One year already!?

The year has flew by…but we have loved every day and every minute of it. Being married is awesome!

If only we could celebrate every anniversary by being in Hawaii or someplace else tropical…alas, that is not a possibility.

However, we are currently spending our anniversary lounging about, relaxing, and enjoying a good meal over in Bellevue. We opted to use some rewards points for a nice hotel and spend a couple days outside of our house. With our crazy life these past couple of months – nothing says love more than allowing yourself to be lazy bums!!

Such a fun day for us!

P.S. In case you are wondering – that top picture is from some wedding pictures we had taken while we lived in Korea. I’ll blog more about that later.

Trending with me

Sorry folks – it’s been a crazy few weeks. I haven’t had much time or energy to put towards blogging – as you have probably noticed. Quite sad really. I haven’t been reading. I haven’t been baking. I’ve barely been following what’s going on in the world. There’s taxes still left to do, a house that still needs a major cleaning, and a number of baby shower and birthday gifts to purchase. Ah…my to do list is insanely growing.

And quite honestly, since I’ve primarily been devoting my time to work (which I hope will change once I really figure out what I’m doing) – I haven’t had anything to blog about!

But here are some things currently trending with me:

1. Fage Greek Yogurt with fruit:

• Apparently it’s pronounced “fah-yeh”
• Plain Fage with no fruit – is bland and hardly palatable.
• Fage with fruit or honey – is awesome and delicious.
• It’s a great snack, filled with lots of protein and other good stuff that comes with Greek yogurt
• You can get a 12 pack from Costco with three different fruit flavors…and I love them all!

2. Muscle Milk Light – Vanilla Crème:

• This is a delicious high protein, low in calorie, lactose-free drink
• I’ve always been a drinker of the chocolate flavor, and was so excited to see a Vanilla option at Costco
• It’s a perfect on the go snack and helps when you have those sweet cravings
• Remember: Consume something with protein within 45 minutes of working out, otherwise you are cheating yourself of the full benefit of your workout

3. Dried blueberries:

• Apparently I have a Costco thing going on b/c you get these from Costco
• Dried blueberries are sooo delicious
• Mix them with some nuts and you have a great tasting trail mix
• I love to mix a handful in with my steel cut oatmeal in the morning…yum!

4. Ultimate Sandbag:

• As some of you may know, I’m an avid Bodyrocker (www.bodyrock.tv)
• I recently picked up this sandbag and incorporated it into my workouts
• It comes with durable bags that you fill with however much weight in sand you want
• It is a great way to up the challenge and intensity of workouts
• I love it so far! And yes…mine is pink, just like this one

So there you go. I hope you are inspired to try some of these out too!!

To Kindle without a Kindle

I love my Kindle…but even more, I love the Kindle app.  You can have all the functionality of a Kindle, without having to buy an actual Kindle.  If you have a smartphone or iPod touch, or tablet/iPad – then, download the free Kindle app – and you can easily download digital books to your device. 

I’ve basically abandoned my actual Kindle device – and read all my books on either my smartphone or iPad.  It’s great! And one less thing to carry with me.

And even better…you can check out (for FREE) digital books from the Seattle Public Library.  I’m sure other libraries out there are doing the same thing.  It’s awesome!  You get 21 days to “check out” the book before it expires and disappears from your Kindle library.  The library won’t have every title out there – but I’ll be definitely checking the library first before buying from Amazon.

Breaking the 500 mark

Ahh…I did it!  I have 501 blog posts!  (This one actually makes 502).  For the random, casual blogger like myself – that’s a HELL of a lot of writing. 

I thought I’d share some fun stats about my blog thus far:

• 1 – My very first blog post was on September 22, 2008.
• 51,379 – As of 10pm on Dec 18, that is the total number of views of my blog.
• 1,787 – The most views for a single post.  It was on April 12, 2010.  I wrote about running a race in Korea.
• 52 – My current average per day views for 2011, down from an average of 67 in 2010, but significantly higher than my average of 8 in 2008 (for the 3 or so months I was up and running).
• 4,053 – The number of SPAM comments that the widget Akismet has filtered out for me.
• 0 – The number of people I know who I’ve successfully convinced to start their own blog!

