2 Years: My MRS. Experience

Each Labor Day weekend since 2009, my husband and I celebrate our anniversary.  

On September 6, 2009, we got married and it was easily the happiest day of my life.  We went out to dinner to celebrate and discussed the past year tonight (recap will come later).

We had nothing to overcome in our first year and this last one was a doozy.  My husband's wise words said that we survived and our marriage is stronger.

Each day I have a coach, comedian, personal trainer, and best friend with me on my journey.  I still am the luckiest girl in the world.  Each year gets better and better and I can't wait to see what our future will bring.

Husband- you not only make me happy, you ARE my happy.

Flashback Friday: Wedding Dress Fitting

It's been brought to my attention by my blog manager and intern (husband) that I haven't blogged since last week.  My glamorous job has put me through quite the week and I have had barely enough time to run home, walk the pup, and try to get to the gym for yoga before crashing out.  Everyone is busy and I know that, so here I am trying to get back into what I love- my little blog home with you guys.

When I started my blog about 2 years ago, I was in wedding planning fun and I shared some of my planning with you.  You can click here to see some more wedding posts.  One aspect of the planning that I couldn't share was my dress, because my intern could have read the blog and my surprise could have been ruined.  It's not that we waited until the ceremony to see each other, I just wanted the dress to be a surprise. 

I did not make a big production over my dress.  I took my mom and nobody else with me to select the dress and to the fittings.  In my head it made sense since she was my shopping partner of choice at any other time and she has the gift of honesty and would tell me if I looked like crap.  I purposely wore my hair down and curly so that I could make sure I saw 'me' and not some other girl when I tried on my dress.

We went to a local bridal shop and I tried on a bunch of stuff.  I never got the 'it's the one' feeling about my dress, I just sorta liked this one.  I wasn't looking for perfection.

About this time 2 years ago (eek!) I started the fitting and measuring process.  They pin it up and they cut it up and put it back together.  I had no idea- I thought they just gave it to you all pretty and fitted- genius, huh?  How else did I think it would fit my waist to booty ratio?

My favorite part was the back and the side.

 

This would all turn into a huge mess later when the train decided it wouldn't stay put on the actual day of the wedding (until my maid of honor hooked me into it with tweezers), but looking at myself in the mirror and adjusting the bustle was pretty fun.

And so was walking around and 'floating' because I couldn't see my feet.

Playing dress-up is my favorite and I'm so glad I have these pictures to look back on.

The final result was not too bad either.  Nothing is perfect- even when it looks like it is on the hanger.  Here are some of my favorite 'outtakes'.  At least the dress fit :)

September 2009 vs. September 2010

This time last year, I was awaiting the weekend with excitement, anticipation, overwhelming happiness, and my typical impatience.  This time last year, I got married.  It was the best weekend of my life. Ever.

This weekend, we are celebrating one year together and eating our anniversary cake!  It's been a great year and I can't wait for many, many more.

We froze it and it still maintained some of the details.

And all of the taste

Instead of wearing these outfits

We wore our sweats.  Trust me, it's better to eat cake wearing sweats anyways.  That's what being married is all about, right?

Happy Anniversary Hubby.  Thank you for a wonderful year. Thank you for supporting me no matter how neurotic I can get, always opening the mail and making sure our bills are paid, and for encouraging me to grow a pair and stand up for myself.

P.S. here is what we looked like eating cake last year courtesy of my big bro.  Yes- I am that awkward in real life ;)

The Husband Makes a Smoothie

A while back POM Wonderful sent me some free samples of their Pomegranate juice to try out.  This post is a review and expresses my honest opinion- this stuff is good and get ready to spend your dough on POM.

I was thrilled and placed the adorable little bottles in the fridge to cool down. I am not much of a juice drinker, but I know of one guy who is- my husband.  Slowly but surely, my juice stash was disappearing and I had one suspect.

When I checked no more than 2 days later, ALL of them were gone.  Very interesting.  I was  interested in the juice stats (from the POM website) but my husband didn't really care.  He just said it was good.

POM Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice is a little bit sweet, a little bit tart and a whole lotta healthy. Bursting with superior levels of naturally occurring antioxidants it’s 100% authentic, 100% delicious and 100% pure, meaning there’s no added sugar, colorants or cheap filler juices. We have also provided over $34M in funding to support scientific research on POM products at top institutions around the globe so raise a glass to life. And the pursuit of healthiness.

All of POM Wonderful Juices:

• contain no added sugars, preservatives or colors
• are a good source of potassium
• are gluten-free
• are flash pasteurized to retain both flavor and nutrients
• are certified kosher

Lovely, right? When I asked my husband what he thought of it, he said it worked perfectly in his smoothies, and chugged straight from the fridge.  Before I knew it, this massive bottle started coming home with us almost weekly from Costco.  Below is my husband's smoothie recipe. 
**Please note that he is in a weight gain period for a tournament right now, so please don't come after me if you get all yoked and stuff.

