Blueberry Clusters

Father's day is tomorrow so I decided to do something similar to what I did for my mom. First I got my dad a gift card to one of his favorite restaurants. Then I made him a sweet treat to go with it. My dad is a blueberry fiend so I wanted to incorporate that somehow. I found a recipe on http://www.keepitsweetblog.com/ for blueberry pretzel clusters that I decided to use. I had more blueberries than the recipe called for so I increased the other items slightly. The great thing about this is it's only three ingredients so it doesn't have to be very precise as long as you have enough chocolate.



I melted the chocolate then added the blueberries and pretzels.


After stirring together, they are dropped onto a wax lined tray and put in the fridge.


Mine didn't look the prettiest. Some of the blueberries popped open when I mixed everything together but they did taste good!

New Year New Resolutions (Part 7)

Today I checked another item off of my New Year's Resolution list. I went out for sushi today. And no, it's not like the lame attempt at sushi that I blogged about in December. This was a legitimate attempt. And I liked it!

My coworkers and I went to a place downtown called Moira. I decided to dive right in and try the raw sushi instead of the cooked. I didn't go as far as getting sashimi but I did get nigiri. First I tried the Philly Roll. This was a good start as it had cream cheese in it which is a texture I like. So I think that made the first few bites less intimidating. It also had cucumber in it; I'm not the world's biggest cucumber fan but it went well with the roll. Then I moved on to the nigiri; I chose the tuna. It was really good. It sounds really stupid but I think the fact that I've had canned tuna made it not so surprising, even though the texture is very different.

In addition to the sushi, I also tried the Miso soup and seaweed salad that came with it. I wasn't crazy about the Miso soup but I don't think I was alone in that - a coworker mentioned that she has yet to find a really good miso in Arizona. I did, however, really enjoy the seaweeed salad. And it's low calorie too!

Sushi will definitely be on my list of things to eat again! Now if only I could convince E that fish is good...

I'm so blue

Or rather my knitting is. I'm still working on these stupid blue squares for the checkerboard. And knitting time has been in short supply lately. I've been putting in extra hours at work, desperately trying to catch up on everything that got pushed to the side when I was on vacation. I think (hope) tomorrow will be better. Knit Night is tomorrow night!

On the weight loss side, I haven't weighed myself yet. I want to give myself a week or two to make changes so that I don't get discouraged by any lack of success. So far on my calorie counter, I've been over on the count two days and under the other two. Today was one of the better days and I haven't even been feeling all that hungry. Hopefully I'll see progress soon!

A better me

I've decided that I need to get in better shape. Specifically I'd like to lose some weight. Ultimately my goal is to lose forty pounds but I don't want to get discouraged so I'm setting my goals in ten pound increments. I plan on checking in here periodically to keep me on track. I want to increase the amount of exercise I do (currently almost none). I'm also going to eat healthier and smaller amounts of food. It's a lot to change but honestly I'm tried of the way I look and feel.

Now onto brighter subjects. I'm almost done with the checkerboard! 58 squares done and six more to go. All are seamed together except four green and two blue. I should finish at least two more blue squares and seam it so I will be able to give it to E finished or really close. Then I can finally move on to something new. I may finally pick up the baby blanket that I'm mad at - I have a reason to work on it again!

Vacation - Day 5

Yesterday was our last day of vacation but by the time I got home I was too pooped out to write about it. It was mostly a travel day for us but we did go out for breakfast before heading home. We went to a yummy restaurant near downtown called Big City Bagels. I had a sesame seed bagel with garlic and chive cream cheese and a mocha on the side. E had a plain bagel with egg, cheddar and bacon. He let me have a bite and it was fabulous too. If we ever get back to San Diego I'm definitely going there again.

Then we left for home, which unfortunately was about a six hour drive. But at the end we got to finally see our boys. Yay!

Vacation - Day 4

Today was the last full day of vacation. It's been fun but I'm kind of ready to get home and see my boys. We did have a fun time today though. Things were not too hectic as we were done with all the major tourist attractions. It was all about taking it easy today. Our first stop was the Air and Space Museum. Lots of neat planes especially the ones from WWII. We also saw the Apollo 9 landing craft.


After that we went to the Museum of Champions. To be honest this was probably my least favorite thing. I really like most sports but this seemed kind of lame - there wasn't a whole lot to see. I did snap a few photos though, including a replica of one of the minor league fields.


Then we grabbed a picnic lunch and took it to the beach. We went to Mission Beach again but this time went to the ocean side instead of one of the coves. Beautiful!


Next was Boomers for a round of mini golf and then to Old Town for Italian food. Yummy!

On the knitting side of things I finally finished the green squares for the giant checkerboard. Woohoo!!!! Eight more squares and the thing is finally done. I have 10 days if I want to get it done by Fathers Day. I also finished off one practice slipper with the exception of seaming. Hopefully it fits!

Vacation - Day 3

Today was another busy day on vacation. First stop this morning was Legoland. It is absolutely amazing how they are able to create these wonderful works of art out of Legos. Some of the sculptures had over a million pieces! One was a replica of the New York skyline that used 6.5 million pieces. E and I spent most of our time in Miniland, where the most detailed replicas were.

This is Washington DC, specifically the Capital with the Washington Monument in the background.


They had also opened up a set of Star Wars scenes. Some of these had to use an even smaller scale or it would have been too tall. This is Hoth from the fifth episode.


After we were done at Legoland we found a cute little pizza place in Carlsbad and had a nice lunch. Then it was off to Seaworld. We saw the whales


And a tide pool


And some penguins


We also saw the the Blue Horizon dolphin show and the Cirque de la Mer show (and rode on the gondolas that are in the background of his pic)


I also got a little knitting done today. I'm down to less than 10 squares on the checker board and I've also started a pair of slippers. If these turn out well, I'm going to make some pairs for Christmas gifts.