Kim's Bridal Saturday Extravaganza!

Over the weekend, we celebrated my sister's bridal shower and bachelorette party, all in one super long fun day! We had the bridal shower at my parents' house where my other sisters and I did all the cooking from scratch (!) for 14 guests. The room was filled with fresh flowers from Pike place in glass pasta jars which only cost $15. We played Kim Trivia, a game where we drew our favorite memory of Kim and she had to guess it, and pin the mustache on the groom, which was totally fun because everyone designed their own mustache out of card stock making Andy's face very hairily festive. For the bachelorette party, we took a sexy dancing class which included sexy walking, sexy crawling (my personal favorite), sexy sliding down a wall, and sexy spinning down a pole. I think we were all scared as hell at the beginning of it, but by the end, we were laughing ourselves silly. It was such a fun way to bond- by being so uncomfortable that you just have to laugh at yourself. Afterwards, we headed out to dinner downtown and hit Belltown afterwards. We progressively loss people throughout the night, because I think it takes a ton of work celebrating for 12 hours!! I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow that night. It was a total blast that required a ton of planning, but I think everyone had a good time, and that's what's important.

The day after the shower, I went back to my parents' to clean up, and I realized the wedding is in a month! It feels crazy that it snuck up while we were busy doing other things. In the time since Kim got engaged and now, I graduated from college, got into nursing school and finished a whole year of it! I'm so excited for all my family to be in town. I hope the weather is just beautiful so everyone is envious and decides to move here.

Here are some pictures of the shower. They made me realize just how gorgeous my parents' house is.

Cheers to Kimbo! I'm so happy and excited for you!

Dear blog

Dear blog,
I've missed you. I know I haven't written in you in a whole week. It's finals week and I hope you understand. Below I left you some pictures from what I've been doing (or rather, things I've been eating) between my studying. I'll write again soon.
Love, Tu

Dinner (and a little bit of shopping) break with my sister at Cedar's

Early Father's day breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe

Ice cream window at Hello Robin

Memorial Day Weekend part 1

Ohana in Belltown with John and Jenny

Next time I hang with Jenny, I need to step up my hair game

Because of awesome scheduling, I'm half way through my FOUR day weekend which started Thursday at 12:20 pm. So it's basically 4 and a half days. John flew in Thursday and his flight came early so I sat in class anxiously bouncing my leg and clicking my pen while he waited at the airport for me for an hour and a half. Oh, we've had so much fun already, I wish I could bottle up the next 2 days of fun and save it for a sad day!

Last night, we celebrated a friend's birthday at Bucca di Beppo. That place is so much fun. The decor is crazy Italian ecclectic and the food is family style which means you get to try a variety of dishes. Bucca has become a go-to restaurant for big get-togethers because the atmosphere is welcoming and they regularly accommodate huge groups so we don't feel like a huge burden on the poor waiter who has to has to serve 15 people that usually serves tables of 2-4. I always forget how delicious their pasta is. I never order pasta at restaurants so I am kinda, ehhh, when we decide to go to Bucca, but then I have a bite of pasta, and I am pleasantly reminded how tasty it is. After dinner, we went to a friend's apartment in Capitol Hill who had a pet garden snake. At first I was totally creeped out, until I got a closer look at his cute little face and his smooth shiny little scales! It also helped that he wasn't smelly. He was so cool, and yes, everyone did try to Britney Spears him. I wish he could've talked. I wonder if he liked me. Later that night, we ended up at 95 Slide where we saw EVERYONE. I ran into cousins and friends of cousins and friends of friends, and high school friends, and new friends. Blah, it was all just too much fun.

Carbo loading for nothing

Cool kids' car

Friends!

not!

UW Street Fair

Today I went to the UW street fair with great friends! The forecast was 30% rain so I spent all morning praying to the weather gods to hold back the rain until after I left the fair. And guess what? It worked. The rain fell on the rest of the fair go-ers 20 minutes after I stepped into my house.

Oh, fairs are so fun. There are babies and dogs everywhere, it's warm out, live music is on every street corner, and everywhere smells yummy. The entire street is closed off to traffic so everyone is free to roam around openly in the street. I always forget how much I love fairs until I'm at one at the beginning of the summer. This time, I got excited as soon as I saw the tops of the white vendor tents from 3 blocks away, and then even more giddy (and hungry) as soon I smelled the food. I love fair food. Everything is fried and fast, and there's a ton of different foods in one place. There's just something about fair lemonade and elephant ears, or a giant cube of fries and a foot-long corn dog. There are two challenges to eating fair food: 1) deciding what to eat, and 2) not getting too full too fast that I can't eat anymore. There's just so many things I want to try, and I never remember what I have tried before, so I really have no solution to my problem.

It's fair season, people, and I am stoked.

Jenny is really happy about some totchos.

^There is something about a man with a banjo... and mismatched socks and no shoes.^

^Kicking this elephant ear's butt^^

Smoothies

The weather this week has been so amazing! I've been sleeping with 1 (count it, ONE) blanket and waking up with a sticky face! Hooray, I am so ready for that beautiful hot weather so I can do fun stuff like paddleboard yoga with my roomie and simply be in the sun. I took two midterms Monday and Tuesday so after class yesterday I took a 30 minute walking detour on the way home yesterday because just because I could and I wanted to feel the sun on my skin. It was fabulous.

