’round here

Not too much to report around here. Good quiet week. One night it got down to 55? So we schnuggled up near the fire.Friday night we found a new fun spot to hang out about 2 miles from our apartment. Six months and we never knew this was here. San Pedro Square, the beginning of downtown San Jose, full of fun restaurants and bars. Friday night we met friends at the Old Wagon Wheel.Saturday, Wallydog had a spa appointment so we took a stroll downtown again to explore San Pedro Square. I will never tire of Palm trees in my backyard.San Pedro Market is sorta like Quincy Market with lots of food vendors (a lot of them have food trucks, but this is their home base). It was a hard choice…gourmet grilled cheese, spring rolls, thin crust pizza, noodle bar, but ultimately we chose well.Homemade specialty hot dogs with homemade buns. Amazing. Just amazing. The top is Shakingdog: Kobe beef dog with Vietnamese shaking beef on lemon vinaigrette watercress. But the winner goes to the Breakfast Dog on the bottom Bratwurst, bacon egg over easy, and BACON JAM.  We explored some more then picked up the pup from his beauty appointment. Doesn’t he look handsome?Sunday was full of errands, housecleaning, and a long walk in the neighborhood. My Mr. Pringles pumpkins managed to grow some pretty fierce eyebrows this week. This week we finalized our Thanksgiving plans so to celebrate…we had mini Thanksgiving for dinner tonight. The menu was pretty simple, brined turkey breast, gravy, cornbread apple sausage stuffing, mashed tatoes, and balsamic brussels with cranberries. My first time making it all, and it all turned out pretty well.We now have dinner for the entire week…And now we’re all in a turkey coma…Have a good week everyone. Be safe east coast! Hope Sandy is gentle!

welcome fall!

We stayed pretty busy this weekend…all pretty local but we had a great time. First up, we had a little Christmas in October. We decided to treat ourselves to a new bed as our Christmas present to each other. For the past six and a half years we’ve been sleeping on a full sized bed that was between 30-40 years old. Given it’s age, it was in great shape, but it was getting a little cozy in there with the pup in there very often. See exhibit A:We actually fell inlove with the bed we slept in at the hotel in Rhode Island for the wedding we went to last month. The front desk gave us a website to buy it from. A few days (and some not so comfortable nights) I convinced Nate it was time for an upgrade. With the mattress delivery scheduled for this Saturday, we went on an adventure to Ikea to get a king sized bed frame to fit into a Touraeg. Success!Next up, building the frame. It’s a good thing we had Wally supervising…

Saturday, Christmas morning finally came…Do you think he likes it?It was hard for all of us to leave this on Saturday, but we had tickets to the Bridge School Benefit Concert at Shoreline, where we saw Florence just a few weeks ago. Our seats weren’t as impressive but the show was definitely worth it. It’s organized every year by Neil Young and his wife Pegi to benefit the Bridge School, which helps kids with speech and physical impairments. We saw a lot of great bands: Gary Clark Jr, Ray LaMontagne, Sarah MacLachlan, Foster the People, Guns N Roses, and of course Neil Young. My favorite part of the show though was Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. A few minutes before they were due to come out, I said to Nate, do you know who that band is? And he shook his head and said “the only Steve Martin I know was in Father of the Bride”. Well what do you know….They were amazing! A folksy bluegrass band with the best violinist (fiddler?) I have ever seen. And Steve plays the banjo!My second favorite was of course Ray LaMontagne.Sunday morning I begrudgingly dragged the boys out of bed. It was pumpkin carving day!Sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds.Protecting our door step at night.To continue our celebration of fall, we had a nice cozy dinner of braised short rib, stout, and potato pot pies with roasted carrots.And to complement it, a taste of the east coast, Shipyard Pumpkinhead.And now a new Dexter and Homeland.

