Sunday Social: Summer

image from tripdeal

Best Summer memory as a kid? One of my memories is parasailing in Thailand. As young as I can remember, my Dad has always worked overseas. I don't mean making business trips... he sacrificed family life to work and live overseas so the only time we ever got to see him was during summer vacations. One year, my Dad took us to Thailand. I forgot where we went, but he took us parasailing. The daredevil in my brother thought it was exhilarating, while my Mom and I watched in horror. Seriously... we were bawling in fear. My Dad was so pissed because he's all about trying things at least once in life. Since I was older, I had to go by myself and it was sooooo terrifying, but in the end, I'm really glad I did it! It was definitely a very memorable event in my life.


image via tripadvisor

Favorite summer drink? Since I'm one of those weirdos who don't drink alcohol of any type, my favorite summer drink is anything slushy. Even though they are packed to the max and more with sugar. I actually don't drink them, but once in a blue moon, I would go get a Cream Slush from Sonics. Preferrably with their non-melting "whip cream".

Favorite Summer TV show? I don't even know what shows come out during Summer time!

Best outdoor summer activity? I personally do not like summer. I do not like to burn to death or sweat profusely, but I do like just grilling, being out and about and getting a tan.

Summer vacation essentials? Bug spray!! And of course sun screen.

If you want to participate, follow Neely and Ashley.

Let's Get Physical For March!

Back for March to link up with Evani in Let's Get Physical! What is it? It's motivation. How many times have we made mental notes to ourselves that we need to eat healthier, drink more water? Did you actually accomplish what you wanted to do? More than likely, you didn't and neither did I. This isn't just a regular link up party where you answer a bunch of questions to get a gazillion viewers to your blog. It's intended to get down to the nitty gritty and face your mental health notes and take charge with it. Okay, here we go...







Not toooooo bad right? Ok ok, so February was more like my party month. With R&R, our anniversary and everything up til he left, we just had fun and ate whatever we wanted. February was AWESOME. Now it's March and truthfully, I struggle all the time with the whole work out bit. Eating healthy and all that is easy peasy... it's the fact of getting off my fat a** and going on the treadmill. I really need to tape up some motivation words to keep me going. Like, we need to forreal forreal be serious about trying to conceive our first miracle baby.

SO YEA... Come link up with Evani and get motivated with the other girls!

Baby, Say My Name

I've been blogging since '99 or so and bounced from place to place, got hosted by a couple domains, went to LJ and decided to make the jump to a public domain. I wrote a little about this on one of the past Sunday Socials if you want to look. Going from being private to public is a HUGE jump, but the reason why I did it, is because I was inspired to start a food blog after being addicted following so many of my favorites. With hubby gone, cooking and baking has sort of been put on the back burner... I'm running low on motivation and I don't have any guinea pigs here. I have no clue what to label this blog... it's a jumble mess of food and life I suppose.

Coming up with a name is incredibly hard these days! You want to say true to yourself, but also have a catchy name that hasn't already been taken and twisted around in different variations. Originally, the first blogger name I created was honeypetal. YEA. So I ended up changing the name to Yen Learns to Cook which I felt definitely captured what I was doing, but I'm extremely wishy washy when it comes to names. So after having YLC for a couple years and buying our first home Dec '11, I came up with what we know today as Green House on Top of the Hill. When my friend Jenny came to visit me back in October, she exclaimed "OMG You really do live up on a hill" so I knew this name was right for me. The thing is, the name is soooooo long, that I abbreviated to GHOTH which has been mistaken as goth or God's House On The Hill. I am neither.



Since having this blog, I have gone through so many different watermarks/logos and countless of layout designs and I think right now I am pretty content with everything. I do have a couple scheduled posts coming up, so I promise I'm not purposely ignoring you. The thing is, we might be moving, so I will no longer be living on top of a hill! That's still awhile from now and I will just have to deal with it when time comes.

Anyways, that's my story. Come link up with Steph and share how you came up with your blog name!

Let's Get Physical for November

October came and went and it was kind of a blur really. Can you believe it's already November?! I did really good in eating my fruits... apple or orange a day or even twice a day, I didn't eat as much veggies as I usually do though. October was a fail in my book. November so far hasn't been TOO BAD! Still constantly snacking and eating ramen. I'm not too worried for the upcoming holidays though. My mom is coming in a couple weeks... she's a vegetarian and eats incredibly healthy, so I have no chance of sleeping in, no bad snacking (unless I stash some upstairs in my room), no chance to be lazy either. It'll be a good detox! If you're interested in linking up come link up with Evani!



1. I ONLY worked out twice this month!
2. I had the munchies! A lot. Mostly for chips.
3. Been drinking too much juice. Even if I water them down.
4. Eating too much high sodium foods.
5. Been going to bed super late because I'm too busy watching Korean variety shows.



1. I honestly have no clue what happened in October, but I have been having the munchies lately. I don't eat chips all day every day, but I'm constantly snacking! Didn't help that I had my monthly friend visit either.
2. I got lazy and just didn't care. I even slacked off on cleaning my house for awhile there.



1. Stop being so darn lazy and work out more!
2. Need to lay off the juice and chips. As well as high sodium foods like ramen, or don't put in all of the powder packets!
3. Try to to bed earlier! At least by midnight so I can wake up earlier.

