Graduate School Tour

In 2 short days, I will be on a flight to Colorado where I will be visiting graduate schools with my parents. From Colorado we will be off to Boston for almost a week to explore the city and visit some other schools. I am very much looking forward to a little vacation from work and Santa Barbara. I love my job and I love Santa Barbara but the last few weeks have been a little CRAZY! In fact, Thursday will be the first day off I have in 16 days. Seriously, for the last two weeks and a few days straight I have done at least a few hours of some type of work every day. Part of that is the nature of my job, living where you work is definitely a unique dynamic. But more so its the end of the school year and half of my apartment complex is moving out. Enough about work, here is a rough draft of our trip itinerary:

Thursday 21

Leave Santa Barbara @10:13 am
Arrive in Denver @ 1:40

Rent Car

Drive to Greely--visitUnitersity of Northern Colorado

Drive to Fort Collin

Stay the night @ HomewoodSuites Ft. Collins Colorado
 

Friday 22

Visit University ofColorado in Fort Collins

Drive to Boulder—VisitUniversity of Colorado Boulder

Drive to Denver

Stay the night in Denver@ Hyatt House Denver International Airport

Saturday 23

Visit Denver University

Explore the City

Return rental car

Stay the night in Denver@ Hyatt House Denver International Airport

Sunday 24

Take shuttle from hotelto airport for early flight to Boston

Leave Denver @ 6:02 am

2 hours and 58 minutelayover in Newark Jew Jersey

Arrive in Boston @ 3: 58pm

Rent car at airport

Drive to Cape Cod

Stay the night @ OceanMist So. Yarmouth

Monday 25

Spend day sight seeingin Cape Cod

Stay the night @ OceanMist So. Yarmouth Cape Cod Mass 

Tuesday 26

Spend the day sight seeing in Cape Cod

Drive to Plymouth

Stay the night @ Hilton Garden Inn  PlymouthMass   

Wednesday 27

Drive to Boston

Drop off Rental Car

Stay the night @ Fairmont Battery Wharf Boston Mass

 Thursday 28

Sight Seeing in Boston

Visit Boston College,North Eastern, Harvard (Just for fun) and Boston University

Stay the night @ Fairmont Battery Wharf Boston Mass

Friday 29

Sight Seeing in Boston Boston

 Stay thenight @ Fairmont Battery Wharf Boston Mass

Saturday 30

Leave Boston @ 6:20am

Arrive in SB @ 11:16pm

Exciting! This is not at all final but a little framework for our trip.  I've never been to either of these states so I am definitely looking forward to the adventure. I'll do my best to post during my trip but I have not decided if I am going to bring my laptop yet. May be II'll be stuck doing iphone blogs posts, which is difficult but better than nothing.

Sorry for the pictureless post. Hopefully I'll make up for it while I'm there!

It's the small things...

After my shower curtain switch up, I felt like doing some other small things to change the decor in my apartment. Doing these small things helps keep me from getting bored in my space...which also helps me keep in cleaner! First I decided to change the decor in my mini-hallway. It had been pretty much the same since Christmas...

 I ditched the mercury glass for a cleaner look...

I think it's more season appropriate and I'm glad to find a use for those jute balls I made forever ago.

The next small change I made was adding some votives and a basil plant to my window sill.

We'll see how long that lasts though! I have a habit of killing plants. Nonetheless, its a fun look for now.

The candle-holder-turned-pot was a little gift from my marmy the last time I went home. Despite being allergic to bee's, I have been slightly obsessed with them lately!

Have a great Fathers Day Weekend everyone!

Big Black Bows

A few weeks ago I decided the black burlap shower curtain had to go. As much as I loved it, the burlap had trouble drying out and was starting to look nasty.

So after alot of looking I found this tan shower curtain at Target.

 I had the added challenge of finding a way to hang it since my permanent shower rod is at a weird height. I didn't want to use the same jute strings I used on the black shower curtain. But lack of inspiration caused me to do it again anyways...

I didn't hate it, but definitely didn't love it either. It looked too monochromatic to me. So after a few weeks of thinking I decided I'd try a similar look with big black ribbon! 

Doesn't it look great? I absolutely love it! I think the black bows helps the curtain fit into the overall look of the bathroom much more.

What do you all think??

TWMTDW

Team Work Makes The Dream Work!

That has been my staff's motto all year. Pam and I use it all the time and its really caught on throughout our department. So much so that our lovely Resident Coordinator staff bought us TWMTDW shirts that they required us ALL to wear on our end of your celebration. So eleven of us 20-somethings year old's spent Friday evening running around downtown Santa Barbara in hot pink tshirt. I couldn't help but documented the evening. Here are some of my favorites:

Its been quite a year with this crew! I'll be very sad to see them go.

Time Flies!

That expression has never been more true then in the last few weeks! I was planing on blogging all week and now its Sunday and I missed 4 days. Woops! Work has been crazy so the days have all been mashed together. But as promised here are some more fun pictures that I took last weekend while Brett was here.

And this one is my favorite...it looks alot like the black and white one that I posted last week but for some reason I like it more.

 But just so you don't think Brett and I take ourselves seriously, here is the photo that followed us looking at the photo above. Laughter. :-)

Hope everyone has a great Sunday!

Tasty Tuesday: Ina's Hummus

For our Wiener Roast I made hummus for the very first time! I've been wanting to make it for a very long time but have struggled to find the slightly  unique but essential ingredient: tahini. Luckily Turlock has its very own Persian grocery store so mom snagged a jar of it. I followed THIS  recipe (aside from the hot sauce) from the one and only Barefoot Contessa.

It's very simple, really. All you do is blend the following in a food processor:

To be honest this recipe was SUPER lemony. I think that may have been because the original recipe called for fresh squeezed lemon juice. The bottle I used was likely much more concentrated. So when I make this again I will be cautious about adding 6 tablespoons of lemon juice. I ended up adding additional tahini and beans to try to tame down the lemon flavor a bit. I believe the hot sauce would have helped also, but for some reason I just could not get myself to add that. Luckily, the addition of extra beans and tahini did the trick and this homemade lemony hummus was delicious! Honestly, if you like hummus it is so worth it to take the extra time to make it yourself. It was super fresh and flavorful, totally worth the ~15 minutes.

YUM!

The Wiener Roast

I never expected to put the word wiener in the title of a blog post...So if that's offense, please forgive me, I doubt I'll ever do it again. :-) I haven't finished editing pictures from the weekends so I'll take you back to last weekend...

As I mentioned the other day, I went to alot of parties while I was home.One of which was at my parents house and was organized by my mom and I. I wont get into details about the "inspiration" for the party, but it was in honor of my brother and for his friends. We had middle eastern inspired decor (pretty much just because of the table clothes we used) and ate hot dogs, salads-green, pasta, and tabouli-, baked beans, chips, salsa, hummus and ice cream for dessert. Here's the pictures I took...

 

There ended up being about 25 people there and we had a blast feasting on some delicious food and enjoying good weather and good company! I'm missing home already...but am happy Brett was here to keep me company this weekend.