Cold Spring Tavern

Possibly the most interesting restaurant in Santa Barbara, and DEFINITELY the best onion rings I've ever had in my life. Yum-o!

Endless Sunsets

Yet another wonderful time out on our balcony...

The Loop

You could say that the Loop is a rite of passage for any UCSB student... for those of you who haven't gone here, it consists of going to every place in Isla Vista and getting a beer, with a large group of people who are hopefully dressed like complete idiots. We did a much mellower version of the loop yesterday, but it was a total blast and we definitely fit the wardrobe requirements. See if you can guess the theme :)

The first of many holiday posts to come

I am ECSTATIC that it's the month of Christmas. However, I'm very poor so I've been trying to think of how to make extremely inexpensive Christmas gifts... hence the beautiful hat that Leigh is wearing below! I've taken up knitting, but I'm on my third beanie attempt and still haven't figured it out, so more on that later. Also, we went to trivia this week and lost... but still very fun. Probably the most successful of my recent ventures was the mini turkey burger dinner with Bryan, which was totally delicious and they turned out incredibly cute.

Thanksgiving and Pre-Birthday Festivities

The week or two before Thanksgiving was, well, amazing to say the least!! Filled with many trips to South Coast Deli (obviously), a night excursion to Lizard's Mouth, fishing again with Miss Bowen, an epic Thanksgiving feast with friends, and a lovely birthday brunch, cupcakes courtesy of the wonderful Emily Xiao. So great!

Making up for lost time...

Here are some photos of the last few months since I've been the worst blogger of all time... more to come!

Promises of Food

I said I would be posting about some food endeavors in my last update, so here goes! First, Leigh and I decided to make some delicious sounding cupcakes - "Carrot Cake Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese Surprise."













They didn't turn out quite as carrot cake-y as I anticipated, but they were still totally delicious and disappeared by the end of the day - a sign of great success, haha.













Then, yesterday, Bryan and I were trying to think of something a little more exciting than usual to make for dinner, so we started exploring what turned out to be the BEST cookbook of all time - Jaimie's around the world cookbook. We ended up deciding on Chicken Biryani, and after about 3 hours of seemingly endless grocery shopping to find all of the more eclectic ingredients (pretty sure the lady at the Indochine Market thinks we're idiots), we started cooking!













Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it turned out DELICIOUS. Plus, we only used about 1/4 tsp of every spice, so now we can make Indian food all the time! Like tonight! Next on the menu: Chicken Tikka Masala, yum. Here's the final product, although the picture would be more effective if you could smell it too :)

Hikes and Boats and Friends

I'll be honest, most of the time I've been living in Santa Barbara this summer I feel somewhat like a waste of space... seeing as I'm doing nothing but watching movies, reading, going for walks on the beach, etc. But, despite my lack of purpose, I've been having a totally fabulous time.

A few weeks ago when I first moved in, we decided to build a new coffee table for our living room... we even sanded it and stained it and the whole shebang! I'm pretty impressed by our handy work, and I think it looks very "college chic."















Upon my return to Santa Barbara, Bryan gave me this awesome book with all the hikes in the surrounding areas. Since our initial plan to hike half dome was foiled by the impossible Yosemite permit system, we decided to do one of the more epic-sounding hikes in the book. The Matilija Creek Trail in Ojai took us pretty much all day and was a nice easy hike, and we even saw two rattlesnakes and possibly the scariest spider ever. Also there were these awesome waterfalls!



















The next day, Saturday, after a little overnight camping at Wheeler Gorge, Leigh planned a boat ride of epic proportions for about 25 of our friends... we took the bus from the edge of Isla Vista to the bus depot downtown, and essentially ran from there to the harbor (not a short walk!). The sailboat was awesome, and we saw a ton of dolphins along the coast... mmmm :)















This past weekend I went with Bryan down to his house in Redlands, and we went on a hike in the forest falls area, which pleasantly surprised me as a gem on the outskirts of LA! We also raided his mom's cupcake recipe book, so be expecting some photos that might make you salivate in the next week or so...















