The "You Bake Me Happy" Winner!

It's time to pick the winner of the very first You Bake Me Happy Wednesday!  Not sure what that is?  Scroll down to the post below and you will see.  :)

So, www.random.org has chosen number...

drum roll please...

excitement building...

oh the anticipation...

chosen #4.

Which means my lucky winner is: 

ME!  haha, totally kidding...although I am the 4th comment.  :)  But I guess I don't count eh?

Anyways, the real winner is:

Jenny: Ooh, I love peanut butter blossom cookies too. But my favorite are chocolate chip - but really chewy, gooey, LOADED with milk Chocolate chips. :-) 

Seriously, though I wanted to bake all your cookies.  Some of them I'd never even heard of.  So exciting.

Anyways, the goods will be baked tomorrow and sent out on Monday!  Hope you enjoy them Jenny!

Have a great weekend everyone! 

You Bake Me Happy Wednesday

So, I love baking.

Really, that's sort of an understatement. 

I'm borderline obsessed. 

I scan and peruse cookbooks like you wouldn't believe.  I'm slowly chipping away at a culinary arts pastry text book.  I.Love.It.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about baking, this blog, my "life path," who I am, who I want to become, what the Lord has in store for me, do I give enough, am I kind enough, do I exude a life that is FULL...full of Christ, full of joy?  Maybe it's because I'm inching towards 30 (which is like the end of life practically SO KIDDING) but I feel like I've been extra reflective as of late.

Anyways, back to baking.

One day I would like to incorporate baking into my life...like my every day life.  I'm not exactly sure what that looks like/will look like but I thought that I would start here.

Start with you.

'Cause I love ya.

So, here's the run down, the D.L., the deets.

The first Wednesday of the month will be "You Bake Me Happy Wednesday".  Where I, yours truly, will bake you something amazing, something delish, something probably totally and completely fattening....bring on the butter, and then I will mail it to you.  FOR FREE.  I love baking, I love giving.  How much better can it get eh?

All you have to do is leave a comment with the treat that you would be overjoyed to have show up on your doorstep.  This month, it's COOKIES!  Bring on the cookies.  Cookie, cookie, cookies.  And if I pick your name (very randomly of course) I will mail you said treat (so you better pick wisely).  Por ejemplo: Say my name is Judith and I left a comment saying that I would love snickerdoodles to show up on my doorstep.  If I choose Judith, then I will mail her snickerdoodles.  Understand?  Bueno.

The little drawing ends Sat at noon!  So comment before then.  Sat evening I'll let ya know who the lucky winner is!

yay!

I'm excited!

:)

So, what cookie would YOU want to magically appear on your doorstep???

Grits.

I've been rockin' this blog lately huh?  Yeah, I pretty much told myself, "Blog, or shut it down."  So, I'm trying to be more intentional...really because when it's all said and done I like blogging.  What's the fun in a month with no posts? 

I have grits cooking right now.  Yum.  I love grits.  It must be my childhood raised in the south.  We skipped dinner because we had BBQ at this place in Pacifica.  It was a TON of food and no hunger was had once dinner time rolled around.  Now that it's 10:30pm though I'm ready for a little snack.

My house is gloriously clean today.  It took most of the day but it was in need of one of those "deep cleans".  Included in this of course was a mopped kitchen floor.  As I was taking down the above mentioned grits from the cupboard I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be lame if I dropped this on my sparkly clean floor?"  2.3 seconds later I drop it.  Grits everywhere. Really? 

So, did you ever see that weird movie The Secret Life of Bees?  Well, as punishment Dakota Fanning's character is forced by her dad to stand on her knees in a pile of grits on the floor.  She has to do this for quite a while and ends up with bloody knees.  I thankfully had never heard of this (Jason was sure I had since I grew up in the south). Anyways, looking down at the pile of grits all over my clean floor I decided to try it.  You know, they were already on the floor so why not?  It hurts, just so you know.  I didn't even put my full weight for more than  3 seconds.  And oddly...my skin where the grits were in contact burns now.  Weird.

Grits, good for the belly...and apparently a some what legit torture device.  Who'da thunk???

