Happy Birthday!

Today is Glenn's Birthday! Happy Birthday to you Darling!!! We are headed out to dinner tonight with friends to a place we've been wanting to try. We will be sitting outside on the patio enjoying the lovely evening. Should be nice!

This isn't a very good picture (taken from a cell phone) but here is a picture of the birthday cake I made. I made a rich chocolate cake and to put between the layers, I made chocolate mousse and I frosted it with chocolate ganache and decorated the top with chocolate curls. I added orange zest to the cake when I made it so it had a yummy dark chocolate/orange flavor. It turned out quite nicely if I do say so myself!

Spring in the Desert

It is very pretty here with all the spring colors! There is a lot of green in the hills from all the rain we had a few months ago. And driving around the last few weeks, I've noticed all the prickly pear cactus have buds on top and the last week or so they have all been blooming. It's very pretty! Down the center of the roads in our neighborhood, they have trees that are all in bloom in bright yellow and then under them, lots of prickly pear cactus that have bright orange blossoms on them. I of course don't have a camera to take a picture but I found this one on the internet that looks just like the yellow trees and the blooms on the cactus only these blooms look closed and the ones around here are all open and beeeutiful!!

It's heating up!

We have had some beautiful weather lately. In the 80's mostly but the last couple days have been in the mid 90's! Yesterday afternoon I wanted to take a dip in the pool but it was only 72 degrees, a bit chilly to go in just yet. We have been in a few times in the last couple weeks but we turned the heater on for a bit before going in. It isn't warm enough yet to maintain that temperature. It's going to cool back down to the 80's this week which is fine with me. All too soon, the hot hot hot temperatures will be here. We had friends in town from Seattle over the weekend and they were loving the warm weather! They did lots of sun bathing by the pool. They said it was soooo nice to be in the warm weather.

Who turned the lights off?!!

We ordered window coverings (blinds and shutters) a couple weeks ago for all our windows - finally! Today we got the blinds and wow, what a difference! Not only do they look nice, but when they are closed it is SO dark in here! We have had those temporary paper blinds on the window for so long, I'm used to all the light that comes in. When the blinds were installed, he left them closed. I walked into the living room and it was so dark! I opened all the blinds up to let some light in. I was worried about the color we chose and whether we would like it etc but no worries - I love them! They are wood blinds with nice and wide 2.5 inch slats. Pretty!! The shutters for the front of the house aren't here yet but they should be up in a couple weeks. The house is coming along...........

Coming Soon - Pictures! And No April Fooling Story

I know, I've promised to post pictures before but that was before I realized our camera was broken. But, I should be able to post some pics soon since my sister is a picture taking crazy woman!!! She has taken lots of pictures and I asked her to send them to me when she gets home. So, assuming she does, I'll have some pics soon.
So, the not so fun stuff is that my sister and her fiance were headed up north for a few days and then will return to our house tomorrow. Anyway, in preparation for their trip up north, they packed some stuff in their suitcases. Their rental SUV was parked in our driveway and he took one suitcase out to the car and loaded it in the back. Came back in for the next suitcase and we chatted a bit and I wished them a good trip. A minute or so later they rang the doorbell. I answered and asked what did you guys forget? They told me their suitcase had been stolen. Yeah, yeah, April Fools right? We had been joking with each other earlier that morning with April Fools Day jokes. But, they weren't kidding. When he loaded the first suitcase in the back of the SUV, the back was left open as he came in to finish up and grab the other suitcase. While we were all inside, someone stole his suitcase from the back of the SUV. We were shocked that something like this would happen in our neighborhood let alone right in our driveway!! The neighborhood is very nice, quiet, kind of secluded. We would never think that we need to warn people not to leave something in their car in our driveway. It is a new neighborhood and there are still a lot of people in and out. Construction people, landscaping people, pool builders etc, etc so you don't really know who is in and out of here. What a total bummer. I guess you just never know and should always be on the lookout. We will now be very careful about leaving anything out. I'm just sorry that my guests had to be the victim of someone's stupid crime.