Spring Cleaning

Last Wednesday, our friend told us he had started a clense. It was the night we won trivia for the first time in a year, so he must be doing something right. We joined him for a hike up Mt. Baldy the following Saturday, Day 5 of his 7-day clense, and he was motoring up the mountain. I don't know if these two things are related, but after asking him a million questions and despite the fact that I'm not into diets or supplements, I signed myself up this week to do a 5-day clense (I'm flying to Seattle Saturday, so it's probably not realistic to keep it going through the weekend). No, this isn't your typical, lemon juice/maple syrup/cayenne pepper concoction, it's more like forcing yourself to eat what you're supposed to eat plus a few extras as seen below.




So I'm on Day 1. Veggies only. You can eat them in broth-based soup, you can sautee them, basically eat them any way you like, but you can only eat veggies. Okay, fruits, too, but only until 4pm. I started off the day with:

• 2oz. shot of juice mixed with bentonite clay (not as gross as it sounds...it helps get impurities out of your body)

• 8oz. of water


• a cup of Yogi Get Regular Tea...then wait an hour


• 8oz. of juice with DetoxiFiber (tough to choke down, next time I'm mixing it w/ a smoothie)


• 8oz. of water

• 8oz. of vitamin C drink
  

I was so stuffed with liquids, I couldn't imagine being hungry later. After peeing 5x, I was walking out the door at 10am. Around noon I started to get a little hungry, and despite eating a nectarine, a tomato, and a cob of corn, by 4pm I was ravenous. From noon to 7pm, I at the following:

• 2 white nectarines (thank goodness they're in season!)


• 1 corn-on-the-cob


• 1 tomato


• Butter lettuce salad with another tomato, corn from a corn-on-the-cob, green onions, and avocado


• Grilled zuchini & yellow squash with mediterranean spices (mint, oregano, red pepper flakes, etc)

I still want a cookie or carb of some sort, but I'm acually pretty satiated. What I like about this "clense" is that it forces you to learn to eat (and make) healthy stuff and takes you cold-turkey off starches (at 4pm, I was like a junkie craving anything carb-related). It made me realize how a quick granola bar or a Taco Bell taco may stave off hunger, but it's not really the best option. As I was eating my naked salad, I started googling oil-free salad dressings. For instance, take avocado and blend it with dijon, vinegar, and some garlic - haven't tried it yet, but it sounds delicioso. The clense doesn't restrict oil altogether, but it's an emphasis on finding alternatives.

I'll end Day 1 with another round of tea, clay/juice mixture, and water. For dinner on Day 2, I get fish with brown rice and veggies (Halibut w/ Fresh Peach Salsa - YAY!!!). I also get to add in lentils, and I couldn't be more excited to eat beans (I'm currently cooking up some Spicy Black Bean soup to enjoy for lunch).

Goodyear, Good Golfing

We've been lucky enough to golf every weekend since I arrived in CA. One of the courses we played in LA was right next to the Goodyear blimp's parking spot. They must have been training people to fly the blimp because it kept taking off and landing the whole time we were playing. This was at the tee box for the 17th hole - no pressure, Stu.

Summer Lovin'

Zach & Tish's wedding in Palm Springs: 5:30pm on the 18th hole of Indian Wells Country Club. Gorgeous and sunny, but it was also 102 degrees. The icy mojitos at the reception were a welcome refreshment.

Renovations

After moving my stuff to LA in mid-March, I finally arrived in early May. One of the first orders of business was to repaint the bathroom from a "vibrant" red-orange to something more bathroom appropriate. Some of the walls in the living room and bedroom are a shade of orange, but a much more neutral version that looks great. We thought a nice neutral purple might work in the bathroom, but $50 worth of paint and primer later, with one wall painted, we decided otherwise. On our next run to Home Depot, we were walking towards the paint and saw a single sample laying off to the side - "Brown Fox" - and we knew it was perfect. With the white trim, I like to think it's my personal piece of Nantucket, right here in LA.

Here you can see me happily working on demolition and pre-painting prep (along with the beautiful red-orange color of the walls). The white part in the upper right used to be a big cabinet that the previous owner probably installed in 1936 - it was dirty and blocked all the light in the bathroom, so down it came. And so goes Stu's introduction to home improvement.

Whenever I get started on a project, I get so excited about it, I'm up at 6am working on it (to Stu's delight). Bonus? The whole thing was done in 48 hours including painting and priming one wall purple and then priming plus painting and touch-ups with the final color.

And here you can see BROWN FOX!! The new color made me as happy as the demolition.

Now all we have to do is get the floor replaced after a "minor" toilet leak caused black stuff to ooze out between the seams in the wood laminate flooring. A light red stain on the white baseboard is now black and fuzzy from the same problem.

