Sun, Scuba and...Swine flu?

No I do not have the Swine Flu. But I did have a great time in Mexico. And I am grateful for the Swine Flu only because after being in Mexico for a week, my office would not let me return to work for another 5 business days! I had to "work from home" for another week!! Which means that instead of just one week of vacation I practically had TWO full weeks of relaxation. Well, to be honest, the second one spent at home was probably more relaxing than the first one spent in Mexico. This is due to the decision Dianna and I made to get scuba certified while we were in Mexico. It turned out to be more of a challenge than either of us anticipated. Those who have been will hopefully sympathize with me. If not, please don't tell me how easy it was for you, I don't want to hear about it.

We flew into Cabo San Lucas on Saturday afternoon and our trip was already off to a rocky start. Our flight from DC to Atlanta ended up sitting on the runway for much longer than it should have due to a gate change. This made an already tight connection even tighter. We made our connection, but were certain that our luggage would not. Our fears were confirmed when we arrived in Mexico and were greeted by no luggage, but instead a form with our name and information on it saying the next flight that could bring our luggage would be arriving the next day at the same time. We were very disappointed to leave the airport without our luggage but comforted by the fact that they had been organized enough to already have our info ready when we flew in. We were the first in our group to arrive at the resort and we couldn't check-in so we went on a tour. We were staying at a very nice place called Villa del Arco. Great pools and an okay beach. Honestly, the best beach I have been to is still our beach in Rocky Point. Love it. We ate an incredible pizza at the outdoor restaurant over looking the ocean while we were waiting. All in all, we were just happy to be in Mexico enjoying the beautiful weather and freedom from real life, even without our stuff.

Lucky for us, we were sharing a room with two other girls, my sister Tara and her friend Amanda. We were able to make due with the few things we had with us until the next day when our luggage gratefully showed up as promised. Sunday was a great day that started with a visit to the local branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. I love visiting church in different countries. It was in Spanish so I understood some, but not all. You also never know who you're going to see there. For instance, Ryan Denney happened to be visiting that Sunday as well with his family. Now I didn't know that it was him, but other people who actually recognize professional athletes told me that it was him. We made some new friends there who directed us to the best local bakery and tortilla factory. As I have already mentioned on here, I love good food. And so much of traveling is about the good food you get to eat. Fresh tortillas are at the top of my list of things I love most, so anytime I can get them, I eat a lot. We also found at the bakery these cream cheese bread that we always get with my family when we're at Rocky Point, but I promise these were the best I've ever had...Princess Bakery, you rock. We made a stop at Costco to get some supplies for the week. Yes there is a Costco and a Sam's Club down there. It was just like at home. My experience going to Costco in a foreign country wasn't nearly as exciting as my cousin Shane's. He went in Tokyo and wrote a very funny post about it.

Monday started our SCUBA training at Amigos Del Mar. The first day was just book work and watching videos with our instructor Jonathan. Since we had both read the book on the flight there, we had the info pretty fresh in our minds and passed each quiz with flying colors. We wrapped up early and were feeling good about getting to practice in the pool the next day. We went to this random pretty empty resort across the street from the scuba shop and their pools were nice. What wasn't so nice was us in the pool. To make a long story short, because I don't want to type it all, the actual practice of the moves ended up being a lot harder than reading about it in the book. We survived the pool practice with all the gear and and the floating and the breathing, etc. For some reason, I could not get the "hovering" along the bottom down. The next two days we had our ocean dives and Dianna and I were each at different times terrified and frustrated beyond belief.

The first dive ever in the ocean, we weren't down that deep and I had a REALLY hard time with the whole neutral buoyancy thing and I accidentally floated to the top a couple of times...without being told. And for those of you who know something about scuba diving, you know that this is a very bad and potentially dangerous thing to do. So much so that after the second time it happened, when I finally got back down with the rest of the group, Jonathan, our instructor, grabbed my arm and pulled me down until I was sitting on my bum on the bottom of the ocean. He then proceeded to scold me for my bad performance with a lot of gesturing and finger shaking since talking/yelling was obviously out of the question. Needless to say, my first dive was not my favorite. In fact, when we were finally back on the boat, the only thing I could say was "I hate scuba diving". Sad. Fortunately the next dive that day went better inspite of getting caught in some crazy currents. And the two dives the next day went well for me. I started to enjoy the things we were seeing a little bit instead of just being constantly worried about whether Jonathan was in sight and if I was getting too close to the bottom. Dianna was not as lucky. During our first dive of the 2nd day, she actually kicked her fin off and had to go back to get it. She was kind of panicked which caused her to breathe harder, resulting in her running out of air and getting to use our newly learned air-sharing skill in real life. Crazy. She was pretty shaken up, but she got back in and we conquered. I have to say that I will definitely need a break before trying it again, but I am proud that I got the certification.

