I saw this at Native Foods restaurant when I went there Friday.
So clever! 
A Day in the Life of Higgley
Do you remember the Taco Bell commercials from way back when of the doggie saying in his accent “I think I’m in LUV”… Well I think I’ve fallen.
He’s short, white, and slightly wrinkly.
I didn’t think I’d miss him till he was gone at the beach for two days. I needed my Higgley fix!
I’m mean who can resist a face like this?!? (As my bird is extremely jealous that I’m writing this post…)
Don’t let the underbite scare you….he’s the sweetest dog I’ve ever met!! He’s not a drooly dog (except after a drink of water). He LOVES to be beaten on (like Rolfing pats, not abuse), doggie spa treatment massages, treats galore… We make him work for it though.
I’m not a dog person either so this is kinda scaring me. Although I miss petting my kitty’s who have taken their 9th life. And my birdie I can barely pet with one finger and he squawks like I’m bruising him…(he’s 14 years old). So it’s nice to have a dog you can give a good pat on the back and a chin scratch to help de-stress and relax. :]
This is not my dog, it’s the owners of my work. So when I just need to take a break from the computer I call him over and he just plops down for his lov’ins. :-] occasionally I’ll give into his boredom and play tug-o-war and get him riled up so he’ll get wore out and then SNORE….oh how jealous he makes us to be able to sleep at the job. I usually blame his snoring on a co-worker. Lol!
Oh how much joy a little animal could bring. He was kinda a rescue dog. He had cherry eyes and the original owners could not afford the surgery. So one man paid for the surgery until a good home could be found. A co-workers wife works at that surgery clinic and knew the owners of my company was looking for a bulldog, so they snatched him right up. I’m glad he got another chance. :-}
Awe………
Family Time!
This weekend my parents were able to come out for a short visit. They live about a 6 hour drive away and so I was very thankful they squeezed it in.
Last week I was sooo drained mainly because I’ve been working close to 50 hour weeks (which takes a toll on me) and the whole Boston bombing thing put me ONE EDGE!!! (Refer to this post to understand why).
My parents came in Friday evening and got to relax a bit before I got off work then we headed to Jade Tea House for dinner. I had planned on cooking….but after cleaning my fridge the day before, my meal went into the trash because it had expired…I’ve obviously been living off fast food lately.
I was craaaaaving the salad rolls!! (Those were what I was going to make…) my dad got the seafood stir-fry and my mom the mango chicken thingy I got last time. We were stuffed!!
So after dinner I was like “so what do you all want to do”???? (I’m the worlds WORST planner!!) My mom asked about a park to go walking in….lightbulb moment!….
One of my friends was just telling me about a rhododendron garden that we were nearby. It was Gorgeous!!! And we were in time for the sunset so I utilized my HDR apps. I was in my “perfect world”. And what I found funny was that my dear ol’ dad and me were getting all the pics and my mom would wait for us and read all the boards. So in the end it all worked out that she told us what our pictures were about. Haha!
There were many unique rhody’s in colors I’ve never seen before. I love love LOVE taking pics of flowers…call me a nerd, but they are beautiful and they comply! (Not like people who run away and hide…). Here are a few of my favorite shots…
This one is an overview of the walkway, fountain, and duck pond.
A few ducks were not very shy…
Sunset setting in…
A lone Dogwood tree. 
I love how the light was just kissing the edge of this photo and the center of the flower was reaching out to accept. 
Sunset coming in at its peak…
I was loving the silhouettes I was able to get of the trees. (There’s a duck snoozing on the main log).
This one reminded me of a Spanish dancer with the colors on her “skirt” of the petals. 
I’m thinking this is a verbena? I loved how they were planted next to this “fiber optic” type of reed grass.
If innocence was a flower, it would look like this one. Sooo pretty!!!
My parents enjoying the sunset together. “Awe”
The ducks were enjoying a sunset swim as well. Pretty soon there will be lots of baby duckies around!
Ok. So after that long day we headed to bed early, cuz who knows what tomorrow may bring.
Saturday April 27th:
I woke up early for a Saturday. Chatted with my dad over coffee and then after I remembered my eggs were expired and I really only eat oatmeal for breakfast…my parents said, “lets just go to Biscuits Cafe”. Fine with me! It’s just down the road and tons of food to sustain you.