Just thought I'd tell you about that.  :)

10 Things I've Learned on the Trail

Well, I'm not entirely sure that I have even a single reader that backpacks.  I wouldn't even call myself a "backpacker" at this point.  I mean, we've done it...yet, not that many times.  But none the less, I feel as though we've learned a whole lot and so here, for your reading pleasure, is a serious and not so serious list of the top 10 things I've learned about backpacking.  Enjoy. :)

10.  Food.  Food is key.  There is a fine line between grubbin' good and not carrying a whole Thanksgiving meal with you in your pack.  Hot meals are key though.  Things like chicken fajitas are delish and if you ask me totally worth carrying the couple of cans of chicken (I've yet to find the chicken in the packets...like tuna...I know they exist but cannot find them ANYWHERE!)  Oh, and carrying beer was heavy and yet SO worth it and the end of a long day on the trail.  hahaha.  My father would be proud.

9.  You snack a heck of a lot less than you think you will. 

8. A chair.  I want a chair.  Seriously.  A hard log by day 5 is killer on the back and the butt.  I want THIS CHAIR to be exact.  It's light...and expensive.  But totally worth it.  I was having dreams of
beautiful back support by the end of the trip.






7. I am hopelessly and completely...totally irrationally, scared...no no...TERRIFIED of mountain lions.  How about bears you ask?  Nope.  They don't freak me out...not at all really.  Bears don't EAT PEOPLE.  Grizzly bears do but since we don't live in grizzly country we're good.  I knew that I had a fear of them before.  I went on a night ride mountain biking once and being that I was the slowest downhiller in the group I started having visions of a mountain lion picking me off since I was seemingly the "weak one" at the back of the pack.  Then after a few backpacking trips that left me frantically searching in the dark looking for those freaky reflecting cat eyes...just looking to pounce on it's prey (that would be me) sealed the deal.  It's official.  They freak me out.

6. This relates to #7.  Always hang your bear bags in the EVENING when it's light out.  The first night we did it late when it was dark.  We were far from the campfire in the pitch black with a headlamp that was flickering in and out.  If you don't know, hanging bear bags can be a long process as you have to find a branch that's high enough, tie a rock to a rope and throw it over.  A lot easier said than done.  Being it was dark it took forever!  And I was FREAK.ING OUT X 10.  I made Jason promise me that we would hang the rope before dark.

5.  This also relates to #7.  I thought that I would be into hammock backpacking (you string a backpacking hammock and sleep in that instead of a tent).  It's lighter and seems super cool.  Then I realized how much I don't like the night.  It's stupid but I feel safe when I'm in the tent.  As if an animal can't slash right through that thin tent wall?  But maybe if I'm really quiet it will just walk by and not know I'm there?  Maybe?  Then the thought of me being in a hammock all exposed just became a big.fat.heck.no.  I want my tent, my walls, my false sense of security!  :) 

4. Sleeping mat.  Let's talk about the sleeping mat.  PAY THE MONEY FOR COMFORT.  Just do it!  Especially if you are a scrawny boney girl/guy.  You will hate yourself if you don't.  I hated myself this last trip.  Side sleepers especially!!!  I want THIS MAT!  I will get it...when it's on sale that is :)  Oh wait!  It's on sale now!  Fancy that!



3. Never store your baggy of koolaid next to your baggy of coffee.  Turns out flavors transfer through ziplocs.  Our koolaid water had a weird dirty coffee taste and it took me a day or so to figure out what was happening.  yuck.  I preferred the bleach taste to the coffee hinted koolaid by the end.  blak.

2. There are about 521 ways to start a campfire.  We've done them all.  Good ole' Jason and his mad survival skills.  :)

1. If you see smoke...and you smell smoke....there's a fire.  Don't keep thinking, "oh, it must be a campfire" when you haven't SEEN A SOUL in 3 days.  Yeah.  Good times.