The trip was amazing and I came back with a great base tan to start off the summer :) Though I must say that I think I like Rocky Point and being at the beach with my whole family a little bit more. Viva la Mexico!!

Food Glorious Food!

There have been several occasions over the last few months where delicious food has been a main focus. I feel that these delicious foods deserve some sort of recognition.

First, my friend Dianna introduced me to a delicious recipe for Veggie Pizza. It's easy, healthy and so very yummy. Whole wheat dough from Trader Joe's, Pesto sauce, a base of spinach, lots of chopped veggies of your choice, and a light sprinkling of mozarella cheese. No better way to get all your servings of vegetables.

Second discovery, also courtesy of Dianna, the Pear'wich. This is another healthy meal that I have eaten a lot over the past few months. All it takes is 2 pieces of bread (I like to use OatNut though the recipe says to use whole wheat), a smear of Almond Butter, half a pear-sliced, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. You assemble these as you would any sandwich and you have the most delightful treat of a sandwich you've ever had.

Third, the delicious banana cake I talked about before. I have pictures this time that show just how lovely and scrumptious it was. We changed up the recipe from the one on SmittenKitchen and did a cream cheese frosting with pecans sprinkled on top. Wonderful.

Last of all, we put together a rather impressive Easter dinner. We were lucky to have some visitors, my friends Jess and Megan were in town as was Daniel (as of that weekend, Ani's fiance!!). Dianna had a recipe for Island Pork Tenderloin that she shared (she is a wealth of good recipes!) and ask anyone who ate it, it is DIVINE!! It consists of seasoned, baked tenderloin served on a bed of coconut rice, sprinkled with mangos and topped a brown sugar glaze. My mouth is watering just thinking about the deliciousness of it all!

Ani made lemon cake for dessert and Christina and I had put together a little Easter basket with special prizes for everyone. They had to follow the trail of M&Ms to find it. heeheehee. It was great fun.

I love good food!

Stomp the Yard??

First of all, this happened quite a long time ago, in February to be exact, but I never got around to blogging about it because there were too many other things going on and because I was waiting for my mom to see if she could find a video of me from high school when I did a step routine for half time at a basketball game. The video could not be found, but I just went back and watched all of these videos and remembered why I wanted to write about it so much.

My friend Amanda had some co-workers who were participating in George Washington University's Annual Step competition and when she mentioned it I immediately asked when and where. We gathered quite a group for what turned out to be an incredible show. These two videos are a sampling of what we watched for many hours that night. Most of the groups were from fraternities or sororities, but these two are high school groups that performed as "opening acts". They were actually better than most of the college groups. (seeing these girls dance reminded me of Amber, Anna and Syd doing their step routine)

I have never been to a step competition before, but ever since seeing "Stomp the Yard" I have wanted to desperately. This was a dream come true! I became friends with the girl sitting next to me and I asked her all sorts of ridiculous questions through out the night. She was great and explained everything to me. One of my favorite tidbits was that the mean looks they have on their faces while stepping is called "grit". This photo is of us practicing our grit during intermission. Which brings me to my other favorite part of the night. During intermission, the entire auditorium got on their feet and it turned into a huge dance party!!! Not kidding, the emcee was calling out songs to the DJ and there were people up on stage dancing. Wow, I loved every second of it!!! Did I mention that we were pretty much the only white people there as well? Loved that too. The whole auditorium felt like one big party with people chanting and cheering on their favorites. It was definitely an audience participation performance. This is something they apparently do quite frequently, and I can't wait to go to another one.

My other new love

There are so many things I need to post about but I don't have time to write anything too long so I decided to just do something quick about one of my new loves. That love is Golds Gym. It's true. Up until about 2 months ago I had never belonged to any sort of gym. Didn't really believe in paying money to work out. But I have been converted. It started because I was looking into taking some sort of dance class out here, but with my work schedule, etc. it's hard to commit to the same time every week. After a lot of research, I decided that Golds was the best fit for my lifestyle/schedule. There are 6 gyms in the area that have different class schedules every day. With all those options, I can always find a class I want to go/can make it to. And the classes are AWESOME!! For those who have never been to Golds, they have this program that has "Body" classes that include the following:

Body Flow - A combination of Tai Chi, Yoga, and Pilates

Body Jam - Basically you just dance your heart out for an hour

Body Pump - Weights

Body Attack - High Level Aerobics, super intense

Body Step - Step class

Body Combat - Mixture of different martial arts/kickboxing

I have done all of these classes at least once, except for Pump. My favorites are Flow and Jam. Jam perfectly fulfills my craving for dance. The music is some of my favorite dance tunes and the moves help you get a work out and yet are completely funky/fun at the same time. I LOVE it! And with flow you get stretching, strength building, balance and relaxation. My friend Dianna who is my workout buddy has an equal obsession (more so than me actually) with Flow and she teaches a Body Step class. I actually spent 2 hours at the gym on Wednesday doing Attack and then Flow. I'm more than a little bit sore, but it's the good kind of sore. The point is, I have become one of those people, the gym people, and I can't believe it.

