Did you make the most of your Valentines Day?
I sure did.

 Sure, some could say it’s contrived romanticism.
But that’s not in my heart.

SO, I did a few things to demonstrate my love and appreciation for Ivan…

First, I had the unique opportunity to participate in a Boudoir Photo Session with Jenifer of Polka Dot Photography.
I certainly did not go into this month planning on doing this.
In fact, I got the call from Jen on my way home from work the night before the shoot.
Given a chance to mull this over I bet I would’ve chickened out.
Emboldened by the spirit of spontaneity I dove into the experience…

And it wasn’t as scary as I thought. In fact, it was a ton of fun!

Of the 100+ photos I received I’ve selected a few to share.
These don’t show much more than you would see in a low cut top or a bikini.
Both of which I’ve been known to wear.

I hope that by sharing these I inspire some of you ladies out there to participate in a Boudoir Session.
Both for your husband and for yourself.

Seriously, my 70 year-old self will LOVE having these photos tucked away.

I also handmade some gifts…

Wicked stitches for my love…

Anyone else out there love the Princess Bride??
*swoon*

We are less than 30 days from our 1 year Wedding Anniversary!!!
Love abounds!

I’m back in the blogging arena…
Coming at you with events that happened a month ago! Ha.

We drove West and spent a weekend with our besties on the Oregon Coast!
Three couples and a set of twins in a sweet beach house.
We enjoyed catching up with one another and noshing on fantastic food (we each prepared two meals)!

Here’s the super cute doorbell!

A VERY cold and beautiful beach walk.

I totally love beach houses!

Here marks the end of the Lewis & Clark Trail (If I remember correctly).

We cruised through a super old Aquarium, Circa 1937!

I loved the seals. I cannot find the seal photos we took. Perhaps another camera?

Here are a few shots of the wee fishies and aquatic critters….

Is it just me? or do these lobsters look like they’re planning something??

We were stoked to have a hot tub!
I seized the opportunity to wear my awesome hat in the freezing temps while soaking in the tub!
Seriously, it snowed the next day.
Yes…that smile is big and yes thats wine.
They are contingent upon one another….

We woke up to snow. Hot coffee.

And lazy beach snuggles.

The ride home was absolutely traumatizing.
A typical 90 minute drive took us five hours after being turned around due to snow in the Cascades.
I prefer not to focus on that part.

Totally excited to share with you our Valentines!
It’s our first Vday as a married couple.

All together now, “awwwww!”

This post requires we revisit 2010 which was a pretty big deal to me. You see, it was my first experience being tattooed at a Tattoo Convention. I absolutely loved it. There’s nothing more amazing than being surrounded by an artistic and creative community while getting tattooed. While sitting there tons of people with different background, interests and stories to tell pass by.

This is me having the outline and shading of a Peacock tattooed on me.
This tattoo has special meaning for me and it’s dedicated to my Mother.
The tattoo is heavily influenced by traditional tattoo styling.

Here it is complete. At this point I had no idea when I would get color added.

At home, all wrapped up.

A year later – same Tattoo Convention, same tattoo artist and same tattoo!

Before – the outline/shading all healed up and ready for color…

I love tattooing SO much I’m actually sad when it’s over…

I always take pics of the colors.

During….

Me watching…

Ivan got an awesome photo of the needles in action…check that out!

A little soda break…blue green done.

Viola!

I love Mikal! She works at New Rose Tattoo.
Along with amazing talent she has a great sense of humor, impeccable musical tastes and a huge heart.

I could say “The End” but that would be a lie.
I will continue tattooing my beautiful body.
Tattooing is one of my favorite forms of self-expression and vessels for communicating what lies beneath my skin.

I would LOVE to hear about your tattoos! Any special meaning? New ones you are saving for?

]]> http://princesshotcakes.com/tattooed-princess-2/feed/ 1 http://princesshotcakes.com/tattooed-princess-2/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PrincessHotcakes/~3/YQNkA5-dtPE/ http://princesshotcakes.com/sausage-festival/#comments Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:34:46 +0000 Princess Hotcakes http://princesshotcakes.com/?p=2692

Ivan took me to this year’s 77th Annual Verboort Sausage & Kraut Dinner.

The Verboort Sausage dinner is hosted by a small but amazing community every year on the first Saturday of November.
The whole community pitches in to prepare every detail of the meal. The funds from the day go to support the parish and a school.

My title may have been a wee bit misleading. It’s just fun to say it that way.

The deal is… You show up, buy your tickets and then enjoy yourself. There’s activities, a small bazaar and a beer garden just down the road at the Verboort Gun Club. Yup. Beer and guns. No, just kidding. Just beer and wine.

We decided to check out the beer garden.

We hitched a ride on a school bus that shuttled us to the beer garden! So unreal. Those seats are ridiculously small.

At the gun club!


Outside they have several fires burning in barrels.

Here we are waiting in line…

As a souvenir we purchased this beautiful handmade quilt.
Someday we might have a baby Z to wrap up in that beautiful blanket.
It was such a gift to have my picture taken with the woman who made the quilt. She was a sweetheart!

We will most certainly be going back next year and the years to follow! 

]]> http://princesshotcakes.com/sausage-festival/feed/ 1 http://princesshotcakes.com/sausage-festival/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PrincessHotcakes/~3/W04LQE6Sa0Q/ http://princesshotcakes.com/horrifically-awesome-halloween/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:30:24 +0000 Princess Hotcakes http://princesshotcakes.com/?p=2658

Halloween weekend was THE BEST!
We had such a great time together.
Marko had an awesome General Grievous costume.
Ivan and I had a great time as the Proud Parents.

