letters to you: 2010

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

good friends, good food & the dutch baby

My lovely friends,

Can you believe that Christmas came and went already? New Years Eve will be here in a few days and I haven't found a knock-off gold sequined skirt yet for my party outfit (if anyone finds one in a small/medium, you know who to call).

Christmas at the Schiller household was nice and low-key this year. My dad got me these SWEET earbuds from Adidas. I'm not sure if other people experience this when they run, but my little ears get nasty and sweaty while running so my earbuds always fall out. I've resorted to using these 80s-looking earphones that are completely embarrassing to wear in public. These new Adidas earbuds are AMAZING!!! There's this nifty flap thing that tucks into the fold of your ear so it's nice and secure while you run. I'm in love.

Lauren got Page and me some knitting stuff and taught us the basics on Christmas. She's a pro at knitting.

Lauren trying to teach Page how to knit.

I resorted to using the hoop to make a beanie.

Uncle George drove all the way from the San Francisco area (as did Page and Ryan) to spend the day with us. Even though he was our guest, he entertained us with his amazing cooking skills. Lamb, crab legs, lobster, ham... we had it all.

Another successful Christmas down, MANY more to come in the future.

Today, I spent the day catching up with old friends.

I met Carizza and Devon for breakfast at The Original Pancake House and Carizza ordered the Dutch Baby...

It was a Dutch MONSTER! That thing was huge! For being such a tiny thing, Carizza ate that Dutch Baby/Monster like a champ.

Then tonight, I hosted a lovely little reunion for the Victoria Girls, 8 ladies that have been friends since third grade at Victoria Elementary School. We had a potluck style dinner and everyone brought a little something to share. After gossiping and reminiscing, we headed to Collin's house for an old-school high school partay. The Most, our faaavorite high school band, played and it was fabulous.

Good friends, good food and good times.

What else could I ask for?

xoxo

Friday, December 17, 2010

the secret is sexy

P.p.s. Found my new years eve party outfit:

Thanks, Victoria's Secret, for always having adorable, sexy outfits.

props to brookelyn

p.s. Real quick, I wanted to show you a sweet project that Brookelyn from Brookelyn Photography is doing. To celebrate turning 30, she's going on a trip to India for 30 days to take pictures of 30 women who have created a business from micro-lending. At the end of her trip, she's creating a 8x10 print of her photos.

Pretty awesome.

Check out her 30x30 project. Buy a print. Or just send her good thoughts!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

wonderful winterland weekend of woo

My dear friends,

It's official. The quarter is over and Kristin is moving out! I'm so sad. To send her off into the real world in style, we had a girls trip to Lake Tahoe.

Before driving all the way to the lake, we stopped for a night at Kristin's house in Jackson. My goodness, her family has a beautiful house and a GIANT piece of property. When we arrived, it was already dark so I didn't get to see just how gorgeous the view from Kristin's window was until the morning.

Here are her two dogs, Ginger and Dakota. They're adorable.

We hung out with Kristin's parents in the morning for a bit then hit the road.

Kristin stopped once there was a ton of snow so I could play in it for a minute. I don't think I've ever seen so much snow in my life.

The ladies:

We got to Tahoe in about an hour or so and found out that our fancy-schmancy hotel room in Harrah's had TWO BATHROOMS! WITH TVS! High-class living, I'm telling you.

Ashley took us to a little wine bar down the road from Harrah's called Apres. It was adorable and delicious. Yes, I drank all of that Chardonnay by myself.

It was VERY snowy outside, and since there's nothing to do in the snow but gamble and eat, we had midnight snacks at the Hard Rock in Harvey's. I loved the "pray for snow" sign in the Hard Rock.

The next morning, we woke up to a huge snow storm! I've never been outside when it was snowing, so I was loving it. We mostly stayed inside though to keep dry. For those of you who haven't seen Megamind, you should. Fantastic movie.

Here's where we would've gone ice skating if it wasn't so snowy.

