Swingin' good time

We Ensors' heading on out to a 1950's themed birthday party this past Saturday. Two of our fave little girls were celebrating their birthdays and doing it in style. I had every intention of sewing Elsie her own poodle skirt but you know how that goes, I never bought the fabric and so it never happened. I basically forgot that I wanted to do that until the day of.wha,wha,wha...
I also wish I would've taken a few shots of all the cute decorations they had for the party. From Root-beer floats to hula hoop games and strawberry float cupcakes (which were bomb diggity), this was such a cute event!

Of course no smile from our girl

me and my kiddos

Look at his chucks and flat cap, I need to go wake him up right now and squeeze him from just seeing how cute he is in this picture!

Vernon you are getting to be more and more handsome every day

she would not share one bite with me or her Aunt Nat

our little fam

she was so sweet just looking out the window

oh little Pearl, we love you so

Mondays Maid Simple:Musty Towels must die!

Ok so I did it again. I washed a load of towels after dinner Saturday night only to remember about them on the way home from church on Sunday! Of course they reeked of mildew and I was beyond frustrated. This has happened three times since I have had Vernon and I am a total freak about this type of thing because I can't stand the smell of musty anything and who does really? So instead of my normal routine of running it through the wash again with detergent I instead grabbed my white vinegar and poured about two cups of that in there with NO detergent. Then after that wash cycle ended I checked them to see that the smell was gone! So I ran it again but as a regular load with detergent and voila it totally worked! Fresh clean towels again. I went online to check this out and sure enough vinegar is used to remove mildew smell from towels, so yay! Soooo if any of you happen to have this problem in the near future here is just one more use for that awesome white vinegar you have sitting in the cupboard left over from dying Easter Eggs!
I also read that adding 1 cup of baking soda to the wash will do the trick as well so I might try that next time after I stock up on baking soda of course, plus I really hope there isn't a next time. Musty Towels are the worst!

Summer Kick off

So Elsie and I kicked off Summer yesterday by lounging in a blow up pool while enjoying popsicles. We picked zucchini, basil and lettuce from the garden to make a super yummy Zucchini Pizza with a fresh salad for when daddy arrived home. Perfect day!

Today was just as wonderful, not only because of the weather but because it was Vernon's four month check up. Our little man is healthy and very happy! He is weighing in at 16 lbs. WOO-HOO! He is our bubsy alright.

The weather was so perfect tonight Micah said we had to get out and walk to dinner, so we threw the kids in the car and headed over to our favorite park in Old Town and when we arrived we saw that they were setting up for some big event. I talked to someone while Micah and Elsie played on the equipment only to find out that it was the first Concert in the Park Summer Kick off.  Every Wed night until August the city puts on the these concerts. We were so stoked! We love these type of small town community events. We walked to our fave restaurant (Nana Jean's) for din and when we returned back to the park where we parked there where literally hundreds of people there. Dancing, eating and all enjoying the weather. We bought some shaved ice to share as a fam and decided that we will be partaking in this fun little event every week from here on out! Next time we'll be prepared with our own picnic basket and blanket in tow.

yes that is red cherry flavored all over her face

look at Vernon's chubby baby feet against the crisp green grass

A San Francisco treat!

So we did it, we made the drive to San Francisco. We had been debating on it for weeks. Should we fly? Should we even go? Can we afford it right now? After we made the decision to go it was whether or not we should take our Pearl with us.  Should we take Elsie? Let's take her. No. Let's let her stay home with Grandma and Grandpa. We went back and forth up until the day we actually left.We knew at two she wouldn't enjoy walking miles of the city to shop and eat so we decided to let her stay back and just take Vernon. I'm not gonna lie, we cried while pulling out of the drive way and Micah and I talked about her all weekend long. I think Micah was worse than me this time. We took Josh along since he had never seen the city and because this was more of a visiting friends and family trip and not a romantic getaway trip, so we asked him to join in on the fun. The main reason for the trip was it was Tricia's birthday party weekend and we couldn't miss that. Initially we planned on staying in a hotel suite near the city but literally hours after we booked it Tricia called to inform me her in-laws were going to be out of town and we could stay in their beautiful home in Walnut Creek! EEEK! We were stoked. Not only would we save some moola but we would take the BART into the city to give Josh the full Bay area experience.

Vernon's first BART experience

Best crab ever! 3lbs of this goodness and it still wasn't enough

strolling the city

Look at him with his arm up. Just chillin' like a villain

We did San Francisco all day Friday which was literally walking from Powell street to shop, take in the city views, to Fisherman's wharf to eat at our FAVORITE crab restaurant, to walking to Ghiradelli Square for yummy chocolate goodness and then back to the BART station. Let's just say I couldn't feel my calves the next day. We visited Berkeley Saturday morning to do some vintage shopping and to show Josh the amazing University campus. We ran a few other quick errands and then headed to Tricia's Birthday Burrito Bash in San Mateo! They had the yummiest food and was such a laid back party. We all enjoyed it, even Josh!

he just slept wherever we took him. He was an amazing traveler

at the party

we returned home on fathers day to the happiest little girl.