Summer Backpacking Trip -- Numero Dos

We started the summer off with a backpacking trip so it seemed only right that we end the summer with a backpacking trip also.  We returned to the Trinity Alps and set off to do the North Fork to East Fork Loop.  A 5 day, 4 night, 27 mile escapade.  Did we complete it?  NOPE!  Want to know why?  Well, the night before we arrived there was a lightning storm.  No big deal right?  It didn't effect us.  Or so we thought.  After attempting a detour to a lake which was about the half way point (seriously, this trail was unmarked, and never used.  We were totally winging it and definitely got lost at one point.  We knew we were close but didn't want to risk getting truly lost.  This was the WILDERNESS, as in we hadn't seen a soul in a couple of days and there probably hadn't been a person where we were in who knows how long (plus on our itinerary we gave to the ranger station we didn't note this detour).  So we decided to call it and retrace our steps (it was beginning to get dark and we needed to find a place to set up camp). 

We made it back, found a spot, set up camp, heard a very close gunshot go off at 9:30 pm (which means two things: Option A: crazy person with a gun...don't like this option.  Option B: Crazy bear/mountain lion threatening person with gun.  Don't like this option either...though I choose the animal over the crazy person any day.)  Turns out the gun shot sorta wigged me out...though I didn't realize it at the time of the shot.  When it came to lying in the tent...listening to the forest noises, with Jason sound asleep in .5 seconds...my mind went crazy.  And my mat was really hard and uncomfortable and yeah...no sleep was had.

The next day we packed up and continued back from our detour to find the main trail.  This is when I started to smell smoke.  Not horribly...but I could smell it.  I have a freakishly sensitive nose.  I mean...it even weirds me out sometimes.  Jason always jokes that the police should hire me for their narcotics division.  :)  As we started hiking deeper into the wilderness the smell was getting stronger and stronger...and we began to see it in the sky...and even lower in the trees where we were hiking.  There is something really unsettling about the knowledge of a forest fire being somewhere but having no clue where it is.  So, we talked and prayed and decided to head back down, backtracking our trail rather than completing the loop.  In the end it was about the same miles but it was going back the direction that seemed to be better smoke wise.  We made it pretty far, found a site and decided to make that home for the next 2 days. 

We woke up the next morning...and the sky was clear and blue.  No smoke.  Weird.  So we lounged by the river, relaxed and had a nice low key day.  We woke up the next morning sad to be leaving the mountains as we were hiking out that day.  I started packing up, and then the smoke came fast and strong.  The sky was a weird browny color in some spots.  We kicked it into high gear and got out of there as fast as we could.  We did 4 miles in oh...a little less than an hour. haha.  With packs on our backs.  :)

So, we did our 5 days and it was grand.  Being outdoors...especially far from anyone else besides the person you're hiking with involves flexibility.  Sometimes it's hard to remember that.  But we had a blast and have some good stories to go with it too.  And here are a few pictures to leave you off with!  :)

Jason and his crazy cool suspension system for boiling water in the pot.

Tongs!  To remove our quesadillas!  :)

You know you are far from civilization when you aren't worried about people seeing you in these babies!  :)  (sssshhhh.  I secretly like wearing them!  :)  )

FISHING!

Too bad I caught the only fish...and it was sooo tiny!  :(  Sad.  I hate killing things...like really do.  Even bugs.  I know, it's ridiculous.  We tried to release it but it had swallowed the hook to deeply and it didn't make it.  But there you have it.  The fishing champion!

Our attempt at a "together shot"  on a bridge...with packs that got in the way every time we turned to face the camera, haha.

Loaded up!

Smoke!  Ack!

Our accommodations for the week!  :)

Have a great weekend everyone!  Adios!  Oh....and yes there is a big fire in northern Cali right now.  It was about 30 miles east of Redding.  Not sure how close that was to us.  Not dangerously close, but definitely close enough.  Especially when you had no way of knowing where exactly it was!  Good times.  :)

Come on Wednesday!

Come on Wednesday I have great hope for you!

We've had some series of rather unfortunate events around these parts.  Some hard life stuff that just reminds us this is not our home.  On TOP of that, let me tell you about the last few days.

Sunday: Jason was making me breakfast.  I went to help him dump the hot grease from the bacon and the handle slipped out of my hand.  I am really good about not cooking in my Ugg boots since I tend to be a messy cook and Uggs are not exactly cheap...and I'm sorta slightly in love with mine.  Anyways, I didn't even think about the fact that I was wearing them and yes...the bacon grease dumped all over them.  I think I would've cried no matter what but it felt a little more like salt on a wound at that point with all the other things going on.

