Wine tasting last weekend

Last weekend my cousin and aunt came up from Los Angeles, and the two of them, my sister and I went wine tasting! So much fun! Here are some photos that they posted on Facebook.

^ Amanda, Samantha, Karen, me ^

I've always wanted jumping pics!! Click HERE for a sweet animation by Amanda :)

We went to Frasinetti's, Scribner Bend and Bogle. I loved a lot of Frasinetti's wine, especially the sparkling almond and reisling. Scribner Bend was so crowded that it was hard to enjoy anything, but the chocolate covered strawberries were good! I already knew that I loved Bogle's zin and merlot.

Sunday we had brunch at Zocalo, went to Old Sac, and had dinner at our place.

Monday we hung out at Sam's house and had lunch at BJ's before dropping Amanda and Karen at the airport.

Thanks for a great weekend, ladies!

Dreaming of home ownership

We won't be househunting until next winter, but lately I've been dreaming of having a home of our own, with more room. Don't get me wrong, I love our current duplex. It's charming, comfortable and in a great location. But it's not going to work forever due to its 1-bedroom-ness. I can't wait to have property of our own that we can paint and renovate however we so choose!

I'd love to have a functional backyard... it doesn't have to be huge, just somewhere to sit, eat and chat.

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With a fire pit!

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Where we can host barbeques in the summertime.

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We'll host Thanksgiving at our place. I loved doing that last year!

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And the party I'm especially excited about and have always wanted to become "our thing..." tacky sweater parties! We absolutely must host an annual sweater party for our friends!

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Thankful Thursday: Weekend

I'm thankful that in 20 hours it will be my weekend... and I need it. What a week! Can you say overtime? Actually, can you say overtime but no overtime pay because you're salary? Yay for that...

Oh wait, I'm supposed to be non-sarcastically thankful.

I'm thankful that it's almost the weekend, and that I got to go wine tasting last weekend! I've been waiting to post about that until I got pictures back from my aunt, cousin and sister who I went with. Hopefully I'll get to it this weekend.

Weight Watchers

I've been keeping a secret from you, blogland! I joined Weight Watchers. I really need to loose weight for health and vanity reasons, and this accountability is needed! I've been on it for a month now.

I had been counting calories for a long time but honestly it's hard to make myself stick to the goal! And even if one day I stuck to the calorie goal, the next day I would have a few glasses of wine and/or pieces of lasagna and reverse all the hard work I did earlier. It just wasn't working long-term.

I'm doing the WW online program, which allows me a certain number of points each day. In addition, I get even more extra points to use throughout the week. I can use them in a small amount each day, or lots in one day if I'm going out or something. I keep track of everything I eat online, which is easy most of the time. I haven't been too busy yet.

The one thing I hate about the program is that a cup of fat free milk is 2 points, while a can of diet pepsi is 0. I'm a huge milk drinker - as in every meal - and I rarely drink soda. I know that milk is better for me, so it's frustrating that I have to use up my points on it! I can't go without! A 1/2 cup of wine is also 2 points.

I signed up on January 15 and in this first month I lost 10 pounds. Ultimately, I'd love to loose a total of 30. Yikes, I really hate that I need to loose that much!

Save the Dates

We sent our Save the Dates last week, and now that they’ve been received I can blog about them (wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise)!

I loved the string of lights on these, even though they don’t match our blue & green color scheme for the wedding. I don’t think it matters!

Here’s the image from the site where I designed them (private info concealed to deter stalkers):

And here they are as received!

I was a little disappointed because I felt like the text is too small. I used the sizes they had on the sample card, and even enlarged them a bit, but I still wish it was bigger. I've since gotten over it.

However, I got these cards for a steal! They are from Vistaprint.com, a company that offers some great deals. If you sign up for an account with them and opt to receive email offers, they’ll email you frequently with offers of free products – you just have to pay shipping.

These emails can be annoying if you don’t want the offers, but if you’re looking for free Save the Dates it’s worth it!

In December I finally got the email I had been waiting for – offering the cards I had already designed for free! You can get 10 free per email address, so I ordered 10 each with my two personal email accounts, and one work email account.

Then at checkout, they gave me the opportunity to add an additional 10 to the order of 10 for $7, with free shipping. I opted for that option with two of the orders, for a total of 50 Save the Dates.

30 free cards… shipping = $12
20 upgrade cards = $14

Total cost for 50 Save the Dates = $26

I also decided to do envelope liners for these - I know it's totally silly and something only I actually care about. But look how cute!!