Stu & I

My friend Jenny found this list of questions from another friend (that seems to be the way these things work), and I thought it would be fun to fill out about Stu & I:

• What are your middle names? Mine is Colleen; his is James. Both are passed down from one of our parents.
• How long have you been together? A year and a half.
• How long did you know each other before you started dating? I met him in San Diego at my cousin Jaymee’s in May 2007. We started dating in August 2007, so 3 months, except we didn't really have any contact in those three months (I'm convinced I sent him an email, but he will argue otherwise). I knew someone named Stu was coming down to San Diego while I was visiting over Memorial Day, but I didn't meet him until I woke up on the air mattress in the living room to find him on the couch 12” away from me. Stu, Jeff (my cousin’s husband), and I went golfing at Torrey Pines the next day, and Stu swindled me into getting a cart for us to share while Jeff walked the course. That night he slept on the couch again, and I slept on the floor next to the couch. We stayed up talking while everyone else was sleeping, and in the morning he took me to the airport on his way back to LA. Yes, it felt like high school.
• Who asked whom out? He likes to say/think he did, but I’m the one that booked a flight to LA.
• How old are each of you? I'm 31 (32 in 5 days); he’s 29 (30 in 22 days). Yes, there is a period of 17 days that I am 3 years older than him. *sigh*
• Whose siblings do you see the most? His sister, Sara, and her husband, Jason, because they live 2 hours away in Palm Springs.
• Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple? 3044 miles, but that’s all about to change.
• Did you go to the same school? I went to Arizona and then Penn for business school; he went to Colorado State followed by LMU for law school.
• Are you from the same home town? No, but he grew up in the same town as my cousins (Great Falls, MT) and went to the same high school as my cousin's husband (Jeff) – and that’s how we know each other.
• Who is smarter? It depends on if we’re talking about legal proceedings or financial statements.
• Who is the most sensitive? I have yet to see Stu shed a tear. I, on the other hand, can cry if you look at me funny on the wrong day.
• Where do you eat out most as a couple? Sadly, Olive Garden, but it’s always take-out, and it’s usually on the nights that I fly out (I will secretly admit that we had Olive Garden take-out for our Valentine's Day dinner this year). If it’s before 10:30am, McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches. If we’re in Boston, Bricco in the North End and Charley’s for brunch.
• Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? It depends on if you mean from LA or from Boston, but probably Montana because it’s the only place where both of us had to connect to get there.
• Who has the craziest exes? You mean the one that broke open a door to get to me? He claims to have not dated very seriously before me.
• Who has the worst temper? I suppose if I’m going to take the “most sensitive”, I also have to admit having the worst temper. Stu is ridiculously even-keeled. Although his mom tells me he had quite the temper as a little boy. I didn’t realize you could grow out of that.
• Who does the cooking? One time Stu asked if I had to use a cookie base to make Banana Jumbos. As though a “cookie base” was something you bought at the store. I gently informed him that a “cookie base” is simply flour, eggs, butter, and sugar.
• Who is the neat-freak? When we were moving Stu last month, we got 80% unpacked and organized in one day – I was energized; he wanted a nap. When I got back two weeks later, maybe 1% had been touched while the rest was still in haphazard piles. Cleaning makes me happy.
• Who is more stubborn? Me, and don’t try to argue with me about it.
• Who hogs the bed? It’s not so much that he “hogs” the bed as it is what he calls “cuddling”. I generally have a small 6” sliver of bed to work with.
• Who wakes up earlier? I am generally awake and excited to get going around 9am. In LA that means 6am. We’ll have to see what happens when we’re on the same coast.
• Where was your first date? McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches en route to a hike in LA. I’m not supposed to admit that to anyone.
• Who is more jealous? If he went to dinner with as many girls as I do with guys in Boston, I would be a basket case.
• How long did it take to get serious? We were always serious.
• Who eats more? Are we talking a Chipotle burrito? Because you should see Stu mow them down. He can eat more in one sitting; I graze throughout the day.
• Who does the laundry? I might say we’re pretty even on this, but again, we’ll have to see once we’re in under the same roof. He definitely does it more often.
• Who's better with the computer? Probably me, but it’s not like either of us does anything that’s very complicated.
• Who drives when you are together? Stu. Especially in LA – I just don’t have the patience.
  

Hungry kitten

Yes, thankfully he's eating on his own now, but he's not exactly clean about it yet (it doesn't help that I still mix formula in with his wet food along with some dry food). He's also still working on using the litter box consistently - though fortunately he seems to avoid going on the rugs (minus one mishap with a blanket, but he was on the couch and too scared to jump down).

