Oy yoy oyster!

My good friends Diana and Vicky are up here for Labor Day weekend, and we started off their vacation right with a round of freshly shucked oyster's at Elliot's Oyster House. Elliot's has this fantastic Oyster Happy Hour where each oyster is $0.50! The price goes up $0.20 every half an hour. We ended up ordering 2 dozen oysters and washing it down with Champagne (Vicky), the featured beer on tap (me) and a Bloody Mary (Diana). The oysters were all from the Puget Sound area and were very tasty!

Sweet On You!

A gelateria opened up at the corner of Greenwood and 85th a few months ago and we always pass it and think it looks so cute! We made it over there Saturday night after dinner for a little dessert. I have to say that we were all disappointed. The interior is not as cute as you'd think - bright colors everywhere, but the tables and bar stools are cheap, plasticky and all scuffed up. The gelato too, was a miss. Coconut was too icy and pistachio was too grainy. They had very little business when we stopped in at about 9pm, so I'm not sure how long they will survive there.

Backyard, Phase 1 complete

With a lot of help from Scott's parents, we were able to finish up the front AND backyard gardens this past weekend. hooray! They look marvelous - a huge improvement over what was there before. The rock wall is about 3-4 stones high, and we have many many varieties of plants and flowers back there now. To name a few: hydrangeas, tree peony, camelia tree, japanese 'blood good' maple tree and fuschias. We still need to fill in a few places with some fall/winter plants that are not available at the nursery right now, but I'm already excited about how our yard will look this time next year after everything has grown!

Blood, Sweat and Fears

Scott and I are redoing our backyard. Our first project is replacing the existing rock wall (full of concrete bits and odd rocks) and creating/planting a larger gardening bed. We want to later add in a paver patio, but we'll get to that another weekend.

Overall, the day was very successful! The first layer is in, and now we just have to figure out how to stack up the next few layers. It's hard puzzling it all together becuase the natural stones are all different sizes. Anyway, here's the wrapup of our hard work:

Blood: My arms got cut up quite a bit reaching into the pallet to grab the stones yesterday. Then today, my little pinkie accidentally got in the way while we were trying to fit togehter two stones into the ground. It's still throbbing! Lucky Scott got through the weekend unscathed.

Sweat: Seattle weather today was 80+ with over 60% humidity. The good thing about our backyard is there is several very tall conifers that shades the entire yard for a good part of the day.

Fears: We have no idea if we're doing this right!

A Day at the Beach

Who knew that it could get so hot in Seattle? We took advantage of the 85+ degree heat and headed over to the 'beach' at Magnuson Park to meet up with Greg, Lauren, Max and Anne (and Oggie!) for a beach bbq. We didn't go swimming, but there were tons of people there on their floaty toys. It looked like fun!

Pewter mugs rule!

I have to say, I really love my pewter mugs. The blacksmith that invented pewter is brilliant. It's light, strong and keeps your cold beverages icy-cold! Literally the outside of the mug is frozen cold to the touch.

My parents-in-law bought these for May and I while they were in China, and have been used frequently. I recommend you do the same and pick up a pair.

Olympic-mania

With a flare for patriotism, at work today we decided to launch a spiff program for the sales team with an Olympic theme... the Media Solutions Olympic events. It was actually a lot of fun. I made an Olympic torch, wore a few fake medals, and played the Olympic tune as we rolled-out the plan.

Gyros or bust!!

We're going to Greece! (and Italy, Egypt, Turkey, Cyprus)

May and I just booked a 12 night cruise in the Mediterranean. To celebrate, May and I walked to dinner at our local Greek restaurant (Yanni's). The best part about it, I was able to convince the cruise line that we needed a balcony room for the "ocean view" rate.

BOAT:http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/ships/class/ship/home.do;jsessionid=00006ud1V4BBtemCCUGHkBOVC7G:12hbiocus?br=R&shipClassCode=VI&shipCode=LG

ITINERARY:http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/cruiseDetails/itineraryAndPricing.do;jsessionid=0000r75At_-QBTqwZhv-XWGvynz:12hbiocus?packageCode=LG12M064&date=&selectedCurrencyCode=&promoType=&hasSenior=&hasMilitary=&state=

I definitely need to download Yanni's "Live at the acropolis" CD to my ipod to get into the greek mood.

vacation

Since I can't find the camera to take a pic of our awesome new living room, I have to write about something else instead. What's taking up most of my time right now is figuring out where to go on vacation this Sept! I'm so excited! We originally wanted something tropical and relaxing (but not TOO relaxing because I'm like Miranda and would go crazy) so narrowed it down to Mexico (Cabo), Maui, Costa Rica or Belize. Turns out it is rainy season in Latin America and Scott has this aversion to Mexico so we settled on Maui. With my Starwood points and Scott's travel discounts, we can get some good hotel deals!

Yesterday, I was perusing the Royal Carribean travel agent site for fun, and found a deal on a 12-day Eastern Mediterranean / Greek Isle cruise. Ports of call are Rome, Naples, Turkey, Egypt and several stops in Greece.

Now we're torn. The cruise sounds amazing and the deal is fantastic, but overall, it's more expensive than Hawaii. Factor in excursions, flights and the exchange rate and it ends up being more than we were hoping for. On the other hand, we can do Hawaii any old time! We can even save it to do when we have kids! But relaxing on a beach DOES sound nice right now.

Which to do?!? Which would you choose?

Edmonds

For lunch yesterday, we drove up to Edmonds, home of my favorite travel guru - Rick Steves. I was really hoping for a star sighting but it didn't happen!

Blackberries!

I took a walk around Greenlake for my lunch break today. I was surprised at how many people there are walking around. In Westlake Village, you see lots of moms with their kids at CPK at lunchtime, but who are all these people around Greenlake that don't have to be at work at 1pm on a Friday? They must be lucky like me to be able to work from home. =P

Anyway, as I was walking along the path, I spied walls and walls of blackberry bushes starting to sprout fruit. YIPPEE! We missed the blackberries in Oregon this summer, but it looks like I can get some here! I wonder if the ones growing in Greenlake are okay to eat though.

In a related topic, we want to break up the concrete in the front of our house so we can plant some flowers instead. I was reading up on this and supposedly, the city expects the property owner to maintain that area even though it is technically owned by the city. There are rules of what you cannot plant there (fruit trees). So, no cherry trees for us!

Washington Park and Arboretum

Everytime we drive on 520, we see these marshes and trails and kayakers drifting through small waterways. It looks really neat so we finally headed over Sunday afternoon to check it out.

It turns out the Washington Park has lots of hiking trails as well as an Arboretum, Japanese Garden and a country club. We even saw a couple getting married at the visitors center patio and it looked very sweet. We walked around a bit, and checked out the kayaking waterways and then did the little hiking path that follows Lake Washington.

We didn't figure out WHERE to rent kayaks though, so that's our new step. But, here's a link to the kayaking path we want to try out: http://www.nwoc.com/rental/arb_detail/index.htm

My grad, Scott

After 3 grueling years (including one with many flights back and forth between Seattle and LA), Scott graduated from Pepperdine this past Saturday. Hooray! Congratulations Scott!

The graduation took place on the Pepperdine Malibu campus, which is gorgeous. Sadly though, the ceremony was inside the gym instead of out overlooking the water. Thankfully, the speeches weren't too long so the ceremony only took about 1.5 hours. After, we explored the campus a bit (and bought some Waves paraphenalia) and then headed over to Duke's for a tasty lunch.