Happy New Year!!!

Have a great night everyone and be safe!  2007 has been a really good year for me and I hope it has for you too!  

See all you fools at the gym next week trying hard to meet your resolutions.  

I'll try and remember to take pictures of tonights festivities (one of my resolutions is to take more photos)

The pic above is from last year at Carrie's house.  I think there is still some confetti floating around that place. 

Gelbie

Today has been a really hard day.  We had to put my parents dog Gelbie to sleep after a rough bout with pancreatitis.  She was such a sweetheart and we'll miss her terribly.  It's a relief to everyone that she's no longer suffering.  Rest in Peace sweet girl.

A Must See!

I got this set of DVDs for Christmas and it's sooo impressive.  If you haven't seen them yet rent or buy soon!  You wont be sorry.

P.S.  Make sure you get the BBC version  

Who is your candidate?

This is pretty neat, it asks you a bunch of questions on the current hot-button issues and then matches you up with 3 presidential candidates that fit you the best. Wait for the page to load then click the button to start it. I wasn't to psyched on some of the choices for the answers but oh well...

My top three matches in case you are wondering are

1. Kucinich (I don't know why but I can't seem to bring myself to totally like him yet)

2. Gravel (people think he's crazy, and I know he wont win)

3. Biden (I don't even know a thing about him)

HAHA it's going to be an interesting year!!!

WTF?

Is this for real?  I don't want to be paranoid but...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas!  I will be using my IKEA G.C.s to start by bathroom remodel project.  Don't worry I'll be posting some pics of me trying to figure out the instructions, IKEA may be cheap but they sure make you work!

For my cookie platters this year (I give these out to family) I made some old favorites of mine and added a new one this year

I also was in charge of making a cocktail for our family get together and it was a hit!  Here is an awesome recipe for pomegranate cosmos

Lastly, I made some awesome mac and cheese that I was very happy with!  

Me and the pups are spending the day after xmas recovering from all of the excitement by laying on the couch doing nothing.

Republican YouTube debates

Anyone who knows me personally knows that I'm a Democrat. Even so, I think it's very important to know what both parties have to say and who the candidates are.  I watched the Republican YouTube debates last night.  They were given some hard questions from people all over the country who posted their questions on YouTube.  Well, I can safely say that I wont be switching parties anytime soon!  It's funny how much both sides pander to their audiences.  Giuliani seems like a car salesman to me.  Ron Paul has some interesting things to say and doesn't seem like he's sold out and telling everyone what he thinks they want to hear, however none of them are anywhere close to who I would want leading the country I live in.   

Anyway, if you haven't checked it out yet click HERE to check out the debate

neat products

I found these aprons online and thought they were so cute

Actually If you need Christmas ideas for anyone who is a cook or just a food geek in general I found a list of great ideas here

UPDATE: Kudos to the boyfriend for paying attention to my blog and buying me a cute apron for xmas!  I will be sure to drop more hints on here from now on :)

What are the consequences of your lifestyle?

This is a pretty cool site to check out. It asks different questions about your lifestyle and figures out if everyone in the world lived like you do how many earths it would take to support that lifestyle. I'll tell you that I live pretty modestly, the only meat I eat is seafood which is pretty rare for me. I recycle everything I can and I was still pretty sadened by my score. But, it's important to know these things in order to do a better job at protecting the place we call home.

What really bums me out is knowing that the only reason we haven't totally trashed this planet yet is because there are so many poor people who can't afford to do the damage that the people with the capability to read this blog do.

Congrats Mr. Gore!!!!!!!

On winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Proof that Ann Coulter is not only a moron but possibly a man

Let's let Ann dig herself a hole here (and hope she falls into it soon)

“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and ‘We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?’”

Seriously what is wrong with her? Do the republicans even want her anymore? 

Yummy cookbook

No, the actual cookbook itself isn't yummy just the recipes inside. I wanted to try my hand at vegan baking and found this book. It has a lot of good explanations about ingredients and the baking process itself. And Jamie even liked the muffins I made even though he thought they looked too healthy.

one more for good measure

Feist - My Moon My Man. I love her videos

How cute is feist?!

haha!

Jamie just had a full conversation with me while he was asleep about some food tasting bad and how I should put my fork down and stop eating ( I wasn't eating, I was trying to sleep) I don't understand sleep talking at all, but it's pretty funny sometimes.

saving the planet one sandwich at a time

I thought this was a good example of how our everyday actions that we think are unimportant can have huge impacts.

Another reason to be vegetarian...

This is disturbing! the meat industry is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases and posses a larger problem than driving.

Something to think about while eating your next hamburger...

Finally!

I have been a bad blog owner and have not posted anything in a long time, I will be updating more though now that I am finally GRADUATED! Yes that's right, I finally did it and am currently enjoying having a normal life complete with days off. My plans for now are to get my office organized (long overdue) and to put more energy into real estate, which I'm happy to say is going pretty well at the moment. I'm also going to make an attempt at getting involved in some volunteer work.

Sicko!