Pumpkin carving had a new spin this year.

Instead of carving we drilled out holes! Marko loved it!

And then we filled them with dry ice!

We had to do lots of dry ice experiments. This one was a big hit!

Our front entry at night – complete with planetary pumpkin, polka dot pumpkin,
a Z for our family , fog and black light awesomeness!

 We’re definitely looking forward to the upcoming holidays!
Building traditions together is pretty much the best thing ever.

The last three months of the year are jam packed full of my favorite holidays! I am soo excited for Halloween this year. We’ll have Marko over the Halloween weekend and we fully intend on filling it with ghoulish and spooky awesomeness.

I have always loved Halloween. Growing up I LOVED carving pumpkins! The sad thing? Growing up in Alaska meant my only reference point for where to get pumpkins was in the produce aisle at our local grocery store.

One of my favorite things about living in “the lower 48″ or “on the mainland” is Pumpkin Patches!!!

This year we took Marko to Lakeview Farms and had a BLAST!

Here are a slew of photos from this years pumpkin adventure! *Warning* It’s image heavy!

First stop: Corn maze.

We followed a particular plan: Given two paths, always go right!

We were on a mission to gather all five punches.

We practiced blending in with the corn.

Guess who was found?

Next was a boat ride to the pumpkin patch. The lake even had a submerged Loch Ness Monster and shark that would pop out of the water. Pretty rad for a 6 year old!

I love this fella.

SO many pumpkins and SO many possibilities!

After selecting five perfectly imperfect pumpkins we loaded up for a train ride back.

Have I mentioned how much I love being a StepMom! 

How perfect is that smile?? I love his toothless grin!

Marko requested a ride on the tractor pull. I had so much fun watching all of these kiddos enjoying the ride.

One Happy Boy.

One Happy Family.

Next up, pumpkin carving!

Inspiring. Motivating. True.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”

- Steve Jobs
1955-2011 

Go get it!!

We’ve had this sweet little Chiweenie for a year now. Bella is such a darling companion pup. She’s worked her way into our sweet hearts.

We love her snuggles. She’s an excellent doorbell. She is quirky. She prances, pounces, makes little grunty noises and makes squinty eyes.

She does really cute little baby deer snuggles on our pillows…

When we picked her up we were told that she probably would take a while to warm up to Ivan. She had had a tough beginning and at three months old was “leery of guys.” So, I carried her to the car and before the car had even started she was in Ivan’s lap.

She loves him. Sometimes we’ll even fight over his affection…

Have you noticed that I’m the one taking all of these pictures?

He has such a big heart. I love him so.

I have pinned my little heart out finding inspiration on Pinterest for a future kitchen update. I am SO craving change in our kitchen. Alas, our budget and time lately just hasn’t allowed for this. I did however come up with a pretty remarkable change that cost me NOTHING!

While unloading the dishes one evening I asked Ivan to hand me his drill.

And then I took off the doors to these cabinets.

Ha! I’m a genius!!

Part of our kitchen update in the future will include open shelving. Ivan’s still unsure if he’s into the open shelf idea. This seems like a great way for us to live with it before we invest in it.

One thing struck me right away …

How much light those dark cabinets suck out the room. With the back of the shelf exposed so much light is reflected back. I can’t wait to refinish the cabinetry.

I am super pleased with the outcome and am even more invested in open shelving!

Yes! we’re back from Alaska. No, I did not blog from Alaska. I really wanted to keep everyone current on the Alaska amazingness. However, the internet connection in Alaska is not so amazing. Ivan ran some techy check-your-internet speed test and told me it was “more than 100x’s slower than our connection” here in Oregon. Damn.

I will eventually share pictures of our adventure. That is, when I have the energy to go through 3,000 photos. Yikes!

Here’s a photo of the three of us kayaking to an Island in front of my childhood home. Yah, I get to say cool shit like that… I grew up in a pretty amazing place.

We had a great time working together to paddle across. Although, Marko would’ve preferred to have had a double-sided paddle.

Here we are on the island – just after exploring, climbing nets in trees and berry picking.

For the last 10 days since my return from The Last Frontier I have been dealing with an awful sinus/chest cold. I’m pretty sure that nasty booger cartoon from the Mucinex commercials is living in my body. He has an eviction notice. Stat. I have also been in the process of wrapping up my old job in preparation for a NEW JOB! I might be really excited about this next chapter in my career.

Needless to say, I haven’t had much time for my beloved blog. Sad face. Pout. Foot stomp.

What brought me back today is the most awesome purchase in the most very long time! We love to host but have found our current table, although beautiful, lacking in size. I scoured Craig’s List and found the perfect table. Perfect for me that is.

Here it is, all unloaded and in our dining space! I’m actually sitting in right now – big deal coz I never blog from the dining table.

Check out these awesome chairs!

And, here are my inspirations!  I am smitten with Pinterest and have a serious problem.

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We’re leaning pretty heavily on the idea of refinishing the table in white. I however, have grand ideas for the chairs! Something like this…

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I’m soo excited!! I’m leaning towards a peacock blue chair with a graphic black and white fabric. Chevron? Stripes? Gah, there are soo many great decisions ahead!