Show and Tell Tuesday: Top 5 Favorite Pictures

I am linking up with Andrea today for Show and Tell Tuesday and showing my top 5 favorite pictures.  Rather than try and pick 5 pictures from my whole life I decided to pick my 5 favorite pictures of me and my husband.

This was the first Christmas we were together.  I knew my mom had bought my sisters and I new fun flannel pajamas so I made my then boyfriend a pair of flannel pajama pants to go with us.  This was the first time my sisters had really gotten to spend much time with my husband so it was fun to see them all start to develop a relationship.

This was my graduation from grad school.  This is the picture that make me go "oh we look so young".  We had only been together about 6 weeks when this was taken and this was the weekend my parents first met my husband.  We knew our relationship was something special but he was still nervous about meeting my parents.  Obviously it all worked out in the end.

We never got around to scheduling professional engagement pictures so we ended up asking my very talented and wonderful cousin to take some pictures of us at the winery she works at. I love the way this one turned out and we ended up using it for our Save the Date cards.

I can't find an electronic copy of my favorite picture from our California wedding but I do also love this one of us the Christmas after we got married. While our wedding was wonderful it had been hard couple of months with my mother in law passing away a week before Christmas so we were glad to know things were coming to an end.

I love pretty much every picture from our wedding in Hawaii so choosing one was hard. This is the one that I have at my desk to look at everyday. I loved everything about this day and even though we had gotten married in a smaller ceremony 6 months before this it still was magical to walk down the aisle and see him waiting there for me.

I am sure over time I will add many more to this collection of favorite photos but I think these will always be some of my favorites.

Stitch Fix #22

The minute I opened this Stitch Fix box I knew it was going go be a good box. The colors and patterns in this box looked like they were right up my ally.

The first piece I tried on was this cute black and white striped/polka dot top.  It fit well and was very comfy but I have multiple other flowy striped shirts so I decided to send it back. If it was something I didn't already have multiples of I would definitely have kept it.

This dress had a cute pattern and fit well but it was just an inch or two too short to be appropriate to wear to work so I had to send this one back too.

I love a good maxi dress but maxi skirts tend to be hit or miss.  I like the pattern on this one but the fit wasn't quite right.  The way the stripes hit at the waist it made me look like I had a bit too much tummy.

This maxi dress was cute and the fit was okay but it wasn't anything special so I didn't keep this one either.

I knew the minute I saw this jacket that if it fit as well as I hoped it would than this one was joining my closet. I love the color and the fit was great. This looks great over dress or with a t-shirt and jeans and is a perfect spring weight. Expect a lot of pictures of me wearing this jacket over the next few months.

Hello Fresh Review

In my quest to try all of the available meal prep delivery services my second round of recipes came from Hello Fresh. I again tried this company for three weeks so I got a total of nine meals.

The first meal I tried was the parmesan crusted cod with carrots and potatoes on the side. This dish was absolutely delicious and something I would absolutely make again.  I don't cook much fish but this dish was super easy and seemed pretty fool proof.

These sesame chicken noodles were also delicious.  They had a peanut butter based sauce that was really good and easy to make.  If I were to make this again (which I totally would) I would swap out regular noodles for whole wheat ones and add some extra veggies but keep the sauce exactly the same.

This beef chili was decent but nothing special.  Chili is something I make fairly regularly and while there was nothing wrong with it I can't say it is a recipe I would make again.

The second week started out with the peppercorn steak with creamed kale and roasted potatoes. The sauce was delicious and the kale was just creamy enough to be good without being heavy at all.  Could easily see myself making this again.

This brie and fig jam grilled cheese with a side of arugula and mushroom salad was a nice light dinner.  I liked that the sandwich was on wheat bread.

This chicken with dukkah spices was not at all a bland chicken breast. The chicken ended up nice and moist and the sides were good.  I had never cooked with dukkah spice so this was something new for me.

The third week started out with another chicken dish. This time it was a chicken breast with a gremolata, roasted potatoes and an arugula salad.  All of it was good but the gremolata was the best part.

This penne dish was fine but nothing special.  I make better pasta dishes on my own so I wasn't really impressed with this one.

I managed to make this Italian wedding soup on a cold and rainy day which made it even better.  The meatballs in it kind of fell apart when cooking it (I may have stirred it too much) but it didn't effect the taste at all.

Pro:

• It was nice to only have the ingredients I needed for a recipe and not to have to buy a whole bottle of something I will only use once.
• Made me cook things out of my comfort zone and use ingredients I don't normally use but I feel like the ingredients weren't quite as out of my comfort zone as with Blue Apron.
• There were 6 meals to choose from and I could choose any 3 without restrictions.

Cons:

• As I said in the pros there were not as many ingredients I had never used/had never heard of. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it will make these recipes easier to recreate but didn't push me as much to try new things.

The cost of Hello Fresh and Blue Apron are within a few cents of each other so in that regard they are equal.

Come back in a couple of weeks to see what I thought of Plated.

St Patrick's Day Decorations

Life got a little busy and I ended up leaving my Valentine's Day decorations up for the rest of February but last weekend I finally got around to putting up my St. Patrick's Day decorations.  Since I am only planning on having them up for a couple of weeks (we will see how that goes) I didn't do anything to grand but a few touches of green.

St. Patrick's Day is a Friday but I am going to be gone that weekend so I am not sure if I will actually make corned beef and cabbage but at least I have some decorations to enjoy.

My Trip to Universal Studios

Last weekend my husband and I took a couple of days off and headed to southern California with his family to go to Universal Studios. 

On our drive down to southern California we shopped for lunch at Harris Ranch.  I had never actually eaten there since growing up I usually got onto Highway 5 a bit south of there. The cow decor everywhere was cool but I wasn't crazy about the food after all the hype.

Once we got to southern California we tried to get all settle into our AirBnB but there were all kinds of mix ups on the part of the property company that we ended up going straight to dinner. We met up with my sister in law at a Korean BBQ place.

After dinner we finally were able to get settled into our AirBnB and as headed to bed as soon as we got there.

Friday morning we were up bright and early to head to the park. It was actually fairly cold in LA while we were there but we still had a good time.

I had been to Universal Studios a couple of times in college but that was a few (or quite a few) years ago so there were quite a few new things for me to explore. What I was most excited to see was Harry Potter land so that is where we headed first.

While I wasn't overly impressed with the themeing and attention to detail of the rest of the park Harry Potter land was extremely well done.  It was as well done as anything you would find at Disneyland and if you know me you know that is a complement.

We went into Olivander's shop and watched as he helped a little kid pick out the perfect wand before venturing into the part of the shop where we could get our own wants.  I ended up picking out an ivy want.  The cool thing about the wands is that while in Harry Potter land you can use them to cast spells.  Many of the shop windows have markers outside of them telling you how to cast a spell and when you do something happens in the window like it lights up or makes noise or things spin.

In addition to the wand and all the stores there are two rides to go on in Harry Potter land. There is a kiddie coaster and a really cool flying broomstick ride. We discovered the broomstick ride had a single rider line so I may or may not have ridden the ride 3 or 4 times in the 2 days we were there. When in Harry Potter land you can't not get a butterbeer so of course I had 3 or 4 of those also while we were there.

I promise we did go to the rest of the park but it wasn't as picture worthy so I didn't really take many pictures of the rest of the park.  After two days in the park we had breakfast on Sunday and then we headed home but not without a stop at Anderson Pea Soup!