travel | jenojoon

Jul 30 2013

adventures, fitness, food, fun, life, nachos, travel, vegan food, yoga

7ish Months… and a ton of traveling and other stuff

Wow. I haven’t blogged in seven months. I could have almost had a baby in that time! HA! Or I could have gotten in amazing shape. Or I could have… well, I could have done a million things but I’ll start by telling you a couple things I HAVE done in the last seven months.

Ok, well, one thing I didn’t do: I didn’t run that half marathon I started training for last fall. It was supposed to be in February. I ended up having to travel for work that weekend and when I found out about the trip I lost all my momentum (and I lost my entrance fee I’d already paid too). I also injured my hip somehow and was getting acupuncture treatments for a few months… and then I FELL on my hip while stepping up on a curb while running… so anyway, I stopped running altogether. Maybe I’ll get back to it at some point.

The very most awesome thing that has happened is that I got a NEW JOB that I love! I am still a Marketing Coordinator. But now I am working from home for a not-for-profit society. I won’t go into detail because its a very specific green construction industrial segment that will likely bore you… haha. But it’s not boring to me and that’s all that matters! I’m just absolutely thrilled with my new position.

I have travelled A LOT this year for work (old and new jobs) and a bit for pleasure:

January- Houston
February- Denver
March- Sacramento and Las Vegas
April- I stayed home!
May- Orlando
June- Las Vegas (for fun!!), Cleveland (I loved it there!), Omaha (for a wedding…)
July- Orlando… again

And coming up the rest of the year:

August- Chicago
September- no work trips so hopefully I can go on another mini-vacay
October- Chicago again- I love it there so no problem with this!
November- Calgary- my first trip to Canada!
December- Hawaii with my Fam! :)

Whew. I’m still cooking lots of vegan food. I’m still Instagramming all the time (obsessed might describe it). And I’m still NOT on Facebook– which is seriously awesome. I never miss it. It’s been months and months and months. I was seriously addicted to Facebook so this was a necessary cutting of the ties. I tweet every now and then, but it’s pretty few and far between.

I want to start blogging on a more regular basis again. I’m trying to find my path though for that. I guess this is a just a general lifestyle blog and my space so I can do whatever I want. I’m thinking maybe some posts on my plants, my home (which we’ve been working on quite a bit lately), nachos of course, my fitness journey, yoga…

I’ve been working from home a little over a month now, but just got my office set up last weekend. I needed to hit up Ikea. I plan to do an office tour soon- when I get it all set. In the meantime- here’s a pic of the cheerful rug I picked, and my beloved Nathan checking it out.

Cheers!

Feb 20 2012

9 Comments

adventures, life, travel

things… life… whatnot…

I’ve decided to take a blogging hiatus. Life is so full right now, and I’m loving it (mostly) but I feel like in the back of my mind I’m always worrying about not taking enough pictures or not taking good enough pictures, or needing to evaluate every single thing I do as blog-worthy or not blog-worthy, instead of just LIVING my actual life. I’ve been putting unnecessary pressure on myself to build this blog into something I don’t know if it will ever be. There are so many fabulous lifestyle blogs out there- like gazillions of them- I can’t even keep up with reading them, let alone being on par with them.

March is already booked solid. I’m going to get another fitness certification next month (yay!!) along with two separate work trips (including a major trade show), plus some events with my family, and a couple personal development seminars. Oh yeah, and keeping up with all my household chores, fitting in exercise, tons of cooking (of course!), spending time with my husband and kitties, and planning for the future! And that other thing called a day job…

Anyway, I know I’m not busier than anyone else and there are amazing bloggers out there that do all the things I’ve got listed along with raising kids and full time blogging! They are utterly amazing to me. But I’m not in the space to do that now. It makes me panic just thinking about it!

So I’m going to take SOME of the pressure off of myself and spend the next few months working on my fitness and health goals and getting my home organized to perfection! :)

If you are so inclined I’ll still be active on twitter (my one true social media love).

Thanks for reading!

xoxo Jenna

Jan 07 2012

2 Comments

adventures, baked treats, cats, do stuff, food, fun, halloween, holidays, in the kitchen, life, loveliness, nachos, travel, vegan food, Vegan MoFo

2011- A Year in Cell Phone Photos

I take lots of pics on my phone- who doesn’t, right? So I thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane via phone photos! I tried not to overload you on FOOD pics and CAT pics… ;) Here we go:

In January I made vegan waffles!

in February we adopted Nathan!

in March I went to Washington, DC with two of my besties! this is bestie Joe

and this is bestie Anna- that's the White House behind us

In April we went on THE BEST vacay evarr! this is Joe and David in Philly!

in May we got new bicycles! mine has a basket, cup holder, and a bell!

In June I went to Denver for a really great conference. I love Denver!

in July it was HOT!

also in July, we went to a Dodger game on a beautiful Saturday afternoon

in August I made 'sundried' tomatoes in the dehydrator- one of my better ideas!

in September I flew to Vegas for PhotoShop World in a private jet!! it ruled.

in October I blogged about vegan nachos for Vegan MOFO- it was a delicious month!

also in October, David and I were scary Halloween Clowns!!!!!

also in October I made pumpkin chocolate spider cupcakes!

aaaaaand in October I made these cute pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies!

in November I hosted the 2nd Annual Punkin' Partay! All pumpkin treats and drinks!

also in November David and I got new glasses and had beachy adventures!

in December these puppies escaped from the neighbor's yard and frolicked in my yard!

also in December I made these super cute (I mean scary) MONSTER cookies for my nephew's bday!

my nephew Jake turned NINE in December!

we lost our precious Bas in December but Nathan and Pepper are keeping his memory alive. here they are snuggling in Bas' tuffy bed

So there’s my year in review. It was hard to pick just one or two pics for each month. Looking back, I had a REALLY great year for the most part. It ended on a sad note with the loss of our kitty friend Bas, but it was nice to reflect on all the positive that did happen throughout the year.