Cake Decorating Course 1 - Check!

I am an official graduate of the Wilton Course 1 Cake Decorating class. We learned many things, like how to frost a cake and not show the crumbs, how to smooth it with parchment paper, some borders, flowers, and of course the rose. Which I never thought I would be able to do when our teacher, Ashraf, showed us. But all the roses on my last cake were made by yours truly! I spent almost 5 hours baking, making frosting and decorating that cake. Holy smokes! Good thing I truly love it.

The first class where we decorated a cake, I had signed up to feed the missionaries the next day and I thought, "Perfect. I don't want this cake sitting around my house, and Elders always want more food (at least in my experience)." Which is why the cake has a CTR on it. So great.

The rest of the cupcakes and cake I brought to work the next day and my co-workers love me. It's amazing what free food does for the work place. I have already started Wilton Course 2 and I LOVE it! I made cupcakes last night just so I could practice decorating them. Yes, I have an obsession. I also keep finding all these great cake/baking blogs and last weekend I made a yummy banana cake with cream cheese icing and pecans from a recipe on Smitten Kitchen.

I have decided my dream job is to own my own little bakery/cake decorating shop. But it has to be in a small town, not DC. So if anyone knows of any cute, small towns that need a cake decorator, please let me know and I will consider moving there to open a shop.

Back after 18 years!

Where did I go back to after 18 years? That would be Philadelphia, PA, the city of brotherly love. I went there the summer of 1991 on a family reunion trip. Here is a photo, courtesy of my parents, of the kids in front of the Liberty Bell. Can you tell which child is me? And now, 18 years later, with friends Amanda and Christina.

This was just a quick weekend trip to visit Amanda's house actually and pick up some china from Amanda's mom for a tea party we're going to have. Her parents live in a darling cottage outside of Philly. And since her parents were such amazing hosts we felt like we were staying in a B&B. Not kidding there was a little bedside table with a rose and drinks plus a basket full of random shampoos/soaps/toothpaste/etc. for us to use. And the next morning even though Amanda's mom had to be at work by 5am or something, she still laid out a beautiful breakfast for us. So sweet. We enjoyed our stay very much.

We met up with Stacy and Krissa after visiting the Liberty Bell and we all went to the market where the highlight was definitely the baker's dozen of delecious gourmet cookies that we purchased and then divided into 5 parts so we could all sample each one. This is a video of Amanda cutting up the cookies. She was taking her job very seriously. The cookies were AMAZING!!!

The rest of the day was spent walking around Philly, taking random photos, visiting the Art museum, running up the Rocky stairs which I actually never knew were in Philly. (I don't know that I've actually even seen that whole movie...) The museum was probably my favorite art museum I've ever been to. They don't just have art on the walls, they have entire rooms that are from all over the world. This was one of my favorites. Christina and I walked in and both of us were instantly reminded of Sound of Music when Maria is dancing in the ballroom. I of course had to take a picture of me doing the same. I just wish I would have had a dress on like hers.

The funny part about this trip is when Amanda gave us a list of "must dos" for our day in Philly, the majority had to do with food. I already talked about the cookies, the other two major foods were soft Pretzels and Philly steak and cheese. The pretzel story is kind of ridiculous, but basically we couldn't find a place open and we finally found one when we were on our way home. They were good but I prefer Pretzel Time (which always reminds me of hanging out in the St.George mall when I was in middle school). And for the Philly steak and cheese, those of you who know me best will recognize that steak is not something I usually eat, but I sacrificed, and it was surprisingly delicious. I took off about half the steak that they piled on, but combined with the onions and peppers and some ketchup, I enjoyed it. I think I could handle eating one every few years...

All in all, the trip was fantastic. I love living in a place where weekend road trips can take me to places so different and historical.

