Friday's Photo of the Week #62

Friday's Photo of the Week #61

Friday's Photo of the Week #60

This is Friday's photo of the week:

And a reminder to drink a cup of coffee or tea this weekend!

Relax and appreciate the good things in life.

Hiking and Cooking

(Friday's Photo of the Week)

This week has been full of hiking to the hill top (also means getting attacked by misquitos) and cooking at night. I get stuck on blogs like pioneer woman when I'm hungry and go all out on the cooking. This week I've made bbq chicken-pineapple quesadillas, chicken potato casserole, blueberry lemon buttermilk cake (featured below), nutella cookies, breaded fish with asparagus, fresh homemade lemonade (expect a post with lovely lemons!), and orange chicken with pineapple over rice. Yum yum. Here's the blueberry lemon buttermilk cake:

And a self portrait of me with the pups:

Photo of the Week #58

The super moon this week!

Photo of the Week #57

Photo of the Week #56

Little girl on Olvera Street.

Photo of the Week #55

This has been a full week! Over the 3-day weekend, we got a hike in, more housework in, and a relaxing sunset walk with the dogs by the Eagle Rock, pictured below:
I had some friends over Monday evening to play Dr. Mario. More victims subject to my mild addiction. Mwaa ha ha ha haa!

On Wednesday, our block lost power for about 6-7 hours. It is amazing how useful electricity is! Well, in the midst of this, our neighbor, Roland, called the police. I'm assuming it was in order to notify them about the outage, but I think he somehow ended up talking about his inactive WWII memorial grenade. This turned into firemen and policemen swarming outside of my house at around 7pm (during the power outage) and investigating. They decided to evacuate everyone within a few houses while the bomb squad safely removed the inactive grenade. I was really stressed out because I was evacuated so quickly that I only had my keys and phone. No time to get the dogs, my wallet, or even lock the door. We didn't know how long we would be standing outside in the cold (we found out later that it ended up being about 2 hours), so I left with Sam to go to his show that night. I felt so uncomfortable leaving everything in that state, but when we got back at 1am, the lights were back on, the dogs were fine, and everything was in its proper place. Still it was a crazy night.

Today, I got to do yoga on the lunch hour! Our wonderful new HR director, Melissa, decided it would be good for us desk-sitting folk to have a complimentary 8-week yoga course. It felt wonderful and peaceful to stretch and breathe and balance. I loved it! I then had a scoop of my very favorite ice cream, Baskin Robbin's February flavor: Love Potion #31... And also started the calorie counter app again this week (just to make sure I'm not eating more calories than I'm burning throughout the day). Later on today, after work, a group of previous and current coworkers are getting together to reunite because our friend Dallas, from Kansas, is visiting for GDC (Game Developer's Conference). So it's turning out to be a wonderful day indeed!

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. May your sense of humor thrive and tension level diminish! Take care. :)

Photo of the Week #54

I shot a dance for my music video this weekend. It'll be months til I have the video done, but here's a glance of what some of it will look like. :D

Photo of the Week #53

This is Adrieanna, a good friend of mine who (I found out this weekend due to her "Baby On Board" shirt) is pregnant with her 3rd child and just ran her first half-marathon. I went to cheer her on. This was the Surf's Up race in Huntington Beach.

Friday's Photo of the Week #52

Alright folks, a year's worth of Photos-of-the-Week. I made it!!

Yesterday was wild. I woke up early and got to see the most beautiful sunrise sky. It made me wish I were more of a morning person. After working a 12-hour day, I got a ticket on the way home for not stopping completely at a stop sign. I will probably try to fight it, but it was still super depressing.
Then, since I didn't want to "wallow in misery," I decided to stay up longer and go to Sam's show with The Hopelessly Devoted in Long Beach. The venue was pretty lame, but the show was enjoyable and I got some decent pictures, including my photo of the week, Eitaro (pronounced Ay-tar-o) an incredible solo guitarist:
I will post some updates on the house soon! We've been working on the outside siding and it's looking pretty rad. :) Hope you are doing well. Take care, and have a splendid weekend.

Friday's Photo of the Week #51

Sam and I went to Larkins this past Wednesday. It is a southern cooking joint in Eagle Rock. Slightly higher prices, but absolutely delicious and great for date night. I stuck with the classic oven-baked mac-n-cheese, which was fantastic. It was also just really nice to converse and laugh and have a nice time together. We found out later that night that our server was one of our friend's girlfriends. What a small world...
Anyway, I highly recommend checking out Larkins for some great southern food!

