BEACH TRIP!!! (caution this may be really long)

Richard got 3 whole weeks of vacation this year. WOW! We are cashing in 1 of them but we used the second week as a great chance to have one last NorCal coast and Redwood trip. This time we rented a beach front cabin (lower rates for winter HOORAY!) for 6 whole nights! I used to come to these cabins as a kid with my aunt and uncle so I am especially attached to this particular beach. We stayed in Pelicans Perch (#6) here are some pictures of our adorable little home for a week.

I used this great online program to create a panoramic view from our back deck. Be sure to blow it up full screen then click and drag to see in either direction:

http://www.dermandar.com/p/bSJKAF/white-rock

This place has a kitchen and have fresh made bread baking when you arrive!

We ate some of it but feeding the seagulls is so much fun not only did half of this loaf go to that but we had to buy a cheap loaf at Grocery Outlet. Here is a great video of that:

We got really lucky and it was great weather. It was a little more chilly then we are used to. We got some great sweatshirts (with woolly lining) and neoprene socks for under our teva's at this AWESOME little surf shop on the Crescent City docks called South Beach Outfitters. We had a great time talking with Lisa who was working the shop that day, then we went down to the docks to see the sea lions. We kept getting closer and closer. You can tell how nervous I am by my silly voice.

After the camera shuts off we sneak a little closer the big guy decides we have gone far enough and starts barking and lurching.... We booked it off those docks! Some people watching from the safety of the parking lot got a kick out of it lol.

Our favorite hike this time is called Damnation Creek Trail. It is a little over a 4 mile hike that has an elevation change of 1200 ft! It snakes from the redwoods down to the ocean. It was misty and fantastic!

I discovered my poor camera of 6 wonderful years is finally on its last legs :( barely any of these pictures turned out, and even those were kinda blurry. Oh well It still gets the point across :)

We also tried to see some lighthouses... They were all closed to the public but we still had fun taking pictures with this one:

We drove up to Bandon Oregon and had a good time stopping at all the fun touristy shops on the way back down. We got a great tour at a myrtlewood shop. Myrtlewood trees only grow in Southern Oregon and Israel! They take hundreds of years to grow and the wood of each one is unique in color and pattern ... Just like people :) Here is a great page that talks about them: http://www.myrtlewoodgallery.com/what-is-myrtlewood

On our last day we did a great redwood hike on Mill Creek Trail (near Stout Grove) and Tide pooling at Lone Ranch:

This is barely the tip of the ice burg of the adventures and pictures but that's all for now. We had such a good time! We are now ready to hunker down and endure the Utah winter before we run off for our Hawaii adventure.

Preview

California Coast Trip post coming soon :D

Pandora

Recently I created a Bob Marley station on my Pandora. Today this song came on:

Before I was born Eli was the baby and he was an especially fussy baby. When he would cry my oldest brother Ben would sing him this song. So now every time I hear it I have a mental image of cute little toddler Ben singing this song to a fat little baby Eli. That, combined along with the happy lyrics, I find myself grinning from ear to ear.

Aww :D

Bacon

It seems like ever since I left home it seems like certain food items prices have been increasing exponentially. One such item is Bacon. In software when there is a glitch in a program people invent "work arounds" Its a odd slightly complicated way to maneuver around said glitch.

Recently I have found the work around for bacon prices. It is called Sunny Valley Ends and Pieces.

This is a pork belly:

And after they cut out those nice uniform bacon slices there are leftover chunks and bits. Those bits end up in a bulk package with a friendly sticker at WinCo.

They layer the few strips in the mix on the outside of the package so you think hey most of this will be usable. Once you open it up you find those were the only things in the entire 3lb package that resemble bacon. At first I was very disappointed. It's a grab bag between big ham like chunks the size of my fist and similar sized lard hunks, to little marble sized pieces, to slices so thin you can see right through them. It takes me about half an hour to sort through and make 3 bowls:

Lard:

Solid Meat:

Friable Bacon:

The last group I end up with about 10 slices and the rest 3 lbs is divided between the first 2. I chop the ham like chunks into lovely bacon bits that I freeze in little servings. (I can just toss the little frozen serving into a pan and it thaws and fries up just the right amount of bacon for a two person omelet or to be used on top of a pizza.) Next I render down the lard. When it goes liquid I strain it and refrigerate to use later for cooking eggs or other savory dishes. We just used up the last of it two weeks ago so I've been going through the process again today.

Right now I'm rendering and from the kitchen, to the bedroom, to the laundry room it all smells like bacon! YUM :)

5 Little Pumpkins

A few years ago when I took my very first 3DS Max* class I made this little video. I spent countless hours digitally sculpting, positioning, lighting and timing the project. Its obviously amateur but I was pretty happy with the results. I posted it on YouTube so I could easily share it with my family.