Since it was going to be a beautiful warm upper 70° day we sat out on the patio. (Although that’s not the best place to get service there…not like anyplace there you get noticed by your waiter…)
Thankfully I got the meat lovers scramble (no cheese or gluten, yea!) My meal ended up lasting me a good 7 hours! (Double yea!!)
My dad wanted to see Bob’s Red Mill so I happily took him there. I have an obsession for that place! Although they were out of my fav GF/vegan chocolate chip PB cookies. 
oh well…I didn’t need the calories anyway! But I got my parents the glutenous snicker doodles (which helped sustain them later in the day). 
Choices choices choices…
Next stop were a few errands since I couldn’t see past all the juicy bug splats on the windshield, I dropped my dad off at NW Armory to get some ammo and mom n me to the car wash…
JCPenney, GNC, B&N, then to my fav coffee shop – Water Ave coffee. (Shhhh it’s a bday present for my nephew).
Two back to back coffees and a long drive to Woodburn Outlet Mall (WOM) later…
I have never been to WOM before and it was waaaay bigger than I anticipated. (And I had the WRONG shoes to walk in…ouch ouch ouch…)
I actually restrained myself and only got a few things, but mainly I wanted to check out GAP cuz I had $50 in store credit to spend. FUN!!! 
I found a cute shirt in Maurice’s. although it TOTALLY clashed with my Capri’s for that day. Lol!
After shopping a good part of the day, we had dinner at Claim Jumper (yummy food!!) and headed home.
Then it dawned on me…OH NO! I was going to have my dad put up my shelves so I can get the totes out of my living room! :-/
I gave my puppy dog look and my dad and me headed to Fred Meyer for wall screws at 10 pm… :]
He gets Dad of the Year award for this one!!
My mom was trying to stay awake…
Notice the clock says 11:45 pm… After that I decided not to torture my neighbors anymore….
The shelves look awesome and I can’t wait to finally decorate my room! After living in this apartment for 2 years I have neglected my room and I’m sick of looking at the blank walls.
So that’s it for my family visit. It was short and jam packed! And man was I tired on Sunday! But I’m really glad I got to see them and also collect a bunch of pics from the visit too (sorry it was a long post…makes up for my month of no blogging).
One thing my co-workers we talking about today was getting the stories from your grandparents on video or audio because one day they will be gone. So this is kinda my little record in time of my family. I am so thankful I can be closer to them since I only got to see them once a year when I lived in Alaska for 9 years. That was hard on me and so now I appreciate them all the more.
Take time to realize what you have, because one day you will miss it.
Spring Stroll in the Portland Japanese Gardens
Today was a rare spring day for Portland. It was sunny and 76°!!
I have been wanting to get over to the Japanese Gardens before the cherry blossoms had fallen. Today was my day! I had gotten there at 3:45, they stop letting people in at 4, and gates close at 5. So that’s enough time to get some sweet light shots before they close.
Although I had 2 backup batteries…I didn’t take into account that my memory card was about filled up…oops! Delete delete delete!!! (In 5 seconds or less…) Thankfully I learned on the fly how to delete batches by date. Yeah!
So here’s some of my shots just off my iPhone. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
It’s nice to top off a warm day with some salad rolls from Jade Tea House in Sellwood. I also got the mango chicken, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach!
MacBook Tip for iTunes
Have you been having issues with your hard drive filling up because of iTunes? I sure have! I only had 2GB left and that’s not even enough to sync my phone.
I’ve also just been complaining about how I’d love to have my audio files synced from my external hard drive, but never knew how to do it until today!
So here’s how you do it:
When you are in iTunes, click on the top bar that says iTunes, go to “advanced” tab, in the “change” button is where you can direct the path….AND uncheck “copy files to iTunes media folder when adding to my library” so you don’t have doubled up info taking up even more of that precious hard drive.
I feel so dumb for not knowing that. It’s ok if you don’t want to admit you never knew that too…
Diaper Cake!
I’ve always wanted to put together a diaper cake the 1st time I saw one at a baby shower. So last night was my opportunity! I’m glad that I got some help…it took 4 hours with 4 people helping. But the times of sharing silly stories and laughing uncontrollably didn’t help speed up the process either.
For those of you that don’t know what a diaper cake is, it’s not edible. It’s a bunch of rolled up diapers shaped into a cake formation with ribbons and bows and all things baby. Inside the cake are the presents!
I was trying to figure out what boxes or tins I was going to use for the structure, because going to work this week threw off my timing. But I got my order from Shade Clothing in the mail last night. I had to call my apartments just minutes before closing to please please please stay open until I get there to pick up that box! (Accident on freeway tied up traffic).
