Dinner parties and gratuitous kayak modeling

We had Mandy, Seth and Shalom over the other night for an impromptu collaborative dinner. They brought leftover eggplant parmesan that we cut up and mixed with our pasta, their sauce, and our zucchini, then whipped up an easy salad with a mish mash of the combination of our crisper drawers. An awesome chill evening, and even the babies were easy! 

 

Yesterday was another gorgeous warm FALL day (I can't believe it's not summer anymore! It went by SO fast. Sad face.) so we hit the Long Beach Marina with our friends Lynne and Ray to go paddle boarding. Because I knew I'd fall off the board and don't like being submerged in ocean water (salty and all the sandy grit gets in your crannies- yuck), I opted for a kayak. Lynne took these shots of me and are the only pictures we got of the outing. I forgot my phone at home and I was scared to pull out Lynne's phone to snap pictures and then get blamed for dropping it into the ocean. So you'll just have to imagine Lynne kicking the guys' asses on her pink paddle board while they teetered behind her and slowly caught up to us (only because we let them).

I'm pretty sure Malibu Kayaks is going to be calling me soon to model in their next catalog.

We lounged a bit afterwards at our house, eating pita chips and making fun of Ray, the cat magnet, before taking it outside for dinner.

Ray introduced us to two new friends, Ryan and Jodi, who also live in Long Beach and happen to  also be awesome. Love them! They were a ton of fun, and look at the cute little hostess gift Jodi brought!

(The adorable plant. I had the wood cats- shocker- and the painting is Jeff's. And hell yeah Lynne, those are billy buttons.)

This is Jodi and she's a crafting maven. I got this picture of her from her profile on the MARTHA STEWART WEBSITE!! Seriously. She's one of the finalists in the American Made Awards! I wish I had known about it earlier because I would have blogged the crap out of the contest and made all five of my blog readers vote for her. Voting ended tonight though, but I got my vote in!

I'm jealous of her long ombre hair. Here are some pictures of the cuteness she makes:

Elsa would squeeze the heck out of these and shout "KEY! KEETY!" while pointing at them. Her website is stellaandmaude.com and is so dang lovely. I feel a girls crafting day coming on...