Gingerbread houses

This past weekend, I was in LA with Stu for his company's holiday party and prior to going, I found out that a cooking school in the area was having a gingerbread house class. I love cooking and craft classes, but this was particularly relevant because when I was 10, I needed to make a gingerbread house for school, and it was a complete disaster. My mom set me up with graham crackers and some frosting that was much too runny, and I basically ended up with a house of cards drizzled with some frosting. 21 years later, here's a much better product. Notice my tiny wood pile to the right of the front door, which I made out of broken pretzel sticks versus the Tootsie roll version in the 3rd picture - clearly I need to be more adventurous and not so hung up on proportion with my gingerbread houses. In the right corner is a small fire pit - again, bigger would have been better. Stu was equally excited about the class, but unlike me, he had wonderful memories making a gingerbread house for school. This is his thatch-roofed house in the desert, complete with a swimming pool and rainbow slide. If you look closely at the left corner of the house, you can see the remains of a cactus made out of a pretzel log that didn't survive (the arm fell off within minutes).

This last one was the big winner of the day (in my opinion). Its owner brought in Twizzler Nibs to make the brick and used Tootsie Rolls for the wood pile. Notice the intricate garland around the fence. The woman's two daughters were in the class with us, and just as she was finishing, one of them griped, "ugh, mom, yours is so perfect." I have something to aspire to next year...

Meet Carrot, the kitten

Clearly, if I don't make any promises, it means I'll be better about posting.

Here is a pic of the 4-week-old kitten that I am fostering for the Animal Rescue League until he is old enough for adoption (8 weeks). I picked him up the week before Thanksgiving when he was just barely 3 weeks old and had to start off bottle-feeding him, but he is thankfully eating on his own now. Thanksgiving morning we woke up to him limp and passed out in his litter box - after 36 hours at the emergency vet, he came home recovered from a little bout of hypothermia. Now he's relegated to a kennel that only has room for his little litter box and a heating pad, so he's desperately excited for attention and affection when he's out. So much so that he won't sit still. After an hour or so, this is how he fell asleep, jammed between our legs while we were watching football.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know last time I said I was going to be better about posting, but here I am again months later with no posts. My resolution is to not make any promises (which means I'll probably end up posting more often). With that said, I wanted to wish everyone a super happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful to have so many wonderful friends (whom I love to keep up with through their blogs since I'm so bad about emailing).

Since we spent the past year traveling to so many different weddings and family events (I've seen my family more this year than I have any year since high school), Stu and I decided to have a quiet little holiday in Boston with the added bonus of having almost a week to play in the city instead of just a quick little weekend. We made it a sports-filled weekend including a Friday night Celtics game against the 76ers (Stu's first time in the Garden), a rainy but super fun Patriots game against the Steelers Sunday night (both of our firsts in Gillette Stadium), and watched plenty of football on TV (does it count if he fell asleep during every game except the Vikings/Bears on Sunday night?). Thanksgiving Day we volunteered at the Animal Rescue League feeding the over 100 cats and kittens and cleaning some cages before coming home to a dinner of turkey rolled in Stu's Uncle Jim's stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry jelly, croissants (with blueberry jelly from Mom in Michigan), and of course, green bean casserole. It was just the two of us for dinner, but we made it in 2 hours and devoured it and the leftovers for the next 4 days. Green bean casserole usually requires a 2nd batch, but somehow we survived on 1 - stuffing though required a 2nd batch as did the gravy. Thanksgiving is almost complete with green bean casserole but not without banana jumbos (banana bread cookies with buttercream frosting), so in between football timeouts, we managed to bake up a batch of cookies and some banana bread. Next up with the rest of the turkey leftovers (the only thing left from the feast)...turkey tetrazzini, mmm.

I would say stay tuned for some pictures, but I promised I would make no promises...

Boston!

With the time change and Stu's work schedule, it's usually easier for me to fly out to LA (not to mention it's a whole lot warmer there in the winter than Boston), but he was in NYC last minute for work this past week, so we were able to make another weekend in Boston happen! I was in Chicago for work for the week, but after I got home on Friday, we wandered around town on a perfectly sunny afternoon including lunch on the patio at Parish and sushi and Liberty Hotel with Lauren and Matt. Saturday we fought off the urge to sleep in and made it to Nantucket by noon for a full day of sunshine on our own private beach. Sunday was thankfully cloudy and cool back in Boston, so we took advantage of a day full of sports and napping on the couch. Here's a pic from the Barking Crab - with the lobster pager that they gave us while we were waiting.

Two in a row...

Wow, don't get too excited. Seems I reintroduced myself to blogspot and even figured out how to change the links to the right so that I could add friends' blogs! For good measure while I'm at it, here's a pic of Stu and I over New Years in Breckenridge - the afterparty from Emma's wedding!

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

I know, it's been forever since I posted (I swear, I got errors a few times and kind of gave up), so who knows if anyone will ever see this, but Stu and I came up with a super delicious gumbo recipe this weekend. It probably serves 6-8, so you can either feed a bunch of people or you'll have lots of tasty leftovers!

