Yes indeed it's sun time, sun time

Just got home from an exhausting, but delicious and fun Austin trailer (aka food cart) tour. One unexpected aspect - we all ended up sunburnt! We did find a bunch of delicious new places to eat that are inexpensive because their overhead is so low. The nice thing is each trailer creates their own fabulous outdoor atmosphere, and several may share one atmosphere. One of my favorite had a fire pit that overlooked a creek. Can't wait to write about it over at PSD!

A couple thoughts for next year before I forget. One, a two day event might be beneficial. We didn't get to try all the trailers today as we were too full to continue after the first five or so. Second, WARN the trailers that we are coming. Most did well with this, but one wasn't aware of the expected volume. They actually were refunding money because the wait was too long, and personally told me they had only expected a group of 15. Had they checked the facebook page they would've seen 351 confirmed guests. That's only the ones that bothered to RSVP on facebook. Hopefully that particular trailer will take me up on my suggestion of offering their trailer tour prices to customers for another day, since a lot of people ended up not being able to try them even after waiting half an hour like we did. Third, remind to people to bring sunscreen! I'm going to be saying ouch quite a bit the next few days. Fourth, have a map at the check in point. It would actually be inexpensive to create with each trailer contributing a little to have their advertisement on it as well. It also would serve as a GREAT future reference to attend the trailers again or try the ones you might've missed.

A house

has never kept a family from divorce.

*not in reference to me, but in reference to my frame of mind about owning and/or living in a house.

SkinnyGirl

I am in LOVE with the SkinnyGirl books by Bethenny Frankel. So far I own two of her books, SkinnyGirl Dish and Naturally Thin. I'm not sure if she has any more, but these two I absolutely ADORE. They are EVERYthing I used to know internally about healthy food and healthy eating, and everything I promptly forgot during one semester of high stress full-time college courses and keeping together a marriage and family. Starbucks in the morning? Yes, please. Need to eat to keep up my brain power. Out to lunch with friends? Sure! Got to socialize, and what's another $8 bucks and a whole sandwich? Dinner? I looove dinner, it's my favorite meal. Can't skip that.

Yeah, so, my healthy eating habits went to shit that semester. Then, I totally forgot them! So I am SOOO excited that somebody else had internalized them and actually had the foresight to write them down in Naturally Thin. My favorite's so far:

*Your diet is a bank account: Make huge withdrawals if you want, just make sure to balance it with a deposit.

*You can have it all, just not at once: Pick your splurges. Instead of having the bread, cheese, pasta, desert, and wine, pick one or two. Or, just have a bite or two to satisfy your craving without making a huge withdrawal.

*Balance your meals: If you have carbs for breakfast, have protein and veggies for lunch. If you have eggs for breakfast, have some whole grain bread for lunch.

I love the general idea she presents that we are ALL naturally thin, we just need to to THINK thin, and stop beating ourselves up for our cravings and indulgences. We are, after all, human.

In Skinnygirl Dish, Frankel teaches you how to cook the way she cooks - by instinct. I used to know how to do that, too. When I stopped cooking four years ago, I had neglected to write down exactly how I did that. While the Fat Flush Plan got me started with what ingredients and simple recipes to use, Skinnygirl Dish has helped me continue with cooking techniques and essential kitchen utensils. My favorite's so far:

*Cook eggs on medium heat, not high heat. She actually does a different version than this, but it didn't work for me, so I modified it to medium heat. Makes delicious fried eggs for the boys, and perfect scrambled eggs for me.

*Buy a silicone baster. Works for EVERYthing. And so easy to clean.

*She gives proportions to create your own cookies. Haven't tried this yet, but am excited to.

*She has listed the spices to create different types of ethnic cuisines. What an excellent reference when I want to change things up!

*Most of all, she emphasizes adjusting to fit your needs and not being afraid to try something new and being okay if it doesn't work out.

That's all I can think of for now that I definitely don't want to forget.

Edit: Two new rules I've learned and love:

*Avoid food commercials. They can make you want food you don't need.

*Taste your food. Really taste your food.

*Don't eat while distracted i.e. watching tv, standing up, driving. Food isn't as satisfying this way and you end up feeling like you didn't eat.