Monday:  Our washer drains into a sink that's next to it in the garage.  I have no idea why.  It's weird but it's a washer in our house...in the city.  That's pretty much unheard of.  No laundry mat!  woohoo!  There is a plug though for the sink that I'm considering tossing into the ocean.  The plug was used to plug the sink for something and then was left there...still plugged.  Then the washing machine was used.  Then the sink was not doing it's job of draining the washer and instead overflowed and dumped water all over the garage.  And not on our stuff.  On the landlords tools and what not.  That was quite the cleanup.

Tuesday: I've stayed home sick the last two days.  Because of this my radar for what day it was/the date was a bit off.  I was laying in bed, half asleep when I heard the sound that will rise any San Francisco resident from a dead sleep who parks their car on the wrong side of the road on the wrong day...THE STREET CLEANER.  And yes, we were too late.  And it's not $50 anymore...it's $63.  How nice.

So, here's to you Wednesday.  I have high hopes for you!  Don't let us down! :)

**No really, we're ok.  You know though, sometimes it just feels like you're being refined.  I'm glad that God's not content with me and who I am.  That He desires me to grow and thrive...not just live stagnantly.  Sometimes in the midst of the refining though you just want to say, "Too hot!  Too hot!  Can you just turn it down a little bit por favor?"  :)  In the end though He gives us strength to endure all things.  Even ruined uggs, flooded garages, and absurdly expensive street cleaning tickets!  :)

Hope we ALL have a great Wednesday.  Adios!

July Post :)

Hey peeps!

I'm here for my monthly post.  Patheeeetic.  Oh well.  I have excuses and reasons that are actually surprisingly valid but rather than go on about them I will spare you.  Onward!

First, changes are a-happenin' at work.  Our optician is some how incapacitated and can no longer come to work.  So, we are once again hiring someone new.  Instead though we're hiring someone for my position and I will be moving into the optician position.  My docs are going to pay for any classes I may need and my opticians license in November.  They are so good to me.  They told me that they don't want to be the only one's to gain from me working at the office but that they want to invest into me and feel like I've gained skills and knowledge too.  With the move to optician is higher pay...so they are literally paying...to pay me more money in the end (does that make sense?).  God has blessed me mightily.

So the last couple of weeks have been a little bonkers.  I'm working like a mad woman lately since we're down a person at work until we hire someone new.  And we have spent a ton of time with family/friends.  So two weekends ago we were able to see and hang out with Jason's sister and family.  We haven't seen his sister since our wedding and we haven't seen the whole family for about...4 years?  Than 4 days later Jason's brother and sis-n-law cam up and stayed with us for a little while.  Than a few days later Jason's friend from his Italy days came up and visited.  And NOW J's ma and pa are on their way up as I type.  I love family time.  :)  And it's a FANTASTIC way to keep your house clean.  Gotta keep cleaning for the new company!

And some randomness (because I'm tired of writing in complete sentences) :).

• the body no longer sleeps and I am not.digging.it.  Well, I sleep but I can't seem to sleep past about 6:30 and it is no bueno.  Well, no bueno on the weekends.  Otherwise it's not bad.  A lot easier to go to the gym in the morn that's for sure.
• I feel like lately I've just been treading water.  I can't seem to get ahead though I so desperately want to.  I'm trying to decide if it's because I work full-time.  I know that this is probably cuh-razy but is it even just a tiny bit possible that you are able to get even just a tiny bit more done every day being a stay at home mom?  I know, crazy huh?  Nut-so.  Off her rocker.  (maybe it depends on the quantity/age of the offspring)
• I think I would like to make new pillow covers for my couch pillows...
• I made a 4th of July cake and it was so cute.  I busted out a basket weave pattern on the cake for the first time and it was super fun.  Seriously.  I love baking cakes.  Darn you California for banning in-home selling of baked goods.  boo.

And that is it folks.  Have a great weekend.  Hope you're asleep and not up like me!  :)