Heat a little oil and sautee the following together in a giant skillet:
3 cloves of garlic
1 giant sweet onion (or 2 medium ones)
2 bell peppers (any color – recipe called for green, but I prefer red)
1 can of diced tomatoes (16 oz or so) – add a 2nd can if you like tomatoes
1-1.5 lbs sausage of your choice (we used mild italian sausage)
2 tsp fresh thyme (or ¾ tsp dried thyme from a jar) – I’d never cooked with this before, it’s tasty!
½ tsp white pepper (or black, but I prefer white for soups)
2 tsp cajun seasoning (or cayenne pepper + extra oregano + extra pepper)
A dash or two or three of oregano (or use fresh)
Salt to taste
Red pepper flakes if you want more kick
You can also add Gumbo File, found in the spice section (not too expensive – made from sassafras) that adds a delicate taste plus thickens the broth a little

Mix together in a stock pot and bring to a boil:
1 rotisserie chicken (prepped like you would for Chicken Tortilla)
64 oz chicken broth
1 large can of tomato sauce (16oz oz or so)

Add the mixture from skillet, and add a little cornstarch and water mixture if you want to thicken up the final product.

Serve in a bowl over cooked brown rice (or mix cooked rice into soup mixture before serving).

Enjoy with cornbread and anything else Cajun!! Serves 6-8.

Fall Festivus!

Gosh, it's been a whirlwind of fun (this is why I haven't had time to settle into my apartment)! This past weekend, my friend, Allison, hosted her annual Fall Festivus down in CT, which involves the girls going apple picking, pumpkin patching, and making a feast of all things apple, all while drinking hot apple cider with ginger brandy (ginger hot toddys might be the official name). The highlight of our day, possibly even our year was the "Cool Bus" (defintely a framer). It was an aboslutely perfect day - warm and sunny with the fall foilage at its peak.

The significant others joined in on the feast, we sang Happy Birthday to Shrn (Sharon, but we like to pronounce it "Shurn"...along with "Ern" and "Dern" for myself and Darren), and then everyone got into a rousing game of Cranium while watching the Red Sox win Game 6 against the Indians!

Fun in Puh-hoe-nix!

So it seems like most people get to a point where all of their friends get married in/around a 2-year span. Somehow mine have been spread out over the years, but two of my best friends, my cousin, Jaymee, and my college roommate, Emma, are getting married in the next year. Emma's wedding is this coming New Years, so we had her bridal shower and bachelorette party down in Phoenix this past weekend. Here's the bridal party (minus Abby) including her brother, RJ, who is the "best bro" or "bridesman"...I think the jury's still out on his official title. Running away as fast as she can is Emma's adorable neice, Katherine, who easily steals the show in any room.

Some of the girls out for the night (including Abby on the left)

Dancing queens! (nevermind the weird guy off to the right)

And of course we had hike Camelback! We've done it everytime we're in Phoenix, and it's one of the things I love about Emma - we're always out running, hiking, or doing something active.

How you d'ern, how you d'ern??

One of my friends from business school, Pete Stern, is headed to Hong Kong for work, so he had a big going away party in NYC complete with sunglasses (his trademark) and sushi on a rooftop bar. TONS of fun to see everyone now that we're all settling into work and the post-school real world (Pete's the one just to the left of me in the pic).

Last May, Pete suggested that I link up with his sis, Lauren, once I got up to Boston. He thought we'd probably get along pretty well, and he was totally right. She's become my favorite partner-in-crime up here, and his party was our first opportunity to "dress slutty" in NYC together!

Back in action!

There's been a lot of commentary on my "hey guys, i have a blog!" email and the fact that I've only posted twice. Well, it's a big week, friends, because I just got internet! Not only that, but as I mentioned before, I lost my camera during the weekend with Jaymee and Jeff. $300 later, I have a replacement and some fun pics coming up.

So I finally moved into my own apartment September 9th after subleasing via craigslist for the past 2 months. It's great to finally have a place to call home, but I haven't been around for a full weekend yet, so I have yet to completely settle in. There have been a lot of quick runs to pick up and return things rather than getting them all done in one fell swoop - this is me on a recent lunch run, testing out the new camera, and tired of the whole moving process.

Pony Up.

I got lucky with a work trip to CA and got to head down to San Diego for Jaymee's birthday! After their engagement glamour shots, we headed out for a hot air balloon ride in Del Mar - SUPER FUN! I lost my camera later in the night, but at least we got some shots on Jaymee's camera. Jeff's holding out hope that the camera will show up, but I'm not so positive.

Fun with blogging...

Since so many of my friends seem to be doing blogs, I decided it was about time for me to give it a shot, so my friend Jenny gave me a little tutorial. Here's a fun picture of us that we took when she was in town last weekend! Yay for Boston!!!