Kitty Deschanel | Food, Wine, and Travel Adventures Across the USA

Happy New Year! Sexy Nerd and I will be celebrating at the zoo. Yeah, we're fun and dorky like that. Sitting here trying to eat my toast ( yeowch !) it seems like an ideal time to look back on 2011. Let's see... I stepped outside (waaay outside) my comfort zone and attended Camp Blogaway . It's not something I would do again, but I'm impressed with my shy self for going. We bought 13 acres in the mountains for our future dream home ! Sexy Nerd and I became an uncle and aunt... fear of babies be darned. We traveled to Santa Fe (does this still count when you live in Albuquerque?) and San Francisco . Hmmm...what else? Pica resolved to act smarter in 2011. It didn't stick.  I showed you my pale, hairy leg. Here at LambAround, being classy is #1. As for 2012, I'm hoping we'll finally make it to Australia to sight see and visit my family. Sexy Nerd and I have been together 8 years and he still hasn't met my Papa! Craziness. Will we have a baby ...

My teeth are loose - a very unnerving quality as an adult. You always wanted an up close and personal view of my funky teeth, right? Despite having the nicest orthodontist in Albuquerque, there's no denying that braces suck ! Oh, my poor teeth are killing me. Teenage Me , who swore she would never get braces, is very upset with Grown Up Me! She was right all along. Seriously, everyone told me that my teeth would hurt for the first few days but then be fine. It has been 3 loooong weeks and my teeth are just as sore as when my braces were put on. Sexy Nerd says I'm a wimp. My boss, the pediatric dentist, says I really shouldn't expect to or try to eat anything solid, like a sandwich (!) until the braces come off and that a liquid diet would be best. I would probably lose a ton of weight over the next year...but chocolate cake, ice cream, and pudding are all so wonderfully soft!

...because I stayed up too late eating Christmas cookies .

Come share your awesome blog posts! And don't forget to enter my FREE EGGS coupon giveaway. It ends tonight and a whopping 4 people have entered so far. With 4 prize packs to send out, at this point you're almost guaranteed to win!

*Update* This giveaway has ended and the 4 lucky winners have been emailed. Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter! Just in time for all your holiday baking, I'm giving away 4 Safest Choice Pasteurized Eggs coupon prizes! The odds of winning are HIGH, especially because this giveaway ends in just 4 days. What can you make with Pasteurized Eggs? Anything you would make with regular eggs, of course. Recipes involving raw eggs (chocolate chip cookie dough, anyone?) are especially perfect for these. Might I suggest a little Chicken Mayonnaise ? The Prizes There are 4 prizes that include 1 coupon for $2 off 2 dozen eggs and 1 coupon for $0.75 off 1 dozen eggs. One of these 4 prizes will also include 1 coupon for a FREE dozen eggs! How to Enter Like all my giveaways, there are a ton of entry options. Choose whichever one (two, three, etc.) you want! Just leave a comment for each. Follow LambAround via Google Friend Connect (right sidebar). ...

It's time for another Not "Baaad" Sundays blog hop! Share any post you're proud of. As for me, I will be going out to see either Midnight in Paris or 50/50 today, hopefully with Sexy Nerd...though I'm sure he'll say "But I hate going to the movies! Can't we just watch those at home?! I don't want to see either of those movies anyway!" just as soon as I tell him. (fuddy duddy)

You know those cute, romantic engagement stories? This is not one of those. Our engagement caught me off guard. We'd hardly been dating a year and, having just gotten out of the Worst Relationship Ever, which had been a twisted, rapey mess, I was barely keen on dating Sexy Nerd. Valentine's Day weekend, he checked us into a local hotel for a "romantic surprise". Ummm...yeah. We started by leaving the hotel to have dinner. When we returned, Sexy Nerd seemed disappointed. Then, there was a knock on the door. Room service had arrived with Champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries, and to sprinkle rose petals on our bed. Yes, rose petals on our bed ! Supposedly, the plan was for them to do this while we were out to dinner, but they were running behind and instead set this up right in front of us. Awkward, you think? Oh yes. In hindsight, the hotel should probably not have gone along with this. The Champagne was nice, but I was only 20 years old. I was feeling p...

Brrr! It's our first snowy day of the season here in Albuquerque, NM. I'm blogging beneath an electric blanket and am planning to veg out in my pajamas and drink hot apple cider all day. How about you? Have a wonderful weekend, my bloggy friends!