I know we just got back but I love the Bay area so much I'm already longing to go again. Plus I didn't get enough time in with all my peeps. Speaking of peeps, we also were able to stay with my cousin Jess the last night and got a sneak peek at her beach house she is buying, I don't know why I don't have any photos with her but major FAIL on my part.

I guess I will just go make some Rice-a-Roni to hold me over until our next visit.

Mondays Maid Simple:When coffee isn't enough

You know those mornings when you down your coffee in a few gulps like you were drinking water itself. That was this morning for me. I literally drank it in like two minutes flat. The problem was I had to go buy my coffee this morning instead of brewing my own because we were completely out of beans and apparently my medium sized cinnamon coffee wasn't enough and now I'm here needing more, but why? I mean my kids slept in today. I had to wake Vernon up at 8:30 to feed him and wake Elsie up at 9:15 because I couldn't wait any longer for my caffeine fix. I think I need a new routine. I mean Vernon has been sleeping through the night for some time now, so his routine is fine, but mine apparently is not. I went online this morning to find some tips. Hope you can benefit from some of these as well.
Click on this link for the tips:Waking up refreshed

In addition to some of these helpful tips I was thinking I need a cute eye mask and some rejuvenating body wash, I mean can't hurt right?

Seriously the cutest eye mask, unfortunately the price isn't so cute. So next week, this will be my new project, sewing cute eye mask such as these

I have heard fabulous things about this product. Since the kids sleep in later than me these days, I'm thinking about showering in the a.m. and starting the day with this stuff.

Well I wish you all a restful week!

Zucchini and Carrot soup

So now that the zucchini is coming in daily I have been trying to make a new recipe each day using it. I also have kind of challenged myself to use only products I had in the house. Two reasons, the first being I was too lazy to go to the market this week and the second I want to try cutting back our grocery expenses by using mostly produce from our garden. Since the only thing ready to harvest is Zucchini, Lettuce and fresh herbs my options are quite slim. With that being said Friday was wet and gloomy and definitely soup weather. I scoured my cabinets and fridge for ideas of what to make and came up with the following items which ended up creating one of the tastiest, healthiest soups ever!

Zucchini Carrot Soup
3 medium sized zucchini from the garden
1 large onion
1/2 pound bag of carrots
Garlic cloves
Vegetable stock
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes
fresh herbs included: Parsley, sage & thyme
olive oil
s/p to taste

Prep:
cut onion in half. Chop one half in big chunks. Dice carrots and add both to 3 quart pot. Add two cups of Veggie broth, fresh sage, thyme and salt and pepper. Heat covered until boiling and then lower heat and cook until carrots are tender. Transfer carrot mixture into a food processor (or blender) and puree. Poor back into pot and add 3/4 cup more veggie stock.
Dice the remaining half of the onion and zucchini. Heat in skillet with olive oil and s/p to taste. Heat until onion is clear and zucchini is softened. Add this to the pureed carrot mixture in pot.
Add can of diced tomatoes and cook until heated through and flavors combine. About 10 minutes.

I garnished the soup with the fresh parsley and a dash of Pecorino Romano cheese. I had Micah grab a baguette on his way home from work and wahlaa! A fabulous super easy and super yummy soup.

Enjoy!

Fam and stuff

My oh my how time flies. Since my last post I have read five novels, had the Ensor family visiting for family vacay and have made a few zucchini dishes using the fresh zucchini from our garden. Oh and my little bro graduated high school. Oh and I have a new obsession with Indian food (I want it everyday) and well, I guess a lot has happened since my last post but don't have time to talk about everything.
I feel like I was avoiding a dear friend by not signing on to my blog or even visiting my fellow bloggers these past couple of weeks. I have been enjoying my babies, friends, family and books so much that I kind of forgot about the internet completely. I say kind of because in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "must check email" and "should post pics on my blog" and yet I never got around to it. Nap time which is usually my internet time very quickly turned into reading time and then I kind of got stuck into a new routine and next thing I know days have turned into weeks and I start getting random stalkerish emails from my dear ones saying "what is up with you not blogging" HAHA! So I'm here with nothing more than update pictures and to apologize for my recent lack of interest in my blog.

I still can't believe he graduated. Why you gotta grow up like that Josh?

 S'mores in the backyard

 Elsie's first S'more!

 My bizillionth S'more

 Micah devoured his marshmallow

 Story time with cousins

 Katy cracked me up the whole week she was here

 Though the water was freezing the girls (little ones) wanted to go swimming everyday

 the cousins lovin up on Vernon

 Aunt Kiki and Uncle Ken

 Beach day was a bust for me. This was taken during the five minutes I was there. Vernon was not feeling the wind

Chili Cookoff & Street Fair

He is such the little man now

Really, what can I say other than...Priceless!!!

Yes I was stoked to be gathering fresh lettuce leaves for my salad

So after downloading the pictures from the family Ensor vacay I soon discovered that the whole time I was taking pictures I was using Jenn's camera and not my own. We have the exact same camera and I'm super bummed to not have all the fun cousin shots to share with you. These are literally some of the few pics I have from the whole nine days they were here.