Family time, jewelry, and dinosaurs!

It's not Easter without cake—and mimosas!

You know you're living a blessed life when you have an abundance of fun things to write about. I'll start with Easter, which I meant to write about earlier but forgot. Since there's no expiration date on Easter, here goes: I drove down to San Diego to spend a mini Spring Break with my family over the Easter weekend. I called my mom ahead of time to request that she make me an Easter basket. I didn't care how old I was—I wanted an Easter basket! She mixed some old favorites (Robins Eggs) with some age-appropriate goodies (a new purse and scarf) and a wild card (Hello Kitty chalk). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the chalk. :)

In addition to the basket she made an absolutely amazing Easter brunch of ham and savory bread pudding with leeks, mushrooms, Swiss cheese, and eggs. I'll try to find the recipe and post it on here because it was delicious! I spent the day with my mom and dad, both grandmas, and some family friends. Then, later that evening, I drove to La Jolla to spend the evening with the one-and-only Alex Jones. We walked along the bluffs overlooking the cove, caught up, and cooked squash and salmon. Some other highlights of my four-day weekend were hiking Blue Sky nature reserve with my dad and cousin, Raylene; BBQing it up with Joyce and Eddie Lindros; having lunch with my mom and Grandma Arlene; having breakfast with my mom and Grandma Caryl; and meeting some local friends for a pre-high school reunion reunion at Karl Strauss in Sorrento Valley. There's nothing like family, friends, and food!

Two of my favorite people in the whole world: Grandma Caryl (left) and Grandma Arlene.

Now fast-forward to yesterday: I got up early on Saturday, which is typically my day to sleep in, to go birdwatching with my friend Pam. I've loved watching birds since I was a kid, but just recently started going on official birdwatching trips with Pam. On our first trip we drove to Morro Bay to look for shore birds and had a wonderful time. This time we decided to try something new and went to El Chorro Park on Highway 1 for a free, guided session with Doug from Wild Birds Unlimited. Birdwatching might sound boring to some people, but it's actually really cool! We saw a ton of birds, but the highlights were a hummingbird making a nest (a first for me) and a red-shouldered hawk eating something. Normally I'm squeamish about seeing animals eat each other, but I've noticed that I'm starting to accept the whole Circle of Life thing more. I also learned that, in addition to their different markings, red-shouldered hawks and red-tailed hawks also sound different; red-shouldereds make staccato caws and red-taileds make more drawn out caws. It felt so good to be out in nature, enjoying the sunshine and trying something new! I wasn't able to take any photos, but I've included links to images of the hawks so you can see the difference.

Later that afternoon, I had some friends over for a jewelry- and cupcake-making party—quite possibly the most domestic thing I've done lately, if not ever. I served cookies-and-cream cupcakes that I made the night before. I got the recipe out of Family Circle magazine, which my grandma has sent to me. It's not really my thing, but the recipes are pretty amazing. The secret ingredient in this recipe is sour cream; the not-so-secret ingredient is Oreos. For the jewelry making, I busted out the beer bottle caps I've been collecting for more than a year. You could definitely tell which breweries Peter and I favor—or, more specifically, who drinks the most beer in our household. There were lots of caps from Bear Republic, Dogfish Head, and Stone, so take a wild guess as to the answer. The girls brought beads, eyelets, and earring hooks (and snacks and wine!), so we were all set. It took me forever to make my first pair, but I persevered! I'm very happy with both of my creations. I see much more jewelry making in my future. Check out this blog for instructions: http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/06/diy-bottle-cap-earrings.html.

We ended the night with champagne and dinosaurs—cupcakes, that is. Back when Peter and I were getting married, we put a dinosaur-themed muffin tin on our registry just so people would have something fun to buy. Lo and behold, someone did buy it, and I've been waiting for a chance to use it ever since. Heather and I mixed up some vanilla cupcake batter and Camillia had the awesome idea of swirling the yellow and green food coloring together to make some psychedelic dinos. Unfortunately, the swirls didn't make it through to the front of the tin, so we made the second batch completely green. I'm totally stoked by the amount of detail in this tin! We found it on Amazon, so it might still be out there. Happy baking!

Paleo-EPIC!