I don't really feel knowledgeable enough to write about San Francisco, seeing as we were only there about two hours, but I took a lot of pictures and they're pretty good, so you're getting my opinion on the city, for whatever it's worth.

Thanks to the wedding of a high school friend of B's, we had an excuse to visit California in April. The wedding took place in L.A., but while we were already on the West Coast we took the opportunity to visit San Francisco (briefly) and Sonoma Valley as a slightly early anniversary gift to ourselves. Needless to say, I took a lot of photos, but thanks to an over-full hard drive (6,000+ Europe pics, anyone?) and a MacBook Pro that had slowed to a crawl, we had to do a little technical refiguring and external hard drive purchasing before I could edit these to show you. But anyway. We're here now.
 
So. Los Angeles.

There's a street in Tours near the river that is chock-full of ethnic restaurants. We fell, and fell hard, for one in particular: Beyrouth. A Lebanese restaurant, Beyrouth offers large platters and also smaller appetizer-type plates meant to be shared (think tapas). All were good - the fattoush salad, the stuffed grape leaves, the hummus. But one stood out in particular...mouttabal.

We were looking for an easy side dish for our blue cheese turkey burgers, and we landed on sweet potatoes. I mean, sweet potatoes are just good, you know? But we thought we could take them to the next level grilled.

When I re-branded the blog, my yoga teacher/mentor of sorts/dear, dear friend Liz emailed me and said, "I LOVE the new title and especially the meaning behind it. I got goosebumps when I read it - that's how I know it is perfect."

Wow. Undoubtedly she meant it as a simple compliment, but her words stuck in my head for days, until I finally sat down to write this post. Mostly, aka 99 percent of the time, when I get goosebumps it just means I forgot a jacket or didn't check the weather before getting dressed in the morning (this happens more often than I'd like to admit). But that one percent...it can tell you a lot more than you think.

Y'all, in the south, monograms are everything. It was a consideration (a minor one, but still) when choosing a husband - his last name must be compatible with my monogram. I am a master circle monogram gal (just Google Image it), and my mother did a hell of a job naming me, at least from a monogramming standpoint. I couldn't ruin her good work by adding a ridiculous last name.

Being a Stevenson? Why, it works very, very nicely with an E on the left and a P on the right. So now that I have this beyond-perfect monogram, I want it on everything. My cousin-in-law knows this. And she somehow found out about this monogram box subscription from I Love Jewelry. 

One evening, B and I took a trip to Costco to grab a bag of frozen chicken breasts. We perused the store, cart in hand, but only had the chicken breasts. It seems logical. It was what we came for. But as we waited in line - in line! - B couldn't handle it. He said, "This is too weird. We can't just buy one thing," turned the cart around, went to the wine section, and picked out four bottles of wine, me trailing along behind him laughing my rear off.

I shouldn't have laughed. I do the same thing with books.

I typically don't post on Saturdays, but today is sort of special. It's been 10 years since I wore a Carolina blue cap and gown and, under Carolina blue skies, was pronounced an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday that I was picking up dinner to go from Franklin Street Pizza and Pasta on my way home from journalism classes in Carroll Hall. Other times, it feels like a hundred years ago, like it happened to another person.

In a way, it was a different person who earned that degree a decade ago. To point out the obvious, I do have a different last name now. And I have learned so many things in the days and years since graduation, I truly am a different person. If I could talk to that scared 22-year-old girl, here's what I would tell her.

I really, really love getting things in the mail. I'd much rather shop online than in a store, and I've long since been intrigued by the meal-delivery subscription services that promise pre-cut and pre-measured ingredients delivered right to your door. When I saw a LivingSocial deal for HelloFresh, I jumped.
 
And, well, here we are.

My paternal grandparents maintained extensive gardens during my entire childhood and I frequently helped by weeding the roses or picking strawberries - a pastime I loved so much that apparently my grandmother would buy strawberries to put in the patch for me to "pick" (something I only discovered at the age of 30 when my maternal grandmother told me). Sadly, I've retained little knowledge throughout the subsequent years. That's why I chose The Rooftop Growing Guide to review.