Fast Forward

To this weekend.

Saturday morning Kristina and I packed up and headed up to Napa for Michelle's birthday party. I can't lie, it was a little odd making a journey to Napa without Scott. That said, we had a tremendous day visiting wineries and enjoying a girl's day out. There were 11 of us loaded on a bus to take Napa by storm in our most fun fashions!

All of us at our first stop, Grgich.

Family photo-Aimee, me, Kristina, and Michelle (aka, me and my nieces...oh, and they are all older than me. Work that one out!)

Thanks for having a birthday, Michelle! It was a perfect day!

Cue Sunday. Kristina and I headed back early this morning because we had important business to tend to. WEDDING INVITATIONS! Kristina so generously offered to make our wedding invitations. I am not sure that I have ever mentioned the very large piece of equipment that lives in our garage...the letterpress. It is an old, old, old trade that is extremely impressive to see in action. Even more impressive, Kristina taught herself how to do this. Kudos to her for picking up a trade from the 1400s! The best way for me to explain letterpress is to think of something you have had embossed and reverse it.

The whole process today took 5+ hours to complete. So don't throw your invitation away, it is a piece of art! If you ever want anything letterpressed just let me know, I have the perfect person for you!

Plate #1

A step back in time...

Scott excited to start printing!

Test print #1 (of about a million)

I even got to help. Apparently my OCD comes in handy from time to time :-)

Lola playing her part

Color #1 hanging to dry. In order to get two colors on the invite we had to press all 200 (room for error) invitations twice.

Kristina working her magic

Color #2 drying. Aren't these the most fantastic thing you have ever seen?!

Art. Seriously.

The garage was taken over by invitations.

Now we just have to address all of the envelopes and get these out the door. At least I have a month to work on that. Thank you is not a big enough expression to Kristina. We LOVE our invites. I wanted to save all of the mess ups just because so much time and energy went into them to throw them away. I love it all!

I leave you with a little known fact. Vegetable spray (PAM) works as an incredible paint thinner. Who knew?

Tomorrow, Giants game. I will sleep when we are in Italy!

Lost

No, I'm not lost (although by my lack of blogging you might think so). I am going back to a week ago and the Lost Series Finale. When I woke up on Monday I had to remind myself that it was truly over. I can't lie, there is a part of me that is relieved. I no longer have to spend hours on end trying to figure out what is going on! Yet, I will miss my weekly dates with Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, Locke, Jin, Sun, Richard, Ben, Desmond, and the rest of the castaways.

In order to send the show out right, we hosted a Lost finale party. Of course this party was only exciting until the show came on when nothing more was to be said!

Welcome to our TV island (note: I should not be allowed unaccompanied in a party store)

Island plates

Ok, I doubt the Dharma Initiative had the world's best cookies but Scott's mom made them so they HAD to be consumed (about that wedding diet...)

Ah, but they did have wine!

And white wine, too!

I will spare you my recap/thoughts but it was a great way to say goodbye to a fabulous show!

Cardigans, Pearls, and Boat Shoes

What a weekend it has been!

We kicked it off by heading to a wine bar close to home on Friday night called Heart. I learned about it from an article that made its way around the office last week. It was a different take on the normal snobbery that accompanies many wine bars and of course it was great that it was within walking distance! We finished off the night with some gourmet dinner at Papalote. Watch out Chipotle, I might have found a new favorite (albeit, I am capable of making healthier choices at Chipotle).

Heart

They serve the wine in mason jars. It still tastes just as yummy!

Awwww, I love him!

A sample of how they describe their wines

They are also an art dealer. Not sure I will be looking to hang this piece in the house any time soon.

Sorry, no pictures of Papalote-I was too busy stuffing my face!

Saturday we put on our fancy fashions and headed up to Napa (the fog has officially settled in for the summer here in the city so we must find our sun elsewhere). Kristina and Nick decided it would be fun to take a cue from the East Coast fashion world (think Nantucket, Cape Cod) so of course we played along. Given more notice I think we could have done better but we got plenty of stares and laughs as it was. Agenda for the day...Gloria Ferrer, lunch at the Rutherford Grill, Nickel & Nickel, and A16.

Kristina and Nick at the grill.

Whew, there is a lot of color happening here. We decided Scott's attire could best be described as salmon on sorbet.

This could definitely be possible at some point in our lives!

Please note their popped collars.

What a good looking group :)

2009 Cab Futures

I was a bit worried my teeth were going to be purple forever!

Loving A16!

The end of the shenanigans. What a great day.

Tonight, we have another dinner to celebrate my cousin Andrew's graduate school graduation. The wedding diet starts...soon! Although Bar Method is pretty much the most terrific thing ever and I am not too worried about my wedding shape. Bar Method combined with half marathon training should have me fit in plenty of time. Here's hoping anyway!

3 months ago...

I jumped on a piece of glass. It has been quite the road to recovery but starting tomorrow I get to rejoin the exercising world. I am pretty sure I have never taken three months off. I am sure there are reasons it was good for me but it was also a huge challenge to keep myself pretty much sedentary for 12 weeks. A huge thank you to Scott for making me stay put and not doing too much too soon. Now, a little over three months to the wedding...time to kick it into high gear! Bar Method and 1/2 Marathon training here I come!

Of course, it wouldn't be my blog without a much overdue recap.

Last weekend we spent the entire weekend soaking up the rarely seen sun! It was a gorgeous weekend and we ended up with sunburns to show for our time outside.

Saturday-Giants day game! Apparently we stayed a little too long after the game because when we went to get the car we found this...

Where did everyone go?!

One guess where this is...

Ahhhhh, bubbles in the sun!

We got back to the city around 5 and realized it would be easy peasy to get into A16 that early!

Best. Pizza. Ever.

Oh, and the wine isn't too shabby either.

The work week began again and got off to a bang...literally.

After happy hour with Michelle we were waiting for the car in the garage when we heard an accident. Yep, someone hit Scott's parked car. To add a little excitement to the whole incident the driver and his girlfriend were from Switzerland, driving a rental car. A little challenge when trying to figure out how to swap insurance.

The rest of my week was spent working in Monterey and I will save all of the shenanigans that happened there for another post. Let's just say some people in Monterey are cut from a special mold!

This weekend we packed up Lola and headed down to Cupertino for Mother's Day at Renee's house. It was another beautiful day and it was wonderful to see everyone. It is so crazy that we all live within an hour of one another but somehow life always gets to busy and we don't get to see each other enough!

After a wonderful visit, Aimee and Andrea invited us over for a TREMENDOUS gourmet dinner. Andrea is a chef at Piatti and hails from Italy. Quite the recipe for a great meal. Oh, AND they paired each course with a delicious wine.

Andrea in the kitchen hard at work.

Andrea's 5 year old daughter, Maya. She is going to be a heartbreaker!

Scott and I in between courses.

Scott has always told me kids are fascinated by his chin and always wonder what happened or what is wrong with it. Well, I saw it in action. Here, Maya is trying to fix it :)

Some cotton and tape should do the trick (we avoided the honey suggestion)

Quail leg and risotto. Can't say I have ever had quail leg but it was delicious! And the risotto...no words.

Wild asparagus

I am pretty sure I had three helpings of this pasta!

Cheesecake? Nope! This is a side for our last course. It is cheese though!

mmmmmmm......

Scott trying out to be the sous chef. Hopefully he is hired for next week :)

Yes, you heard right. We are doing it all again in San Francisco next weekend. I could get used to this!

And there you have it. All caught up. I herby declare tomorrow the first day of bridal bootcamp. Wedding dress shape here I come! I'll keep you posted on the progress...

Have a great week!