Straight from our neighborhood liason: WILDLIFE SPOTTED LAST WEEK    Wednesday, five deer were seen crossing by Golf Course and earlier in the day, a mountain lion was seen chasing five deer across the 18th Green.  Thanksgiving Day a golfer encountered the mountain lion between the 13th Green and 14th Tee Box.  It was about 20 yards away and the golfer chose to wisely let the cat play through. I think we're going to like our new home . You know, if we ever actually get it built!

Lookin' good, Sexy Nerd! (when I tell you to smile for the camera and instead you take a big bite of your sandwich, photos like this are going to happen.) I can't decide whether Pica and Biscuit are exceptionally well-behaved dogs or really stupid for ignoring my sandwich on the table.

The other day, I posted the following comment on The Spohrs Are Multipling : My all-time favorite holiday special was Santa Bear, which is so sad because I can't find it ANYWHERE! I had it recorded onto a VHS tape when I was younger but the tape no longer plays. Seriously, does anyone else remember this Christmas special? Santa Bear and Bully Bear switched places (naked, they looked identical) but Santa and Santa Bear's airplane-flying female pal saved the day! Every Christmas, I search online for Santa Bear and every year I'm out of luck. Until now! Enjoy :) What's the best part of all? This has the same 80s commercials as my old VHS recording! Ahh, simple times.

Have you been snatching up all the incredible Black Friday deals? Here's a bargain I just stumbled upon: $1 for a 5lb bag of mini neon sour gummy worms from bulkecandy.com ! There's a limit of 5 bags per order. After factoring in shipping, this comes out to just $18.67 for twenty five delicious pounds of gummy worm goodness! And, of course, if you're going to pay so much for shipping, you really ought to throw a few more discounted candy selections into your cart, don't you think? Sadly, there will be no candy for me. I'm scheduled to get my braces this Wednesday (with no jaw surgery). In a brilliant (brilliantly stupid) move, I agreed to help my orthodontist fill a hole in his schedule yesterday and had separators placed in between my teeth on the day before Thanksgiving. Yeeooooowch! So happy that all the best turkey day side dishes and desserts are soft.

For our vacation, I bought 2 San Francisco Go Cards, which included a Red and White Fleet Golden Gate Bay Cruise. I don't think it would have been worth the cost if purchased on it's own (about $30 each, I believe) but without any extra expense, we really enjoyed it. Cruising beneath the Golden Gate Bridge provides some great photo opportunities! I think someone enjoyed our Golden Gate Bridge cruise.

A week has passed and I'm still sick, now with bronchitis! Bah humbug and cough, cough, cough! Also, we've been back from our travels for quite some time but there are still no photos from San Francisco here on LambAround. Let's fix that. We flew into Oakland and took the BART into San Francisco. The station has a nifty view of the Raiders stadium. (boo!)  Sexy Nerd, looking absolutely thrilled to hold my bag while I take his photo. Yes, the other husbands may laugh when they see him, but holding your wife's bag is a necessary part in the life of the modern man. Eventually, Sexy Nerd accepted it. You can't argue with an awesome bag! Before our vacation, I joined the Boudin email club and received a $3 off coupon, good at their Fisherman's Wharf location. Note to anyone thinking of using this handy travel tip: Learn from my mistake and print more than just 1 of these coupons. About a dozen, registered to multiple email addresses, wou...

Remember when I told you I was getting braces ? Nothing is ever simple, is it? So, it all started with a simple consultation for some cosmetic dentistry. My front teeth have always been a bit wacky (thank you to a clumsy 3rd grade face plant on the road) and I finally decided to have them fixed. But not so fast! Sure, the cosmetic dentist could fix just my front teeth, but was I aware that my molars were certainly going to fracture as I got older due to the horrible way my teeth fit together? Umm..no. So before redoing the build-ups on my front teeth, I needed braces. But wait! The orthodontist might be able to fix my bite with braces, but what may work best would be braces and (wait for it)...(suspenseful, right?)...jaw surgery!  "What would that entail?" I asked, completely horrified. "Nothing with the lower jaw, so not to worry. Just the upper," he reassured me. "They just break your upper jaw in two places. It will move everything. Your nose will move ...

