celebratory date night

I love having things to celebrate, don't you? Actually, scratch that, I love to celebrate!! Sometimes Tim and I just pull some random fact out of a hat and poof! instant date night. "It's tuesday, let's celebrate!" "We've been so good about not eating out this week; let's celebrate!!!!!"

This week, though, we were celebrating not only the grand opening of my storefront but also some pretty big sales. {Thanks so much for the support!} Plus, Tim had heard that one of our favorite "special occasion" restaurants was having an anniversary celebration and had discounted one of their items all week, how could we resist that!?

So, to commemorate my first sales, we each got a five-course meal.

Yeah, talk about overkill, right?

Here's the thing about this place though, you guys. It's tied for best restaurant in Santa Barbara (in our book, anyway) and even though we'd only been twice before, we hadn't yet been disappointed. Yes, 5 courses was a TON of food, but it was discounted so much that we essentially paid for the three-course-meal and got two extra courses for five bucks. Plus they're one of those "local and organic" places that has a different menu every day and will order entire animals so they can do their butchering right there and have the freshest meat evarrrrrrrrrrr.

We sat at the bar overlooking their kitchen (so we could scope out the best dishes to order, duhhh), and they got a few awesome deliveries for the next day: a bucket of urchin and giant seabass!!

  

The other cool thing is that the owner/head chef is, like, barely older than we are. Go what's-his-face!

So anyway, I can't go any further without showing you the 5 dishes Tim and I each had. (I say "each" loosely; because if I'm being honest we split everything. We tried the whole menu haha!). We love this place because even the grossest-sounding dishes are absolutely delicious. But don't take my word for it, take a look! 

"Tim" had (counter-clockwise from Left): Beef cheeks with gnocci and succotash, goat (!) bandito with potato quesadilla and pico, jerk sea bass with shelling beans, argula salad with stone fruit, and sweetbreads with ravioli and a sherry cream sauce.

"I" had: (counter-clockwise from Left): seared hamachi in cucumber soup with summer melon and dill pollen, ramen with smoked pork and kimchee, pork tenderloin with brussels sprouts and baby romas on cream of wheat, seared scallops with celery root puree and citrus fruit, and a duck duo (seared breast and sausage) on lentils with plum sauce.

Yeah we had to take like a ton of it home. I couldn't even eat my last course. What were we thinking??

Oh yeah, that's right; an awesome foodie date night. How could I have forgotten?

Don't forget to enter the store giveaway ! Win one of my sweetheart hangers!!  The giveaway ends TOMORROW at noon PST, so head over to this post and enter now!

winefest

This weekend was the 10th annual California wine festival in Santa Barbara. A 3-day event centered on wine? Sign me up!

Okay actually don't; we couldn't afford the whole thing, so we picked just one of the events. So, Saturday, we walked down to the park for a four-hour beachside wine and appetizer tasting.

And it was awesome.

Hundreds of wineries, dozens of food vendors, and even a handful of breweries too! Of course, the majority on the food vendors were serving cheese, olive oil/vinegars, or ceviche for some reason. It was sponsored by a bunch of seafood restaurants , and maybe that was the easiest thing to make for a gigantic crowd of winos...?

Still, though. Ceviche is delicious and I had no problem with that. The oyster shooters, though? Probably not the best choice.

 

But anyway.  We got there about a half hour into it and people were already hammered. So that pretty much set the time for the afternoon...

Tim, fantastic job on the awesome date day!

playing catchup

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Lots going on around these parts {although none of it has made the blogosphere! Bad blogger, I am}.

In the past few weeks, we've hiked and discovered some hidden gems of our town, crossed some things off my 25 by 25 list, hung curtains, went housesitting in a lovely home for a week, visited my parents, painted a wall, and worked my little tushie off. {not literally, although that would be nice too}. Here's a peek into what's been going on in our neck of the woods lately:

{above} I hung some fabulous no-sew curtains in the living room to go with our fabulous frosted windows {blogged about here}. We are in silly-giddy love with them. Post/tutorial coming soon!

{above} Tim and I cater-waitered a birthday party for the son of Dick Wolf, producer of Law & Order SVU. It was a big deal. When tips like that are involved, we jump at the chance work it! ;)

{above} we got to go housesitting in the lovely home of a couple from our homegroup {who are "slumming it" on a cruise ship for sixty days. Rough life, amirite?}. While we were there I of course enjoyed the jaccuzi tub and a bath bomb from Lush {this one thankfully kept me person-colored, unlike others I've tried!}

Side note. Lush: I would happily be your product tester. Hire me. Moving on.