I had completely forgotten about it until yesterday when I got a email from you tube saying there was a comment on my video. I went and watched it again and then I saw... OVER 5,000 people had watched my little video!

Happy Halloween everybody :)

*3DS Max is a 3 dimensional software program that is used to make the characters and scenes in movies like Nemo, Toy Story, and Avatar

Crafty Update

Its amusing that so many of my posts should start out with stories of Eli but he was such a quotable little boy so here it goes :) When Eli was about 4 or so he was pretending to be a little native american brave. He made himself fishing spears and would collect "herbs" and things for his little tepee. His favorite invention though was a little bow he made that could actually send a little stick "arrow" halfway across the front yard. My mom brought out the video camera to record his new invention. She was telling how impressed she was with this new creation of his and he puts his hands on his hips and says in a very self assured voice. "Well, I'm Proud I did it"

So my newest addition to our little etsy shop are these rings. I made them out of a ring base and old watch parts. And yes I'm Proud I did it ;)

X96

So last month on a Tuesday at 6am in the morning you would have found me sitting on a sidewalk in front of a run down record store with about 100 other people. We were waiting in line for this year's $10 tickets. Almost every year the Alt Rock radio station here in Utah (called X96), throws a HUGE concert with tons of different bands, both signed and local, and they sell their first group tickets for only 10 bucks! The prices keep going up until day of the show when they are 30 dollars (still not a bad deal). The line up this year was Panic at the Disco, Anberlin, Switchfoot, Neon Trees, She Wants Revenge, Brogan Kelby, Sleeper Agent, Grouplove, and King Niko. There are two outdoor stages and the show starts at 11:30am and goes until after 8pm.

Yesterday was the show!!!! Wahoo! The bands I was most excited to see were Panic, Anberlin, and Neon Trees. Richard was super excited to see She Wants Revenge, he's loved them even longer than he's loved me :) The pictures I took with my phone make us look way further away then we actually were.

Most of the bands we wanted to see were at the lower stage and we found this great big cement planter rather close to the stage. We could sit up there and be a whole head above everyone else. Plus no getting shoved around by and excited crowd! My favorite find of the show was a band called Sleeper Agent. I had only heard one of their songs before but it turns out they were one of the best bands there! I got them to sign my jacket! Their Bass Player thought I was a cutie :D So ya I probably could have dated a rock star if I hadn't already found my perfect man. Speaking of my perfect man, Richard got to meet the lead singer and lead guitarist from She Wants Revenge. They signed my jacket too :)

Here he is with them:

Here is some video from Neon Tree's:

They put on a great show, they even played some new stuff that hasn't hit radio or CD yet. Their drummer, Elaine Bradley, is one of the coolest female rockers of all time. I hung around after the show and she came out to meet us!!! She is super nice too!

The crowd was so huge for Panic that we couldn't even see the stage :( But they were mostly playing music from their new CD and honestly its not anywhere as good as their old stuff. This is as close to them as I got! haha

They were the last show so we skipped out early, No traffic jam for us!!!

Oh and here is a fun crowd picture:

Where's Waldo? (look hard he's in there)

Here are the web sites of the bands I talked about:

Neon Trees: http://www.fameisdead.com/default.aspx#!all

Sleeper Agent: http://sleeperagentmusic.com/tour/

She Wants Revenge http://www.shewantsrevenge.com/

Panic at the Disco: http://www.panicatthedisco.com/

One Beach

I saw this video and really liked it! Its 24 mins long though, so make sure you have time for the whole thing :)

A quick post called I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar

When I was looking for the picture in my last post I stumbled upon so many more fun very hungry caterpillar baby and toddler stuff. I decided to make a separate post just about them.

First here is a blog about making these onesies

http://kronhaus.wordpress.com/tag/very-hungry-caterpillar-fabric/

Also this clever mom who makes this skirt combo:

http://helpinglittlehands.blogspot.com/2010/04/very-hungry-caterpillar-applique.html

Pottery Barn makes this cute crib set

It would be a pretty easy quilting task though I bet.

They also do these beautiful bedding sets:

This would be a cute mom and baby or sibling costume set:

And who could resist caterpillar toes!

http://pleasegivepeasachance.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-friday-vhc-toes.html

Crafty

We have a home video of my dad making split rails from cedar logs. As usual all three of us are milling around being the peanut gallery and commenting on what we are observing. My mom polls us on what we think of this new found talent of our Papa. Ben and I make various positive comments. Eli however, sees this as a great moment to get right up in the camera, bug his eyes out a bit, and declare in a loud voice "I think he's Crafty!" So that is the theme of this post.