One super-cool dorky dork! When I first found out I needed to wear glasses, all I could think of was that I was going to be a nerd just like you-know-who. I’m already super duper dorky. Glasses would be just the thing to push me over the edge. "There are so many styles of glasses," Sexy Nerd insisted. "Think of shopping for glasses like shopping for clothes!" Whatever, Sexy Nerd. Though I'll admit there were one or two frames that caught my eye. If you’re thrifty like me, you hate having to spend a bunch of money on something that you wouldn’t even need if your vision were perfect. Well, guess what? Your eyesight isn’t perfect and you and I are just going to have to accept it! Really, I knew my eyes weren’t quite seeing 20/20, but I never dreamed that wearing eyeglasses would make such a remarkable difference. When driving, I can see each of the little leaves on all the trees (and, better yet, I can actually read the names on the street signs before pa...

Despite my trypanophobia , (thank you, Dr. Google !) I found myself in the CVS pharmacy a few weeks ago, being brave and getting my first ever flu shot. The last time I was sick, I missed nearly a week of work. I didn't want to repeat that scenario again this year. Sexy Nerd was feeling miserable and missed work on Tuesday, so I was extra pleased with my smart flu shot choice. Lousy sore throat. I drank some green tea with honey and ignored it. Stupid sinus pressure. Must be allergies. Get out of here, you dumb fever! The shot appears to have been for nothing. My boss and coworkers pushed me right out the door today, even though I insisted I was fine. You know, with the exception of those symptoms listed above. And the mild (mild!) dizzy spells that have left me stabilizing myself against the wall for the past couple of days. Drat. I'm too cheap to go along quietly with missing hours at work, but after drinking a little Theraflu Maximum Strength, I must admit I'm...

Good morning and happy post-Halloween madness, everyone! I have a little confession to make. You know the post from Friday morning wishing you all a great weekend and starting the blog hop? Totally scheduled! I actually flew into Oakland on Thursday night and spent the last few days enjoying San Francisco. Now I'm back in Albuquerque. And you know what else? I'm soooo tired! Why do I come back from every vacation feeling like I need a vacation? In other words, I'll post photos later. For now it's back to bed (I wish!) I have to go to work. And then starts my quest for marked down candy and free pumpkins!

Remember how excited I was when I bought my first DSLR camera, a Canon T1i? The honeymoon is over. I know every good blogger is supposed to have a "real" camera, but honestly? Dragging that heavy DSLR camera around is a pain! And my camera, the Canon T1i, isn't even that bulky compared to some of the others. All those fancy options and features are complicated! Is point-and-shoot really that bad? For our San Francisco vacation, I left the Canon at home and brought our old, pocket-sized Nikon. With the help of Picasa's free photo editing software, I was able to go from this: Alcatraz, as seen from our Golden Gate Bay cruise. To this:  Post-Picasa. Not bad for a photo taken willy nilly! (And even more 'not bad' if you click the photo to enlarge it!) Fellow bloggers and photographers, would you ever trade in your DSLR camera for an old-school point and shoot camera? And, if so, which one would you recommend? I'm tempted to sell my Canon to buy som...

Handing out little boxes of toothpaste and business cards for our dental office (and candy!) Yes or no? Is my house going to get egged (again) if I do this? Have a safe Halloween everyone!

Have you ever thrown together a bunch of different things just to use them up before they go bad, only to discover that what you've made is absolutely delicious ? This is one of those recipes. I had no intention of blogging about this (hence the bites that are missing from the below photos) but it is really, REALLY good! I was just trying to use up our leftover kale and zucchini and now have a new favorite recipe. Don't you just love when that happens? It's especially great since I never know what to do with kale anyway. Hmmm...this is perhaps not the most beautiful food. KALE AND ZUCCHINI QUESADILLAS serves one Ingredients 1 tortilla 2 large kale leaves, chopped with thick stems removed 1/4 of a zucchini, thinly sliced Cilantro, Green Onion, and Jalapenos (to taste, but if you skip this altogether, your quesadilla will be bland!) 1 Tbsp Garlic Butter (you can add these ingredients separately if you must, but after that you should make you...

It's time for another Not "Baaad" Sundays linky party! Discover some nifty new sites and share all your week's adventures. After that, be sure to check out Pica and Biscuit's cute Halloween costume idea. Dressing up for Halloween works better when your dog isn't afraid of their costume. And, of course, if you could share my blog hop button, I would be much obliged!