My baby shower

My baby shower, on Saturday, June 30, was awesome. I was extremely honored that so many friends and family members came to celebrate our newest addition. We had about 25 people there! My mom and sisters hosted the party at sister's house. It looked so nice!!

Gorgeous food setup

Cute little fruit baby!

Diaper cake - so cute, and still in our nursery today

Outdoor decor

Cousins

Sabrina had her baby girl the next day!! Our babies are going to be BFFs, at 3 or 4 weeks apart in age.

Sisters and Mom

We were given tons of adorable, thoughtful and generous gifts for baby - I felt so incredibly loved!! I'm sooo grateful to my 3 beautiful shower hostesses for all their effort, and to every guest who came to celebrate with us!

Housewarming party menu

Our housewarming party was a success! Unfortch, I was too busy hosting and having fun to take any photos, but it was great. We had over 20 guests check out our casa, including my family, hubby's family, our friends and a neighbor! Here's what I served.

• Pulled pork (in a crock pot) with buns. I made almost 8 lbs. and 2 or 3 lbs. were left over at the end of the night. I don't mind though - it freezes great and is still delish next time I want some :)
• Meatballs (in a crock pot). I used this recipe but with 3 lbs. of frozen meatballs.
• Cheese and meat tray with pepperoni, salami, chipotle jack, gouda and smoked cheeses.
• Veggie tray with olives, broccoli, carrots, cucumber and hummus.
• Spinach dip in a sourdough bread bowl.
• Tortellini salad (the bag mix from Costco).
• Mini cheesecakes - adorable with cherries on top! I made waaaay too many though.
• Death by chocolate cookies - my mom provided these!
• Magic cookie bars
• Soda, water bottles, red wine, beer and champagne punch.

I'm so glad that we held this celebration because I just love planning and hosting parties! Next one will be either Thanksgiving or our second annual tacky holiday sweater party!!

In the past month...

1. James' sister and nieces came to visit from Washington. We had a lot of family visiting time with them and others from our area - very fun!

2. We had new counters installed in our kitchen and both bathrooms! I really, really need to get around to doing an updated house tour.

3. We went to two Giants games - one with my family and one with my coworkers.

4. I finally completed our wedding album and ordered it from Shutterfly, just in time for our anniversary! I'm a little disappointed in the quality, but not sure that I care enough to do anything about it.

5. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in Santa Cruz. It was lovely - the best part was our sailing trip on the Chardonnay II. We saw a whale and dolphins, drank wine (chardonnay, naturally) and met another couple that was also celebrating their anniversary and also got married at Lighthouse Point - just a year earlier than us! I told the captain my name and he said I was the first passenger named Chardonnay that he'd had :)

Free anniversary cake from Hoffman's Bakery

The view from our private balcony at the Babbling Brook Inn

6. I've been busy planning our housewarming party, which is October 2. Should be a good time!

7. Finally, BIG NEWS: I quit my job!! This was a huge decision and something I had never done... I quit without having another job lined up (Other than the time I quit my high school job to move away to college, of course). I had not been unemployed for a single day since the age of 18. I'm lucky to have a husband with a job, so I was able to do this. It was the best decision for me. I didn't like the work, I didn't like the way I was treated, so what's the point? It's a strange position for me to be in - one that I'm not used to. But I know that it was the best decision for me.

I'm going to try to get a house tour put together in the near future, and pick up blogging in general. Trouble is that lately I do NOT feel like sitting in front of a computer, and have no motivation to blog about life... I hope I get inspired soon!

My quarter century birthday

Thursday was my big 2-5! I have a feeling I'm always still going to feel young for a long time, because I'm the youngest in my group of friends - not to mention that hubs is 7 years older than me. This week was tons of fun celebrating my quarter century of life.

Tuesday

My thoughtful hubby surprised me with these roses after work, because he knew I'd be busy the next two days.

Wednesday

We went to dinner at J's coworker's house. Thank you Kim for the delicious meal!

Thursday

My coworker and friend gave me with this wine glass gift - how perfect right?! Thanks Sabrina!!

"Hooray for Chardonnay!"

For lunch I went to Zen Sushi with my coworkers. Yum!




Kohaku Roll

Then after work several friends joined me for happy hour at Cafeteria. I think we had a good dozen people there and it was a lot of fun. We even somehow convinced J to go to Faces with us for a bit. That's one for the record books!

My older sister brought balloons and my younger sister gave me a beautiful framed collage of all my favorite wedding photos :)

Saturday
I did some shopping in the morning. Among several other things, I got this dress. It was originally $70, on sale for half off, plus I had a $10 off coupon. $25! I'll probably wear it to a wedding next weekend.

We had dinner at Chicago Fire (my fave) with my parents and sister, then headed to Raley Field for a River Cats game. My mom brought this beautiful bouquet of flowers from her yard when we met at our house beforehand.