WordPress makes it easy to keep stats on your site.  This histogram charts the number of views to my site from the beginning to current.  Aside from a few spikes, my site is pretty darn consistent.

Soy nog

One of the best things about the holiday season…the return of one of my favorite drinks…egg nog! Now, egg nog is a hate or love it kind of thing. For me, it’s a bit of both. I love the creamy sweet taste, but I hate how ridiculously fattening it is.
This year, i stumbled upon the perfect thing….soy milk egg nog. It’s delicious! It doesn’t have the same creaminess as regular egg nog, but what you save in calories and fat is totally worth the tradeoff. In fact, soy nog is dairy-free, cholestrol-free, and lactose-free. Thus, you still can get your calcium.

They also make a pretty good chocolate mint flavor soy milk and a pumpkin spice (which I haven’t tried yet). Give it a whirl this holiday season!

Snowman cake pops

We went to a holiday party last weekend.  And I saw a basket of these:

Look how adorable they are!!!

They are cake pops – made famous (in my opinion by the fabulous Bakerella blog).  

They are super easy to make – and this snowman twist is ridiculously cute.

My tasty change-up would be to make the snowman head out of Oreo Truffles instead of cake.  I’ve blogged about them before – and they are FABULOUS!  They’ve been my “go to” treat for holiday parties this year!

Wedding recap: A sweet treat ono-style

OnoPops.  They had me at rentable vintage cart.  When I stumbled upon them and their delicious, locally made and sourced popsicles – I knew it would be a perfect addition to our wedding. 

We selected a good number of flavors (they have TONS and adding more everyday) and opted for the cart rental – including them serving.  It was a steal of a deal.  As soon as our wedding ceremony was over, they wheeled the cart into place and handed out their delicious, refreshing, sweet treats!  It was an awesome, unexpected surprise for our guests.

All the leftover pops were stored in the freezer during the reception, and brought back out towards the end of the night.  A perfect late night cool-me-down treat!

Extreme gingerbread house makeover

To help jumpstart getting into the holiday spirit, the day after Thanksgiving, Micah and I, and some of our friends headed to downtown Seattle to check out the 19th Annual Gingerbread Village held at the Sheraton Hotel. 

A fairly accurate example of what my “gingerbread” house would look like.  Just add a more dizzying array of sprinkles, and candy canes.

Unlike the shack you see above, these gingerbread houses mansions are gigantic and utterly amazing…and they’ve been doing this for 19 years!  In addition to it being a festive sort of thing to do, it’s also a fundraiser for diabetes research. 

From their website: “Each year local architecture firms collaborate with the Sheraton Seattle culinary team to custom design, bake, and build awe-inspiring gingerbread displays.”

Here are just some of the ones on display.

 

Kangaroo “reindeer” – very cute…and edible!

It’s a fun and quick thing to check out if you are in the downtown area.  It’s free, but donations accepted.  The lines are surprisingly quite long.

Micah, me, Charissa, Gabe, Naomi, and Vann

The perfect summer beer

Thanks to some new German friends of mine – I have found the perfect summer beverage (ahem, of the alcoholic variety).  It’s light, sparkling, and just plain ol’ refreshing in the summer sun. 

Apparently the Germans call it the “radler” (and yes, they really do drink this in Germany).  It’s essentially one part Sprite or 7-Up, to one part beer.  I personally like a 25% Sprite ratio to 75% light beer ratio.  Pour in a glass, serve cold…and enjoy.

Even if you don’t typically like beer – you should at least try it.

The Radler, the wine spritzer’s cousin.

Another beer mix we encountered and enjoyed in Korea was light beer, plus a little mix of Hazelnut syrup (the kind you’d put in your morning latte).  It’s a strange mix, but when served in a nice frosty mug – it’s quite tasty!

Some serious mustard with a kick

This stuff is awesome.  Buy it, try it, and love it.  It’s got a serious kick – nothing too harsh, but super wimps need not apply (super wimps should stick to boring ol’ yellow mustard). 

Talk about a HOT dog!!!