Me, Myself and I: October

Sorry for my lack of posts! I do have about 10+ scheduled posts... all recipes which I'm trying to transfer over from my old blog. The weather here is back to being gloomy and rainy and I've been feeling pretty under the weather myself. My friend Jenny came up to visit Columbus Day weekend and it was the exact girl weekend I needed!

Anyways, excited it's time for MM&I link up party hosted by Breanna!


image via languageandgrammar

What is your favorite season? Explain. I don't exactly have a favorite season anymore, but Summer is my least favorite that's for sure! I like Autumn for it's cool air, tree foilage, start of pumpkin everything and anything, Thanksgiving, apple cider, apple picking. Winter for snow! I absolutely lovelovelove snow even after going through one winter stationed at Drum. Christmas is my all time favorite holiday and I love putting up my tree the day after Thanksgiving.

Talk about a moment that changed your life? It's personal (plus I don't know whose reading this), but I feel like that moment in my life has shaped me to be who I am today. I don't know if it changed me for the good or for the bad. It definitely has made me more cautious, less trustworthy and overall, living too safe. Of course, how can I forget marrying my husband was one of the biggest life changing moment. Can you believe in February will be our big 9?! Also, finding out earlier this year I have Diabetes has changed my life for the good.

If you could be any Crayola crayon color, what would you be & why? I agree with Melissa here. I wouldn't personally want to be a crayon either, but there's a gazillion colors and I honestly cannot choose just one! But if I had too, it has be from the pink and/or teal, blue/green family.

Describe yourself as a superhero: Superpower? Name? Sidekick? I'm the worst when it comes to coming up with superhero names. My superpower would be... Wait, can I just omit this question all together?

If you had all the money in the world and could only shop at 3 stores, where would you shop? Target. Definitely Target since you can buy just about everything there! Torrid and Nordstrom.



Come join in at My Beautiful Crazy Life

Let's Get Physical: October

I was reading Melissa at Sarcastic Remark's post earlier about Let's get physical hosted by Evani and was intrigued. It's not your typical link party where you meet and greet and gain a bunch of followers, but more of a fitness journey and being motivated by people who are on the same journey as you. I think this would be a great motivator, especially since it's written down (yikes! for the public to see too) and you can't run forever from what's holding you back.

Everyone is always on some kind of fitness, get healthy journey. Right? It's not always about losing weight just to fit into that size 2 pair of jeans, but it goes a lot deeper than that. For me, as hard as it is to admit, but I've always been the curvy Asian girl and I have been criticized since I was a kid by my parents and I still do, taunted by other kids because my chest grew way quicker than the kids my age. Whoa, emotional moment. In honestly, it has damaged my self-confidence and self-esteem more than you'll ever know and it's still a battle. After I got married, I gained even more weight because I couldn't cook, didn't really know how to cook and they had all this fast food I've never seen... darn you Sonic and Chickfila!

Earlier this year, I found out I'm Type-2 Diabetic and at the time I also had high-blood pressure so I immediately cut down on sugar and salt for about awhile and within a couple days, I lost 5 pounds! Since then I've been teetering around that 5lbs and having a hard time to get over another 5lbs, but I am so proud to announce my a1c (blood sugar) test came back at 5.8 last month! I'm not too sure what my original score was, but I'm pretty sure it was really high around 8 or 9 and after seven months and taking Metformin, I'm now at about a 5.8! It's a huge accomplishment and I also really glad that my TC/LDL is good, but my HDL needs to be higher.

I'm starting to ramble, so, on with the show!

Me, Myself and I: September

*WOOT WOOT* It's my first link up party!

1) When you're feeling down, what do you do to pick yourself up?
To be honest, there has been quite a few "feeling down" moments in the past couple weeks since my husband left and I... I, hmmm... actually have no clue what I do. Usually I just bake, but since it's just me, I don't bake that often. I probably paint my nails, have a good cry, listen to my KPOP/Dubstep extremely loud or I text my husband.

2) If you had to live in a different time period, which would you prefer?


I don't know why, but I've always found the 50s to be interesting. It's probably just my secret love for poodle skirts.

3) What is the most creative Halloween costume you've ever worn?
I am the least creative when it comes to Halloween! I just NEVER got into Halloween like most people. I know when I was younger, my mom would always make me wear my traditional Chinese outfit which was bright pink satin with red trimming and flowers. One year she did let me borrow my neighbor's dress and I was a flapper. I think that was my favorite of all time. One year, I just honestly didn't care so I put on sweatpants and a hoodie and called myself a "jogger".

4) Five weird things about you we wouldn't know without being told?
- Up til winter of 2010, I couldn't drive a car if my right foot had shoes on. Since we were stationed at Drum and it snows like crazy, I had to learn to drive with my shoes because it was freezing and I really had no choice.

- When I'm nervous or scared to do something or even when I'm just bored, I start picking the skin around my thumbs. I don't know WHY I do it, but I've been doing it since I was a kid and I use to get scolded for it. So, um sorry my thumbs are sometimes icky to look at.

- I sorta like to count people's fingers and toes. When I was younger, I met a family friend who had an extra finger and when I got older, I use to go to my best friend Jeannie's and I discovered her mom has an extra pinkie toe. So, YEA.

- I have an unhealthy addiction hoarding of nail polishes. And I'm picky of what brand I buy.

- On top of hoarding nail polishes, I also hoard hand soaps from Bath & Body Works and candles.

5) What would you tell your 16-year-old self?
Be more adventurous, more out-going, more fun, less shy, do better in school and don't worry about boys!



Come join in at My Beautiful Crazy Life