Amazing Boyfriend Makes Amazing Meals!

Vermicelli rice noodles, home-made marinated chicken, sliced carrots, sliced green onions (I love slicing with our new Calphalon knives!) nestled on top of baby spinach, drizzled with a rice vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and salt mixture.



It was delicious. I love having an amazing cook for a boyfriend!

A Few of My Favorite Things

Whenever I leave Nick's house at night for the ten minute drive back home, he always stops at the top of his stairs and waits for me to back up and start to pull out, and then waves and I blow him a kiss. I love that. 

Waking up with my cats sleeping next to me. Io laid claim to the pillow I don't use (I have a queen-size bed) and Oz sleeps by my feet. Also, snuggling with my foster kittens. 

The book series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon--if you want to read a few thousand pages of fascinating historical fiction, time-travel, medical treatments, absolutely fascinating characters and complex plots, and romance, this is the series for you. 

The TV series Burn Notice, Firefly, and Buffy. 

Baking yummilicious treats (and trying to keep them healthy) (and sometimes really not). Pumpkin pie tonight--but more often brownies! 

Amalah, the first ever blog I knew about and read and got invested in. She went from a hip wino that was good at falling down and making it funny to a hip mom with two kids, one of which has SPD and some other learning issues. Pretty much daily I check Amalah's blog and click on her Advice Smackdown, and the Mamapop gossip site that she helps run. 

Dooce, one of the world's most popular bloggers, who has some ridiculous number of people following her. But she is hilarious and witty and snarky, very blunt about being ex-Mormon and her treatment for mental illness. 

A new hilarious blog that is illustrated (with the best expressions a near-stick figure can have) is Hyperbole and a Half. I just found her and she made me laugh so hard I couldn't resist adding her to my blog listing. 

Hmm. I'm sure I have more faves but I can't think of them now. I love being lazy, watching movies, reading, eating, sleeping, and day-dreaming. 

Cassiopeia Topaz Necklace

This beautiful necklace is my Christmas gift from Nick (from four months ago, I know, and yes I feel guilty for not blogging about it sooner)!

Nick told me a few weeks before Christmas that he wanted to buy me a necklace, but that I had to help him pick it out. We looked everywhere! He really liked the journey diamond necklaces, as did I, however the price range shot up ridiculously for good quality stones, and they had a bad habit of rolling over on their side. (To be entirely truthful too, I preferred something a little less common. Seems like everybody has one)! We both also did not like yellow gold, and preferred white gold or platinum. 

So we kept looking, and looking. I liked the sapphires that weren't too dark, he liked them dark. I liked emeralds (because they matched his eyes) but they didn't match mine, and Nick didn't love the emerald I did. 

Then I liked rubies, and he liked garnets. And it seemed like every store was having sales and the next store would have bigger, better, cheaper necklaces! And we started getting veeeery grumpy about looking for more because we were so freaking tired of looking. 

And I very definitely wanted a pendant. Something special! We were looking online and I saw that Kohl's had some very promising looking pendants, so we decided to go down and look. We ended up being torn between a three stone journey necklace and the cassiopeia topaz pendant, which is a clear topaz that has a treatment applied to the outside that makes it sparkle and be so colorful--it is blue and purple and green and clear and shiny and sparkly, and it has a tiny diamond chip right above the topaz and it is white gold and we both just fell right in love with it and so Nick bought it for me, and I stubbornly refused to wait until Christmas and Nick clasped the necklace for me once we were in the car and since that day it has rarely left my neck because I love it and he gave it to me. 

Thank you Nick! ^_^ 

Best Boyfriend EVER

Three months ago, Nick bought me a one hour massage certificate for my birthday. Today I finally put the certificate to use and had my one hour massage!

I was a little nervous about it (never had one before, didn't know what to expect) but it was . . . AMAZING. The lady was so nice and made me feel very comfortable, and we chatted about schools and my brother and her sons and animals and Nick. She massaged my back, my feet, my legs, my arms, my neck, and the lotion she used smells really good and now I'm a little bit in love with my arms, they smell so great! My hour massage actually lasted for 1 hour and 15 minutes (I think) and I was sad when it was over.

Now I'm at Nick's where I rhapsodized about the massage for a good ten minutes, and made him sniff my arms. (Vanilla chai lotion. Mmm).

Now we're off to make chocolate dipped strawberries. Best boyfriend EVER!