuff though :-)