Dive in Theater at SkyBar by day
Dive In Theater at SkyBar by night
Date nights are the best nights
Puggle was very interested in these strawberries.
I’m suddenly all about closing doors.
Life According to My iPhone
Lulu & Georgia Miss Me
…at least according to an e-mail I received from them yesterday they do. They noticed I haven’t purchased anything lately and wanted to see if they could provide assistance in any way and change that. Oh Lulu & Georgia, you could, you could! You see, I’m moving into a new apartment in a couple weeks that is oh so lovely but also oh so expensive compared to my current “lived in” apartment and I will not be able to properly decorate for quite a while. Perhaps you could find it in your hearts to help a girl out? I’m totally kidding. I’ve happily accepted my fate of living in a less than dreamy home for the time being and am feeling pretty darn fortunate for all that I do have to fill it with. I do however have a list on hand of items I’d run out and buy in a perfect world and was able to find loads of inspiration and prettiness on your website that I thought I’d share. Let the dream decorating begin!
Let’s start in the living room…
This would look oh so lovely next to the couch and really help anchor the “living room” area of our open floor plan. It feels just a touch feminine which is a nice contrast to the more masculine vibe of the room.
Do we need more coasters? Does anyone NEED more coasters? Particularly agate coasters? Probably not, but they’re beautiful to look at.
I so desperately want this tray on my coffee table. It’s drop dead gorgeous and would help to cover up the horror that is the table our roommate refuses to part with.
Now let’s move into the kitchen…
It goes without saying that anything involving marble and stripes needs to be in my home. I’m loving the contrast between the cheese board and the rug below.
Now this is a bold move for me…rugs in the kitchen are always questionable ideas, particularly when one lives with someone prone to spilling coffee on the kitchen floor on a daily basis. But I love the way a rug can dress up a kitchen and since I am the one who spends the most time in there I figure, why not?
Ohhhhh, this basket. I have so many feelings for this basket. Rose gold is what my dreams are made of. I’m dying to have it sitting in a corner of our new, darker than I would like, kitchen serving as a home to odds and ends. Big spoons perhaps? Rolled up linen napkins? It could go so many ways.
Now let’s get some ideas for the bedroom…
The foot of the bed could really use a cozy throw and I love the smokey color of this one.
I have been eyeing this peace print for quite a while and would love to have it sitting in a black frame on top of one of my dressers.
I would love these candlesticks arranged on the corner of one of my dressers with dark candles in them.
And finally let’s end in the bathroom.
I find these two prints soothing and they would bring a much needed bit of greenery and cheer into the bathroom.
This rug would be perfect for the area in front of our bathroom sink. Those hardwoods are going to be cold on winter mornings!
Thank you for letting a girl dream Lulu & Georgia. I’ll return to you someday.
Savory Gourmet Tuna Melt
Tuna melts and I go way back. When I was growing up, my mom would always make them for us on nights when my dad had to work late. They were a special treat for the two of us because my dad inexplicably despises tuna melts (he’s weird) so we never ate them when he was around. Fast forward a couple of decades to when my new boyfriend (now fiance) brought a tuna melt from Mendocino Farms on a date to the Hollywood Bowl, forever rekindling my love.
Unfortunately my body’s tendency to reject gluten and dairy briefly put a damper on this tuna melt obsession of mine. Regardless of how delicious something is, it is difficult to justify consuming a meal that you know will negatively impact every system in your body within an hour or two. This led to a very dark, tuna melt-less year. I finally decided that enough was enough, I would not be held back from my one true food love, and created a gluten free, lactose friendly version. This gourmet tuna melt recipe is based on the one from Mendocino Farms, the tuna melt that is the king of all tuna melts.
Parsley, green onion and lettuce
Melting white cheddar cheese
There are several differences in ingredients between my gourmet tuna melt and the one from Mendocino Farms which I address below, but my taste buds feel (and my fiance’s agree) that this recipe comes pretty close to capturing the magical taste of theirs.
I hope you will give this recipe a try and enjoy it as much as we do!