Have a good week!

around here

Not too much to report this week. Nate has been traveling so it’s just me and the pup.
I had a pretty rockin’ Friday night…I had to work so sushi was the hilight of my evening…Saturday was full of errands. Hard to believe but my Saturday night was even more exciting than Friday night…what? all the cool kids hang out at Trader Joes on Saturday nights…

 

Sunday Wally and I cleaned the house from top to bottom. And did lots of cooking. For lunch: Fig, prosciutto, mozzarella, arugula pizza. For snack: stuffed shells. Just kidding, these went into the freezer for some easy after work meals.For dinner, french onion soup. It didn’t get higher than 75 today, so obviously that’s soup weather.In between the cooking and cleaning, the pup and I went for a long walk in the hood. It was a beautiful day in San Jose.It really tired him out.You think he needs a haircut? He’s looking just a little scruffy…

Happy Monday everyone!

29!

This weekend was one of my favorite California weekends so far. Saturday marked me entering the last year of my 20s and I could not have felt more loved from all the calls, texts, facebook messages, and packages and of course all the effort Nate put into making a special weekend for me.

Friday night we got tickets to see one of my favorite bands, Florence and the Machine. Thanks to my friend at work, we were able to sit about 6 or 7 rows from the stage. The closest I have ever seen a concert and what an amazing show it was.Saturday morning I woke up to breakfast in bed…Wallydog helping me with my presents…After breakfast we headed up to Berkeley to go to the dog park with the best views. Notice the bank of fog hanging out by the city…this was concerning Nate…360 view with the new panoramic function on iOS6. Wallydog likes to pose.After the dog park, we headed home to drop Wally off because Nate had a surprise for me. What a surprise it was! We took a 30 minute helicopter ride around the bay (which is why the fog was concerning earlier…luckily it all cleared and it could not have been more of a perfect day!)Wearing my new shoes in the copilot seat, Pacific Ocean below..Nate behind me.  

Heading towards the city… Jazz fest in Golden Gate Park.We went under the bridge!America’s Cup in the bay…Nice view of the bridge. The Blue Angels were actually performing an airshow on the otherside, which we got to watch from the air.Fisherman’s wharf and the city…Bay bridge to Oakland and Treasure IslandAT&T park… Looking west..It was absolutely amazing. Followed up with a delicious Italian dinner outside in Saratoga. I am very lucky! Made my first West Coast birthday very special 🙂

2.5 week update?

Hello there. Deliquent blogger here. I know, I don’t even have a good excuse…just moderately busy and just getting back into the swing of things around here. But I vow to be better. Even get back to posting on Sunday nights. So here’s our life in iphone pictures over the last couple of weeks.

Despite seeing froggie in there, Wallydog was not interested in his carrier.But begrudgingly, we got him in there. And he survived 11 hours worth of flights, without too much complaining.While in MA/RI, we went to the wedding of two good friends at an absolutely beautiful location. Congratulations April and Matt!The only picture I have of the two of us. The important part of this picture is I set a new record right before this was taken. I showered, blew dry, curled, ironed, and got made up in under an hour.  Nate’s looking pretty sharp too there, don’t you think? He was ready in under an hour too 😉The rest of the weekend, we caught up around town. Visited the yacht club and the river…Took in a sunset…And Wallydog and his Uncle Wesley got in a good run on the beach.The weekend went way too fast and before we knew it, we were back on the west coast. This weekend we did’t have too many plans. Saturday we went on a sunset bike ride.And completely erased any calories burned by having ice cream for dinner.Sunday morning I roamed the farmer’s market. Best tomatoes I’ve had in awhile. Late girls I think they are called?Dahlia season!My new favorite fruit…pluots!Sunday afternoon we took a drive to the northern tip of Big Sur. And had a nice grilled dinner.Today, despite being October 2nd, did not show many signs of Fall.But we still had a nice autumn-ish dinner. Sage pork meatballs braised in apple cider and white wine with rainbow potato, rainbow chard, apple hash. Very colorful despite the blah picture.

And that’s all folks…be back in just a few days 😉