Here’s to a wonderful 2012 with all kinds of fun adventures on the horizon! Cheers!

Dec 15 2011

Weekend Adventures: Redondo Beach Pier

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was a vacation day for me and David worked a half day. We were heading south to see a band play that evening in Torrance, CA, but knew we needed to leave pretty early to bypass some of the holiday traffic in Los Angeles.

We got very lucky with the traffic most of the way and took surface streets once we were deep in the heart of LA. We almost always take surface streets because it is so much more fun! There’s always stuff to look at and if you see a little shop or something interesting you can just pull over and go in!

We got to Torrance with a few hours to kill before the show and we headed to the Redondo Beach Pier. Neither of us had ever been there that we could recall. It was dark out and there were lots of neat lights and lighted signs around. There was a creepy 80s style arcade with this fun/creepy clown mural out front that I made David pose in front of in his best gangsta fashion:

fun? factory ;)

We saw some cool boats, neat birds and some seals (my favorite!). The beach surrounding the wharf area was very pretty. But my favorite thing was this awesome sign with lighted balls for Tony’s! It was a restaurant/bar that I’m sure has been on this pier forever (there was even this sign telling us that- Old Tony’s!)

I imagine this pier is packed with kids and families and strolling lovers during the day, but it was really fun to be here the night before a holiday when it was mostly deserted. We wandered around for a long time just looking at stuff. It was a really fun way to start our super long holiday weekend.

Dec 08 2011

2 Comments

adventures, food, fun, life, travel, vegan food

Weekend Adventures: Pizza and Glasses!

This is my first installment of a new regular feature: Weekend Adventures! I try to always have at least one adventure each weekend. This doesn’t mean I’m always off on a road trip or exploring pirate ships or something… a weekend adventure could even mean staying home and baking. But to me, the ‘adventure’ part comes strictly from your attitude. If I look at two (and a half if you include Friday afternoon/night) days of potential with excitement and I’m open to what comes along, then it is an adventure! A few weeks ago was a jam-packed weekend full of fun- a concert Friday night; a road trip Saturday; brunch, shopping and then napping and baking on Sunday… so much adventure to be had! So I’m going to focus on Saturday.

David and I had this little day trip planned for over a month and it was pretty much centered on eating delicious pizza. The rest just fell into place.

After sleeping in and lazing around with kitties we headed down to Los Angeles (about an hour and 45 minutes drive) to hit up The Original Pizza Cookery for vegan pizza for me and non-vegan pizza for David. The Pizza Cookery has a full two page spread on their menu dedicated to vegan options! (they also have tons of gluten free options if you need that kind of thing) They automatically bring complimentary (and all you can eat!) garlic butter rolls to the table and you can request their vegan version if you like! And they’ll bring both versions if you ask.

I ordered a medium pizza just for me so I had tons of leftovers. I got the Southwestern pizza with Daiya mozzarella (they use Follow Your Heart vegan cheese unless you request the Daiya). The Southwestern comes with BBQ pizza sauce, vegan chicken, cilantro, and red onion. From past experience I had them leave the red onion off- just not my thing. So the pizza was as insane as I knew it would be. I ate a couple garlic rolls and a few slices of pizza and was set for the rest of the adventure-day!

delicious vegan pizza

Fully fed, David and I took the long way down to Venice Beach to wander, people watch, and oh, just maybe, get new glasses! We’re both a bit obsessed with glasses. David more so than me, probably because he needs glasses to see always! I only need them to see certain things… Earlier this year we discovered Good See Co., a wonderland of thousands and thousands of eyeglass and sunglass frames. And they can put your prescription in onsite in about 30 minutes. (and they are willing to negotiate on price- which is fun!)

We wandered the store and both found frames we were in love with. We negotiated a good deal and then left the good people at Good See Co. to work their magic while we wandered the boardwalk in Venice (that’s a lot of ‘goods’!). It was after dark by this time so we stuck close to the main drag, but it was so lovely out. After the sun went down the air got warmer than it had been that chilly afternoon. We saw tons of awesome doggies and interesting characters. After the allotted time, we headed back to pick up our glasses. They were perfect and we were so happy!

Happy! At the beach! With glasses!

Now we were ready for more pizza (since we had all those leftovers). We found a grocery store with a good selection of bottled sodas and then we feasted, once again, on pizza and garlic rolls. Only this time, we sat in the car and relaxed! It was so much fun to just kick back in the car with boxes of pizza on our laps. And awesome-er still, we had even MORE leftovers for Sunday!

Once we finished the car-feast, we look the long way (again) back to the freeway to head home to the kitties.

A nice daytrip with a good song playlist, a tank of gas, and pizza anticipation makes for an adventure to remember!

jenojoon

nothing fancy, just adorable

Category Archives: travel