quinn's place

january

we went on a beautiful wintry hike to heather lake.

we went to cabo san lucas!

i went night skiing for the first time.

i made some "fancy" citrus & herb ice cubes ;) these were featured on the feedfeed's community cooking site in the herbs & spices feed.

february

barely caught a couple of gorgeous sunsets at the end of the workday near our house. i live for the days when it is not dark out at 5pm.

i baked up a lot of bready goods.

pete and i went on a fun valentine's day bus camping trip on whidbey island.

march

spring came early and it was freaking beautiful.

i discovered the most delicious fluffy chocolate marshmallow filled donut at general porpoise donuts in capitol hill.

i attempted my very first lemon meringue pie from scratch for my dad's birthday. the pie turned out tasty & scrumptious, but looked hideous and you won't find it on this blog. i'm always bummed when recipes don't work out on my first try (especially when i take all the process photos expecting the food to turn out just right)...but it's all just part of the learning process. i'm getting better at accepting that and attempting recipes again instead of turning my back on them forever. anyhow, i'm excited to create some successful meringue magic.

my company spent several days shooting at snoqualmie pass in the remaining winter's snow for our winter 2017 print piece. these shoots are really fun and a lot of work with a lot of moving parts. its definitely cool to see the images from this project out in the wild, and in print!

during our big shoot, i took this photo on my moment macro lens and it is now featured on the product page for this arc'teryx jacket.

april

we visited pete's fam on lopez island. love that fairy tale house.

spring was GORGEOUS!!! and this photo above was reposted by DESIGN SPONGE on instagram. i about lost my damn mind! that was reallyyyy something.

i carried on my merry ice cube making way and came up with these coffee & coconut cream ice cubes. this recipe was also featured on the feedfeed's cooking site in the caffeinated beverages feed.

may

i tried my hand at various fruit-as-roses.

pete and i went backpacking in the rain at goat lake.

fun summertimes began to commence. pete and i set out on our volkswagen road trip to utah!

this photo below of our happy cheddar bus in moab was shot with my moment wide lens for iphone, and was reposted on moment's instagram account.

made delicious homemade tzatziki. this image above was reposted by food should taste good on instagram.

june

evening bike rides and picnics are what life is all about :)

my friend ashleigh and i went to LA and nerded out at harry potter world.

evo's annual employee retreat was one to remember. the theme was high school cliques and my marketing team was the marching band. so many laughs and hilarious videos taken that i still laugh wildly at today.

we had oodles of back porch barbecues and gatherings and rode bikes to our beloved marination ma kai. pete bought a ukulele and we started learning lots from cynthia lin on youtube. she's amaaazing. and cool. pete got another uke for christmas and is still really into it. i think my uke talents peaked at 'three little birds.'

^^^ neighborhood summer solstice partay on the hill. except that durn cloud covered the sunset. we still had a fun picnic. so crazy that this is at like 9:40pm.... ah! can't wait!

i made these baked s'mores donuts.

folks on instagram quite liked them.

july

lopez island again for the 4th of july! always a grand ol' time!

oregon kriekfest & camping near hood river!

lake union boat party for piper's birthday!

ADELE!!!!!!!!!! she is just amazing.

august

ohhhh summer night grillin' at its best. i LOVEEEE this time of year.

more fun summer nights!! above is a crazy nicoise salad made by our friend jeff. what a delight!

pete and i spent a lazy summer afternoon on the patio of the bar on lopez island just drinking beer and chatting it up with all the yocals that came and went. such a fun day.

our obsession with locals flip flops is still v strong. we re-upped on our supply on our trip to hawaii this fall :)

pizza & pals. ❤️

^^^ ashleigh's birthday/crab made of bread bash at birch bay!

more grillin' and chillin' and dining al fresco.

lake days.

sounders game!

pete demolished the last 15 feet or so of our very long driveway and we are expanding our backyard! it's not done yet, but the yard is twice the width now. 👍

september

i concocted this mess of chocolate and mallows and s'mores ice cream in a skillet. this image was also shared on instagram by lodge cast iron.

september = sportzball.

so much sports ball..

pete and i went to his friend julie's amazing hindi wedding at the four seasons.

outdoor hall & oates concert with friends!

october

pete & i took a fun day trip to vashon island.

halloweener!

november

we visited friends in the bay area for the UW vs. Cal game. such a fun weekend!!!

in n' out treat before we headed back to seattle.

fall four square games at work. just like the good ol days.

pete and i celebrated 8 years together! 😘

then we went to HAWAII!

^^^ my cutie uncle transported his wine to thanksgiving dinner in a laundry basket. 😂

rainy thanksgiving cocktails with my bestie!

pete & i got the perfect tree from our local produce stand before i left for nyc.

december

snow in seattle! only an inch or so. but we still went sledding and made a snowman, haha.

my friend whitney and i went back to new york city! i just love that place! seeing it during the holidays was a dream come true.

^^^at pete's company holiday party.