Sadly, I forgot my camera that night. We witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets ever, and of course I always love going to the game on Saturday nights because they have fireworks afterwards! All the little kids around us cheering, screaming and jumping for joy at the fireworks display was hilarious!

Sunday
This wasn't for my birthday, but we went refrigerator shopping and then spontaneously decided to drop by a granite and tile warehouse to get ideas for our future kitchen and bathrooms :) It was sooo much fun and we came away from it with an agreement on colors and styles we like. I told J it was one of my favorite dates we've ever been on - I LOVE home decor/renovation stuff and I can't wait to get started!!

Overall, I really felt the love and was so honored that family and friends were sweet enough to give me a gift, a card, a text message or come spend time with me!

24 was a great year for me.

• The best thing that happened was that I married my husband. He's perfect for me!
• My parents also moved to this area, which I have loved loved loved.
• We hosted our first tacky holiday sweater party, a dream of mine for far too long!
• We started house hunting and while we're not quite there, we're in a good place when it comes to our future home.
• I had many great times with fabulous friends - most of which I didn't blog about, unfortunately.

As my 25th year begins, I have some great plans for it!

Graduation weekend

Congrats to the newest college grad in our family, my little sister Rose! By next year, all four of us siblings (not to mention all of our spouses) will have Bachelor's degrees - not too shabby!

On Friday I worked until 3 p.m. and then rushed home to change for Sac State graduation at Power Balance Pavilion. Rose and her friend met me and hubby at our house, then we drove together. And drank champagne in the parking lot to celebrate. Champagne = classy!

After the ceremony we drove to my parents' house to get our party on! There were almost 30 guests. SUCH a fun party!

My grandparents are going to be in town from Texas all week because my brother's wedding is next weekend.

On Saturday my aunt and cousins from the Bay Area came over and we had a picnic in Old Sacramento. So much fun to get to see my aunt, cousins and three little second cousins ages (my best guess) 3, 5 and 7. I got a little sunburned but had a great time. It was super exhausting being out in the sun for several hours. Wish I had taken some pictures!!

Sunday was my mom's birthday! Happy birthday madre! My sister and brother in law hosted us all for dinner. They made Thai food, and I brought Italian cream cake made with this recipe.

Girls night out

My friend Andrea planned a girls night out for our group of friends, so on Friday night we went out to dinner at Kupro's Bistro, drinks at Dive Bar, and dancing at Social and Badlands. We had a blast and one too many Washington apples!

I used to have nights out like this allll the time a few years ago, but I hadn't in a long time. Honestly these days I'd rather hang out with my friends at one of our houses. However, once in a while it's great to change it up and do something different.

I am so thankful to have found a great group of friends. I have very few friends from college that I'm still close with, and only one from high school [actually first grade!] that I still actually see regularly. 

All of these ladies [and their boyfriends/hubbies] I met since graduating from college and I finally have that group that I can picture our kids growing up together. Okay some of us... and some of our kids will babysit the others' kids in a really, really long time ;) Haha ♥

Wine tasting in Placerville

I wanted to share some photos of a wine tasting day from a few weekends ago - we were celebrating my sister's birthday and hit up some yummy wineries in the mountains!

Our group included myself, mom, sister and three of her friends. Lots of fun! Thanks for driving Mom! And thanks for taking the photos Kelly... I totally stole all of these from Facebook.

There was snow as we got higher up, and it was even snowing when we first arrived. This is a big deal to me because I hardly ever see snow :)

Holiday party menu

Here's what we served at our tacky holiday sweater party on Friday. It was way too much food, but oh so good!

Sweets:

Death by chocolate cookies (a recipe from my mom)

Cream puffs... from the freezer section.

My famous fruit dip with strawberries, kiwi and apples.

Apps:

Veggie tray (cucumber, carrots and celery... and no broccoli because I dropped it on the floor) with hummus.

Cheese and meat tray with pepper jack, fontina, gouda and smoked cheese, salami, pepperoni and venison summer sausage

Spinach and artichoke dip (the recipe is in my Make it Fast, Cook it Slow cookbook that was a wedding gift from my sister and brother in law) with tortilla chips

Deviled eggs

Goat cheese fillo bites - I found this recipe and adapted it a lot. My filling consisted of:

• 12 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 cup goat cheese
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 3 tablespoons green onions
• 1.5 tablespoons lemon juice
• 6 ounches chopped bacon
• 1/4 cup chopped nuts
• Honey

On the top I put nuts and honey. They were really good but not good enough to be a favorite!

And I was going to make 7 Layer Dip, but my friend Sabrina offered to bring it.

Drinks:

Champagne punch in this super cute drink dispenser I got at Bed Bath & Beyond

Beer, soda and water

Red and white wine

Sabrina brought red and green Jello shots too!

If I did this menu again I'd cut out the fillo bites and deviled eggs... there was just too much food but I don't think that's the worst problem to have.