As I mentioned in earlier posts we have been working on Steam Punk gear. We have been selling some of our practice projects on Etsy and we had our 1 of the items sell in less than 20mins! So we will be doing more of that for sure!

Here are the two that we sold:

We also had the chance to be with a "MeetUp" group. They are a bunch of photographers who pick a theme and invite people to come pose for them. We had my costume mostly ready (I borrowed a shirt from a nice theater girl who brought a bunch of costume stuff to the event!) So here are some awesome pictures from that:

Richard made the goggles and customized the Nerf gun. I made the fascinatior and the brooch.

One of my good friends from the daycare is having a baby girl. We both love the Eric Carle book The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I found this and am going to try to re-create it.

Also, I've been crocheting baby hats for all my pregnant or new mom friends... I'm still getting the size down right but they are soo cute. So hopefully pictures of those soon

Richard's Vacation

Richard had this past week off from work. Following an almost 60hr work week it was a very very welcomed break. We had a relaxing weekend and decided to head up into the mountains on Monday to go camping.

As we were driving up SR 150 it was so fun to watch all the cars going the other way. We were going to have the place all to ourselves! About 2/3rds of the way there, it started to get very cloudy. When we finally made arrived, it was down pouring :( We thought maybe we'd wait it out until we discovered our favorite campground Shady Dell is completely packed with people. We decided to try one of the many other Forest Service campgrounds the entire road is dotted with. We headed down the mountain. Turns out the reason Shady Dell was packed was because all the other campgrounds were shut down because of Provo River flash flood warnings :( But at least it was a beautiful drive :)

Since the camping endeavor failed, we deiced to just have our Dutch oven Cornish game hen dinner later in the week at Pine View Reservoir with Eli. They turned out AMAZING! It was a beautiful day on the lake too :) I wish I would have remembered my camera!

It was so fun to just hang out and relax for a whole week! I have the tendency to over plan all our vacations but this was just perfect :)

Shortie

Just a quick hello! Wanted to make one last post for August. Its been a fun month :)

I started web design!!! Well ok it's not really web design, it's more like web page customization. I'm not writing HTML code or anything, BUT it is still pretty cool. This is only the 3rd one I have ever done and it's by far the best. I'm still playing with it and getting it to where I love it. Once it's to that point I'll link here you can see it :)

Also, I've been playing around with making business cards again. I made some in high school and more recently for my sister-in-law's home business. Vista print does a thing where you can use them to design business cards for other people and the will give you 25% of the sale. Maybe I'll talk to some local businesses and see if that is something they would go for.

Well I hope your August was good. Ready or not here comes September!

Busy Again!

I haven't written for a while because I am finally busy again!

Eli came back to Utah last Saturday. His apt wasn't ready for him though so he's been staying with us. Its been really fun to have him around. He moves in to his new place tomorrow! It is good timing, because even though its been great having him here, a tiny 1 bedroom place is really not big enough for 3 full grown people. The poor guy has been sleeping in my laundry room :( And with him on day shift, and Richard on night shift, my sleep schedule is a total mess. I'm excited to help him set up his new place. He got some great hand-me-down furniture from some friends.

Also, I've had a creative outlet! Richard and I have started making "SteamPunk" stuff. Together we are working on or have made: a set of goggles, a leather bound survival book, some jewelry, and modified Nerf guns. (With Eli here we have had some pretty massive Nerf battles) My favorite part is antiquing everything.

On top of everything, I got a free picture editor and I have been teaching myself photo editing. :)

I hope to add pictures of our crafts soon but first I really need to get a new camera. Buying new electronics kinda stresses me out though, so it may be awhile.

Bugs

Story 1

In order to get any circulation in our house we have to open up the front door. I put it off as long as I can but eventually the stuffiness gets too much! I hesitantly open the door. WHOOSH! We get a wave of fresh cool air! Then it happens Do Do Doo DOOO The worlds smallest bugle sounds. An adorable little bug with too many legs and a Napoleon hat that is a bit to large for him calls: CHARGE!! and just like that the RolyPoly advance begins.

I have tried reasoning with them, "Why are you coming in here? There is nothing for you to eat in here. I keep it dry and clean. All this march will result in is your death!" I scoop them up in little handfuls to toss back in the lawn as I lecture them, "Everything you need is out here. Your lives out here are good!" But every night they come back. They are getting so used to this routine that they have stopped rolling into little balls when I pick them up!

