This weekend Dave and I are down in Whittier. We are here because my cousin is having a bridal shower (she is getting married next month). Because my mom gets cheap tickets to Universal Studios through her work, we decided to go yesterday because we haven’t been in ages (and Dave has never been at all).

We knew the day was supposed to have some rain, so we made sure to do the tram tour first thing, so we wouldn’t get wet. We then saw a few other things before Dave and my parents decided to do the Jurassic Park ride. I skipped it, because it’s like Splash Mountain and I don’t like large drops. It’s a good thing too, because while they were on the ride, it started POURING! When they came down the drop at the end, they were all soaking wet! Even worse, it had started to HAIL. The hail was quite large, and when they emerged from the ride, they were totally covered in bits of ice. I haven’t seen it rain like that in a LONG time!

After that, we went to the indoor location where they were serving complimentary coffee and hot chocolate to warm up a bit. We then hit up a few final attractions (including the House of Horrors where people in costume jump out at you to scare you. They totally zeroed in on my mom and this lady ahead of us—scaring them the most! I was glad to be in the middle of them, which meant less chance of being completely startled!)

After our day at the park, we showered and changed and went to visit my sister at work. After dinner, we went to go see Shutter Island, which thankfully was indeed more psychological and not really as scary as the trailers made it look.

All in all, a pretty full day! As for today…in a little bit, my mom, sister, and I are heading to the bridal shower.

Posted at 12:40 PM | (0)

It’s been awhile, but we finally hosted another small movie night at our place. Kristen brought over Whip It, which she had rented, and we all ate snacks and watched the movie. It was cute, and we had all been wanting to see it.

Another bonus of the gathering was that it allowed the remainder of my chocolate bars to be consumed, since the note on the recipe made it sound like they didn’t stay good for more than a day or two. They still tasted fine, but maybe the consistency turns weird after a few days or something. At any rate, that just means it was good that people were able to enjoy them and that none of it went to waste!

Posted at 1:37 PM | (0)

Last night was book club, and I actually finished the book (well ahead of time, no less!) I think it helped that we had 6 weeks to read it and that I actually had to purchase the book—I think I’m more motivated if I have monetarily invested in the book.

We had a decent turnout, and since some of the new girls in the group like to bring fancy food creations to the club, I have decided to step it up a bit as well. Last month was lemon bars, and this month was Chocolate Dulce de Leche bars. I had to go to 3 different grocery stores to find a can of dulce de leche—finally finding it in a market that had more Mexican products. As a backup, I had bought a can of condensed milk so that I could make my own, but that was a way more time-intensive option and would’ve been cutting it close to have it finished in time for the meeting.

Anyway, even though the bars were kinda messy to cut with their shortbread crust and thus the presentation was somewhat lacking, they did taste quite delicious. I didn’t take all of it to the meeting and so there are some leftovers, which is good. I think the dulce de leche flavor is pretty subtle, but the resulting chocolate is somewhat mousse-like and quite tasty. I would totally make this recipe again.

Unfortunately, there are no photos, because I made it so last-minute and forgot to take pictures before I left. Maybe next time!

Posted at 1:31 PM | (0)

Happy birthday to my sister, who is now on the last year of her 20’s…..mwahahaha! :)

Posted at 1:29 PM | (0)

Hmm, haven’t really been doing much lately—I guess I’ve been watching a bit of Olympic coverage in the evenings. Lots of skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, whatever is on at night. I agree with most people who complain that it’s lame that we don’t have live coverage when we’re in a similar time zone, but what can you do?

While watching the games I’ve also been crocheting (yes, crocheting!) a blanket. It turns out that, while I have always been a tight knitter, I am also a tight crocheter and it’s looking like this blanket is going to be twice as much work to get it be the right size! The pattern calls for like 46 rows or something to be just over 5 feet, and my blanket with the same number of rows is less than 3 feet. So I guess that means I have to keep going! I have a ton of yarn left over after doing the rows, so at least there is that, but I think I will probably have to buy some more in order to complete it—the pattern calls for every row to be slightly bigger than the last, and thus each row takes more yarn! Guess I should’ve bought a crochet hook 7 sizes bigger or something—live and learn!

Posted at 1:24 PM | (0)