End of Summer Recap

We've had a busy few months....

We went to the Sonoma county fair (some time in August).  Full post coming soon.


Zulu will turn one in a few weeks (October 26).  Detailed Zulu update and pictures coming soon. 


We went to Tahoe for two days (Sept. 21-22).  Beautiful pictures and a humorous story coming soon.


I survived the Pear Festival weekend (Sept. 23-25) at work.  This included a kick off country concert and bbq on a Friday night (I actually was able to attend for fun and not have to work the event, but it was still somewhat work related), the actual day of the Pear Festival (one of our busiest days of the year) and our annual Harvest Party the next night.  It was a fabulous cajun themed event.  I don't have any of my own pictures, but there are some on the Wildhurst Facebook page.  The event was a huge success and I was so excited to be a part of it.

We attended the wedding of two wonderful people last weekend.  I didn't take a single picture, but it was so beautiful and probably one of the most personal and entertaining ceremonies I've ever witnessed.

We also did the Konocti Challenge last Saturday.  I did the 40 mile bike ride and Jake did the 100 mile course!!!

I know it doesn't look like I did a bike ride at all, but I did.  I just happened to have time to go home and shower before Jake completed the race.  I'm so proud of Jake for accomplishing this huge goal.  He worked so hard and I think he had a pretty good time doing it too.

For our next athletic challenge, we're considering the Orange County full marathon in May.  I've been having some foot problems though so we'll see how I feel after the end of my half marathon on October 29th.  We were considering the New Orleans marathon in March, but I might need to take a considerable amount of time off after the race this month and I want to have plenty of time to recover and then train again.

I think that pretty much sums up the past couple of months.  I'm sure I've forgotten some important details, but you get the gist of it, right?

An Afternoon in Healdsburg

It's funny how this blogging thing works....when I had a job that I was unhappy with, and thus not really loving life so much, I somehow found a lot to blog about. I think that I was trying to make my life appear better than it really was. Ironically, I'm still doing a lot of fun things (though not always on the weekends) but I feel less motivation to blog about them. This is partially because my new job really wears me out. I'm tired in a good way, but I barely have enough energy to make dinner at night, so blogging hasn't been a big priority.

On the other hand though, one of my biggest reasons for blogging is to keep my family up to date on our lives so I will try to make more of an effort to blog about the fun times I'm having (even if it's mostly work related these days).

Today we had a wonderful afternoon in Healdsburg and I took a lot of pictures. We went to a couple different wineries that a friend recommended and they were wonderful.

Our first stop was Quivira:



 
 
They had some wonderful wines, but our favorite was the Grenache.  We purchased a bottle and got 30% off with an inter winery discount!

Quivira is organic and biodynamic.  I don't know much about the biodynamic thing, but I think it has something to do with the stars and moon and other things of that nature.  Google it if you're interested.
Along with their great wine, they also had an amazing garden and farm area.

 

 

 

(bees)

Our next stop was the Dry Creek General Store.  I've read about this place numerous times and have been wanting to try it for a while.  It's basically a deli that makes really good, albeit expensive, sandwiches. 

 

We enjoyed our lunch on a picnic table outside. 

 

Our final stop for the day was Ferrari Carano. This place was so fancy!  The grounds were amazing and wine was pretty good too.  They offered an inter winery discount too, but only on certain wines.  Our favorite one, the Home Ranch Cab, was not discountable, but we purchased it anyway. 

We had a wonderful time and plan on taking advantage of the inter winery discount again in the near future.  

Cutest Pillows Ever

When we went to Napa several weeks ago we found a store that had a bunch of cute items. Some of the cutest were dish towels and pillows from catstudio. I ended up purchasing a dish towel for my mom's birthday, but I recently checked out their website and really fell in love. If these weren't so pricey I would purchase the following pillows:

They have a Nevada pillow, but I don't feel any sort of connection to the entire state of Nevada so I'd definitely choose this one.

These are all hand stitched, thus explaining the hefty price tag. I don't think I'll ever be able to justify $149 for a pillow, but I'll continue to check the website in case they ever have a 75% off sale.

Where oh where have I been?

It's been almost a month since my last post! Well it's been a busy month to say the least.

First, I got a new job. It's a fabulous new job and I love it more than any job I've ever had. I'm working at a tasting room for a local winery. I'm managing the wine club, pouring wine for people, and learning as much as I can about the wine industry.


Soon after my new job started, we had another incident with Zulu (see here for first major incident). Jake decided to take Zu for a ride in his jeep one afternoon. He strapped her in with her harness and took off down Main St. Not too long after their ride began, Zulu decided to work her way out of the harness and tried to crawl out of the jeep, Marley and Me style. Jake reached down to grab her and ended up hitting a parked car. Luckily nobody was injured, but the car was totaled, Jake's jeep was damaged, and Zulu sat in a puddle of motor oil, thus staining her entire back end. One month and several baths later and she still looks ridiculous.

I also went on a trip to Texas this past month. I was there for 8 days and it was fabulous. I did normal things like shopping, eating, movies and just plain hanging out, but it was the most fun I've had in a long time. I miss my friends and family so much. I've tried to convince all of them to just move to California, but nobody took me up on the offer. I didn't really have much to offer them besides cooler temperatures and the ability to see me on a regular basis, but I would have thought that would be more than enough incentive ;)

The only downfall of my new job is that it requires me to work on the weekends. This means I'll probably have fewer fun adventures to post about on the blog, but I'll try to make my weekdays off a little more exciting.