 Another thing I am excited for this summer is smoothies! My mom got a magic bullet from Costco for $35 that I am permanently borrowing. She has a Vitamix, so I feel no guilt borrowing this from her. I've been using the magic bullet for the past two weeks and it is totally awesome. Last summer, my old roomie had a blender, but it was always such a hassle because I'd have to clean the entire blender every time I used it and I'd always make too much smoothie resulting in feeling so full that it hurt and I would just lie down and wait for the abdominal pain to pass. I'm less lazy about making smoothies now because there's so much less to clean, it's easy to bring with me when I'm walking out the door and it makes the perfect amount for one person. I know I'm sounding like an advertisement, but yeah, I am.

I've been experimenting with things I can put in my smoothies. Sometimes I do carrots and kale and random veggies for a green (actually probably more like brown) smoothie, but usually I do fruits because it's so much yummier! Frozen berries and mangoes are easy because you can leave them in your freezer without worrying about them going bad, plus they keep your smoothie colder for longer. Also to keep things cold, refrigerate everything! That means all your fresh fruits, because warm smoothies are not very yummy. Other fun things I've been trying are chia seeds, coconut water (mmm potassium) and kombucha.

Also make sure to match your smoothie to your outfit

Happy hump day! Have a smoothie!

Food from TJ Maxx

This is a short story about discounted food. I'm not sure what everyone else's first impression of food from TJ Maxx and Marshalls is, but I used to approach it with a lot of suspicion. I just figured the food was either about to expire or it'd be so smashed up from failing at another retailer that all you'd get when you open the bag is crumbs. I mean, discounted food? Of unknown brands? Where did it come from and how long has it been here??!?!!

Anyway, a while ago, my sister let me try these avocado oil potato chips that were totally delicious and fragrant. I asked her where she got them, and she said she had originally bought them at TJ Maxx and liked them so much that she and her husband ordered it in bulk on Amazon! How cool. I became slightly less suspicious of food at TJ Maxx. And THEN, a couple weeks ago, I was binge watching Shark Tank and this lady was trying to sell her healthy/natural/all-good-stuff pancake mix to the sharks. One of them asked if she was in any major retailers and she said TJ Maxx! She was just some little lady with her independent business, selling product to TJ Maxx. That is freaking cool and totally awesome! It made me want to go directly to TJ Maxx and find some awesome product hidden in their food aisle. The next big food thing could be in there... think of the possibilities.

So when I was in Kentucky over spring break, I went to the food aisle at TJ Maxx and bought those chips my sister had and apple chips by the same company and I was so impressed. Now every time I go to one of those stores, I look in the food aisle for anything interesting looking. That's the end of my story. The End.

Crock pot time

My groceries looked so pretty that I actually took a picture of them at the store

Over the weekend, I made crock pot stew. I love my crock pot! I got it from a white elephant exchange a couple Christmas's ago, but I use it way to little considering how easy it is to use. It's is literally the laziest form of cooking. You put ingredients in the pot and then turn it on. Oh yeah, don't forget to plug it in. Anyway, two things sparked this quest for feeding my body better things: 1) I felt horrible about myself after eating what I had been eating over spring break and 2) I had a Fred Meyer's gift card and found beef chunks for stew on manager's special there.

To me, eating better means focusing on whole foods. I try to stick to the outer edges of the grocery store (where the produce, dairy, meats and breads usually are) when I do my grocery shopping, but as a student, I definitely understand the convenience of pop tarts or individualized bags of chips. It's a struggle, but if I can step away from it at the grocery store, then it's not there for me to eat at home! I don't consider low fat or fat free necessarily healthy, and I don't think healthy eating is about cutting carbs (How I would miss loaves of bread from the bakery! And fruit!!! and desserts!!!!!!). Animal welfare is also a consideration in my food choices, so I try not to eat chicken (I know most animals raised for food are treated horribly, but chickens have it the worst I swear). I buy cage free eggs, though I know that doesn't necessarily mean they live much better lives than caged chickens, but I can't afford certified humane eggs at this point in my life. Anyway, that's my schpeel on what I eat.

Anyway, I threw sliced tomatoes, diced onions, potatoes, celery, and beef that I had browned on the stove in the crock pot, filled it half way with water and seasoned it with a some salt and lemon pepper and left it on low for 4.5 hours. I've been eating it with baguette, over brown rice, or even on it's own. Leaves me full, happy, and proud of myself. 

Seriously- those tomatoes. They smelled SOO good. I even put them in my roommate's face at the store so she could smell them. One of my old roomies who traveled abroad in Rome to study food recommended buying tomatoes on the vine because they're fresher- I think she's right!

Isn't my owl crock pot just the cutest??! I told you it was.

And Voila! The result of my impulsive free style cooking.

Lil Jon

Uh, we were too hungry to take before pictures of our food, so I only got after photos.

Lil Jon (not to get confused with this Lil Jon) is a little breakfast place in Bellevue that has been there who knows how long. They have a giant Lil Jon sign outside like those diners along the highway that try to attract commercial truck drivers, which is odd because Lil Jons is right in the middle of suburbia. As a kid, I saw the sign all the time, but hadn't ever actually eaten there. It was just a part of the scenery on our way to Michael's. Anyway, I think Lil Jon caught on fire a little while ago and they had to rebuild the whole thing. When they reopened in January, it was a big deal among the Factoria-lites and I finally got to go today!

It was alright. Maybe a step up from Denny's, but honestly I don't know what all the hype is about.