Ingredients
- 14 oz tuna
- 1/4 cup olive oil extra virgin
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 2 tsp lemon juice freshly squeezed
- 2 tbsp parsley chopped
- 2 tbsp green onions chopped
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder or two cloves of garlic minced or pressed
- 1/8 tsp paprika
- 1/8 tsp pepper ground
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 8 pieces lettuce
- 8 slices white cheddar chese
- 8 slices bread I use gluten free bread from Trader Joe's
Servings:
Instructions
- Mix together all ingredients in bowl (tuna, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, parsley, green onions, garlic powder, paprika, pepper, salt)
- Oil or butter the outside of each slice of bread
- Place two slices of bread in skillet over medium heat, oil side down
- Once bread begins to slightly brown, top one slice with tuna
- Top piece of bread with tuna with slice of cheese and add other slice to other piece of bread, allow to melt slightly
- Add lettuce to slice of bread with tuna and cheese, then top with other slice of bread, cheese side down
- Flip occasionally and cook until cheese has melted and bread is golden brown
Recipe Notes
The Mendocino Farms tuna melt contains tomatoes and pickles and uses red onion instead of green. I don't like pickles and generally leave out tomatoes, but I'm sure the addition of both would only make this more delicious!
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A Balmy Weekend at Home
The takeaway from this past weekend was that it was entirely too hot! We spent the majority of the 95 degree days sitting in our pool on our roof, then escaped to air conditioned bars and clubs at night. Because really, what else were we to do?
Puggle was not amused by the heatwave.
I basically didn’t leave this post all weekend.
It was too hot for this bar/club! But we had fun anyway.
On Being Kind to Yourself
I had another post planned for today but am going to share something a little more personal instead in hopes that maybe someone out there can relate to it. I have a confession. I can be really, really hard on myself. Most of the time I expect complete and utter perfection in everything I do and anything short of that tends to leave me anxious and distressed. Suffice it to say that if I treated others in my life the way I treat myself, I would undoubtedly be living a very lonely life.
I have been this way for as long as I can remember and am trying to be mindful of not nitpicking every single thing I see as “wrong” or as “failure” but have not been doing a great job at it lately. When I am stressed out (there has been a lot of that lately) or in an uncomfortable position (there have also been a lot of those…) I turn those feelings inwards on myself as a way to feel some sense of control. I may not be able to control external aspects of my life, but I can surely control every single thing about myself, right? Wrong.
While self-awareness is an excellent quality to possess on some levels, when taken to this next level it becomes destructive. You can be left feeling paralyzed in a reality where all you see is what you’re doing wrong. You run through and over-analyze past “mistakes” in your head to the point where you’re practically reliving and re-experiencing the situations, often times traumatizing yourself all over again. What good does this do you? None at all. You’re stuck running in circles, unable to move forward and enact the changes in your life that you so desperately want to.
I’ve learned from being with my fiance who is both incredibly self-aware and also very kind to himself that unless you have experienced these feelings firsthand you really can’t relate. You just continually question why and how somebody would make life more challenging for themselves. I wish I had the right words to explain it, but it seems like it is simply the way some of us are wired from the start. That is not to say that we can’t re-wire ourselves to function differently. We can learn from those in our lives who, like my fiance, find this behavior a completely foreign waste of energy.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m putting this out there because I’m not a big sharer when it comes to more personal and internal things. I’m guessing I will likely delete this post in the very near future. But today, and maybe just for today, I feel the need to share because the truth is, I want to be held accountable by someone other than myself to changing this behavioral pattern. I don’t like what I’m doing to myself more and more each day and I especially don’t like the impact that it has on those around me. I haven’t fully lived and embraced so many amazing, monumental moments in the past, particularly in the last four months, and the thought that I could continue on like that deeply saddens me.
I’m getting married in two and a half months to the most amazingly perfect-for-me man I could ever dream up and I want to be able to be completely enveloped in that moment. This life I have somehow created despite all my self-destructive tendencies is basically, down to every detail, exactly what I always dreamed of having but never believed I would. That is something to celebrate and enjoy. Every. Single. Day. So maybe, just maybe, knowing that even one person out there is reading this (other than my mom, hi mom) will help me get out of my head and make the changes I need to make in order to truly embrace life and more fully express gratitude for all my blessings.
This beautiful reminder may be found here.
