A Mustache Baby Bash

I'm not sure how people did parties in my office suite before I came along. Seriously, they must have been lucky if it was ice cream cake day. Let me say the Party Planning Committee brought it on at Virginia and Shawn's "Mustache Baby Bash."

Guests of honor:

We asked guests for a baby photo and added some of our own creative touches.




We kept theme beyond mustaches, bow ties, and monocles to graphic prints in primary colors.



Since baby showers are much more guy friendly these days we opted for games that appealed to a variety of ages and both men and women. Guess the 'Stache (my game, thus no word bank. My dear coworker did the next. She's a lover of the word bank.)

a. Ned Flanders

b. Ron Burgundy/Will Farrell

c. Adolph Hitler

d. Tom Selleck

e. Clark Gable

f. Albert Einstein

g. Captain Hook/Dustin Hoffman

h. Geraldo Rivera

I. (the husband/baby daddy)

j. Hulk Hogan

k. Rollie Fingers (Oakland A's pitcher)

L. Charlie Chaplin

and Who's that Baby.


Food included manwiches, bow tie pasta with dill, homemade pizza, green salad, fruit, quinoa and black bean salad, stuffed mushrooms, and real cookie ice cream sandwiches. Seriously, this suite brings it when I ask.






Guests made onesies for the baby boy to be.





Presents were received and joy abounded.




Twins!

Oh dear.

I, for one, am a Target girl. As you may recall I gave it up for Lent. In many parts of the US, another discount giant is beloved by many. Around here, I give it the stank eye. Especially when I see* my alma mater's apparel inside. Oh my.

*I obviously don't go to Wal-Mart. This was emailed by a former Saxon who desperately needed paper clips.

Cooking for Kings

I joked on Twitter that it's awesome to be married to me due to the dinners I make. All joking aside, it's still true.

We've had two pretty darn tasty dinners so far this week-the Pioneer Woman's perfect pot roast (no pictures, it was consumed too quickly) on Sunday, and yesterday, Ina's mussels with basil breadcrumbs. Oh em gee, I felt like Ina, in a French bistro enjoying our cuisine with Chardonnay, the only difference is we sported our our finest gym clothes. It's great dining fine at home.

Both nights I used my Dutch oven as well-one pot meals are the best.

A Progress Report

We timed our Solvang trip to coincide with some work being done on our shower. If I may give one piece of advice to anyone buying a home-pull back the shower curtain. Two inspectors and two newbie buyers lacked to do so and were stuck with water damage in the window frame that is costing us to fix part of the bathroom sooner than we'd hope and forcing us to go to the gym so we can use the shower. The highlights of a one bath home!

The entrance to the supreme dust zone. It even has a red (plaid) carpet.

Progress! But no available shower.

The work required the walls of the shower to be ripped out, new studs and and waterproofing board that the new tile can be affixed to.

Power tools and boom box take priority to perfume.

Because we think the tub was originally claw-footed and previous homeowners sometime in the last 85 years filled in the corners with cement to make the tub flush with the wall, it's requiring some creative solutions. Thankfully we've got a great contractor who's well equipped to face these issues.

Dust everywhere. I am counting down the days to a functional bathroom and major house clean.

Naturally with the shower's progress I want to move along to replace the gym sink with a pedestal and of course pull up the vinyl flooring for tile. In reality I will probably finally remove the celestial wallpaper and paint.

Solvang, 8 Months Later

This past weekend the entire Haselton clan descended upon the Santa Ynez Valley for Scott's uncle's 60th birthday. It was nice because this trip we were able to try three different wineries than we had since the trip in January.

Sort this Out Cellars (actually we came here in January and one of the co-owners is also the event planner at a local restaurant.) Thanks to Scott's Aunt Kathy (wife of birthday Uncle Jimmy for the photo.

My favorite new winery was Sarloos and Sons, which does cupcake pairings along with their wine. Thank you Audra for selecting that winner!

Our hotel has agreements (probably in the price we paid per night) for complimentary tastings at about 20 local tasting rooms and wineries. We stopped at a few in between the Haselton's route specifically-Andrew Murray Vineyards where I had a one hour conversation with the employee about Pottermore.

After Andrew Murray we drove to the ends of the valley to Zaca Mesa, which will be known as the winery where I shattered my wine glass. Good wine though, combined with a lovely picnic lunch and giant chess board.

