Maryanne ties the knot...

Guess what?!

Yup - another wedding!

My lovely friend Maryanne married her love Mike.  I'm so damn happy for them I could burst!

Amber and I went together and had a lovely time.  Beautiful wedding, delicious food and an evening full of love!

Wedding Crashers

The unfortunate part of the eve was the rain.  The wedding was to be outside in the little courtyard at Five Crowns, but low and behold it actually rained in SoCal.  I was super impressed how the place handled it and I was told rain on your wedding day is actually good luck!  So - yay?

When you arrived you figured out what table you were at by doing a puzzle.  Yup - gamer friends.  I loved the theme so much and have never seen that before!  You had to find your name, there were page number assigned and you had to figure out what table you were at by looking through a few of the books with highlighted clues.  So awesome!!!

Our table was Shakespeare's burial site.  Pretty appropriate right?  I also saw an Abbey Road table and a gramma was telling us she was at the Edinburough table.  So cute!

So cute right?!

There was meat and cheeses outside (in a covered area) and fantastic server staff keeping us in drinks.  Like seriously - drink finished - there they are "Can I get you another?" So rad.  The adorable cake and sign in area were out there as well.  So pretty!

It was lightly raining but we got a pause.  The gal ran around wiping down the chairs and trying to get it all going.

Rather than a guest book we signed little wooden puzzle pieces!

Come on Rain!  Pause for just a bit!

We got our seats and sadly the rain started again.  Back under the cover we ran.  There was another pause and they decided to go forth.  Most of us stayed under the covered area since the seats were wet, and even the guests out by the seat didn't sit down due to the wet.  But that didn't stop the ceremony and it was just lovely!!  Maryanne looked GORGEOUS and the bridal party looked divine.  They had a super sweet ceremony and did this awesome thing with liquid rather than a candle.  Yes...remember I mentioned gamers?  Also Science Nerds.  They each poured a liquid into a container together and it turned pink and smoked!  So cool!!  My camera does not like the nighttime and/or I don't know how to make it work right so any picture where anyone was moving are blurry.

The blurry bride

We were later corralled inside for dinner.  There were a few really lovely speeches by the best man and made of honor, then Mike himself said a really lovely one as well.  The food was delish!!! But...I mean Five Crowns.... YUM!  I stuffed my face way too much.

Gorgeous

Ma and Pa

Her speech was so full of love!

I didn't realize the 1st dance was happening, but I did catch it through the glass!  I was able to run out for the Father/Daughter dance though!  So sweet!

1st Dance

Our little parting gifts were adorable!

Us and the beautiful bride!

We got little puzzles to take home!

How cute is this candy

It was just a perfectly wonderful evening filled with love and joy.  You could really feel it everywhere!  I was honored to be invited and had such a nice time!  Yay love!

Thanksgiving Weekend...

So, I've been dreading this a bit since Thanksgiving has always been a bit of a rough time.  Made even rougher this year by the fact that the 3 year anniversary of my Papa's passing fell on the actual day this year.  This is also the 1st Thanksgiving without my gramma and without Shane and Danelle.

But - of course - my mom made it super rad.

We decided to have a potluck at her house.  We weren't sure if anyone would come, but we ended up with the perfect crew.  Dave and Petey, Justin and Jody.  Such a wonderful holiday!

Mom of course decorated the place to the nine.

Fall themed

Mom's table

Justin arrived 1st and made yummy pumpkin mousse and oreo brownies!  He also brought  delish dill dip!

Justin with a bottle of Justin!

Me & the "Hubs"

Mom made a beautiful bird, stuffing, cranberry relish, fruit salad, sweet potatoes, cucumber salad and gravy. (Funny side note - the gravy came out a bit odd and guessed who spiced it up?!  ME!!)

Basting the bird

I made my non dairy green bean casserole. So yum!

Pete and Dave came over with rolls in hand and an amazing garlic mashed potatoes!  Jody waltzed in with a plumeria branch for mom and the group was ready!

Everyone has arrived!

 So when it came time to cut the turkey - nor mom or I had ever done it.  Let's just say we got creative.  It also totally freaked me out.  I have a thing about seeing meats in their true form, or bones, or...well you know.  Let's just say when the legs got pulled off I didn't take it all that well.  Justin was of course there to capture it.

Seriously so gross

After the turkey tearing up we chatted, drank wine and spirits and had a lovely day.  When it was time to sit around the table we had fun poppers that had prizes and games inside!

