Pass the Vino!

In lieu of a traditional holiday party this year, we decided to get together with a few friends for a wine tasting party at our apartment. All of us head to Napa/Sonoma with every chance we get, so we have all accumulated several bottles of delicious wine that we always seem to be saving for a "special occasion". What better occasion than making one up for ourselves???


The Wine Selection...


A few bites to nibble on...


Some of the Crew


Dave, The Ladies' Man


The Full Crew

We are so grateful for our SF friends. They have made our first two years in San Francisco completely and totally amazing. Our lives are enriched ten-fold because each and every one of them are in it - thank you guys! xoxo

Giving Thanks....

You'd think I'd rock a Christmas post right now, but I can't pull the trigger on that until a proper Thanksgiving post is "live". We had such a great time and I don't want to miss a chance to capture it! We headed down to San Diego to see Mom, Lindsay and Jon and had gorgeous weather for the week! I enjoyed running through our old 'hood in La Jolla.

Dinner this year was - GASP - cooked almost entirely by Lindsay and me. The guys did the turkey and my Mom did the gravy and biscuits, but Lindsay and I managed to cook everything else! It was enjoyable and relaxing...even for a novice like myself. We weren't stressed out at all, though I was grateful it was just the 5 of us as our timing was slightly off...the turkey was done on time but Lindsay and I weren't done cooking for another 2 hours. Ha ha!


Lindsay and I as Chefs


Mom's look is priceless...Lindsay and I forgot to bake the sweet potatoes! Oops!


What? Isn't this one of the perks??


Seriously Delicious Vino


Dave Officially Carving the Turkey


Mama..Wine Pourer Extraordinaire

After dinner, we headed to the beach (about 3 blocks from Mom's place) and let Lindsay & Jon's dog, Jack, run along the sand/ocean. It was a gorgeous day!


Jon and Jack...two peas in a pod

Ahhh, Thanksgiving! Why, oh why, don't we have turkey more than once a year???

Very Sweet Video

My friend Natali sent this link to me of this amazing author named Kelly Corrigan who wrote a book about her experiences with her girlfriends and the support they provide her. Warning, you will definitely, definitely cry....but it is so wonderful and made me so grateful for the ladies in my life.



Cheers to girlfriends!

Babies'R'Not'Us...

We spent Thanksgiving down in Sunny San Diego this year with Mom, Lindsay and Jon (and Baby Ryno, in Lindsay's belly!).

Lindsay, Mom and I hit up Babies'R'Us for L to register and get a starting idea of what she'll need as a mom-to-be. Not surprisingly, the word overwhelming doesn't even begin to describe the feeling all three of us had as we embarked on the journey.


Lindsay apprehensively scanning

I mean, is it really necessary to have 5,000,000 choices of a bottle that the baby will use for 6 mos-1 year?? Seriously? And who knew that jogging strollers have MP3 holders and PEDOMETERS on them?!?! So cool! Though, then we learned that if you get a jogging stroller, you STILL need a "regular" stroller, I guess due to the monstrous size. Hmph.

Mom picked out her favorite bib...

"I love my Nana" bib

...and had to put her glasses on to read up on the 20-types of Baby Bjorn-type things (front only? back only? front and back? Kelte?).


We had a great time strolling the aisles and picking out fun goodies. Lindsay's bump is showing a little bit and we are all super-excited for May 2009!

Home Improvement 2008

Dave and I went on a home improvement spree last weekend! What started it was receiving a dresser Mom had down in La Jolla (from the Raleigh house) that she generously offered up to us. We have converted it into a bar, which forced us to actually assess our bar (and especially wine) situation with new eyes.

WOW.

So here is the "before" picture.


Yes, that is wine on the floor

I feel like it was one of those situations where we didn't even realize how out-of-control it was until we realized how much better it could be!

We hit up Ikea for a wine storage solution that could fit in our hall closet and are THRILLED with the outcome!


New wine storage solution in the closet - yaay!

The new bar is just perfect for us! We love the piece, as well as the lamp she gave us and the new plant we bought this weekend too.


Ahhhhh....much better


We can finally serve a drink from the bar!

And let's play "eye-spy"...we have some of our favorite spirits on top of the bar in the picture above. Maker's (my dad's fave), Tanq (regular and 10...for Dave), and....what's that in the back? Only the BEST alcohol ever invented (I know...big statement). It's Sweet Tea Vodka, made by Firefly out of Wadmalaw, SC. The drink tastes exactly like sweet tea! We add a little Simply Lemon lemonade to make an Arnold Palmer and voila - delicious. It isn't widely distributed yet, so Dad and the NC Girls have been kind enough to keep my supply flowing by bringing bottles with them every time they visit! I feel like they are drug dealers, but I get all worried if our supply gets low! Yes, it's that amazing.

We have more improvements, such as a new nightstand for me from a neighborhood furniture store where Dave has been dubbed (by me) as their #1 Window Shopper (we look and look, but have never purchased anything). We also bought a new lamp and a new beautiful handmade rug from India. We have to wait a few weeks for that one, but we are thrilled with the new purchases! One final improvement is that Dave, poor guy, never had a dresser in this apartment. He's been living out of a half of our hall closet with this weird cabinet that was included with the apartment (we think it used to be a kitchen cabinet). We never realized we could REMOVE this piece - we thought it was a permanent part of the closet. We took it out this weekend, got Dave a real dresser to put in the closet and he is a NEW MAN! For those of you who are apartment-dwellers, you can appreciate how creative you have to be to "fit" into the space you are renting. No knocking down walls, no removing fixtures...heaven-forbid you paint anything...so these minor improvements are major to our life! The only things left on the honey-do list are a new dresser for me and a new console for the TV...eventually!

We love this apartment and hope to be here for a long time ("long time" is a relative word when you are a renter...anything over a year is considered retirement-quality!). We are 1 1/2 years into this one...I came across this mock-up that Dave put together when we first moved in:


700ish square feet of bliss