Finally we embarked upon the famous Fess Parker for a final tasting and cigar enjoyment. It was also rumored that Amanda Seyfried was there, so I went into the vineyard to look for her. The rumor really only came from Tim but I tried to confirm it with no luck.

Dinner was enjoyed at a local Italian eatery which made the best ravioli I've ever had in my life. I'm going to attempt to replicate it this weekend, though I know it won't come close. It was life-changing ravioli.

It was a lovely weekend getaway that has ended our month of vacation for a while. Though I am plotting an MLK getaway if we can swing it to coincide with my birthday. I feel you always need something in life to look forward to, and January can be kind of a low month following the holidays and copious amounts of brie consumed.

400 Posts

Well, this makes 401.

I started blogging back in 2007 and those posts were rather lame (as in I referred to Scott as My Boy-well our last name and credit scores [which are AWESOME] are pretty much now on the webs for public view.)

I've written before about how I go back and forth about what to put out into the blogosphere. Mostly, I enjoy sharing thoughts and events with family members and friends I may not see very often and finding pleasure through reading other blogs, many of which I've never met the author in real life.

I realize it's completely du jour to have a blog these days (remember though, I started in '07 was four years ago, so I'm not a total bandwagoner). People write for different reasons, but I do feel if I am putting something out there that a set of eyes are deigning to read, I should attempt to make it interesting, which is why there can be lapses in post. Sometimes I'm not that interesting-we work, eat, watch Intervention and repeat. I don't think people need a brain dump of my mental to-do lists.

I've noticed a trend in blogging as of late-MAJOR product pushing. I get that people are trying to earn a little money from their blog and thus they have sponsors and do features-why not have a little ROI for the time that goes into posting. I also understand marketing is ever evolving and is not limited to your tv/radio/print venues anymore. I could simply stop reading but frankly I do find other aspects of these bloggers daily lives interesting. And perhaps it has come to that-a little bit voyeurism and a little bit of laziness in not wanting to delete from my reader or Twitter. I don't want to say you'll never see that on here because the minute I do, Martha Stewart Crafts will probably want to advertise for $4,000 a month. I would not refuse that offer.

Clearly I'm no Pioneer Woman in the blogging world (though if the Food Network calls, they should know I'm ready at a moment's notice to be a fabulous guest at a certain Hamptons home) and don't have 700 people a day reading this (which is good, since I don't post daily and use far too many parentheses) thus, no amazing calculators or diapering services to push for an extra fifty bucks a month.

For a 401st post this is certainly no Kerri Knight-Teague dissertation. Thankfully I'm only graded by my own shame later when I go back and read. I know the people who read this may crack a smile and can easily skip the tangent thoughts. Thanks for reading through the last 200 posts-that was probably when it got good anyway. There will be no giveaway because I'm not into those and would probably offer a Chia Pet or Bump It anyway.

Vacation Reading

I stocked up at the Borders going out of business sale earlier this summer in anticipation for our Cancun getaway with some classics-The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Lord of the Flies, and Gulliver's Travels.

I powered through Tom Sawyer (loved it-never read it) and am almost through Lord of the Flies (Sorry Mr. Leon, I remember nearly nothing of this from 10th grade!) Still working on Gulliver's Travels.

What piece of amazing literature took the cake, pie, cookies, and ice cream:

Snort, cry, laugh out loud reading. So much I know Scott was annoyed by the continued outbursts. I wanted to buy this book from the day it came out, but I forced myself to wait until it would apply to beachside reading. So glad I did. Ironically, American Airlines has some sort of agreement with NBC so I saw the same episodes of 30 Rock*, The Office, and Community on four different flights (sans headphones) and in one, it was the season finale when Tina Fey has a fantasy and Ina Garten is her neighbor!!! ZOMG my worlds collided! I do realize this is actually her character Liz Lemon, but let me say if there is a dinner party waiting to happen it includes me and those two ladies. Meryl Streep is optional.

I was tempted to put quotes here from the book but then I'd just be retyping everything and thus, people should just borrow it from me or buy it. I even went against my principles and bought it in hardcover. Doesn't come out in soft until January of 2012. Too long to wait people!
Do yourself a favor and ignore the depression of the world for a few hours and crack open these pages of fine American literature.

*I'm not sure what happened but we fell out of 30 Rock Thursdays so you can bet I've added them to the Netflix queue to catch up.