Friend Fam!

Thanks to mom for hosting yet another perfect event and to all who came out.  It truly was a really great holiday!!!

The Friday after I hit up a hike with Lib and Hailey.

Saturday evening brought the wedding of my beautiful friend Maryanne.  You'll see that in the next blog.

Sunday started out super lazy which was AWESOME.  I can't remember the last time I just stayed in bed for a couple of hours.  It was raining and cold and I just stayed snuggled up and enjoyed.  That afternoon was my wine date with Tully!  He is so rad an usually invites me to be his "date" at the pick up party for his wine club.  This brings me Tully time and a bottle of wine (Or in this case 2!)  Love me some Tully!!

Tully and McCoy Wine Time!

It was a perfectly relaxing awesome 4 day weekend.  So needed right now!  I kinda don't want to go back to work tomorrow...

Yay Vacay!

HipCooks...

Since I've recently (over the past couple of years now) gotten more into baking and even a bit of cooking, T bought me a cooking class for my Xmas presie last year.  Between trying to find a class we both wanted to take and our wacky 2016 schedules we finally got to do it last Sunday!

There's apparently a whole bunch of these sorts of things around but the one we did was HipCooks in downtown Santa Ana.  We met up at C4 Deli for a quick glass of wine then headed over.

It was a little awkward at 1st.  I wasn't sure who was the teacher and people seemed to be milling around a bit confused.  Someone told us to sign in, wash our hands and put on an apron.  Um. Ok.  Both T and I were a little concerned this was going to turn out to be a dud.  But luckily no!

The instructor was very chill, more of a "we're hanging out in her kitchen while she teaches us" sort of thing.  The class we picked out was J'aime Paris.

She called us around the counter and we began!

Ready to cook!

A lot of the stuff had already been cooked or prepared which was kind of a bummer, but I understand due to time constraints.  I was also a little bummed that we all didn't get to cook our own version.  It was more of a "Hey you do this".  Then someone else would do something else and so on and so forth.  It was also a bit scattered and I wasn't sure what we were making when.

The other slightly annoying thing was every time I took a picture I had to wash my hands.  Touch your phone wash your hands.  Ugh.  I felt like I washed the 1st layer of skin off, but again - I get it.



She pulled out some chickens that she had already cooked and they smelled divine.  There was water and tea if we wanted as well, so that was cool.  As we began, she sort of just told random people to do random things.  There were only 2 places to cook things.  They were these portable little stove top thingies.  So cool!

We made our desserts 1st, which I thought was odd, but then realized they had to cook during the class.  They were these little ramekins of chocolate mousse.  OMG.  So friggin good.  This was also when I learned there is a vanilla paste that is SO F-ING TASTY AND SMELLS DIVINE!  I'm using that instead of extract from now on!  I bought a bottle - check it

We could not stop smelling the vanilla.  So good!

 She then had us all chop chop chopping away.  Baby Bok Choys, Parsley, Grapes, Baby Tomatoes.  The really cool thing was she gave us some great cutting tips.  Simple adjustments on how you hold the knife is going to make chopping so much easier!!

I'm cutting grapes!

Wine time!  She broke out a white for all of us as we got ready to steam the clams.

Hello little clams.  We gonna eat ya!

My kind of class!

We then sat down and got to eat the yummy clam dish appetizer!!

So good!  Light and crisp sauce!  Yuuuummmmm!!!

After we ate and chopped we then got to taste the sauce we were making for the chicken.  She had us taste it about three different times, each time adding more stuff to it so we noticed the difference in taste.  This was one of my favorite parts because you really got to see what adding more of one thing mattered.  I so love food!!

Our yummy chicken in our yummier sauce!

After we finished, she opened a bottle of burgundy and we all sat around the table and got to eat our yummies.  It was so good!!!  The chicken fell right off the bone!  We also made a green bean/white bean/basil salad that was so simple and so yummy!

DELICIOUS!

There was a hint of orange in here, but she was saying you could add nutmeg or cinnamon!  Yum!

Terri's haul

All in all - super fun!  It was something different to do.  I learned some great tips and we got to eat great food that we helped make!  I had so much fun with T and all the other people seemed very cool.  There was this young couple that sat next to us at the table and the little gal was super sweet!  She plans to check out our little Orange Farmers Market after I told her about the shell fish dudes!

Thank you to Terri for a really great Xmas present!  I hope to take more of these types of classes in the future!  So much fun!