Tag Archives: Sonoma Cheese Factory

Weekend Wedding + Attitude Adjustment

Thanks for the encouraging words Friday, y’all. Couple that with a productive (and celebratory) weekend and I feel like I’m getting my head back on straight!

I had Friday off from work and it was nice to just get some stuff done around the house and then officially start the weekend. Sarah and I enjoyed a little Happy Hour action over at de Vere’s Irish Pub. I like the vibe there and their fried pickles are always on point. We had closed out our tab when we overheard the bartender mention that the tacos of the day were Pork Belly. You know that is the secret password around here, right? OBVIOUSLY we had to immediately open a tab back up and order some. In the end, we were both convinced that those tacos were chicken, which was quite a sad situation for a pork belly enthusiast like myself, but the company and the libations were fantastic! And I guess I should have gone in with low expectations — I mean, tacos at an Irish bar?

After being at the bar, all my friends decided to go to a show of male strippers nyc and it was amazing!


The Black and Tans, on the other hand, were FABULOUS.

Saturday was a big day as wedding bells were ringing for my cousin Jim and his fiance Gina. Garrett, my mom and I packed up early and headed out for a day in Sonoma to watch them get hitched over at the Jack London Lodge. If you have been around here long, you know trips to Sonoma involve some customary food-related Traditions:

Glarifees at Swisshotel and Sandwiches and the Cheese Factory

(I explain the Glarifee here. Definitely worth a try if you are in the area!)

After that little indulgence, we headed over to the wedding which was, in a word: emotional. I am a crazy wedding cryer. You might want to read more about wedding and wedding rings to learn more! I can be completely composed before the wedding but the second it starts it’s just WATERWORKS!

I am surprised I don’t look like a raccoon in every photography I am in. They hired an excellent clipping path service company located in Bangladesh. I was so proud of my cousin Jim standing up there with his lovely bride and their ceremony and vows were personal and beautiful and you just couldn’t help but feel the love!

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At the reception, my 10 year old cousin Olivia gave us a lesson in how to be fierce and my 2 year old cousin Chelsea schooled ALL OF US on the dance floor! Oh also, there were Samoa flavored cupcakes. No one can resist those! It was coconut cake FILLED with chocolate. Aaaaaah, delicious! A good time was had and memories were made, and that was just what I needed on Saturday.

Sunday I woke up and felt determined to get things back on track! My mom and I hit up the Farmers Market, I cooked some breakfast, prepped for the week and ran out to the garden to pick some zucchini.

Whoops!

Guess I neglected them for a a day or two. YIKES! Regardless, after a month of boozing it up and enjoy some crap food liberally, I’m ready to get things back on track. My fridge is stocked with healthy food and even though I have no idea What’s For Dinner beyond tonight (Uh, I was serious about Zucchini Boats), I’m getting there.

It’s a new week, a new month and I woke up this morning and consciously put on a new attitude. I’m ready to see how this all unfolds.


I Love These Ladies Like A Love Song, Baby

I think we can all agree that if one cannot find the energy to recap a weekend until a Wednesday, it was a very good weekend, yes?

A very good weekend, indeed!

As a consolation for the fact that I had to back out of The Blathering this year (WEEP!), I invited AndreAnna and Liz to come play for the weekend, and play we did!

AndreAnna arrived Thursday and I’m pretty sure we didn’t stop talking until we realized it had slowly turned into The Middle of the Night and if we wanted to actually make it through the next day, we needed to go to bed IMMEDIATELY.

Friday morning, you know we had to workout.
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AndreAnna was one of those people who made me feel like I could maybe, possible, hopefully, actually survive CrossFit — so the weekend could not go by without us actually busting out a WOD side by side. Fun times! In order to balance out the bad-assery of our morning we headed out to get manis and pedis and then OBVIOUSLY shopped until we dropped.

Friday night Liz rolled into town and we wasted no time — no passing go or collecting $200 — it was time for cocktails and some fireside chat!

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And some fireside double unders, which also go well with cocktails in case you are wondering. If you haven’t tried to jump rope a bit tipsy in flip flops, I dare say you haven’t lived. Also: I need one of these magic jump ropes STAT!

