Good Times With Good Friends

Since I failed at blogging last week, I'll give you guys one Monday post with the two big highlights from last week. 

Those of you that read my blog Friday already got a lil preview.

Last weekend I took a trip to LA to hang out with a few of my best friends and celebrate Brittany's birthday. Of course, the weekend started out with seeing The Hunger Games for the second time with Karissa. 

Then a day of mani/pedis, enjoying the beautiful LA weather (before the rain set in) and, of course, good times dancing to Call Me Maybe getting ready for Britt's bday dinner and night out.

Here's a few pictures.

At Dinner

And...

Overall it was a super fun night and we all had a wonderful time celebrating the first bday of bday season. I have a ton of friends who were born in April (like me!) so Britt marks the beginning since her bday is March 20th.

I also finally go to put the concert tickets I won to good use! My amazing former roomie, Jo, drove down to see Lady Antebellum, Darius Rucker, and Thompson Square with me! Our seats were awful (hey you can't argue with FREE) but we had an awesome time.

Here are some pics from that:

And of course, all three artists.

And just for good measure... Here is one of the MANY videos I took. I turned it in to a little slideshow of pictures at the beginning since the concert footage is mid song (the concert footage starts a little less than halfway in to the vid). Check it out.

Lady Antebellum- We Owned The Night

Every Summer Has A Story

It's true.

There was the epic, dodgeball-filled, summer before college.
And the summer of the apartment.
And the summer at Theta Xi.
And the summer after college, full of trips, concerts, and fairs.

Since it has been cold, rainy, and foggy here for the last week or so (and since it is the middle of the winter season) I am obviously wishing it were summertime.

I miss laying out by the pool, and being tan. I miss the sun staying up until late in to the evening. I miss wearing shorts and tank tops. I miss those summer days driftin away in to those summer nights =)

(No) Missed Opportunities

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain

Since graduating the past June, it has been all to easy for me to point out the things I wish I had done. Don't get me wrong, I did A LOT as an undergrad. I worked a few different jobs/internships, was and extremely involved member of my sorority, made some amazing friends, attended lots a great UCLA sporting events, explored LA, laughed, cried, worked hard, and slacked off. But there is still more I wish I had done.

I actually began to realize it senior year, as graduation loomed near, that there were still things I wanted to do. Lucky for me, life doesn't end after undergrad!

I know, shocking! Right?!

All of that in mind, I have made a promise to myself that I will take advantage of every opportunity that I possibly can. Yes, there will be things I have to say no to, but I plan to say "yes" more often than I say "no". 

And many of my friends have embraced a similar philosophy. I am so pleased with the way I've been able to stay in touch with my closest friends even though we no longer see each other daily. And as such, I think we do an even better job of taking advantage of the time we do have together.

I do wonder though... When I am 80, 90, 95+ years old (cuz I'm planning to live a nice looonnnggg time) what years will I look back on and say "Those years- Those years were the BEST years of my life." Right now, I think those year are still yet to come.

P.S. According to Blogger this is my 50th post =)

NYE in San Francisco!

Normally I would do Megan's Sometimes/Always link up today, but I am just so excited to share my NYE with y'all that I just can't wait!

My final day/night of 2011 was spent with two of my absolute best friends in one of my favorite cities. We went in to the weekend knowing two things: 1. We were going to watch the Bruins play Illinois in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl. 2. We had a hotel in the city (What up Holiday Inn?!) and therefore our night would be spent out in SF. Everything that happened after that was unexpected and unplanned which made the night so much better. Get ready for quite the photo dump in this post!

Bethany and I decided to take the CalTrain in to the city instead of driving so we packed up our backpacks with our NYE attire and set off for the city. Taking the train ended up being an awesome choice since it dropped us off literally right down the street from AT&T park. I wish I had gotten a pick of us with our back packs since we probably looked like total dorks (especially while sipping Bloody Mary's in an Irish pub while waiting for Jo to get in to the city).

Jo showed up, we ditched our stuff in her car and headed to the stadium. Stopping to get a pic in front of the water in McCovey Cove.

Our seats were in the bleacher section set up in right field. We got in to the stadium just in time to see our new favorite country cutie, Hunter Hayes, sing the national anthem; read we RAN to our seats to catch a glimpse of him on the field.

The Bruins ended up losing the game, but we still had a ton of fun and got to see a bunch of friends from UCLA that we hadn't seen in awhile.

After getting lost multiple times on the way to our hotel (seriously SF- you may only be 40 some square miles but your streets are so confusing!) we finally parked, checked in, and made plans for dinner. Jo is an awesome Yelpper and discovered the just around the corner was a great little diner called Grubstake, which has been featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives!

After a quick trip to the liquor store, it was back to the hotel to prepare for our night! We (obviously) played the obligatory "Holidae Inn" by Chingy since we were in fact "chillin at the Holiday Inn." Then it was off to our friend Danielle's apartment to celebrate the New Year and her 23rd birthday!

We rang in the new year at a karaoke bar called Silver Cloud, and then were joined by a couple of friends from UCLA where we closed down the bar and then trekked back to the hotel for some more drinks and conversation (though Jo missed this last part as she fell asleep less than fifteen minutes after returning to the hotel). In the end we said goodbye to our friends and drifted off to sleep around 4:30am. We certainly did not waste a minute of our last hours of 2011 nor our first few hours of 2012.

Pizza for lunch on our first meal of 2012 sealed the weekend, and it was back to Mountain View and then on to Fresno.

If NYE is any indication, 2012 is going to be an amazing year. I can't wait to see what is in store for me, my friends, and our epic adventures together!

Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean!

Happy 2012 everyone!

I hope all of you had an amazing NYE! I know I had an amazing final week of 2011, and I am going to share all that excitement with you all this week. 

As you may already know, I spent a few days up in Sea Ranch with my best friend at her parents beach house. We were so sad to have to leave on friday after, because it was a fabulous couple of days full of exploring trails, watching movies, drinking wine, a little bit of blogging, and just simply relaxing! We took about a bajillion pictures but I'll try not to overwhelm you with too many. With out further ado, I'll just let the pictures do the talking (at least for the most part).

The drive to and from Sea Ranch is not particularly easy but it is beautiful. Driving slowly along the twisty turny Highway 1 can be a bit scary (especially when goats randomly decide to run in front of the car!) but it also lends itself to some beautiful views.

Some shots from the drive to Sea Ranch

The views at the beach house did not dissapoint either. Although it was very cloudy, misty, and foggy (our hair and clothes were wet like we had just walked through the rain when we got home) we enjoyed every minute of walking the trails along the beach.

We also got really good at using the self timer on my camera, and finding creative places to set the camera to get a good shot of the two of us together.

And of course who could forget our couple of pics to document our evening in the house. Alex cooked. We enjoyed yummy wine. We played Mancala and Scategories (board games are still fun even at 22 years old!). And we watched a ton of movies- the highlight of which was definitely Mary Kate and Ashley's gem, Our Lips Are Sealed.

"BIG TIME FUN!"- Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson

And of course, here are a few of my favorite pictures.

And last but not least here's a couple of awkward/funny, candid shots Alex got of me.

Overall, it was an AMAZING trip, but it was just the beginning of my NYE weekend. Still to come are stories from my time in San Francisco for the UCLA bowl game and NYE in the city! Stay tuned =)

Adventures in Cooking and Baking!

A weekend without any traveling forced me to find new things to do to occupy my time. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I am not much of a cook (I would much prefer to get fast food or microwave something before actually cooking... a habit I NEED to break). Friday night my mom whipped up some potato skins for the fam to enjoy while watching the Fresno State blowout game. The sight of the bacon cooking reminded me of the DELICIOUS bacon-wrapped hot dogs sold outside the Rosebowl at UCLA games. That was all the inspiration I needed to attempt to create my own. The product was delish but there could have been a few improvements; such as two pieces of bacon per one hot dog (the bacon shrinks as it cooks... in hindsight I should have realized that), and toothpicks to hold the bacon in place as it cooks. But overall it was a successful experiment in my opinion. Pictures!

1. Potatoe skins (pre cheese and cooking) 2. bacon-wrapped hot dog frying just like bacon 3. end result + relish, onions, mustard and a blue moon. YUM

I also decided to test out one of the recipes from a blog I've been following for awhile Gina's Skinny Recipe's.  I picked an autumn appropriate PUMPKIN BREAD recipe! This bread was incredibly easy to make (and if I'm saying that that def means something!). The end result was (one sec while I go find some good synonyms for delicious... oh here's a good one...) SCRUMPTIOUS!  I brought the remainders to work today and it was gone by lunchtime. So here are a few pics of my baking experience (since we all know I hate posts without pictures)...

(from top left to bottom right) 1. all my tools/ingredients 2.everything mixed together and ready to go in the oven
 3. baking! 4. all done and delicious! (and yes I'm wearing my jersey, it was Saturday... GO BRUINS! always)

On another note, a successful first month of (actually sticking to) blogging has got me thinking about upping the number of posts per week, but I don't want to get an crazy ideas or make promises I won't keep. That being said, stay tuned, we will just have to wait and see... Have a wonderful rest of your week!

Friends. Football. FUN.

I can not possibly begin to express how much fun I had this weekend, but this will be my brief attempt at doing exactly that. Saturday I made the quick drive up to Mountain View/Palo Alto to watch the Bruins play the Stanford Cardinal. Knowing that Stanford was ranked number six in the nation and the Bruins have not been having the best season (typical...) we decided to make an event of the day to ensure that even a Bruin loss could not wreck the weekend. As an added bonus I decided to not only include my wonderful UCLA/ADPi girls in the weekend, but also Weston, a friend from the midwest (Alumnus of THE Ohio State University) who moved out to California a few months ago.

A total of six of us all met up at Wes' apartment for some good old fashioned college drinking games (graduating definitely does not mean we plan to stop playing beer pong) before cabbing over to the stadium to meet up with some more ADPi's, and other UCLA friends. A mini-barbecue courtesy of the wonderful Kelsey provided us with some delicious hot dogs pre-kick off. Despite an opening drive that looked promising (until the end when we failed to score...) the Bruins were no match for Stanford. Still, clapping and singing along to Sons of Westwood and The Mighty Bruins brought all my Bruin pride flooding back, and reminded me that I could not be more proud to have graduated from such an amazing school.

Best friends and football will always be an ideal weekend for me. The weekend also included a trip to the Google campus, late night jacuzzi-ing, brunch, a google+ hangout with the friends who couldn't make it to norcal, lots of reminiscing, and tons of laughter.

Check out Bethany's post about the weekend as well! Now for a few pictures to showcase some of the highlights of the weekend.

made a quick stop by Bethany's work and could not resist taking a pic with the Google sign!

Weston and I at the tailgate.
2 things:
1. I got the Ohio State alum to wear blue!
2. Don't you love my new jersey?!

baby beer shot glass

being goofy before brunch (awkward parking sign...)

we love lions... duh

i love the drive from Fresno to the Bay. beautiful blue skies and California countryside