Wow, Jamie and I just got home from watching Michael Moore's new movie "Sicko" we were a bit blown away. It's really upsetting to see how people here are treated laid out so plainly in black and white. It forces you to contemplate our systems and how our "democracy" works (or not) and who it is working for.
If we aren't home some day look for us in France where we will be getting free health care, living in a beautiful condo in the city for less than I pay for my mortgage, and getting our required minimum 5 weeks paid vacation, having free nannies do our laundry and living longer then the rest of you suckers here. Oh yeah, and dressing the pups in cute berets!

late night shopping at Winco

Jamie and I eat very differently. For example I go to a farm every monday to pick up the share of produce that is grown for me there. I also don't eat meat other than fish, and generally try to keep my sugar intake somewhat maintained. However I've never really considered myself to be and extremely healthy eater. That is until the other night... Jamie and I went shopping, guess which groceries are mine and which ones belong to Jamie.


I couldn't believe it so we had to take a picture since it was so ridiculous! Plus I had just filled up my fridge earlier in the day with fresh produce.

New 7 Wonders of the World

This is pretty cool, I voted on my fav. of the nominees for the new 7 world wonders and most of the ones I picked got voted in.

Check out the list here

4th pics

Hope everyone had a great 4th! Here are my boys relaxing in the shade after a big dinner. We also had my yummy cake!

Happy 4th

Happy 4th to everyone. I've been thinking about what today means the last couple days. I'd say in general I'm not big on nationalism as I feel sometimes we use it as an excuse to treat others poorly or care less about those who aren't Americans. Plus with all of the crap going on in our government at the moment it makes me feel a little less then patriotic.
Then the more I thought about it I realized maybe some pride (and I'm not talking about acting superior) is what we need. Maybe if we took a bit more pride in our country and the ideals that we are supposedly founded on we would stop feeling so disillusioned and helpless and get motivated to make a change.

Just a thought. Hope you all had a fun and safe holiday!

Sleep weirdness!

So my boyfriend (Jamie) has always done kind of strange things while he's sleeping like talk out loud or even have entire conversations with you where he will answer questions and everything but lately things have gotten very strange...

Weird:
A couple months ago I wake up in the middle of the night to him jumping out of bed and yelling "Don't move, stay where you are" and then he switches on the light and says "oh, thank God!"
So I'm a bit freaked out at this point and ask him what's going on and he starts jabbering about leaking oil on the floor and then starts snoring with his eyes open! CREEPY! The next day I ask him about it and he remembers having a dream that the headboard was leaking oil and he was afraid I was going to get my shoes dirty if I got off the bed and stepped in the oil (I guess in his dreams I wear shoes in bed?).

Weirder:
So in the mornings I have to wake up first for work so I cover up Jamie's head with a blanket so the light doesn't get in his eyes ( I know I'm the sweetest) anyway one day I guess I wasn't smiling when I did it and he opened his eyes and started freaking out because it looked like I was going to smother him. So the next night while I'm sleeping all of a sudden Jamie puts a pillow over my head! In reality he just set it on my head I was sleeping on my side so it didn't go directly over my face. I started freaking out and he was totally asleep and had no idea he even did it.

SCARY!
Last night I wake up to Jamie head-butting me in my mouth! It hurt really bad, I guess he was trying to reposition himself in his sleep but we aren't really sure how his head got over my face. My lip got cut and my teeth hurt really bad today! That's not all though about a half hour later he elbows me in the side on my head and then another half hour goes by and he half-ass backhands me on my check. This was either a really strange set of coincidences or he's got it in for me! haha. Jamie, watch your back!!!

Great recipe sites

A couple months ago I stopped eating all meat except fish & seafood. So in my search to find some new recipes I have stumbled across a few good sites, not all vegetarian but all seem to have really good ideas for dinner or baked goods which I love!

This is my fav! It focuses on planing your weekly dinners in advance and even gives you a grocery list of what you would need to make all of the meals which takes away all of the guess work and stress of trying to plan your meals last minute. It also uses a lot of really cool grains and beans I wouldn't normally use.
http://www.veggiemealplans.com/

This is a great site for yummy baked goods and has great step by step pictures and commentary, check out the cinnamon rolls! I think I'm making them for x-mas presents next year
http://www.thepioneerwomancooks.com/

This is a neat idea, you check the boxes for the items you have in your house and it will give you recipes for the ingredients you have on hand.
http://www.cookingbynumbers.com/frames.html

This is a great site for vegan kids lunches. The site author also sells some food plan books and such but other than that the site is lots of fun and has great ideas if you want to give your kids something other than the sugar filled crap the schools try and pass over as food.
http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/

my personal blog

Hello everyone! So I'm thinking this blog probably isn't going to have any sort of theme or real cohesion other than the fact than I'm the person writing it. It'll probably mostly contain interesting information I come across from various sources, helpful tips, cool websites, recipes and whatever ends up on my mind at the end of the day. So stay tuned... and if you are a dog lover at all check out my other blog
http://otisallie.blogspot.com/