Oh one thing before I start my chores for the day....



This is the trailer for the movie that was partially filmed in Kelseyville. The street that's shown at :13 in the trailer is Main Street. Sadly, most of the store fronts are deserted in real life and I think even more have closed since they filmed last year. Also, the Sheriff's Office is actually an abandoned building next to the tasting room. I'm curious to see if it will be shown at all in the movie.

A Day in Napa

Last weekend we made an impromptu trip to Napa. Napa is about an hour and a half away, but the drive seems to go quickly because of the beautiful scenery.


Our first stop was the Napa Riverwalk. This was actually really disappointing though. There were several nice looking restaurants, but very few stores. The whole area was actually really deserted for a Sunday afternoon. I suppose most people go to Napa to wine taste, but I expected there to more going on near the river on a holiday weekend.

After walking around the riverwalk and nearby downtown area, we drove a short distance to the Oxbow Market. This place was pretty cool. We purchased some AMAZING lemon pita chips and fresh blackberries. We also tasted some olive oils, browsed a spice shop and ate a couple of cupcakes.

We then drove around trying to find some more things to do. We felt like maybe were just missing the "happening" Napa area, but it turned out to just not exist. I did find a World Market to shop at and there was a pet store nearby so Jake spent his time there. He purchased a new bed for Zulu, but she's already ruined it!

Our next mission was to find a place to eat, but we couldn't find anything that seemed appealing. Now before you go crazy on me for not being able to find a place to eat in Napa, just hear me out...I'm well aware that Napa is home to several famous and probably delicious restaurants, but we wanted something low key and we were definitely not dressed in proper attire for a nice restaurant. So we headed for St. Helena to go to a place we've been before. We ended up at what used to be Taylor's Automatic Refresher, a Triple D place. It's now called Gott's Roadside, but they have the exact same menu. Ironically there's a Gott's right next to the Oxbow Market, but we didn't realize it was the former Taylor's and we passed it up because we weren't very hungry after going to the market.

The next time we go to Napa it will definitely be for wine tasting and not shopping/walking around. It's a beautiful place, but we should have put a little more research and planning into our spontaneous trip :)

Favorite Magazines

It seems like just yesterday that I was eagerly checking the mail for the latest copy of Seventeen or Teen Vogue. For some reason, even admitting that I love the following two magazines makes me feel like an old woman. Not that "old women" are their target audience, but I still feel like I should be reading Seventeen and not magazines for the Martha Stewart crowd. Apparently I'm a grown up now and would rather read about food and cleaning than boys and clothes.

Real Simple

Whole Living

Honestly though, I'm pretty sure I've always been a Real Simple/Whole Living girl at heart. I was never really into hair or makeup and although I wanted to dress and look like the girls in Seventeen, I never came close. In fact, my favorite part of the teen magazines were the "most embarrassing moments" sections that readers contributed to each month. I never contributed a story, but I'm sure I could have made it into an issue or two. To add to my teenage coolness factor, I'm pretty sure I also had a subscription to Architectural Digest. Maybe it's not such a surprise that I didn't date much (or at all) during high school.

Luckily, I've snagged a cute boy and can can enjoy cooking, cleaning, and living my old lady lifestyle without shame. My mom purchased a Real Simple subscription for me a while ago and I love all the recipes, cleaning tips, craft ideas and other fun articles. She also introduced me to Whole Living. She gave me a copy to read on a plane ride last month and I read the copy at the airport and picked up another issue before I got on the plane. I just signed up for for a subscription today for only $10 for 10 issues. I just checked the going rate for Real Simple and it's only $24 for 12 issues. Both are such a bargain!

P.S. Seventeen is currently going for $15 for 30 issues! So feel free to indulge in that if you'd like ;)

Sonoma County Balloon Classic

Jake and I woke up ridiculously early on Saturday morning to attend the Sonoma County Balloon Classic. We left at 4:45 so that we wouldn't miss the 6:30 launch.

This was actually my second time to attend the festival. I went several years ago when I was staying with Jake's grandma in Santa Rosa while doing an internship. She met us at the festival this year.

There was heavy fog in Windsor where the festival was taking place so the launch time was delayed. Fortunately, the fog had cleared enough by around 7:00 so a couple of balloons took off.


Unfortunately, the wind started to pick up and the rest of the balloons were unable to launch.

We had a fun time walking around and looking at all the grounded balloons though!



This fish balloon was my favorite. It was called 'Sushi'.
It was pretty chilly out so we warmed up by staying near the balloons that had to fire up every few minutes in order to stay inflated.




I'm already excited for next year's event. I'd love to attend the big balloon festival in Albuquerque, NM one day.

Cobbstock 2011

Last Saturday we attended an all day concert event up on the mountain. It was held at Jellystone Park and I must say, I'm not really a "camper", but this place is so cute and so much fun that I would actually consider staying a night. Outside. In a tent. Maybe 2 nights since they have showers.

Jake's dad and step mom are in the band that headlined the event. It was so much fun watching them perform.

Jake's step mom is the one singing and his dad is the one to her right, playing bass.




We had a great time and are already excited for Cobbstock 2012!