*Take the few extra seconds to dress up your food. For example, tonight we had Bluebell ice cream. Instead of Hershey's syrup I took an extra few seconds to throw raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries (all frozen) with local honey into the blender and made an amazing raspberry dessert sauce that tasted like we were eating at a five star restaurant. So fun!

Being a Journallist

Hopefully there's no journalists that read this. If you do, I'm sorry. But have you ever noticed how journalist's writing seems to be dry? No emotion. Mostly informational. I've noticed it carries over into their personal writing as well. Just the facts. I don't really feel one way or another when I read it, if I read it at all. Becoming a journalist totally intrigues me, but because of this one fact, I don't think it will be an avenue or opportunity I will pursue. I would love to be a writer, yes, a journalist, no. If I'm being over stereotypical I wish I knew. Maybe there are some journalists out there who can write their personal musings with flavor and feeling. I just haven't noticed any. And so it keeps me from going there.

On a side note the ones who DO have interesting writing have led totally full lives of other intriguing things. People who aren't trained to write about it, they just experience it. Maybe this is what makes a good writer. A life full of experiences with real people and real friends. I can get on board with that.

Meditation

I realized the other day why meditation works so well. Not that I would personally know, since I've never been able to calm myself down and "breathe" long enough to actually call it such a thing. But, taking a shower the other day and having a million and one brilliant thoughts race through my head that I feel the need to immediately share like normal - I only wish I had a recorder in the shower - I realized taking a shower is a sort of meditation in and of itself. Your body is doing something that's completely routine. There's nothing new about it, and your mind is free to relax and pay attention to thoughts from your subconscious and come up with things you'd never thought of before. I swear I've become a millionaire in there. Now I just have to figure out how to get it out of the shower.

Best Friends

The difference between best friends and friends is friends come and go, but best friends stay forever. You can drift apart, get upset with each other, but in the end you always come back together and and have that easy, enjoyable, laugh your ass off time with each other. Best friends just feel like family and in turn they become like family. When I look at it in that light, I have a lot of best friends. There's really only a few though that I truly call best friend on a day to day basis. This is coming from someone who used to never call anyone best friends because each friend fits a different need in my life, and I in theirs.

But I had a tough conversation with one of my best friends the other day. I had to tell her something I wasn't sure she would like. She was putting boys above friends, even to the point where nobody could count on her anymore to be where she said she would be when she said she would. If a boy issue came up she would flake. Well, any way, I talked to her and told her no boy that asks you to ditch your girlfriend on her birthday is worth your time, and even if you gave him or them a ride (which she did) to ditch his ass and tell him to take a taxi home if he's not going to go along with you to the plans she ALREADY made. Any way, she cried at the end and told me she'd been depressed lately, and hadn't been venting to anyone. I had assumed she was venting to her mom and sister since she'd been spending a lot of time with them as well, but I didn't realize she can't vent everything to them. She thanked me for caring enough to tell her what she NEEDED to hear, then called and apologized to the friend of ours she had ditched on her birthday. Then she texted and said I feel like I have a little bit of me back. Yay! Whew for happy endings!

The friend whose birthday it was described me to her friend as the most genuinely nice person she has ever met, almost too nice. I replied, "I try not to be." I can be too nice. To a friend's detriment even instead of telling them to buck up and do what they need to do. I was glad she made that comment because it reminded me I had been too nice with my other friend and it was time to tell her she needed to cut it out. As a result? We went to a movie last night and I FINALLY met her sister yesterday who's been in town for two weeks and I haven't met due to aforementioned issues. Probably the first time I've hung out with her since then, too.

Busy weekend lineup

So looking forward to the weekend! Events I am hoping to attend:

*Friend's baby shower tomorrow morning (please, God, let me stay CLOSE friends with her after she has her kid)

*Modern Home Tour with Brando tomorrow afternoon - SO. FREAKING. EXCITED. for this!!

*R*ck N Sw*p - vintage clothing swap tomorrow evening - so hoping to make this one. 10 clothing items to swap or $5 gets you ten clothing items!

*4th Annual Martini Party with my girlies tomorrow late evening

*Adventure Base 100 for the boys Sunday afternoon

*A quick run by HOPE Farmer's Market Sunday afternoon

Now let's see if I can fit it all in!