Husband's POM Smoothie:

• 2 scoops Monster Milk
• 1 cup tropical frozen fruit
• 3-4 oz POM Juice
• 3 oz carrot juice
• 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt
• Scoop of ground flax

Blend all ingredients

Enjoy!

In other news, this weekend wrapped up the end of wedding season as my cousin got married.  I love weddings and I'm also glad the season is over!  Gratuitous photography ahead!

Here is an outfit shot from this weekend.

We also got some pro pictures back from my other friend's wedding earlier this summer and I loved this one.  We seem to have a good time together :)

Question for you: Do you have any good smoothie recipes? 

Wedding Wrap Up

Hi Guys!
It's been a crazy couple of days and one of my high school friends got married this weekend.  The venue was a unique loft space in San Francisco and the decor, dancing (feet say ouch) and drinks (thank you for reminding me, morning dehydration) were fabulous. As always, I like to ask people if they can be on the ole blog for the entire world to see and since the bride and groom were busy schmoozing, dancing, and not eating, I have kept their privacy. Cool?  However, I'm an open book (blog) and I only spray tan, primp, flat iron, curl, and wedge myself into 4 inch heels once in a blue moon- so here we go!

Ceremony- this is a fabulous take on the traditional Jewish Chuppah or wedding canopy:

After the ceremony we were brought into the main reception area.  I loved all the uplighting and crystals!

We were rolling at table 10:

The bride and groom came in and started with their first dance- so cute!

Speaking of cute- my date for the night-

We goofed around and took pictures- nope, I don't play piano but look like I do

The cake was absolutely fabulous and came in the shape of an ice sculpture with a small layer on top of real cake.  Ignore the goofball in front of it:

It was a lovely night and we danced the night away!

This one looks like prom- class of 2010!  It felt great to be a guest and not the bride this time! I love OTHER people's weddings!

Today we are going to a San Francisco Giants game and now that I'm up and had some food, I'm off to chug some water, put on some sunscreen, and head out to the game!

I miss you all and hope you are having a great weekend!
XOXO

Missing the Cleaning Gene

Hey Guys!  I have to say this was a fabulous Monday and there is a little bit of it left until I get to go to work again!  ((Insert happy face here))!
Thanks for the comments on the spring rolls in my last post.  They are seriously not at all difficult to make and so light and flavorful.  Make them now!

Today I got some cleaning done and straightened up our place after being gone for a week-it was no easy task!  I have to admit that I am pretty crappy at keeping our place clean.  I get a lot of help from the hubby and we share chores but work, school, and everything else really take the place of being Martha Stewart sometimes.  I think I might be missing that wife gene.  Speaking of which, I've been an old married lady for 7 months today!

(One of the blooper pictures because believe me, there were LOTS!  Hubby found a toy and I was not happy)
At least I cook and bake. The highlights of my day included baking brownies:

Marshmallow and white chocolate:

Green sprinkles for my favorite nephew:

Some coffee, cashew, and walnut brownies for my hubby:

One of my favorite things about baking is giving the treats away.  I can't be left alone with sweet treats at all!

In addition to baking and being a wifey, I went to the gym to get my workout on since I swear just smelling the treats added a few extra cals.
The spin class I wanted to take was filled up so I did my own workout and even did my own spin class:

• 20 minutes intervals on the deathmill (stairmill)
• 25 minute spin class
• Stay between 90 and 100 RPMs, alternating levels and doing the 'high' portion at the chorus of each song, approximately 30 seconds of crazy fast and then going back to just normal fast.

• Yoga/balance stretching for 20 minutes

I felt wonderful after and remembered how much I love working out- as bad as it feels when I'm doing the death-machines, I feel like a rockstar after every.single.time.

After my workout I broke into my spring roll leftovers with some dipping sauce and carrot dippers:

I also had an apple with Laughing Cow Light Cheese and almonds:

It was a really filling and flavorful meal, albeit a bit eclectic, but that's how I roll!
I'm off to shower and get ready for my exciting day tomorrow!  Hope your Tuesday is fabulous :)
  
Questions: Do you like to clean?  How do you make yourself clean if you don't like to?
I hate cleaning but music, commercials, and incentives help!

My Favorite Things

What a beautiful weekend it was!  It included my favorite things- food, fitness, great company, and wedding stuff! 

