Here are my shoes

Apparently color is not in this season. I really had a hard time finding anything that wasn't brown, black, red, or nuetral. I love red, but I have enough of it.



I got these for the more casual pair. I'm not sure if I love them. I'm wearing them around the house for now.

And I got these for the more dressy pair. I didn't want anything black, but since they have the open toe and they sort of meshy material, I decided they would work for summer. These are so comfy.

This blog has really gone beyond treats and travel, huh? I've now included green issues, ikea shopping, and shoes. I need to think of a new name.

Oh, check out these cool new candle chandelier styles. I love them.

Went to Ikea yesterday...very exciting...

I'm not being sarcastic. It really was exciting. I know it's probably the furthest thing from buying local, but a girl needs her gadgets and fun, right?

I have two things to show off.

First, the fabric I bought to upholster my sad little wicker chair:

I really like it and it's going to match the living room so well. The greens in the ikea web pic are a little off, the lighter one is almost the color of the walls in the living room.

I don't care for the pillows that came with our couch and loveseat, I'm going to make pillows out of the extra chair fabric.

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The second thing, is this awesome pullout trash separating system.

I already installed it, I'll take a picture. Two of the cans fit in the pull tray. One is for recycling and one is for trash. It was super easy to install. I did it in about 20 minutes. The H was happy, b/c he didn't have to do it. I sent him a phone video when I was done.

My new salad bowl!

I got a new salad bowl last weekend and I can't wait to use it. It's almost obscenely large, but I love it. It's too large for when it's just me and R, but I'll be whipping it out at my mom's 50-th b-day party and I couldn't be more excited about it.

Here she is, b/c I know you were just dying to see her.

Ryan's Birthday Cake

For Ryan's birthday, I love to find recipes that incorporate peanut butter and banana's. This year I found the best bundt cake ever. Plus it was nice because it gave me an excuse to use my cake stand that my MIL got me for christmas. I got the original recipe here http://deborahsw.blogspot.com/2007/06/hunk-hunk-elvis-cake.html I followed this one exactly, I didn't see anything worth changing.


For Peanut Butter Fluff frosting:
1 (1.5oz) package Jello sugar free/fat free instant Vanilla pudding mix
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1 (12oz) container Cool Whip Light

For cake:
1 (18.25oz) box Golden Vanilla flavor cake mix
1 1/3 cups bananas, mashed
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup peanut butter chips

Travel: Sonoma & SF

I haven't put anything on here since last week's meal plan. I have Ryan's b-day cake to post and a dinner from last week--eggplant rolatini w/ the most amazing (from scratch) scalloped potatoes. I promise I will get them in here tonight.

Sanoma and San Francisco, California

We loved this trip. It was absolutely amazing. So relaxing. We flew into SFO, picked up a car (we rented a Prius so we could drive it for a week before deciding for sure to buy one), and drove out to Sonoma. While there we stayed at Windhaven Cottage, http://www.windhavencottage.com/ it was really great. The owner's, Bob and Wendy, were great. Very nice people. They have two small cottages, detached from their house, but on their property. The cottage had a living/kitchen with a fireplace, a bedroom, full bath, and a fabulous private patio w/ a hot tub. Here is a pic of the view from the patio.

We visited so many wineries. Some of our favorites were Kunde, Wellington, Nicholson Ranch, Homewood, and many more. We got to go on a tour of the wine caves at Kunde, which was awesome.

We also drove north on Pacific Highway 1 to Redwood City, that was absolutely beautiful.

And of course, we ended our trip in San Francisco. It is a beautiful city with tons of things to do. We only had two days there and I don't think that is quite enough time, but it was nice none-the-less. We stayed at the Hyatt at Fisherman's Wharf. I do not recommend them. It seemed like a nice hotel, but we are pretty sure we left there with bed bug bites--GROSS. They insist that the room checked out clean, but yet they refunded our full bill of nearly $400. I tend to think we would not have gotten that much money back if the room checked out clean. I even told the guy he could fax me the report, but he declined. Yeah, that's what I thought.

2007 Travels - Cruising

Since the title of my blog includeds the word travel, I should catch up on some of the traveling we did in 2007.

Mexico and Belize
We cruised with Norwegian Cruise lines in March 2007. We left out of Houston Texas and stopped in Progresso, Mexico; Cozumel, Mexico; and Belize City, Belize. All-in-all it was a nice trip, but we weren't huge fans of cruising. Maybe it was the time of year, but the upper sun deck was kind of chilly, too cold for sun bathing or swimming. Then the days that were warm enough for sun activities, the deck was packed and it was wall-to-wall people. We didn't really enjoy life on the boat and found it kind of boring, we probably won't cruise again. People say you can't be bored on a cruise ship, but we disagree. We weren't interested in hanging in the bars all day and night, we weren't interested in the casino, and we weren't very interested in most of the shows. We did enjoy the comic that they had two nights, so that was cool.

Progresso, MX:

We visited some Mayan ruins in Progresso. I can't remember the name of the place. It was really cool and we enjoyed this stop. After the ruins the bus took us to Marida City, MX. It is the capitol of the Yucatan Peninsula. We enjoyed some fantastic mexican food at a whole-in-the-wall little place and purchased a $30 casio digital watch. We forgot to bring a watch and figured we should get something, we're pretty sure we got ripped off:)

Cozumel, MX:

Cozumel was nice and warm. After driving all over the island in a cab trying to find a place to snorkel we finally found a beach on the complete other side of the island from where we started. It was very nice and we enjoyed several hours of sun. We then went back to the port area to get some food and then go back to the ship. We again, enjoyed fab food at another alley whole-in-the-wall. It was great and that day I learned that in Mexico you can take a margarita to go in a plastic cup. Fantastic!

Oh, I also met some really friendly boys in Cozumel: