A bit of an obsession.

I have a new obsession. I think I have adopted it to attempt to ward off other obsessions creeping into my brain...but that's a whole other post.

New obsession: house hunting!

Now this is a little premature as Marc and I both know we aren't going to buy a house as bf/gf, but it is just so fun to look! This week, I took it a little too far. I went ahead and got us pre-qualified for a loan... yes, I did. My reasoning for this was so that when I do my daily browsing for the perfect house, I will know what price range I can look in.

After taking a step back and realizing I might be freaking a certain someone out by this...I am putting on the brakes!! Now, I am not slamming on the brakes, I'm just lightly stepping on it :) Home ownership is definitely a big step and I know we will make it someday, but I want to make sure I'm not rushing it. Let's face it, when I get excited about something you have to all but chain me to the floor to keep me from marching full speed ahead! I just like to be working on a project - to plan and make decisions. I think it's a sort of thrill ride for me, maybe I'm addicted to planning? Maybe I'm the last one to realize that about myself too...

With that being said, I will try to keep my HGTV watching to a minimum (or to just when I'm home alone), stop showing poor Marc my "dream house" of the day, press pause on my loan application process, and stop emailing our realtor. Yes...I even found us a realtor. Obsess much?!

Needless to say, my mantra for the week is:

Good things happen to those who wait.

Be patient, self!

Maybe I should go out to Chinese food so I can try for a fortune cookie with this message inside...? It would surely be a sign from above!

Scatterbrain

I have been so scatterbrained this week. I don't know what it is, but something just has my brain going a million miles a minute. I guess you could call this my "Thursday Randoms" - even though I didn't make it to Thursday:

• I know Courtney on the Bachelor is crazy... but it was recently brought to my attention  that she reminds me of someone I know! Someone who is a friend! And not because she has portrayed herself as a nut case (with the help of some editing on behalf of ABC)!! More like her body language. It made me like Courtney way more when I thought of her like my friend :)
• The time in my life has officially started where everyone around me is getting engaged, married or having babies and I LOVE IT!! I am obsessed with all things wedding and baby so I couldn't be more thrilled to have more love and happiness in this world.
• SVUAA. I have relapsed. My freshman year in college I became addicted. Not to the usual type of thing college kids get addicted to, but to the one and only Law and Order: Special Victims Unit!!! I had started to wean myself off this show the past few years but during the past weeks, I relapsed. I am watching 2-3 every night after work. Somebody needs to stage and intervention.
• Disneyland really is the happiest place on earth. I was in Anaheim for work last Friday (across the street from Disneyland to be exact!) and I was in such an ecstatic mood all day long. I think it was osmosis.
• I love babies. I got to play with the cutest little 6 month old baby girl ever on Saturday. As lame as it may sound to some, it was the highlight of my week! She is so cute and she's already crawling and pulling herself up on things to stand up! Her parents are going to have their hands full!! Marc and I get to babysit her next week, I am so excited to play with her and have her all to myself for a few hours! :)
• Draw something!! This is such a fun game on the iPhone. I just started playing and love it already!
• I am SO excited for One Tree Hill to be on tonight! I can't believe there are only 4 episodes left of that entire show!! It has been with me for many years and I don't know what I will do without it. A big thanks to Rene for introducing me to the show!! :)

That's all I can really think to let out right now... that is ok for me to be sharing with the world at least. There's always more, but this helps to just type out some things.

Happy Hump Day!!

Another year older

No, not me -- this week, Marc turned 26! To celebrate, I took Monday off and we headed to the snow for some long overdue tubing at Squaw Valley. This was our first trip to the snow together and we had a blast! I hadn't been to the snow since high school! The weather was beautiful. It was so warm that I ended up taking off my jacket and gloves and just tubing in my ski pants and a long sleeved shirt. Top it off with a little sunburn and the trip was a success!

Birthday boy!

When we got home that evening, we decided to invite his twin brother over for some birthday dinner. Marc and I made a delicious meal! Mexican Tortilla Chicken with sides of Mexican rice and refried black beans. The chicken was totally invented on the spot and turned out delicious! The recipes are below if you want to recreate them! Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos - probably because we gobbled it up so fast - I found this photo on the internet and it looked sorta similar to this, but without the sour cream on top:



Allrecipes.com



Mexican Tortilla Chicken:

 
3 chicken breasts
1 c. salsa
1/2 c canned corn
1 tsp cumin
hot sauce (to taste) – we like Tapatio
1/2 cup shredded cheese
1/2 cup crushed tortilla chips

Combine salsa, corn, cumin and hot sauce in a small bowl. Place chicken breasts in a baking dish. Top each breast with salsa/corn mixture, crushed tortilla chips and shredded cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, then broil for a few to get the cheese/chips crispy.