First the food!  
On Saturday morning we watched Food Inc., a movie that I have been waiting to see since it came out, but forgot about until now!  I know that a lot of bloggers have already reviewed this movie, but I think it raises a lot of important issue that we should be aware of as consumers.  I loved that two of my favorite authors, Eric Schlosser and Michal Pollan played important roles in the movie.  I'm kind of a groupie of these two authors and highly recommend you read any of their books!
Food Inc. has a comprehensive website that eloquently explains this, much more so than my goofy ramblings, but here are my takeaways from the movie:

• We all have the right to know where our food comes from.  If the information is not available, then ask.
• We have the right to food safety.  Measures need to be taken to make sure that the government is protecting us, not just the interests of the lobbyists and organizations stuffing green in their Gucci wallets.
• Poor nutrition is causing obesity and many other health conditions like diabetes. The correlation between poor nutrition and socioeconomic status is staggering and it should not cost more to buy a vegetable than a burger!
• Read labels, ask questions, and vote with your dollars!

OK, enough preaching from me!
I discovered some new food finds this weekend, one of which includes nut butter:

Sunland Inc. sent me this sample of Organic Vanilla Cranberry Peanut Butter.  The color of this peanut butter is more yellow than other kinds and this is my first flavored peanut butter ever!  It was a bit sweet, but I tasted the subtle taste of vanilla and some kind of berry too!  I think that kids would love this and it's a wholesome product with only 4 all natural, organic ingredients.  I will definitely keep this for a special occasion (OK, who in the world keeps nut butter for a special occasion??) and will try to not finish this jar off in a few days!  Thanks again for letting me sample this!  Also, check out the Recipe section of the site.  I have my eyes on the peanut sauces- and apparently you can make doggie treats too.

I also finally got to try and attack my Foodbuzz Festival samples from Frog Hollow Farms!

The dried peaches are delicious and the granola is dangerous!  So, so good and I will definitely be dipping my fingers into these when I need something sweet.  I have been dreaming of the Frog Hollow pears ever since I tried them at the farmer's market and I can't wait to walk down to the market to get one!
After dreaming about the Ferry Building Farmer's Market, I forgot that we had a perfectly good one right in our city!  I met a man who kicks my Marketing degree's butt with his convincing "5 pounds for 5 dollars" sales pitch (in English, Spanish, and Spanglish)!  I went right to him and grabbed my persimmons:

This is not even all of them and we are now in fruit heaven and this is mine, all mine!  The nice man also threw in a couple of tangerines and this ginormous Asian Pear:

It is seriously the size of a small cantelope!  While shopping I also saw some other freakishly large vegetables, that I tried to justify buying, but finally didn't. 
Also in food news, I got 2 B-nut squashes and roasted one up with dill, red pepper, and some sea salt:

And I roasted some chicpeas with more dill and stuff.  These taste like soynuts to me!  Abby is right!

Hubby wanted me to show you what he was excited over- OLIVES!  This may be his favorite food, ever.

My dinner had chicpeas, spinach, tomato, and egg.  It isn't the most intuitive combination, I know, but it tasted so good, especially with all the hot sauce I doused it in.  I'll be having this again soon!

Fitness!
In fitness news, I got in 2 fun workouts this weekend.  Yes, I'm the freak who takes a picture of her workout stats:

This was 30 minutes of walking hills and a few sprints in between.  It has hot and I wasn't feeling it, so I decided it was a perfect time to throw in some weights.  Since I haven't lifted in a while, I did 2 exercises each of chest, tris, and shoulders and stretched really well afterwards.  I did have an incident in which my balance ball rolled right under me, but nobody seemed to notice!

Today I attacked the old  Torture Chamber ('mill) to get my distance up.  I set the time for 45 minutes and busted out 3.8 miles.  If you do the math, it wasn't fast, but at 5'4", I practically sprint at 5.3 MPH!  I am also having some minor hip pain, which proves my hypothesis of being roughly 79 years old.  I cooled down with some stretching and sun salutations and called it a day!

Great Company and Wedding!

We spent Saturday afternoon celebrating Hubby's mom's birthday!  I of course forgot my camera, but it didn't stop anyone from having a great time.  We went to a Persian restaurant and my spinach salad was awesome!  We also came home to have cake:

(Picture taken this morning, as hubby was eating breakfast dessert)
I also discovered the first chocolate item in the world that I didn't like because it was a whipped cream cake.  You may not understand how shocking this is- it may be like foregoing oxygen for a day, or something like that.  I don't think anyone really would have wanted me to eat that cake if they knew the consequences!  We also had a great time watching the video that our new Step-dad, Stan put together for us (STAN- if you are reading, I have now said your name twice, so keep going!) including photos and a video of our wedding!  It was so nice to actually see how things went down since I was in my bridal stupor and could not really remember most of the wedding.  Look how cute the CD covers are:

I'm going to go shower (for my own well-being and that of those around me) and to watch Amazing Race!  Tomorrow is another day at my favorite place, but it's only a 3-day week, so Hump Day, here I come!

Oh- and in other news- hubby got the surround sound working!  I have spent half of the evening wondering why people are yelling at me and also had a living room dance party (just me) testing out the woofer.  We can throw a mad party now!