Fall Back

I tried to be sophisticated today and spout off an insightful time quote from some long dead philosopher. However, the only thing I could come up with is "Time is making fools of us again." by Albus Dumbledore... Ah well, I'm an engineer, not an English major.

It's that dreaded time of year to Fall back. Why dreaded you ask? We have 29 items in our house that we have to adjust the time on... TWENTY-NINE!

8 - watches
2 - Chris's bedroom
1 - Cheryl's bedroom
1 - master bedroom
3 - living room
5 - kitchen
2 - living room
5 - cars
2 - outside

When the kids were little, we used to tell them that an gnome named Big Ben would come around during the night and fix all the clocks (I sure hope that wasn't the cause of Cheryl's gnome phobia). Anyway, it's not true. Jim and I go through the house setting clocks, sometimes cursing how we can't find the manual for the wireless weather station. Now that the kids are big, I ask Chris to fix the time on my digital watch without having to look for the instruction book :oD

We also have 18 more devices that thankfully can update themselves:

2 - TVs
2 - computers
3 - laptops
5 - tablets and iPods
4 - cell phones
2 - game consoles

Obviously we need help keeping time, that's why we have so many devices doing it for us. An extra hour tomorrow! What will you do with it?

Papertrey October Blog Hop Challenge

It's been a long time since I participated in a PTI blog hop, but this month's challenge was to make 5 Christmas tags. Well, Christmas tags are right up my ally. How could I resist? Plus, I need Christmas tags...

Here are my tags. They are all the same style:



Here's a close up:



Here are the products that I used (all from Papertrey Ink:

Tag Sale #4 Die
Limitless Layers: 2 1/2" Circle Die Collection
Beautiful Blooms II #2 Die Collection
Framed Out #9 Mini Stamp Set
Tiny Treats: Christmas Stamp Set

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you are all having a GREAT weekend!

Recipe Share

One of my favorite restaurants is Zinc Market and Cafe in Laguna Beach. And one of my favorite dishes there is the Balsamic Roasted Vegetables. I looked at some Balsamic Roasted Vegetable recipes online and none of them looked like the dish at Zinc. Then Cheryl got this month's In-Style magazine and there it was! It used all brussel sprouts, but I thought I could change it up to be like Zinc's.

Here it is:



Balsamic Roasted Veggies:

1. Pre-heat oven to 475F.

2. Cut up vegetables in chunks... I used (as per Zinc) ~20 brussel sprouts cut in half, 1 yam, 2 baby beets, 1 butternut squash, 1 zucchini, 6 garlic cut in half.

3. Toss yams and butternut squash with olive oil. Add kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.

4. Put in oven on a baking sheet for 10 minutes.

5. Toss everything else with olive oil. Add kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.

6. Turn oven down to 400F. Add new veggies to the yams/squash and return to the oven for 20 minutes.

7. Remove from the oven and toss with a generous tablespoon of balsamic vinegar glaze. I got mine from Trader Joe's.

Serves 6.

My daughter doesn;t like squash, zucchini and yams, but she likes this. My husband doesn't like beets, but he likes this. My son likes everything and likes this... I hope you like it too.
:oD

October Card Kit Time!

Welcome to the Club Mojo September card kit reveal! We have 10 ladies in the club this year... 10!!! These are all wonderful ladies who I've had the good fortune to meet at Scrappin' Mojo.

It's time for our Club reveal. I've had this project planned since I heard that Diane was making the kit for October. About a year and a half ago, Diane sent me some stamped images of Suzi Blu girls. I had in mind to make one of the girls up as a little witch on a halloween canvas... and Diane sent the perfect kit! It's full of Halloween goodness!!!

Here is the image that I used:



And here is my canvas:



Some close ups:





I even had some paper left over for an October birthday card:



That's it for me this month! Be sure to checkout the creations from the other ladies:

Beth - bethiejs.blogspot.com
KimP - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Diane - mumblebeedesigns.blogspot.com
Terri - jazzyscrappertidbits.blogspot.com
Mary - justanotefrommary.blogspot.com
KimO - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Jan - Mojo Card Kit Reveal
Niki - ellenaspaperhouse.blogspot.com
Stella - myscrapbliss.blogspot.com/

Thanks for dropping by!

Spooktacular Half-Marathon

Today was the Spooktacular Half Marathon in San Dimas. We ran with a couple people from the lunch time running group: Eric and Paloma. This was the hilly-est half-marathon that I ever ran! It was a very tough run... street, concrete side walk, dirt, gravel and a muddy stream crossing. Cheryl and I ran in costume. I was a pirate and Cheryl was a mime.







Here is a picture that Eric took of me coming in to the finish line:




After the half-marathon, Cheryl and I added more miles to make the weekend total.... 18 MILES!

My time: 2:05. 2nd place in my age group. 43rd overall...
Cheryl's time: 2:08, 7th in her age group. 52nd overall...

Last Day...

