I was reading ecorazzi post ‘Pamela Anderson Reveals Favorite Vegan Restaurants‘ and saw this neat link for finding vegetarian restaurants in your area. I don’t know what constitutes as a vegetarian restaurant. For the most part restaurants will substitute a vegetarian option in place of a meat ingredient, but I think this is a great start if you are on vacation or moving to a new area.

Happy Cow: http://www.happycow.net/

Gary has done a lot of work in the yard this weekend removing the bushes in front of our house. Took 3 days to get rid of most of the branches, and he started working on removing the stumps. We have a lot of landscaping plans for the next couple of years, but so far we are off to a great start! We still have to pressure wash and have the house painted and a repaired in a few places as well as working on the inside of the house . . . I’ll be posting updates 🙂

Well, Gary and I had a super fun time at the 4th of July party we went to of our friends. There wasn’t a fireworks display to watch because the rain started right as it was getting dark, but we sat under the gazebo tent for a few more hours and had a great time socializing and eating . . . oh and OMG we had some Amazing cheesecake someone brought and it was the first one they had ever made.

As you can see we were a bit moist in the second photo:

I’m looking forward to my 3 day weekend! Gary and I will be working in the yard pulling out bushes in front of our house, cleaning up debris, planting a pink butterfly bush, Gary will be mowing the lawn, and hopefully we’ll have great weather for all that.

In the afternoon we will be celebrating with friends at their home for a 4th of July cookout . . . I hear there are 40 people coming! I hope we don’t all attempt to sit on the roof to see the fireworks 😛

I have a few other things going on this weekend, but you’ll just have to wait to see what they are!

What are your plans for this 4th of July weekend? Be safe!

To see more fireworks photos from the fairgrounds, click on the photo above from 2007.

We had a fabulous birthday dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill with a bunch of our friends, they did a great job taking care of a larger party.

I brought the custom cake I had made for Gary’s Birthday from Blue Moon Bakery, a white cake with raspberry mousse filling, and chocolate frosting . . . and omg it was SO yummy! I would definitely get another cake from there.

Afterwards a few of us went to Twisted Fork on the patio for a few drinks and then Gary and I went home to veg out.

We’re so glad those of you who could make it were able to come out!

Gary and I went to a Carolina Mudcats game with our friends Clay and Miranda a few weeks ago to celebrate Gary’s birthday since they are going to be out of town for his actual birthday dinner.

We had the buffet dinner at the Cattails Restaurant and saw the first part of thegame in the AC. Later on we went down and saw the game downstairs and got some hand-made ice cream -yummy!

If you haven’t been to a game yet, you should! Go get some tickets! http://www.gomudcats.com/tickets.asp

I love reading blogs in my spare time to see what friends are up to and what the rest of the world thinks, but I only RSS feed blogs that I know I will read and are at least 99% interesting most of the time.

I use Google Reader to keep track of blogs and I put them in their own neat folders. Photography, Photographers, Recipes, Friends, Favourites . . .

What blogs do you “stalk” daily?
Post them in a comment, and hopefully I will find new feeds to read!

Here are some of mine:

Bittersweet http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/
I love her photos, vegan recipes and food info, and adorable crochet animals. I haven’t tried the recipes, or the patterns, but I have checked out her book – so go get one!

Photoshop Disasters http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/
I blogged about this one already, and I love keeping up with the new almost daily disasters, proving no one is perfect.

Mostly Lisa http://www.mostlylisa.com/
Web friend, fellow gadget geek, actress, and model.

Ecorazzi http://www.ecorazzi.com/
I don’t read every single post and they post often! It’s like Perez Hilton’s blog but around eco-friendly and celeb topics. I’ll read all the posts one day and the next day there will be 14 more I need to catch up on. So i read the articles that stand out to me the most.

Fat Free Vegan Kitchen http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/
I just recently found this blog, but they have awesome looking recipes and a search field if you are looking for something in particular.

and for those of you in the Raleigh NC area, check out New Raleigh http://www.newraleigh.com/
about things, happenings, and events in the Raleigh area

So there are a few . . . obviously I have a ton more of friends, other photographers, local news and events, etc but you most likely have a ton of your own 😛

** Don’t forget to post your fave blogs in a comment!

Gary and I went to his parents house today to celebrate his birthday early since we have plans that weekend, and they will be traveling then . . .

so here is the very yummy cookie monster cake!

and he got Mario Kart for the Wii! Along with a second wheel, which of course we played tonight after dinner. You can check out the website here http://www.mariokart.com

My friend Adrienne and I saw this when we were walking to Rosehill Cemetary on my last trip to Chicago, which we thought was amusing 🙂