So I got the box (and cute new clothes too) and headed to the store to buy a lifetime supply of rubber bands, over priced (which they strategically don’t put the price on) baby deco stuff, and mommy pamper gifts (lavender Shea butter body cream for the growing tummy, and Ghirardelli chocolates to make that belly grow).
So here’s a few pics of how it all turned out! It was a lot of fun, but now I know what not to do next time!
We ran out of cute orange ribbon so all we could find around the house was this synthetic ribbon stuff. (You know, the kind you get at x-mas time). I was getting pretty tired here. Started at about 8:30 and left my friends house at 12:20, got home at 1am!
Making the cute bows to cover the pins. (I hope she finds all the pins before changing her baby!)
Frog topper croaked. 
Since the frog was a little limp we gave it a car seat! Lol. That was interesting to make.
So now it’s all done and here’s the view from each angle.
The wrapping paper for the boxes said “baby” all over it and I kept getting Justin Beiber’s Baby song stuck in my head! ahhhhh! Get out get out!
It’s definitely not “professional” quality “baking”. But it was a labor of love and so much fun!!
Have a great day! <3
Quick after work dinner…
Did you notice the title? Today was an exciting day….I started my new job!!!!! Yea!!! After seven months of being unemployed I am sooo ready to get back to drafting! The job I have is drawing fiber optic telecommunication plans. Sounds like a mouthful but it’s just laying the proposed fiber optic cables for business/commercial use. I use a mouse, not a shovel. I did similar drafting for T-Mobile when they were upgrading their towers to the latest and greatest systems. Everyone is super friendly and laid back. My kinda workplace! Beautiful office too. They designed the interior from shack like conditions a warm uptown office. (Sounds like an oxymoron but its hard to describe). Think red brick, black steel, glass, & original old growth Douglass fir beams circa 1923.
Anyway…something new in addition to my new job is I’m going to try going off refined sugar. Eek!
Me and a friend have been going to a nutrition class for the last 5 weeks and its about the paleo diet taken to the extreme. Based on the book “Maximized Living Nutrition Plans” by Dr. B.J. Hardrick, Kimberly Roberto, & Dr. Ben Lerner.
No grains, no sugar, and no a bunch of other stuff. They say you can do dairy, but raw form. No thank you! I can’t stomach dairy anyway. But the whole concept is it cuts out all sugar (berries stevia, xylitol and Granny Smith apples an exception) for the advanced healing plan so that your body can naturally detox, you are burning fat and not sugar.
Your body burns either sugar or fat for energy, if you cut out the sugar you naturally lose weight faster because you have to burn it for the energy.
I’m trying to do this to help my friend with her motivation to stick with it. If we eat sugar we have to fess up and text her husband so we are accountable. He said he would buy the winner something. I laughed and said, “What? YoCream?” Ha! Sure…give us a sugar headache why don’t you. :-p
I’m not doing the extreme only berries for fruits kinda sugar detox. I’m just staying away from refined sugar or added sugar. (Although my 1 Tbs of miracle whip in my tuna salad today had 1 gm…but I don’t count that!…shhh don’t tell) I am doing the Granny Smith apples and Adams peanut butter. It’s yummy. (GS apples are lower glycemic).
So all this talk about taking, adding…so now that you read my novel I guess I should give you the recipe. 
I got it from the TruRoots website of these organic sprouted beans I got at Costco a while back.
I really had no idea what to do with them until I went to the website for an idea. Although their cooking time is a bit off! My beans were stills but aldenté.
So here’s the modified version below. It’s got nice flavor! The tomatoes add a sweet flavor, even though there’s no sugar.
Italian sprouted bean soup
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 med onion, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
2 stalks celery, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
One 14-ounce can Organic diced tomatoes
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 bay leaf
1 cup truRoots Sprouted Bean Trio
¼ cup minced fresh parsley (or 1 tsp dried)
Sea Salt and pepper, to taste
Preparation:
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery, and cook, partially covered, until softened, about 10 minutes.
Add the garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Stir in broth, bay leaf, tomatoes and seasonings, bring to a boil. Add the bean trio. Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.
Makes 4 to 6 servings
Note: If you can’t find the sprouted bean mix at Costco try mixing equal parts mung beans, green lentils, and adzuki beans. (Sprouted if possible)
Enjoy!