Hi all! This is the last leg of our trip. We stuck to State Parks for the rest of our journey, but had another catch in our plans. Up to know we've had no trouble finding campgrounds with open sites. Most of the time the campgrounds were almost empty, But... SURPRISE! It's fall break up North! The kids are out of school and families are getting in their last camping trip of the season. We headed south, going through the 17 mile drive. The highlight was supposed to be the iconic Monterey pine tree on a rock... Uhm, okay, we saw it. Then we headed across the Golden Gate Bridge and ended up in Butano State Park. We got one of the last campsites and the campground was full of kids and families.



It was a beautiful campground. The trees were very open and there were lots of space and fun places for kids to play... and there were a lot of them. It made me think of a shire full of hobbits.



The next day we stopped at 4 different state parks further along the coast before finding one with a vacancy. It was a long drive day. We ended up all the way down in San Simeon State Beach. San Simeon had two campgrounds. The campground with running water, toilets and showers was full, so we were in the dry dusty primitive camp, but we did drive over to the other camp to sneak in a shower... shhhh, don't tell.



That's it for the trip, I think it ended way too soon. We didn't get to see all we wanted, but now there's a reason for us to go back. :oD
Thanks for letting me share!

OCTOBER 1st

What is October 1st you ask? Well, it's the day that the government closed... and two people who are off the grid camping didn't know about it. We left Patrick's Point and headed east for Lassen National Park. We tried to stop half way at Whiskey Creek National Recreational Area. It was there we found out that all National Park, National Monuments, and National Recreational Areas were closed. We spent 2 more hours trying to find another campground. We finally found one at a dry boat landing called Bailey Cove on Shasta Lake... needless to say, we were the only people in the entire campground. It was right below the 5 FWY and we listened to the cars and trucks run by all night.



The next day we trolled for wifi in a small town and found signal behind the local medical center. There we confirmed that Lassen National Park really was closed. So we headed back to the coast. After going from one barren cold windswept campsite to another, we ended up in Gualala Regional Park. A beautiful place under the bay trees. There is a great trail to a secluded beach.



We had some critters in the camp. Jim left the back of the truck open as he took out some wood and worked to start a fire. We heard a noise by the truck and two raccoons were trying to climb in the back. We also had a little grey fox come right up to us to beg for food. We also saw lots of seals and deer, and also a whale.



That's it for this leg of the trip.
Stay tuned for the last leg tomorrow.

Patrick's Point State Park

The last time we were at Patrick's Point (30 years ago) it was completely socked in with fog... fog so thick that you can't see the coast. This year we had clear skies and sunny days. YAY! The rain is over!

We saw some gorgeous rugged California coast. Also took a walk down to Agate Beach, trying to decide which of those pretty rocks was an agate.



We hiked back out to Patrick's Point at sunset with a glass of wine to toast a great trip. We spent the night at a great spot... not too shady because we needed to dry out from our rainy night in the redwoods.



We got visited in the night be some BIG FAT racoons. I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. But, for now here is the visual journal page for Patrick's Point. We had our beautiful campsite on the bluffs above the rugged coast where we could hear the waves crashing on the rocks all night. I also added some of the gorgeous flowers along the trail and of course the banana slugs and raccoon.



More coming tomorrow!

The trip day by day...

We're baaaak...!
I had plans to blog during the trip, but the only day we had wifi access was the first night at the hotel. I'll get you all caught up now. We are recreating (more or less) a camping trip that Jim and I took about 30 years ago. Our next stop on the trip was the Avenue of the Giants, Humbolt State Park. The smell of a redwood forest is so wonderful... different than any other type of forest.

We stayed at the Burlington campsite. We were one of 4 groups in the site. It was wonderful! We did a lot of hiking and I learned what poison oak looks like. Jim got tangled up in some, but turns out he must have the same immunity to the stuff as his dad did, because he didn't come down with a rash.



The trees are really BIG and BEAUTIFUL! We got some rain over night, and it rained steadily all the next day. We decided to setup of rain and stay put in Humbolt for another night. The trailer is great. It kept us warm and dry.



On our rainy day, we passed on hiking and went on a drive to the coast to the furthest west point in the continental United States... Cape Mendocino. Then it was on to Ferndale to walk through the cute Victorian village and have some lunch.



Oh, I tried a different type of journaling for this trip; visual journaling! Here is my Avenue of the Giants page. You can see the trees with poison oak. The tree with the face is from our campsite, and you see our campsite in the rain. I have Ferndale, the beach and the wild road to get there. Here it is...



Now I just need to add some color to it to finish it up.

Stay tuned for more camping adventures!

On our way...

We are on vacation... just me and Jim... no kids and no Jena. Jena would have loved to come. She gets so excited when Jim brings out the trailer... but where we are going, they are not very dog friendly, so she had to stay home.

We didn't leave this morning until after 6am, so we got caught in the morning rush hour traffic. Then we got stuck in afternoon rush hour traffic in San Francisco. With all the traffic, we didn't get as far as we wanted to and had to stop for the night at the Travelodge in Ukiah. After a good night's sleep we will be on the road again for the Avenue of the Giants!

More Snowmen

You've all seen this one:



Well, there's more!



The lady next door always hosts Christmas Bunco, and gives us all a snowman mug from Target as a gift. I thought I would give this set of cards to her this Christmas.

Here are some close ups:









Thanks for letting me share!