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I have been neglecting you, my lovely blog, and I apologize. I am not normally one for excuses, but this time I think I have a really good one. It's this darn house we're trying to get rebuilt. It's sucking up a lot of my time and something had to give. Sorry it was you, bloggie.
That's the thing about living in Malibu. Yeah, it can be glamorous, I guess...but sometimes your house burns down. Then you have to deal with yucky adult things like insurance, construction quotes, finding a new place to live...ugh.
It's been nearly three years since the fire and we've actually come quite a long way. There are many, many stories to be told of the times leading up to this point, but those will have to wait for another day. Meanwhile, here's a picture of the house so far. We're getting there!
Another awesome review for Wade Oaks! This one is on funky finds - a great blog dedicated to promoting independent artists, crafters and designers worldwide. It's a great resource for finding great, undiscovered, new artists out there. And there are so many!
OK. Time to get back to the real life in Malibu. Here's a funny one.
Now, with two little ones at home, we don't get out much these days. But grandma sweetly offered to watch the bubs so me and my honey could go out for a little one-on-one time. Thanks grandma! We just wanted to get a little pasta and a bottle of wine at a local Malibu eatery and have an adult conversation. Scanning the wine list at the Italian restaurant we chose gave us quite a fright as almost all of the bottles of wine started at $75 a bottle. WAY out of our price range. Luckily after looking closer we spotted a bottle for $35 which was doable. So we ordered it (or so we thought). Dinner was great so was the conversation.
When the bill came and it was over $200 we completely freaked out. What the heck happened here! Turned out the waiter thought we wanted the bottle of wine just below the one we thought we ordered. That bottle cost $135!!! SO it turns out we drank a $135 bottle of wine without even knowing it. I'll tell you, it was good, but not THAT good! Maybe my palette is just not that sophisticated. I don't know. Anyways, we spoke with the waiter and the manager and explained the misunderstanding and they split the difference with us so we ended up still spending $75 on that bottle of wine! Oh boy!
Wade Oaks is featured on coolbabykid.com - a "one stop cool stuff shop." They are sponsoring a giveaway for a wade oaks tee which you can enter by visiting the site. Once there you can also pick up a discount code for 20% off your purchase. Check it out and spread the word about wade oaks!
I had the best Valentine's Day ever! We hung out in our backyard (Malibu Family Wines, of course), and really enjoyed ourselves with great friends.
To top off the day, we had the best celebrity citing! Christina Hendricks (Joan Harris - the awesome voluptuous redhed secretary on MADMEN!), was there with her sweet husband. Now, you must know that I am normally NOT the celebrity noticing type - I cannot for the life of me usually recognize any celebs (they always look so much older and shorter in person!). But I absolutely COULD NOT contain myself when I saw Ms. Hendricks. I love her because she is NOT a size 4, is incredibly beautiful, is an amazingly talented actress and is a redhead like me!
I fought my initial instinct to stay silent, and maybe the wine was talking, but in the end I approached her and told her how awesome, beautiful and amazing I thought she was. Her husband actually asked me what my name was and they both thanked me profusely for the complements. SO SWEET!
All in all a great day living the real life in Malibu.
Wade Oaks is currently featured on the website cutehandmade.com. So exciting!Pop on over and vote for the cuteness! Be sure to check out the other super creative handmade artists featured there. It really is a treasure trove of cuteness!Happy Valentines Day - spread the love!
Every Thursday a mom makes soup for all the kids at my son’s elementary school. I make sweet potato soup (see recipe below) which I thought would be a winner with the kids (not green, tastes like pie). It was my turn again last week and I was excited but I’ll tell you the day didn’t start out pretty, as I broke my baby toe at home that morning. Yay for me!
Now you might think a kitchen at a school in Malibu would be fully loaded with all the fancy stuff – but you’d be wrong. The school kitchen is super simple and industrial with just two burners and a smallish size oven. It actually reminds me a little bit of my elementary school kitchen from back in the day.
Most of the other moms do their soup duty solo, but my friend Amy and I teamed up to make it more fun (and hey, less work too!). This was my second go round at manning the ginormous soup pot and I was hoping this time would go better than the first. Last time there were no sweet potatoes (hello…the main ingredient!), so we had to run down to the market and buy 21 lovelies and rush back to peel, dice and cook them all in time for the first lunch rush. This time was a repeat except now I had a broken toe and was limping my way around Malibu lugging giant bags of sweet potatoes.
Happily, the soup was ready in time again and our efforts were rewarded by knowing that lots of little bellies were filled with warm soup. All in all a successful and fulfilling morning living the real life in Malibu.
SWEET POTATO SOUP
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup onion (chopped)
2 stalks celery (chopped)
1 leek (chopped, white and pale green parts only)
1 clove garlic (chopped)
3 sweet potatoes (peeled and cut unto 1 inch cubes)
4 cups chicken stock (or vegetable broth)
1 stick cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup whole milk
2 tablespoons maple syrup
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a large sauce pan.
2. Add the onions and saute for 5 minutes.
3. Add the celery and leek and saute for 5 minutes.
4. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute.
5. Add the sweet potatoes, chicken stock, cinnamon and nutmeg and bring to a boil.
6. Reduce the head and simmer until the sweet potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.
7. Remove the cinnamon stick.
8. Puree the soup with a hand blender or in a blender or food processor in batches.
9. Add the milk and maple syrup and heat.
10. Season with salt and pepper to taste