{above} While housesitting, I also got to cross off something off my 25 before 25 list: Making french macarons! I flavored the shells with coconut extract and filled some with chocolate, some with peanut butter, and some with caramel. For my first shot, I was pretty dang proud!

{above} This one had his first EVER experience with Chick-fil-a. Shocker. This was during our housesitting week, when we were blocks away from the Mission; of course we had to take advantage and picnic there every chance we got. Tim got to work from home three of the five days we were there, so we picnicked on a weekday! {it was my spring break. Perks of working in Education}.

{above} We went on a spur-of-the-moment road trip to visit my parents. Those are the best. No agenda, just playing! We explored Alameda, spent time with my parents and grandparents, ate cake, and mentally prepared for my parents' upcoming kitchen remodel. Guess who's hosting Easter this year??? This girl!

{above} Played with paint chips for Ace's Free Paint Saturday, and settled on this moody and deliciously dark gray for our bedroom. I'm loving the patch we painted; the rest of the wall will be done tonight {hopefully...}!

Phew! Busy busy. How is it only Tuesday?? 

What have you been up to?

our "wedding faux-to" shoot

I'm on a Boat!

@joshnewton

The other day, Tim and I had the opportunity to be "models" for a shoot in an in-town photography conference. On a yacht.

Yeah, I couldn't say "yes" fast enough either.

Want to know the best part? (as if the aforementioned awesomeness wasn't enough) We got to wear our wedding duds all over again, and take a bunch of lovey-dovey faux-bridal shots. It was like a spur-of-the-moment year-and-a-half anniversary shoot! And did I mention that it was on a YACHT?!?

Pinch me, I must be dreamin'.

There were more than 30 photographers present that night; which was daunting to say the least! Taking posing direction from that many people from across the water was challenging, too, but it was f.u.n.

Want to see what popped up on Instagram afterwards? Enough to tide me over until we can see the rest, that's for sure!

@sarahdipityphotos

@megcourtney1  // @amyrizzutophotography

@xiomaragard  //  @shannoncronin
Many thanks to the wonderful people of United 2013! Can't wait to see the rest! 

dish crawl

God bless my husband. He knows just how to make a rough day end on a good note. I came home from work yesterday with the notice that we would be going on a special surprise mid-week dinner date night, and that I should get ready to do a lot of walking. We were going on a "dishcrawl"!

I'd never heard of it before, but Dishcrawl** is a company that puts together events that are like pub crawls with food, or  progressive dinners at restaurants rather than homes. Rather than going out to eat at one place, you go on a walking tour of sorts and have dishes at four or five.

Starting out in Restaurant #1 // The food tasted a whole lot better than my cruddy photo would suggest

It's a preset tour and they don't happen all the time, but there was one last night in our town and Tim surprised me with tickets! Good work, hubby. It was such a cool experience; we got to try out a bunch of restaurants we'd never visited before, and met a few really fun people that night.

Blurry husband // happy wife

The thing is, though? We were starving after we were done! It was silly, really; each of the four restaurants gave us a sampling of three of their dishes, maybe two bites worth of each. And since we were at each restaurant for twenty to thirty minutes, any sustenance we may have gotten from the teeny bites wasn't cuttin' it. Plus the fact that the tickets said "drinks included", but "drinks" only included water. Not like I needed to booze at all four restaurants, but even a coke? C'mon. Plus, I've been to one of those restaurants before, and wine is NOT $10 per glass normally. Pssh.

It was pretty fun, definitely, but I think maybe a "DIY dishcrawl" would be an more fun date night. Plot out your own path of restaurants, grab an appetizer at each one (or split an entree), then finish off with dessert somewhere? It would be an easy way to get a survey of a few different restaurants, and fun for a group! 

**I was NOT compensated for this post (obviously). 

birthday photobomb

Tim heads off for work hours before I get up, but I still wanted his birthday morning to be special. Pinterest friends may already have a suspicion of what greeted my dear husband Monday morning, but in case you wanted a confirmation:

Happy birthday wishes. From twenty or thirty mini-me's.Everywhere.

I'm still finding them all over the house. He just discovered the one in the freezer last night.

Best. Idea. EVER.
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