Simple Pleasures

There are so many simple pleasures in life...

Beautiful wildflowers

Reading a good book

Running by the ocean

Taking a bubble bath

Playing with a puppy

Going for a nature hike

A day in Carlsbad

Today I spent most of the day just wandering around Carlsbad to see all of the things we can do here! The weather was absolutely gorgeous. Here are a few of the things I did.

Coffee with some ladies from the morning meeting at Vinaka in Carlsbad Village

Wandered around the Farmer's Market for a bit

And enjoyed a lovely massage at Massage Envy!!!

Overall, a pretty great day here in sunny California. The only thing I'm missing

is Sean!

Turning over a new and "Greener" Leaf

As we start our new adventures in California, we are going to embark on a journey to live a little bit greener. If there's any place to do it, this is the place. We tried to come up with some simple changes we could make in our day-to-day lives that would help conserve some of our planet's very valuable resources:
Here's our list (feel free to submit other suggestions!):

1) Turn off lights when we leave the room and unplug appliances and charging devices not currently in use.

2) Create a compost for leftover food waste.

3) Showers will last no longer than five minutes.

4) Replace all traditional light bulbs with the new energy-efficient light bulbs.

5) Recycle - and try to find products that minimize packaging and use recycled material in their packaging.

6) Always use re-useable shopping bags. If we don't have any bags, we don't buy anything.

7) Buy local produce (we're hoping to find a CSA we can join!).

8) Limit the use of heat and A/C - this should be easy since it's always 75 degrees here!

9) Know what we have in stock so that we don't buy unnecessary items that we already have and are just hidden away. This means getting organized!

10) Shop every few days, instead of for the entire week - less waste.

We figure small changes are best to start out with, and I just read a great book about this, "Green Chic: Saving the Earth in Style". I've also started adding links to the blog that promote "green living".

Creatures and Foliage of SoCal

We have encountered new and interesting plants and creatures here in Southern California. The first thing we noticed was the number of snails here! They were all over the bushes, which may have been because it rained the first two days we were here.

We have also been to two different places that had blowfish in their fish tanks! We tried to make one of them angry to see if he would puff up, but no dice.

There are so many colorful plants here too. It's absolutely beautiful to drive through some of these back roads as we look for a house. We may be missing out on some of the seasonal changes that we are accustomed to, but we have been introduced to some beautiful, and interesting plants!