Refried Black Beans:

2 cups whole cooked black beans (or canned)
3 tbsp water
1/4 cup shredded cheese
hot sauce

Put black beans in a sauce pan on medium heat with water (use as much water as you need to make them the consistency you want), when it heats up, give them a good mash. After they're the consistency you like, add a little cheese and hot sauce and stir and let simmer for a few minutes to meld flavors. That's it!


Grammie's Mexican Rice:
Grammie taught me how to make this when I was just old enough to help in the kitchen. It never fails to impress dinner guests with my Mexican flair! :)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup white rice
1 chopped white or yellow onion
2 cups hot water
2 tablespoons Caldo de Tomate - tomato boullion powder (or 2 cubes)

In a sauté pan, heat olive oil. Add rice and onion, stir frequently until browned. This just gives it a little extra flavor, don't burn the rice! 5-10 minutes is plenty. While the rice is browning, dissolve caldo de tomate in hot water. Transfer rice/onion and broth to rice cooker (or sauce pan on stove top), push the button and let it cook!


Needless to say, it was a great birthday! I always say "thank you for being born!" because I always love an excuse to celebrate and do something fun!

Happy (belated) Birthday Marc!! <3

Extreme Makeover: Blog Edition

Here it is!

I am officially ready to reveal my blog now that I've spent some time learning how to customize it thanks mostly to Mrs. to Mama for writing this post. It motivated me to sit down and follow her simple step-by-step instructions to make this blog my own. Now I am only just beginning my journey into the blog world - well I've been reading for years, but never writing my own. So HERE WE GO!!!

I hope my posts aren't too random and substanceless ... I am just getting in the swing of things and hopefully this blog will help me document my life in these fun years of my twenties! :)

With that said, come on over and follow me!

To snooze, or not to snooze...

To start, I am not the most religious person in the world, I consider myself more spiritual. But I was raised Catholic; I went to private school for 2nd though 6th grades, had my First Communion, was Confirmed and attended church on most Sundays until college. Once I went away to school, I didn't make an effort to get involved in a church and would only really go with my family on major holidays (Christmas, Easter and Mother's Day). Throughout the years though, I have still carried on the tradition of giving something up/taking something on for Lent.

**that's the backstory to this post**

In the past, I've given up ice cream, soda, and other typical stuff, and taken on tasks such as waking up 15 minutes early every morning to do sit ups, doing "good deeds," etc.

This year, for Lent, I will be doing 2 things. #1 is to follow the mantra: "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Marc and I have gotten into a bad habit of silly name calling and having short tempers - nothing worthy of a reality TV show or anything, just more than should be a part of a playful and loving relationship like ours. <3 I'm thinking this won't be too difficult since all I have to do is love the man I love and take a calmer approach to any disagreements we might have. :)

**sidenote: as I Googled this phrase, I've been informed by Wikipedia that this is called The Thumperian Principle, named after Thumper from Bambi. Now that's cute! :)

{Thumper}

However, for #2, I am taking on a much more difficult task... I will be {attempting} to give up pressing the snooze button in the morning! dun dun dun!

Let me tell you how severely I overuse the poor snooze. Each night, I think about what time, at the very latest, I can wake up and still make it to work on time (and by on-time, I mean 10 minutes late... oops!). Then, I subtract 45 minutes and set 2 alarms on my phone to go off 5 minutes apart. This extra 45 minutes is to allow myself plenty of time to snooze and psych myself up to get out of bed in the morning.

I don't know when or how I got into this routine, but the person who I feel sorry for the most in this story is Marc. The poor guy has to sleep through my alarm going off every 5 minutes for 45 minutes until I finally get the motivation to drag my booty out of bed! I give him so much credit because he has never complained about this once! I don't know how he does it because it's not like he's a great sleeper - it takes him a long time to fall asleep and he wakes very easily, where I usually fall asleep within seconds and sleep like a rock!

So here we are on Ash Wednesday and Lent begins. I was all psyched up to get up right when my alarm went off and nix my usage of the snooze. 6:30 rolls around and... instead of pressing snooze, my genius self decides to just TURN OFF the alarm. Because, technically, that's not pressing snooze, right?? Wrong!! I proceeded to sleep an additional half hour and was late to work. Of course. I failed miserably.