Instructions for envelope liners can be found here. This absolutely perfect paper is from the local store Pulp Papery. I just wandered in one day hoping to find yellow paper with white polka dots and it was a success!

Photo Friday: Roses

Today James had these gorgeous roses delivered to my office. Thanks baby!!

We don't normally do Valentines Day because I'm not a fan and he's apathetic. I think it's a silly holiday, but I looooove getting flowers! I feel very loved and he did a great job.

TV is taking over my life!

There are so many great shows on this season that I'm finding myself DVRing every night but not finding time to catch up! Here are my new and old favorites.

Monday

How I Met Your Mother on CBS

Accidentally on Purpose on CBS

Tuesday

LOST on ABC
Teen Mom on MTV

19 Kids and Counting on TLC
The Little Couple on TLC

Wednesday

Modern Family on ABC

Cougar Town on ABC

Thursday

The Real Housewives of Orange County on Bravo
Community on NBC

Parks & Recreation on NBC

The Office on NBC

30 Rock on NBC

Sunday
Keeping Up With The Kardashians on E!
Kendra on E!
Desperate Housewives on ABC

It's too much to catch up with!! Oh yeah, and I'm ashamed to admit that I was sucked into the MTV Jersey Shore marathon on Super Bowl Sunday. James and I both were :) The first hour, I was like "This is SO stupid!" then I continuted to watch and just had to know what happened to these trashy characters! I will probably watch next season... how embarassing! I honestly hadn't watched MTV in years but I do love 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.

RENT

Last night James and I went to see the Broadway tour RENT at the Sacramento Community Center Theatre. It was good. I love shows like this because the actors' ability to simultaneously sing, dance and act is completely amazing.

I'll admit that this wasn't my favorite though. Last year I saw STOMP and The Lion King, and I liked both of those more than RENT.

My favorite song was their famous Seasons of Love.

Before the show we went to dinner at Il Foranaio. The food and service was good. My one complaint was that we ordered bruschetta and they gave us something else. I saw it and thought "Hmmm that's not like any bruschetta I've ever seen, but maybe they make it differently here (silly me)." Then when we got the bill we saw that we definitely didn't get what we ordered! It was still good though (although a few dollars more than what we actually ordered), as was the Pizza Fradiavola we shared. Not a favorite but a nice dinner.

Booked: Rental house

We booked the house we’re staying in for the week of our wedding and honeymoon! I didn't think we'd need to this soon, but we found the perfect place and it's already booked through July. The price is killing me, although it's actually less than the nice hotels in the area.

Because I’m using a lot of vacation time for my trip to Europe, and because at the time of our wedding James will be fairly new at his job (he's graduating in May), we’re not going to take a big honeymoon right away. We’ve decided to just stay in Santa Cruz and relax – lie on the beach and keep it very low-key.

We booked a great house just a few blocks from the beach and a few miles down the road from our ceremony location. It’s nice and big, which will be really convenient when preparing flowers the day before, and getting ready on the day of.

We’ve always stayed at hotels before and I’m excited to have lots of room for our stuff and a whole kitchen so that we can eat real food without going out for every meal. We're also tentatively planning to have our rehearsal dinner and/or barbecue the day after the wedding at this house.

We’re going to be staying at this rental house for a week – the Wednesday before the wedding through the Wednesday after.

Photo Friday: Santa Cruz trip #1

Here's us on the beach in Santa Cruz in January 2007 - our first vacation together. Before we met James wasn't a big traveler but he would soon be going all over the state with me because traveling is very important to me. We didn't know at the time that we'd be married 3 and a half years later about a mile from where this first photo was taken.

Thankful Thursday: Weather

I'm loving the weather lately! Half the time it's rainy but not too cold. I love to watch wind and rain from the window.

And the other half it's beautiful, warm and sunny. Who doesn't love a gorgeous spring-like day?

I love both! I'm thankful to live in this climate.

LOST

Will anyone else be watching the season premiere of LOST tonight? I'm obesessed with this show!! It's absolutely gripping. It takes up my whole night - I can't be doing anything else when LOST is on because it requires my complete attention!

If you're not a LOST watcher, I recommend watching it on DVD. You have to see every episode because there's so much to keep up with - if you start in the middle of the series you'll be extremely confused and probably not entertained.

I've seen every episode they've made and I'll watch every episode of this final season religiously. I can't wait for all of our questions to be answered!