Lunch back at the Hard Rock. We hung out in our hotel room and watched Eat, Pray, Love. Wasn't impressed.

Then we took a drive in the snow. This is me excited about how much snow there is. I know- I don't have a coat on. I'm an idiot. It was very cold.

After margaritas and dinner at Chevy's, we came back to the hotel and I made the girls get bundled up so we could play outside in the snow.

Out playing only lasted about 20 minutes, but we had fun throwing snowballs, making snow angels and sliding around.

Here's the view from our window the morning after the snow storm. Beautiful.

We left early the next morning so I had to quickly take a few shots of how gorgeous it was outside. The pictures don't do Lake Tahoe after a snow storm any justice.

I'm ready to go back to the snow.

xoxo!

Saturday, December 11, 2010

we're going hot

Dear friends,

Shooting guns is scary.

For Robbie's birthday, I took him to an indoor shooting range. Never having shot a gun before, I didn't know how freaking scary shooting one can be.

Robbie was loving it though!

I learned how to load a gun.

It's hard.

I also learned how to aim.

This is me being scared to shoot. I only shot maybe three times (as in three bullets) because it freaked me out too much.

There were two cops shooting next to us. Our target is the black one and one of the cop's target is the orange one. The cop was practicing shooting one-handed... with his left hand. He hit the target in the head every single time.

Don't mess with that guy.

Funny story: while Robbie was changing guns, the two cops and I took a break from wearing those headphones since no one was shooting. When the cops were ready to shoot again, one of them said to me, "Ma'am... we're going hot!" I had NO clue what that meant at the time, but I loved it. It may be my new catchphrase.

Overall, scary experience. I'm glad we went- Robbie had a blast and wants to go again.

He can go with a friend.

xoxxoxo!

P.s. My roommate, Kristin, GRADUATED yesterday!!!!! Congrats, miss lady!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

procrastination help

Dear friends,

This week is finals week.

It is finally:

- the end of the quarter

- Robbie's birthday

- time for Kristin to graduate (sad!)

- feeling like Christmas time

Two finals and one senior project down and one final to go.

For those of you who are still studying for finals, please take a moment or two to procrastinate:

around the web

Hilarious Cake Wrecks that almost make you pee your pants.

Christmas tree cupcakes that help me get into the Christmas spirit.

The secretest of secret posts from PostSecret.

Joanna's wonderful Christmas Gift Guide that makes you wish you had a billion dollars to buy AWESOME gifts.

Lovely deals & ideas from Snapfish for Christmas presents.

Pretty prints from Tush Tush (found through Joanna's blog)... This one's my favorite.

Homemade french fries recipe. Made some this week! Delish.

In LOVE with this beachy photo by Brookelyn

movie trailers

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (On instant play on Netflicks)

The Next Three Days (TOTALLY worth $10 to see in a theater)

Black Swan (Disclaimer: don't watch if you're easily freaked out...)

The Eagle (Looking forward to seeing Channing Tatum branch out from his usual role as gangster heart throb)

Little Fockers (For Becca, whose true love is Ben Stiller)

Happy birthday, Robbie!

(photo from last New Year's in Seal Beach)

xoxoxoxooxoxox

Sunday, November 28, 2010

history of hanksgiving

Dear lovely friends,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving day full of turkey, mashed potatoes and, my favorite, cranberry sauce.

I know I've built up this whole Hanksgiving thing for a little while now and I promise I won't disappoint. For those of you who don't know what Hanksgiving is, here is the official history of our family Thanksgiving tradition.