At lunch today, I realized I hadn't taken any photos this week for my photo of the week, so I went to a nearby trail and got some shots to share with you. This trail is called Serrania Ridge Trail, just west of Serrania Avenue Park in Woodland Hills.

Photo of the Week:

And others...

Friday's Photo of the Week #50

Photo of the Week #50

I love the joy that people have at weddings. It's such a fun celebration of love.

And on a beautiful day like this, where it was 70 degrees in the middle of January!

This is my cousin, Kevin and his lovely bride Alexis.

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Pritchett!

Friday's Photo of the Week #49

(Photo of the Week #49)

My brother was in town last weekend and it was great to spend so much time with him.

We went to the studio twice because Sam was recording some songs with The Idyllists... well, just Ian and Matthew, the song-writers, since Matthew was in town from New York. I really love the 4 new songs they came up with. :)

I have a lot of musician friends who love to talk about gear... which frankly goes right over my head, but I do love to take pictures of gear. I'll probably post a blog next week with some gear photos. But for now, I'll just show you a few of the glorious exposed upright piano from 1914.

Photo of the Week #48

This evening I yelled the lyrics to the Killers album, Sam's Town, while driving home from work. Sometimes it feels good to just over-exert your body in some way: working out, yelling, hiking, whatever it may be.
I'm going to attempt for my New Year's resolution to be 1 pullup. I've never been able to do one and would like to get my arms in some sort of shape that I could do one by the end of the year.
New Year's resolutions are hard to keep up with, so I figure I'd choose one that isn't a daily sort of thing. 2010 was a good year. I stayed relatively healthy and happy throughout the year. I had a lot of projects and goals to keep me busy and stay active. My company started working on a new project. Sam and I worked on the house all year and it's really coming along. I used my camera every week and took lots of photos that I'm proud of. I hiked a lot and kept in shape.
Here's a toast to 2011! May it grow us all closer to where we want to be in life.

Photo of the Week #47

A bit late, but here's last week's photo of the week:

Friday's Photo of the Week #46

Photo of the week:

We took the pups up Brand Library park hike after weeks of rain. It was BEAUTIFUL!
Here's a photo that Sam took of me with the dogs:

Friday's Photo of the Week #45

This has been a fun week overall, but I got sick again. Luckily this time it isn't lasting as long and wiping me out as much as the last virus.

But even through the sickness, I put up Christmas lights outside (the cheesy multi-colored big bulbs) and we got a tree and decorated it last night with my niece and nephew! My sister-in-law's family is in town visiting for a few days. I love playing with the kiddos! Within 5 minutes of getting home Audrey was out of her first princess dress doing somersaults naked and riding around on my back while we ate pizza. Amazing how much energy these kids have! It was a perfect end to the night: cuddling with the kids and the dogs watching Pixar flicks. :)

Photo of the week:

Friday's Photo of the Week #44

Photo of the Week: A beautiful display of mountains!

Taken from the plane to Vegas for our company Christmas party yesterday.

We are back in L.A. today and we got a lot done in a few hours. Sam installed the flooring in our hallway while I cleaned out the garage and the patio and organized the house a bit, ultimately so that I could make space for a Christmas tree. I'm hoping we can decorate this weekend, but we'll see. It's a busy one...

Also, since I couldn't resist posting a few more photos, here are a couple of my favorite from the Verdugo Mountain hike this past Sunday. There will also be some panoramas to come. It was incredibly clear and beautiful!

COTTON!

DOWNTOWN!

THE LOS ANGELINOS!

Friday's Photo of the Week #43

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!

I hope you are all stuffed with turkey and other delicious treats.

And I hope you were able to spend time with people you're thankful for.

Sam and I drove up north to Menlo Park with the dogs to spend time with my mom's side of the family at my sister, Jenni's house. We welcomed a new member of the family, Genevieve, to the family (the daughter of one of our relatives, David). She is such a cutie:
Today we went spent some more time with the family, then went to see the Pixar exhibit at the Oakland Museum. It was incredible. Pixar has always inspired me with their creativity. I'm glad they have succeeded. I will post some more pictures when I have more time, hopefully later this weekend. But for now, I hope this finds you happy and thankful for the good things in your life. Take care.