Domestic Goddess

I have always enjoyed doing arts and crafts but lately I have been delving into all sorts of new and exciting things. There are so many projects I don't even know where to start. So I'll start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

My friend Dianna and I decided we were going to have a sewing night. I really wanted to make some pajama pants. For all you tall girls out there, you understand how difficult it is to find PJs that are long enough and not 13 sizes too big. I mostly just have one pair of warm PJ pants, my beloved gray sweats. Oh how I love them and will continue to wear them until they are nothing but threads. Anyway, I decided I wanted to make some new pants. We stopped by JoAnn's and picked out some fabric and other sewing paraphenalia (pattern, elastic, thread, etc.). I have made PJs before but it's been awhile. But after washing and drying the fabric, I was able to put them together pretty quick. And I love them. Made them just the right length and they are soft and cozy. Yes they are orange and they have dump trucks and contruction signs on them. My 2 year old nephew Tyler is very jealous. Love it.

So that was the first project. Next came my manager's baby shower. I was helping plan/prepare and I was in charge of making cupcakes due to the reputation I have gained at work from bringing cupcakes to people for their birthdays. Many people have suggested I open my own cupcake shop on the side, which is an entirely different story, but let's just say that I would love to except that DC is already being taken over by cupcake shops. So I decided that I didn't want to make just any kind of cupcakes, they had to be delicious and beautiful (of course). I did some research and found so many ideas I couldn't decide what to do. There was one cake website I came across that has the cutest cakes I've ever seen. You should look at it.

http://www.pinkcakebox.com/

Finally, I combined some recipes to come up with my own creamcheese filled chocolate cupcakes with creamcheese frosting. YUMMY!! And I piped the frosting on and put little chocolate hearts and words that I made from melted chocolate chips. Yes this was a fairly time consuming project, but I loved every second of it. And everyone else loved the results so it was a worthwhile project. Oh and I also made some very delicious, and aesthetically pleasing punch.

Next on the list was Valentine's cookies. When I started doing all the research for cupcakes I discovered the Wilton cake decorating aisle at Michaels. How I have missed it all this time, I don't know, but it's my new favorite aisle. I used my coupons to buy a whole set of tips and bags for decorating and Dianna and I decided to try them out for Valentine's Day. And we had a great time. I had no idea what any of them would really do, so I tried as many as I could. I just remember my mother spending hours on our birthday cakes when we were younger. I wish I had the pictures of some of the works of art that she spent time on. Now that I have labored over my own cookies/cakes, I have a greater appreciation for her efforts. She did a great job and I think it might be hereditary because I think I have a knack for handling a bag of frosting, Dianna told me so. And on Sunday asked for my help frosting her delicious chocolate ganache w/raspberry cream topping cake. Another delicious creation. And all of this fun stuff led me to look into the cake decorating classes that are offered at Michael's. I didn't think I would be able to do it because of work but I finally found a class that worked and I have my second lesson this week!! I love it!! And this is just course 1 but I'll be sure to post photos of my creations.

Just two more arts and crafts. My friend Jack had purchased some blank Matryoshka dolls that he wanted to paint and he invited me to help him. But instead of doing the usual doll and flower pattern we decided to get creative and used 5 Little Monkeys Swingin in the Tree as our inspiration. I was in charge of buying the acrylic paints and as I was selecting the proper colors it reminded me of all the paints that mom has that I have used for various projects through out the years. I'm finally starting my own collection. Hooray! We didn't have time to finish (imagine that, me running out of time on a project...perfection takes time!) but we got a lot done. And I of course loved the entire experience and can't wait to finish them up.

Last but not least, I have recently been watching a lot of old movies on TV due to our apartment deciding to upgrade our cable to Direct TV with DVR. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching Katherine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and all of my favs. There are so many enjoyable things about these movies but the one I have been noticing lately are the great dresses these women got to wear. It's true that fashions recycle and those dresses have been back "in" for awhile now. I have tried some on, but they just aren't made for girls with long legs and torsos. So what do you do when you can't buy something that fits and you don't have your mom around to make something that fits? You get online and find old dress patterns. That's exactly what I did. No joke, http://www.oldpatterns.com/, has hundreds of old patterns organized by year that you can search through. I ordered four of them and I'm anxious to start the latest project. It's going to be hard to fit it in with the cake decorating, painting, etc. but I'm determined. And even though my mother is way across the country, you can bet there will be many phone calls made to ask for help. I don't think I've ever made an article of clothing other than PJs. The best ones being some Tara and I made in sewing class many years ago...oh how I wish I had the photos from that fashion show. They resembled a tent and had hot pink, VERY itchy lace around the neck and arms. Did they really expect us to sleep in that?

I hope you have all been inspired by my craftiness and felt the urge to go create. I was listening to Pres. Uchtdorf's talk from last Relief Society broadcast and he encouraged us to make things beautiful and to create. Hopefully my latest endeavors will fulfill this counsel.