February was Fickle

Most of you need no convincing when I say "February was fickle!"  For those of you who do see please see the remainder of the post:

February 5th we enjoyed a day at Stinson Beach. Incredible.  It was fun to be like a kid squishing sand in my toes, finding ladybugs (they were all over the beach, probably thousands of them so it wasn't hard), and treasures.  However, not actually being a kid has it's advantages... as an adult you are really just a kid who gets to decide what you want to do...  Like get ice cream and cheesecake in the same day!  Pretty sure parents don't let kids decide that.

Stinson Beach is such a beautiful place, it definitely makes our "places to frequent while we can" list. 

Yes February started off with days like this:

                Temperatures- high 60's low 70's.  Sun, blue skies, all around glorious days.

And then it went to days like this:

 and colder!  

We were FREEZING (especially because we had turned our heater off). And not only were we cold we spent a few weeks making piles of tissue by the bed and couch.  Glad that's over.

All With Love

We celebrated Valentine's Day with the classics:

Hearts, candle-lit dinner, chocolate, flowers, and for us Disney movies!

While we did have our traditional V-day breakfast, it didn't include any hearts this year.  Instead the hearts went into a surprise for my man.    

His favorite: cherry pie full of love!

I pulled the fast one this year and made Tim's pie three days early.

We had an early candle-lit dinner

and chilled watching a new Disney flick...

 (I love our movie tradition!)

The chocolates were reserved for Valentine's day.   

Burnt Caramel chocolates from Recchiuti- absolutely AMAZING!  Not only is the chocolate heavenly, they had these super cool designs for the holiday.  Love them!

These beauties were saved for Lover's Day too....

                                                                                       

One of the sweetest bouquets ever!  Tim skipped the lines and inflated prices at the regular stores for flowers from a local artist, Red Poppy, whose arrangements I've drooled over for a while.

To conclude the celebration we added a second Disney movie to our collection and enjoyed homemade chocolate souffles...

In my opinion Valentine's Day is what you make of it.   Yes, it is super commercialized (but what holiday isn't?) and we can choose to focus on that or we can choose to focus on the people we love the most and incorporating our own traditions to make this a special day.

to entice you

This post is meant to entice you...

The conditions of today:

current temperature

A beautiful day

trees blooming

             green grass growing

                                sunny blue skies! 

Today is one of those days.

Were you enticed?  Admit it you were.

If you're someone we love and are somewhere cold this is your official invitation: Come enjoy this with us! (If you're not in a cold spot- we'll see if we can make an exception...  if we don't know you- enjoy the blog and we still recommend the Bay area so feel free to stay at a hotel)

The truth is I can't get over how warm it is and that spring basically came at the end of January!

Last Call... ... ... twenty ten

completing the twenty ten recap with a few pics of Christmas time at the abbott abode

Jingle all the way, back in twenty ten

After miles and miles of this...

We were met with this...

Which equaled this...

This place is so good. Never disappoints. Admittedly part of its greatness is that you have to drive hours to get there (Beaver Utah) and if you're there, you know you still have hours to go. #1 recommendation: FRIED ICE CREAM!!!







One sad stop on our trek home:

One happy stop on the trek home (combined with many more happy, un-pictured stops):

All to spend time with some super cute little people:

Christmas gifts looked as if we hired an Amish family to wrap them (except for the gift in the back that was outsourced to Anthropologie):

We had some time to play in the snow:

And last of all, we ushered in 2011 with these fun people over a delectable meal from here:

Back in twenty ten- November edition

November: To start the month off Erica! (a high school bff of mine) came to visit!  (And yes her name will always be followed by an exclamation point in this post because it really was that exciting and that's pretty much how I said her name every time I talked about her visit!)  It had been quite a while since I got to spend quality time with Erica! She's been at BYU-Hawaii and globe trotting since high school. Our San Fran adventures included: baptisms for the dead at the Oakland Temple, Alcatraz Island, Harry Potter #7- midnight showing, Half Moon Bay beach, California Academy of Sciences, shopping, House of Nanking (super yummy Chinese food... we'd love to take you sometime), and SF MOMA.  We had a blast while she was here... pictures to prove it:

 The next much anticipated visit we had was from Tim's mom and dad! They came on the train, which took some extra time, but was a great adventure and something Tim and I will need to do while we live here.  It was so good to have them here and to get to share time and more adventures with them.  We had a lot of fun showing them sights, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the de Young and the Oakland temple it's always great to show places we've come to love to the people we love the most.

We also enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner with Mom, Dad, and our friends Jason and Emylee and their sweet little ones (Boston- 2 and Story-3 months).

It was my first Thanksgiving to plan and prepare... let me tell you I'm grateful for Tim and his willingness to help (especially with the turkey).

In the end the meal was pretty good, but it also made me more grateful for our moms and the work that goes into a meal like Thanksgiving!   Some of the food highlights:

 Red quinoa parfaits

 Apple onion stuffin muffins 

(More crispy stuffing that everyone loves! Definitely going to be a tradition)

Whipped yams (oh so good!)

Let me tell you I was basically in heaven once it all came together!

Pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin with the help from this cute guy... 

Who could not love this face? Especially with the touches of flour!

what we did back in twenty ten

Yes, it's a new year... and yes it's that post.  You know the one I'm talking about the "Quick blog the last three months of last year because this year is already taking off!" post.  SO here are some of the highlights of what we did at the end of 2010.

October:
Started off with a visit back East for me... to meet this sweet little girl

and see these incredible people!

Although fall colors were few and far between on the trees we still got into the fall festivities starting with the pumpkin festival at Half Moon Bay.  We enjoyed good company, miles of craft booths, delicious pumpkin ice cream, and picking our own pumpkin!

The fun continued with BYOP- bring your own pumpkin. The night of carving featured Edward the vampire pumpkin, super happy jack, the mummy ninja, emo boy (so sad even Monica and Brad couldn't smile), and the incredibly detailed werewolf/pigman!
(see photo montage for both events)

October ended with good friends to share in caramel apples and a "Halloween movie" (in this case I Am Legend which was definitely intense enough for my taste).   Caramel pears, inspired by our caramel apple night.  The apples take the cake, but these were not too shabby.  And walking around Alameda to see the houses decorated.  I've never seen so many elaborate decorations for Halloween.  One of the best houses had a carnival theme with a lot of moving parts including a functioning jack-in-the-box.  Oooo spooky!