My drinking habits have been severely disturbed the past year! Why, you ask? Well, it all started out when I got pregnant last November, miscarried in December, was pregnant again in January, and celebrated the birth of our son, Samuel Liberty 4 weeks ago! Being pregnant completely changed the drinking part of our lifestyle, but that was okay because the result was definitely worth the sacrifice. Read more…
All posts tagged Recreation
Crush and Roll West 2012: The Out Takes
Crush and Roll 2012
If you know anything about us you know that we love wine, beer, food, and stogies; and even though Annie was pregnant at the time of Crush and Roll West 2012 she went to support our friends at the event as well as my continued “usage” of all these wonderful items. Read more…
The Winemakers Cookoff; 2012 Was a Hit!
This past Saturday was the 14th annual Winemakers Cookoff here in Paso Robles which is put on by the local Rotary and held at River Oaks Hot Springs. It was our fourth year attending the event and it’s always a great time. This is one of those events that seems to be mostly local folks that come out to support Rotary and enjoy the friendly food competition between the roughly 26 wineries that come out. Read more…
The Romance of Wine
I think that living in wine country and always being around it makes one lose some of the romantic feelings about wine. When you’re constantly around it and most of the people you know are directly involved in the industry you start hearing a lot of what goes on behind the scenes, stuff that tourists to wine country don’t typically see or hear. This is probably true with anything but in this case I’m just sticking to wine. Read more…
Adventure 22: Elephant Seals, Wine, Beer, and Food!
Males Northern Elephant Seals,Mirounga angustirostris ,California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A week or so back we decided to go coastal, which is much better than going postal…just sayin’! We decided to adventure over to Cambria and check out the elephant seals. We hadn’t seen them in a year or two and to be honest, we weren’t necessarily missing them, we just get a laugh out of them. Actually, put wine aside for a moment, the greatest thing on the Central Coast is nature…from all the different types of land and sea animals, to the ocean, lakes, and oak tree jungles, it’s absolutely gorgeous here year round! Read more…
About.com Videos, Starring Our Annie!
about.com
We recently hooked up with About.com to narrate some videos about wine tasting, touring, etc. It was a great experience…all that learning of the lines and trying to sit still! About.com puts together some pretty professional videos, in my opinion, and it was an honor to work with them on this project. We wanted to share the videos with you and see what you thought of “Serious Annie”. Since you usually get to see me talking all unedited and natural-like, I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts (no laughing…well, not very much laughing). This was a completely different experience, memorizing lines and trying to make my voice sound interesting. We got to hang out at Edward Sellers, which is always a great experience, and spend the afternoon talking about wine.
Check the videos out and let us know what you think.
Cheers, and here goes…
5 Easy Ways to Tour California Wine Country
Tips for Touring California Wine Country
What are the Wine Regions of California
Tips for Tasting at a California Winery
Adventure #20 – A Breath of Fresh Air For Us
This past weekend we finally had the opportunity to go back to Barney Schwartz Park in Paso Robles to follow through on an adventure we tried to do there a while back. The last time it was slightly cold but the wind was howling which made it too cold and far too blustery for our original adventure intent of playing whiffle ball.
Another Adventure on the Books
This time we went up to the top of the park where there is a one million gallon man-made lake. You can fish in it, drive remote control boats in it, sit back with your feet dipped in, or sit back on the grass or one of many benches and enjoy the scene. It is absolutely beautiful out there as you’ll see in the pictures! We hung out up there for an hour or so and just enjoyed the scenery and watched the families and kids running around the water and over on one of the playgrounds that the park has.
After getting slightly agitated with a mother that was there NOT watching her kid run around the lake (he jumped in the water which is not allowed and caught a turtle) we decided to go down to the lower park area and get the adventure picnic out. We ended up sitting under one of those canvas/nylon covers (as you’ll see in one of the pictures) and simply….hung out. There’s something relaxing about being outside and feeling the breeze, watching the trees dance in the wind, and feeling the grass under your bare feet that takes away all the crap in life. I didn’t think about the next car payment or trying to buy a new house prior to the baby being born or anything else. I thought about the moment I was in and how Annie and I were doing nothing but enjoying it.
There are a bunch of great wineries around Paso Robles with amazing outdoor spaces but leaving wineries off the list, my three favorite spots right now to sit and watch life go by are Barney Schwartz Park (I recommend you locals get out there and enjoy this one of a kind park), Hunter Ranch Golf Course, and the Paso Robles Downtown Park. Find yourself an adventure spot, enjoy nature, and become one again with you…priceless!!
Perfect Shade Spot
Barney Schwartz Open Field
The Lake at Barney Schwartz
Related articles
- Adventure #17: New-to-Us Eats in Paso Robles (hootnannieblog.com)
- BevMo!: Adult Disneyland in Paso Robles (hootnannieblog.com)
- Paso Robles Wine Festival 2012 (hootnannieblog.com)
Hunter Ranch; Another Spontaneous Day, Adventure #19
Hunter Ranch Golf Course and Restaurant
It gets boring going to the same places all the time so this past weekend when we were talking about where we could go to do some work on our laptops Hunter Ranch Golf Course & Restaurant came to mind. We figured we could go enjoy their famous Sunday brunch and then hang out and get some work done. It turned out way better than I would have expected. Read more…
Sip, Slurp, and Chug
One thing we have noticed over the months and years is that we end up with a bunch of photos on our phones of wine and beer we have drank as well as food we have eaten…so, we’ve done it a couple times before but we thought we’d start regularly posting a slideshow of recent things we have sipped, slurped, and chugged.
With Annie being pregnant, this new duty of tracking the booze rests on my shoulders but I feel I have risen to the challenge. Sometimes we go big and open the good stuff, and sometimes there may not be anything fancy or glamorous in the slideshow, but hey, both going big, and drinking in the “cheap seats” can be fun.
Take a look at this collection…maybe you’ve had some of these. We also like hearing what you guys have been drinking lately…good or bad!! Cheers and don’t forget to kick Monday’s arse!!
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Earth Day Food & Wine Festival 2012 Coming Soon!!!
The below post is about one of those awesome moments last year at Earth Day Food and Wine Festival and we wanted to share it again now that we are approaching the 2012 festival. This event stands out to us because of its emphasis on sustainability in farming related to wine and food. To top it off, the group that puts this event on (Central Coast Vineyard Team which runs the SIP certification program) is truly one of the best teams of people assembled around such a worthy purpose.
This will be our third year in a row attending and we look forward to seeing how it all comes together. If you are at all in to wine, food, or the cause of sustainability in farming we recommend that you check out their website and if you’re going to be in the area at the time of this event (April 20-22, 2012)…come join us and sip on some SIP Certified wines! Read more…
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