So that's what I've been up to here, more updates to come when we do something other than sit and read on the hammock :)

Home sweet home

Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Colorado

My annual family trip took us across the west coast to Colorado... it was beautiful! Definitely weird to go from sleeping in a tent every night and eating top ramen on a camp stove to being in hotels and eating out, but we did some pretty fun things. I think my favorite moments were going to arches national park, and playing chinese checkers in my dream backyard.

Making up for lost time...

So I went to Belize for 6 weeks... craziest six weeks of my life. I know that many of you (aka Aaron) have been anxiously awaiting my return to the blogging universe - here I am! And here are a select few of my favorite photos from the trip.

June 29

Belize!! Way too hectic for long posting and all I have is the wifi on my iPod, so here's a list of the more amazing things we've been up to so far... Dying of heat and Mosquitos obviously, canoeing down the Belize river, getting licked by a jaguar, seeing howler monkeys in the jungle, double rainbow, lighting storm night search for crocodiles, wild horse stampede through the campground... Quite the 4 days!!

I almost forgot...

Here's a great video of some spectacular dancing skills... my sister in particular, HA!

June 23

I can't believe it's been more than a year since I started writing this blog!! Another year of college is over, my hair is getting longer, and I've started to forget the wonderful stench of elephant poop, so I think it's time to leave for another adventure. Summer has been great thus far - here are a few of my favorite photos from the various festivities :) My plane leaves super early tomorrow morning for Belize, so expect sporadic updates and maybe a few photos every now and then if we're lucky!

April 22

Painted rocks for Luke today... these past six months have been hard, but I can feel him smiling down at all of us every day.

March 28

Home sweet home :)

March 27

Happy birthday Meeshy! After a long drive back to Santa Barbara, we went out to dinner with the drunk and happy 21 year old Michelle... it was awesome.

March 26

Today I went hiking with my wonderful mother at Rancho and it was so beautiful as always! The misty rain felt so good at the top :)

March 25

On the way home from Tahoe we drove past some really flooded flood lands, it was beautiful!

March 24

One of my favorite sights to see!

March 23

Okay so this picture is from yesterday, but I had to give this adorable mini trashcan some representation. Lazy day around the house :)

March 22

Went ALL over the city today, it was awesome!! We kept missing the rain at all the right times and had a day full of stair climbing, hipsters, Irish pizza, "adult fortunes," and incredibly insightful bums. Loved it.

March 21

If I ever get married, this is where I would want it to be!

March 20

Long rainy drive home today, and I got to take this awesome picture of Julia totally passed out!

March 19

I took a couple of pictures today but none of them really turned out how I wanted them to... I'll be honest, I spent most of the day in bed watching Disney movies :) So I think this is more appropriate for the picture of the day...

March 18

This picture sucks but the moon was so awesome, I felt like I was going to be attacked by a werewolf at any moment!

March 17

Leigh's 20th birthday was today! So after Julia and I got back from the Getty we went out to dinner at Cafe Buenos Aires - AMAZING. The patio was also the prettiest thing ever. Thanks for being born :)

March 16

Solvang, for those of you who don't know about it, is this adorable little Danish town over the hill from Santa Barbara. We went there for breakfast today, and the drive was absolutely beautiful! This photo is courtesy of miss Keni Shea, and these trees are one of my favorite things ever. I want one in my yard when I grow up so I can put a swing in it :)

March 15

Today Keni and I took Julia on a hike to Inspiration Point... it was so inspirational. Unfortunately Julia went barefoot so we were basically torturing her the whole time and now she can barely walk hahahahah :/ But afterward we went to a delicious lunch and continued the American tradition of teaching Julia how to pig out!

March 14

The sunset was amazing today as always, but I love how it's reflecting off the windows of my dream house :)

March 13

I'll admit that sometimes freshmen are smarter than me. Happy finals week!

March 12

Today was SO FUN! And obviously, the perfect ending to the day was a ridiculously epic game of Jenga...

March 11

If the construction goes on any longer I think I'm going to douse one of these in gasoline and throw a match on it. Just kidding O:)