After this morning's display of zero self-control, I am determined to do better tomorrow! It just so happens that tomorrow I need to wake up at 3am to catch a 6am flight for a work trip, so it will be that much more of a challenge for me. I am hoping this additional challenge will give me that extra push I need to get my butt in gear tomorrow morning!

Wish me luck!!

Love

{Style Me Pretty}

It seems like my life and thoughts are consumed with all things wedding. Now I'm not getting married, but one of my good friends from high school is actually marrying my best friends brother this weekend and I have the honor of being a bridesmaid for the first time! I am so excited that they found each other and have turned out to be such a great pair. The wedding is going to be so beautiful and I just can't wait to share in the celebrations.

With that being said, today, I was reading on Perpetually Engaged (since I'm obsessed with weddings and rings and engagements and love!), she was discussing what people say when they're asked to do a reading at the ceremony. I read this quote below from "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" by Louise De Bernieres and it just about melted my heart. It is so true and I think I am so lucky to have found a love like this and I can't wait to see how it continues to grow with us.


"Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion... That is just being "in love," which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."


Isn't that just beautiful?

Happy Loving!

Bucket List

As I find myself reading blogs for hours and hours on end, I have finally decided on my next post topic. My Bucket List. I always say, Oh! that's on my Bucket List! but I've never actually put it in writing. You can never set too many goals or have too many hopes and dreams, so I hope to continue adding to my list as time goes on.

Well, here we go (in no particular order):

1. Travel, travel, travel - current destinations of interest are: Thailand (just like the Bachelorette!), Fiji, the Maldives (recent interest), Dubai, Italy (oh, the history!), Greece (blue and white beautifulness), Japan, Peru (Machu Pichu), Costa Rica, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids in Egypt, and the Bahamas, to name a few! - I should have just said to see the 7 wonders of the world...
2. Go hang gliding - it's been Marc's dream for as long as I've known him and I would love to get to experience that with him and see the look of pure joy on his face when he's "flying like a bird"
3. Read all Jane Austen's novels - I have an obsession with Pride and Prejudice (all versions of the book and movies) that started with my Senior Thesis in high school, so I must know what all the rest of her books are about. I've read parts of many, but I can't ever seem to make myself finish them... someday!
4. Go back packing - I've always wanted to do this but I am always a little worried that I won't be able to carry all my own junk... but I love camping and this would be like "minimalist camping" -- sounds like a blast!
5. Climb Yosemite's Half Dome - after putting all the risks and dangers aside, the view from up there has got to me amazing to see with my own two eyes and the feeling of accomplishment of getting to the top on my own two feet? Must do it!
6. Have me some babies - I always talk about how I was born to be a mama and raise some beautiful children. I know this will all happen in due time, but until then, I know there will be this empty space in my heart just waiting to be filled with the most unconditional love I will ever know. :)
7. Make a website - I know this sounds very lame because so many people have websites and they can be so easy to make, but I just don't have a good reason to make one yet...
8. Get a dog - to those of you who know me, you're wondering if someone hijacked my brain and made me say this... I am NOT pet person and am basically afraid of dogs and that's the last thing I want right now. But I really do want to have a dog someday when I have a family and that dog is as much a part of it as the human family members. I will come around.
9. Go sailing - my parents used to sail a lot when they were younger, my dad actually had a sailboat. I feel like it's part of my roots because they've told many stories about it and it just sounds like such an amazing adventure!
10. Take my mom to the Oprah show - This one had been on my list for a long time because I was practically raised watching Oprah and hearing my mom rave about her and the show. However, since the show has ended, this won't be happening, but still, 4:00 will forever be known as "time for Oprah."
11. Volunteer in a foreign country - my sister just got back from volunteering in Peru and I am so proud of her for that. I want to have a "life changing experience" like that. I want to give my time and energy to a deserving cause somewhere. A Spanish speaking country would be great so I will be able to use my Spanish.
12. Learn to dance - for real! Flamenco, Salsa, Waltz, Belly Dance, you name it! I want to learn them all. My mom and I took a brief Salsa class in Mexico when I was 16 and had a blast! I want to learn how to make this body move! "You've got to move-it, move-it!"

This seems to be all I can think of right now and geez it all seems so trivial. I know there are more things to add to my Bucket List, but for now, at the ripe age of 24, this is all I can think of off the top of my  head. Now it's time for me to start checking some of those things off!

For now,