^^^ i spent my first christmas ever with peter and his family, which is kinda crazy! we'd just never been in the same place on christmas day before this one...so it was pretty fantastic to be with him. i loved it.

saw a cool harry potter themed gingerbread exhibit at the sheraton hotel in seattle.

celebrated my 29th birthday and rung (rang? ruhuuung?) in the new year with friends at a beautiful airbnb on vashon island! i loved pete's adorable surprise birthday waffle breakfast he made for me.❤️

2016 was pretty good to me and i'm so grateful & thankful to lead this privileged life with amazing people around me. it was a rough, at times horrifying, year in this country and around the world. i will continue to be positive and appreciate every good thing in my life, which i'm fortunate enough to do every single day.

in this online space, i can only hope that any little thing i've shared on this blog may encourage or teach or inspire somebody in some small way, and make their day just a little bit brighter.

xoxo

heyhey!! i took a little trip to hawaii recently with peter and a couple of friends. it was the best of times. you can't really go wrong in a hawaiian paradise!

^^^ just LOOK. so beautiful.

also...i feel like i fell off the earth on my bloggity and haven't posted since october - and that makes me sad! i have been SO busy, and as far as making new recipes goes....its freaking dark out all the time right now. i've been gone or busy for several weekends in a row and i'm excited to get back in the kitchen in the daylight of the weekend and cook baby cook & bake baby bake.

i've been on a few trips recently and have a major backlog of photos to post - its always really cathartic for me to get all these photos organized and out into the world. i definitely feel a mental back up when i have taken tons of photos that don't see the light of day!

so let me start with our week in MAUI, HAWAII!!

my best friend's ma & pa let us rent their condo in maui for the week, and it was a dream. shoutout D & B!! above is the view from the condo. 👌

we stayed on the west side of maui, just north of lahaina. it was nice to be so close to a cute little beach town full of restaurants and shops. ^^^ this is the aftermath of our delicious brekky at longhi's in lahaina. it has a view of the ocean and a cute airy ambiance with wide open windows.

one morning we got up around 2am to drive to the haleakala volcano to watch the sunrise. it was quite the life experience. none of us knew we were going to do this when packing for this trip...so we were pretty unprepared for the cold. so much cold.....

we got up to the summit parking lot around 4:30am and still had a bit of time before the sun came up. the parking lots get full, so you have to get there this early. we just slept in the car for a little bit and then walked up to the observatory area to freeze our faces off for an hour or so.

^^^you can see in the top photo of peter and me how miiiiiserable we are. it was SOOO cold. we even asked the locals the day before, "would you say its reeeeally cold...or is it just like kinda cold? i mean, we're from seattle soooooo..." thinking we were macho tough shit on the cold handling front. they were like, "yeah its really cold." um yeah. they right. it is FREEZING COLD, PEOPLE. pack your parkas and blankets if you intend to go up here for sunrise. this was also in november, so i don't know if the temperature changes at other times of the year.

we wore beach towels as scarves.

as soon as the sun came up...so much happier! even feeling one ray of sunshine on my face was amazing. but the view was beautiful, and so cool to be up above the clouds.

i would have liked to be up here for sunset. next time!! 😉

^^^ defrosting ourselves and checking out the wild cows as we drove back down the volcano.

nakalele blowhole! we walked a bit all over the hillside there where it was SO windy. it was an amazing view of the coastline, though! also, roadside coconuts from a local called moe!

group selfieeeee. not sure where i pulled my high school status backwards peace sign out from...haven't done that in years. ha! but a fun group pic nonetheless!!

we drove around to several different beaches all over the place. each of them were b e a u timus!

^^^ tacos at coconut's fish cafe in kihei (yummooo!), wow wow lemonade (double yummm & so refreshing!), shave ice at down the hatch in lahaina (also yummm! but mine was supposed to have booze and definitely did not. wahh.)!

we had so much fun at maui brewing in kihei! note the large scale connect 4 game in the background. so cool! that pink bev was a delicious boozy hibiscus kombucha. yum yum.

they also had live music and a woodfire pizza truck out front. i was ready to move in.

setting off on the road to hana! we went the reverse way that most people go and we think it was ideal because we didn't run into too many crowds along the way. head south driving counterclockwise along the road instead of heading east from the top of the island down and around clockwise. you also get the rougher, dryer parts of the road out of the way first.

into the bamboo forest we gooo....

bamboo forest was so cool!! definitely worth the time and the less than 2 mile hike/easy walk up. the sound of the bamboo clanking together in the breeze was pretty magical, too.

getting a bit sweaty on our walk was a-ok since we were planning to go for a dip in the seven sacred pools...

thanks, road to hana! you could definitely camp somewhere if you're up for it and spend more than one day exploring all there is to see along the road. there are a zillion adorable local island food stops like ice cream, pizza, banana bread, fruit stands, etc.

we stopped in paia for pizza and to chill after our longgg car ride around the island. ^^^this mai tai from charley's saloon in paia was the BEST one i had by far. i only actually had a few mai tais on our trip, but this one was just so so delicious.

^^^ lots of beach times and our ford explorer rental with all our day trippin' beach gear exploding out the back :) also pog and aloha maid and hawaiian sun bevs are what island vacation dreams are made of.

^^^ we had some amazing local fruit during the trip and also these smoothie acai bowls one morning. so refreshing.

^^^ can't forget hawaiian plate lunches. pete's favorite. the plate lunch photo above was from ono kau kau just north of lahaina. it was pretty darn good in my opinion! and i get tired of eating plate lunches like this after one day. so, bravo!

we were reaaally sad we didn't make it to star noodle in lahaina. looked so gooood and we've heard so much about it. this is why you need 10 days or 2 weeks in hawaii instead of just 1.😉

i loved kohola brewing in lahaina and was really impressed with all of their beers!! definitely check this place out if you're a beer drinker traveling to maui. my favorite was the 'talk story' pale ale. you go, kohola!