When my sisters and I were younger, we would get together with my Aunt Ces and all of her kids for Thanksgiving dinner. To keep us kids busy, the adults organized games for us to play. Year after year, we'd get together with Aunt Ces and her kids to play games. Being the competitive family that we are, we created a scoring system and scoreboards to keep track of everyone's individual points. Typically, there's a couple of individual games to rack up points. For example, for the basketball throw, you have ten throws to make it into the basket. If you make eight out of ten baskets, then you write eight on the scoreboard by your name under the basketball column (yes, Hanksgiving is that organized... We are as meticulous as we are competitive). We also have a couple of team games that we play, like horseshoes and an egg toss. Since our Hanksgiving is an all-day, FUN-FILLED event, we've collected quite a large crew to come every year. Last year, the count was 41 at the dinner table. As people arrive, they know the drill and start playing games. Around 2:00 in the afternoon, we gather for a delicious dinner and then head back outside to finish up games. At the end of the day, we total up the points, sit in the living room and pass out prizes, white-elephant style. My family buys gifts for everyone for participating and wraps them in Christmas wrapping paper. This is also a way to celebrate the start of the Christmas season. Some gifts are really great and some gifts are really lame (giant bras, tampons, and toilet brushes are some staple Hanksgiving items). We start by announcing the person in last place to pick a present and open it. The next person can either steal a gift or pick from the pile. The whole present-picking process is hilarious. Once present-picking is over and the winner has been announced, Hanksgiving is officially over.

The reason we call it Hanksgiving is because my dad is Hank. He's the whole reason why we even celebrate Thanksgiving this way every year. He spends a lot of time, energy and dollars putting this silly, family event together. Hank literally is giving us the special Thanksgiving we are lucky to have year after year. I know- I have a pretty cool dad.

So now that you know all about Hanksgiving, here's a little recap of this year's Hanksgiving:

While our Hanksgiving is usually HUUUGE, we had a small 25 players this year. Next year should be a big year again.

Hanksgiving dinner: the head table with famous Hank himself (in the hat)

The rest of us.

Oh! We also have a football pool. This year the New Orleans Saints played, which was awesome because Aunt Ces and my mom's side of the family is from Louisiana. Everyone was glued to the TV at the end of the fourth quarter. Saints won!

This year we had a "Mystery Game," suggested to my dad and me by Ryan, my sister Page's new husband. We had a paper airplane throw outside! Everyone had to make their own paper airplane and throw it as far as they could. My other sister, Lauren, put two cigarettes on the back of hers to make turbo boosters. Funniest thing ever. Ryan, the mystery game creator himself, won the competition... Were we set up by him? I think so!!

Ryan, the champ.

We had our traditional egg toss. There's my dad, Hank, again in the hat, with some sweet egg toss action.

Tallying up the final scores... Don't you love the score board?!

Ryan ended up winning Hanksgiving this year! Here's a picture of the newlyweds:

He's come quite a long way since his first Hanksgiving. The very first Hanksgiving he won a pink toilet seat. Now, six years later, he got to sign a toilet seat (a new tradition we started this year... every year we're going to have the winners sign the toilet seat).

Like every year, Hanksgiving was wonderful. It is by far my favorite day of the entire year because I get to eat great food, visit with my family and play a ton of weird, fun games.

Did Hanksgiving disappoint? I hope not. Because it's awesome.

xoxoxo!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

whack this

P.s. Here's an adorable post from Holidash on how to make a cupcake liner pinata! It's so pretty that I just want to make christmas pinatas and hang them everywhere! I'm very much into the Christmas spirit this year... I've already started listening to Christmas music and it's not even Hanksgiving!

Happy almost Hanksgiving!

we are the champions

Dear friends,

Can you believe it? I forgot my camera memory card at my home in SLO. I haven't taken a picture since I've been on Thanksgiving break!! It's the saddest thing ever.

The McCarthy-Schiller golf reunion was fabulous, as always. This year, MY TEAM WON!!! Props to Uncle Ed, Keith and Danielle for being an awesome golf team! We tied my dad's team and did a putting contest to determine the winner. Since Keith had left already, we borrowed Grant, our sweet 10-year-old cousin, who helped us win it all.

Here's a stolen photo (Thanks, Anne!) of the McCarthy-Schiller golf tournament gang.