Live La Dolce Vita

Aaron and I are proud to announce the completion of the cookbook we worked on for fabulous Oxnard restaurant La Dolce Vita. I wrote/edited the material and Aaron designed the beautiful pages. To order, visit http://www.ladolcevitadimare.com/. Trust me, you will just love this book. It is full of great Italian recipes with a California spin, like Pumpkin Risotto, Tomato Fondue, Chicken Marsala, Pasta Carbonara, Flourless Chocolate Cake with Fig Port Sauce, Antipasto Rolls, Iced Praline Torte and much more. Most of all, it is so stunning you will want to keep it displayed.

M & M = Love

Happy Marriage to Michael and Marissa!

Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

Vegas Round 1

I went to Las Vegas for Marissa's bachelorette party. For those of you who don't know, Marissa is a dear friend brought into my life via Aaron. He has been soul mate to her husband Michael for many years.

The first weekend in May was spent gallivanting through Las Vegas with 14 of Marissa's super fun and crrrrrrazy gals. We had a blast. I love these girls!

Vegas Round 2

After two days of Bachelorette Party Fun, the girls dropped me off at my next hotel, where I met up with BFF from college Monica and her mom Nancy. For two days we did lots of walking the strip, seeing the sights and eating our way through Vegas. This is Monica, I mean Sheila, with Karaoke King of Vegas Doug. We somehow always find ourselves in interesting situations when we get together . . . (actually we both find ourselves in interesting situations when we are just individuals, but it just gets MORE interesting when our odd luck combines.)

Happy Birthday Aaron!

On May 9 I celebrated Aaron's 27th birthday. Thank you God for Aaron! He is the most wonderful man and I love him with all of my heart.

Stuffed

Don't you hate it when you buy one tiny little thing and it is surrounded by tons of packaging, which you can barely open by the way. It makes me crazy! Like this:

Aaron is taking a sustainable packaging class in his graphic design program. I thank God that somebody realized that those who design packaging needed proper education on this subject. Somehow though, Aaron and I ended up bickering about environmental thinking as a trend. I was being cranky and anti-everything. It was a Daria moment. (Sorry Aaron for being argumentative for no reason.)

What is funny is that I started The Environmental Club in 7th grade at my school. We planted native plants, took a low-impact train trip, cleaned the beach, created Earth Day skits, started recycling programs and lots more.


Over the years though, I guess I became jaded. And now, I feel like the "green" (I am so sick of that word) movement is still based on CONSUMERISM! And that is the problem to begin with. Our obsession with STUFF! (Which I am not above.)


Buy this! Buy that! "Green" products are a status symbol! Just like SUVs were a few years ago. So there is no change in our hearts or attitude. I saw this amazing video ... it's short, simple and easy to understand. It is called The Story of Stuff, and it helped me get why I can't let my jaded spirit and annoyed attitude stop me from making changes in my life and in my country. Please watch! Click here - http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Count them: TWO Bouquets

Bouquets are practically hitting me in the face. I'm not even trying ... I'll just be walking down the street and all of a sudden the bride's flowers are in my hands.

I caught Valerie's bouquet LAST June. Aaron looks a little freaked out here. It doesn't help that Bryon and Elizabeth and tosse their little baby into his arms. Well ... it has been almost a year, so maybe he is getting used to the idea.

Then in March, I caught Kellie's (my cousin Mark's beautiful bride) flowers.

If I hear "you're next" another time ... I'm gonna lose it.

Yes, This is My Boyfriend

This cracks me up every time I see it. For awhile I had it as my desktop, but then I had a client meeting and the client saw it! Yeah ... I didn't feel so professional. And I had Gilmore Girls in the DVD thing and it started playing.

I'm sure this client was thrilled to be paying loads of money to have an 18-year-old write the website copy for this business.

Anyway, I hope Corky here makes you laugh as well!