I really don't mind sharing my home with a bug or two. In fact I have the cutest little spider (Charlotte) who keeps a tiny web between the stove and pantry. However she is self reliant! If I don't catch the rolypolys they just die. I vacuum up their poor little skeletons all the time! Charlotte ate one of the rolypolys the other day though and I almost threw her out! She is only supposed to eat the bad bugs. Richard said it wasn't her fault the rolypolys are stupid. I'm going to just have to be better about getting them out of the house.

Story 2

Contrary to popular belief I do not love all bugs. Mosquitoes, earwigs, and black flies make the hate list but at the top of this hate list sits the "Giant Roving Spider". After living with someone who grew up in Oklahoma (AKA Land of the colossus bugs) I have found I have to describe what huge is. Huge, when it comes to spiders, is anything that can't fit on a nickle. This particular batch would have trouble fitting on a 50 Cent piece. Roving spiders are wolf spiders and the like. Who a) grow way to large and b) don't build a web like a normal spider and sit in it but prowl around all creepy like!

Well these hideous monsters think its funny to hide in my bathtub. But not just in the bath tub. They hide in the curtain too so that when I'm all naked they can try and jump on my face! The worst part about these evil giant roving spiders is they just wont die! I'll try and scald/drown them with the water but they just run around like they are enjoying their bath. They just laugh at me when I try and us one of my shoes to kill them. I had to upgrade to Richards boots. Richad hit one 6 times with a Drain-o bottle before it finally died.

Most of all I am nervous because I cant tell the difference between a wolf spider (just looks deadly) and a hobo spider (deadly). Also this other type of spider keeps showing up it looks like this:

I finally found out what it was. It's a wood louse spider. (one of the just looks deadly). But this made me wonder? What is a wood louse? Turns out that wood louse is the ugly name for rolypolys! So now I have extra reason to get them out!

Oh and something of interest. If you remember last time I was at the coast Richard and I found under water rolypolys! They are called wood louses too. Look at how big they get though! YIKES!

Another Weekend Success!

With both of us being on night schedule getting to the post office is unusually difficult. We finally woke up around 3:40 pm. (Oh! Side note: a great system for telling what the equivalent time it is for us take the actual time and subtract 8 hours. For example if its 5 pm on the clock its 9 am in our morning.) I leisurely wander out to the kitchen to grab some breakfast. Then I see it -- the stack of boxes and envelopes. OH NO! Quick what time is it.... 3:40. What time does the post office close on Saturdays?... Uh... RICHARD! WHAT TIME DOES THE POST OFFICE CLOSE ON SATURDAYS?! ... No response. For as tiny as our home is sound does not travel well. I try yelling it again one more time and finally track him down. "Quick Honey! When does the post office close today?!?! At 4? Quick run! Run! We can make it! We can make it! We dash out the door, rush all the way there, run in the doors with 3 mins to spare and.... The post office closes at 2 on Saturdays... Really? Oh Well...

Hey what are all these tents set up on main street for? All of the shops on main had come out on to the street! Our favorite was the Happy Harbor Bread Co. They were sampling their sourdough bread. BEST EVER!!

In California there is the Redding Bakery and they make a loaf called the Extra Sour Dough Stubby. It is really, really good! Since I have left home however, I have tried multiple sourdoughs with no luck. Happy Harbor Bread wins! Its actually has a quite different texture than the Redding kind but I have to say its got that AWESOME sourdough flavor! Turns out the baker at HHB is from Sanoma County CA :) If you are in Utah you should definitely buy some. Here is the web site: http://www.hhbreadco.com/

We hung out with Richards family that evening. It was a smaller turn out then usual which was nice because Richard and I got to spend some quality time with Paxton, Wyatt and Kysa, our cute little nephews and niece. It finally just sunk in for Paxton that Richard and I are moving to Hawaii. He spent half the time we were there shaking the magic 8 ball so that it would say that we weren't leaving and would stay in Utah forever. They are some of the few things I actually will miss when we leave.

Salt Lake Daily Deals sends me emails for discounts on local things to do. This is one of the ones we got! It's wall to wall trampolines! We jumped for an hour! It was another 'you are more out of shape than you know' wake up call. We had soo much fun though! It had been 10 years since Richard had been on one and somewhere around 6 years for me. They have pits full of foam bricks that you can jump into. Getting out is exhausting!

We returned home sweaty but triumphant! Happy Weekend Everybody!

Farmers Market!

Finally made it to the Bountiful farmer's market today! It was packed! Its good to see them so well supported, but it gets a bit overwhelming too :) I got some awesome veggies! Got a yummy cucumber (they had samples), a bunch of baby green onions, 2 zucchinis and a yellow squash. It only cost me 3 dollars :) That's awesome for high quality produce in Utah. I've paid twice for old worn out product in the supermarket. So hooray and thanks farmers of Utah!