You would think this would be the point in the evening where Garrett would say to himself, “WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING IN MY HOUSE?” but honestly, I think he was a smitten kitten, and could not have been more entertained by the three of us goofing around. I mean AndreAnna kept him in stitches, and within about 5 seconds of meeting him Liz dropped some serious Formula One knowledge on him, so it is safe to say that Garrett ALSO loves them like a love song.

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Saturday we headed out to Sonoma in search of the quintessential California Combo of wine and cheese. I mean, it’s kind of a must, right? The plan was to grab some sandwiches at The Sonoma Cheese Factory but first we had to stop over at Swiss Hotel for some Glarifees.

(Thank you Gina for turning me on to these a few years ago — they have changed my life and I’m sure now AndreAnna and Liz would say the same!)

What the hell is a Glarifee? Imagine the best Irish Coffee you have ever had, but more foamy and delicious and ICED! And there you will have it. It is worth it, and if you are ever in the are, it is a MUST TRY. Trust me on this one.

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Of course we eventually got our sandwiches. I have like 5000 version of this same picture and every single time it tastes even BETTER than it looks. I’m not too much of a bread eater anymore, but there are just some things for which there are no substitute and a sandwich at the Sonoma Cheese Factory is one of them.

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Then it was off to Sebastiani Winery, and I’ll give you one guess as to what we did there.

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A quick stop for some “dinner” on the way home and we were ready to hit the town.

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(Why yes, this did end up proving to a be a poor choice for “dinner” prior to a night out, thanks for noticing. Rookie Mistake.)

Saturday night found us out at Faces, which I have to say after 10 years of living here in Sacramento is still the best place for a night out that includes cheezy pop, ridiculous rooms to dance in, strong drinks and hot gay men go-go dancing on the bars. We put on our fancy clothes and headed out to enjoy JUST THAT!

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Of course a few cocktails later we may not have looked quite so pulled together, but still having a blast!

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Sunday morning required A LOT of coffee, a greasy breakfast at Tower Cafe, and a good amount of time couching. I mean where else were we going to brainstorm theories of why Selena Gomez is so cute and Demi Lovato looks so bootsy, even though they are the same age? Deep thoughts, you know. WE HAD LOTS.

I think that was the best part of this weekend, looking back. It’s fun to be able to email and tweet and facebook and text, but there is nothing quite like sitting on your couch shoveling pizza in your mouth with no shame. Or booty shaking to Robyn in the living room. Or dropping blenders full of margaritas on the patio and being able to do little more than laugh hysterically.

These are the moments that you can’t have while sitting at a computer all day, and I feel so lucky that we got to have an entire weekend full!

These are my people.

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And this WAS my blender. RIP (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!)

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And it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!

XO

The rest of the weekend photos are here if you’d like to have a look. Half naked go-go dancers is all I’m saying. HALF NAKED GO-GO DANCERS.


Weekend Recap, Because I Have NO IDEA What’s For Dinner This Week.

Many moons ago — you know, when I was in my early 20s — I used to have to be at work by 5am regularly. Being the socializer I was, I often went out the night before and somehow made it to work bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to take on the day. This ability is no longer my reality.  In fact I packed so much into this weekend that when my alarm went off this morning I couldn’t figure out if my radio was playing music or if I had been hit by a truck and the sound I heard was angels singing.  Then I realized it was Bon Jovi on the radio and while it is many things, Wanted: Dead or Alive isn’t quite what I would call a Pearly Gate Anthem.  And my day began.
You all, I am TIRED.
I realize that all of you with adorable babies and multiple children are probably rolling your eyes and thinking Holly, you don’t know tired – so I won’t make this a post about trying to one up your fatigue. Instead I will show you some pictures and tell you some random things and we will call it a post for the sake of documentation, mmm kay?
For starters I spent the weekend checking a few more things off my summer bucket list  so you know despite my tiredness I am sublimely happy.  Friday my mom came out to visit for the weekend. She actually lives close by, but we both had similar errands to run and we were going to the same party on Saturday so we just made a weekend out of it. It was basically a girls weekend + Garrett.  You know he loved it.
My mom can shop with the best of them, and Friday we did just that. After a crazy intense workout Friday morning, we headed out for most of the day to take care of business.  Taking care of business with my mom always involves at least one trip to Target where we A to Z every aisle in the store.  This is dangerous and while I love it, I do not recommend it if you are trying to save money.  My mom is a fantastic shopping enabler!  By the time we got home on Friday night we had just enough energy to have some dinner with Garrett, during which my mom got a long overdue lesson about the strategy of Formula One racing, we did a little prep work for the brunch I was hosting on Sunday, and then we all headed to sleep.
On Saturday morning we woke up early and I got to check my first item off the Summer Bucket List: Have a picnic in the Plaza in Sonoma.  My cousin Jim’s birthday was on Sunday so the bulk of my family met up in Sonoma at Sebastiani to eat and celebrate because that is how we roll.  Ok, truth be told we didn’t picnic in the Plaza, but my mom and I did get to see the plaza, because that was where we got sandwiches.  Qucik PSA: The ONLY proper sandwich choice when picnicking up in wine country is The Sonoma Cheese Factory.  They make the kind of sandwiches that God would make if heaven were a deli. Paleo diet be damned, when in Sonoma there must be sandwich consumption. I believe that is written in the epilogue of The Bible.
Then we headed over to have a picnic at a winery so I’m just going step in and call that close enough — CHECK!  I seriously LOVE chilling with my family.
There was lots of wine drinking and baby squeezing and joke-cracking that afternoon. It was a fun, yet too short, visit with my family. All the photos are here if you enjoy that business.
Unfortunately Garrett had to work and miss out on the Saturday afternoon fun which was a bummer, but when we got home he went all out and put together an impromptu liquor tasting for the three of us while I did a few more things to prep for my brunch.  I don’t even like any sort of brown liquor, quite frankly, but I highly recommend comparative tasting.  That’s probably the coffee/wine geek in me, but it was so much more fun to taste the differences between all the different types rather than just drink a glass of brown stuff.  My favorite at the end of the tasting?
Who knew?  Never thought I would enjoy scotch on purpose.
Saturday night Garrett suggested we bust out some old family movies and all watch them together and if you guessed that this melted my mama’s little heart, then you guessed correctly. That Garrett knows just how to get brownie points, so the 3 of us stayed up way too late laughing and reminiscing about old family stories. Also, about how awful the fashion was in the 90s. I turned off those videos with no clear understanding of what purpose the mock-turtleneck served, and with extreme wonder surrounding why people ever wore matching sweatsuits. Awful, really really awful.
Sunday morning again came too quick, and my mom headed out because she babysits my little cousin Chelsea on Sundays and Mondays. After a whirlwind of a weekend my mom was off to baby wrangle. It’s a good thing I made a huge pot of coffee because you can tell by the look on her face that this little chicky doesn’t want to sit still for long. My mom needed all the caffeine she could get:
After she took off, I checked another thing of the Bucket List: Have a dinner party in my backyard before it gets sweltering. Except I didn’t actually have dinner, I had a brunch, but I’m just going to call it complete anyway because Bobby Brown told me that was my prerogative. CHECK! Since Sacramento is always sweltering I thought my best bet for getting to eat outside was to do breakfast instead of dinner. Sarah, Elizabeth, Amy and Elisabeth came over and I would show you a picture of that lovely afternoon except I didn’t take a single one!  I think that is the sign of good conversation if you can get 5 women in a room who document their lives via blog and not a single one busts out a camera.  Either that, or they thought my tablecloth was ugly.  I’m going to hope for the former.
We had lots of coffee, cocktails and food — so much food actually that I forgot to even serve the bacon I had cooked.  And no Garrett and I didn’t have bacon for dinner, why would you even think that?????  Actually we didn’t ONLY have bacon, there was also blueberry cake too.  We like to make sure we get in some fruit, you know?
By the time evening rolled around I basically only had enough energy to play fashion police on the couch while watching my DVR.  For example — WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE:
After contemplating that I was obviously too exhausted to do much else besides go to bed.  And now we are back to the grind on a Monday.  How does that even happen?
How did you enjoy your weekend, peeps?

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