Christmas 20 1 1 : Whistler

Annually, the hubby and I close the donut shop down from Christmas Day till New Year's day to take our Christmas vacation. While our customers are a little bitter about the week long donut hiatus, they know we really need this vaca since we're open every day of the year! This year's locale: Seattle, Whistler, and Vancouver!

We flew into Seattle late Christmas Eve. Upon arrival and locating our hotel at 8pm, we were ravenous for some food! Long and behold, everyone else shut their businesses down early to spend time relaxing and consuming Christmas cheer. After 10 minutes of walking around downtown Seattle, we found two restaurants open - Benihana's and P.F. Chang's. We chose...

They were surprisingly busy! Too tired and with nothing else open, we turned in for the evening to gear up for our 4 hour drive up to Whistler the next day.

Merry Christmas!! *chirp chirp* The various breakfast joints we marched up and down the San Francisco like hills in search of a good breakfast joint were closed. Bah humbug! Not even Starbucks was open!! Really?! The one place that was?

Aren't you jealous of our Christmas vacation already?? Yea, didn't think so.

Us outside of Subway with the waterfront in the back

The hubby and I ordered a foot long flat bread ham, egg, and cheese for $5 and took it back to our hotel room for consumption. We washed it down with the hotel's complimentary tea/coffee/hot chocolate.

*~*~*~*
Our 2011 Christmas card.

Card from cardstore.com

Picture by DCampbell Photography

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As we were packing up to head out, the hubby and I decided to have dim sum in Richmond, Canada en route to Whistler. It'd help break out the 4 hour drive and give us some fuel for the belly. Plus, we're total dim sum fiends. Ask our friends. It's ridiculous. Being Christmas day, we weren't sure if the restaurant would be open or not. Then again, Asian restaurants are always open. Always. Have you not seen the movie A Christmas Story? Proof right there! So the odds were in our favor.

Beautiful Seattle scenery en route to Canada

Welcome to Canada!

And this is how Canada welcomed us, lots and lots of rain

Sure enough, as we exited into Richmond, all the Asian restaurants had beaming OPEN signs. Looks like we're having dim sum for lunch!

Did you know Canadians consume their dim sum without soy

sauce, red vinegar, and chili oil?! We thought it was the norm! 

The most petite egg tarts I have ever seen.

They were the size of my siu mai!

With our bellies full, our journey to Whistler continued.

While Richmond welcomed us with rain, Whistler welcomed us with snow! Hello white Christmas!!

We stayed at The Coast Blackcomb Suites which was a ski-in/ski-out resort! It also meant every room had a fully equipped kitchen, dining/living area with a (non functional) fireplace, and balcony!

 

After a few hours of relaxing and enjoying the beautiful white snow, we decided to pick up our skis and snowboard so we could fully utilize our ski-in/ski-out privilege early next morning. Unfortunately, the ski rental place was at the bottom of the slope.

A very long, and somewhat steep slope.

Proud that we managed to get down the mountain without falling, we had one more issue to tackle. Where in the world was the rental shop?! Even after asking 2 people of its location, we still wandered aimlessly. After a good 30 minutes of cardio walking (you try not slipping on ice and walking effortlessly in a foot of fresh powder!), we found it. YAY!

While elated at the sight of our "lost treasure", it was celebrated much too soon. The shop was closed. *$&@%#+~^! Nooooo! Defeated, we started our trek back up the moonlit path on the mountain. Cardio workout #2.

However, not all was lost as we had a nice fancy dinner to get ready for! After a quick change in clothes, we took the complimentary shuttle to Whistler Village. The village was lined with numerous shops and decked with plenty of holiday cheer. After watching the 2010 Winter Olympics on NBC for its 2 week duration, I felt like I was living the experience!

As our reservation at Hy's Steakhouse was rapidly approaching, we stopped in at one of the shops to inquire directions. They even provided us a short cut. Sweet!

Hy's welcomed us into their warm and cozy abode by offering a coat check prior to escorting us to our table. The restaurant was bumbling with stories and laughter as friends and family enjoy Christmas dinner. Not needing much contemplation of menu choices, we ordered the roasted prime rib of beef and a Caesar salad.

Hy's even provided us complimentary dessert to celebrate our engage-aversary! What a great way to end Christmas day.

Tomorrow, we will dominate the mountains and ski like we're going for the Gold! Or so we thought...

The 2010 Winter Olympic logo

P.S. If you're wondering what's going on with our family since Christmas is usually spent with family. The hubby's family went to Cambodia for the month of December and my family always spend Christmas in Vegas. Always. Don't worry! We spent time with our loved ones in the weeks prior to everyone's departure to their Christmas destinations!

Pinterest Christmas Card

Pinterest - who's not addicted to this love/hate relationship with yet another online social media?? I'm definitely guilty of it. The numerous drool worthy pictures of recipes that promise to deliver succulent results, motivational pictures to make our yearly resolution of getting fit last just a tad bit longer, inspirational pictures to document your pregnancy journey, and the list could go on for miles on inspiration for everything under the moon.

While I may pin away and delve into more details later, the one that kept tapping me on the shoulder was this one:

{Source via Alice on Pinterest}

*swoon* How freakin adorable! My heart totally melted upon sight and I forwarded the link to the hubby via email. Stat. Time of discovery: Thanksgiving-ish? The hubby said it was cute and that we should totally replicate it. The hunt for the garland was on. Via the couple in the picture, the garland was a product of Anthropologie many years ago. Aka no longer available. Well crap.

While I sourced local craft stores (e.g. Hobby Lobby, Michaels, JoAnn's, etc.), that garland just wasn't available. Sigh. Hopes and dreams for the photo came crashing down and got brushed under the rug. Why don't I just re-create it you say? I totally would except I can't even cut a straight line that's drawn out for me (how embarrassing). How in the world do you expect me to cut straight AND make sure all the letters are the same size?! Ha! Puhleez!

On December 14, during a casual convo with the hubby's cousin's wife (does that make her my cousin-in-law??), the above picture was brought up. Her response, "That's easy to replicate! Just use my Cricut!!". Cue record player scratch. Home girl say whaaaa?? And that was how my hopes and dreams for the photo was brought to life again. Great, but who's going to photograph us?! Enter friend we've gotten to known via the donut shop - Mrs. Deanna Campbell! She said she could squeeze us in that Saturday afternoon. Yay, but holy mackerel, that means I gotta make the garland pronto! Would we get the photos back in time to get the cards printed and mailed before Christmas???

The next day, the hubby was awesome and accompanied me to Hobby Lobby to source the paper to re-create the garland. 1.5 hours for 10 sheets of paper later, we had our paper! 1.5 hours for 10 sheets of paper??? Really?? Major props to the hubby for being uber patient and providing insight the whole time. Paper in hand, let the crafting begin!

First up, cutting the backing for our garland. Paper used - leftover card stock from our wedding programs. Booyah! 10 minutes later...

Ta da! Easy peasy! How freaking awesome is the 

Cricut man! Perfectly cut letters. Nice!

And to make sure the size was appropriate for our use, I had the hubby lay down next to it and pretend he was holding it.

Looks good right? P.S. we won't be using the exclamation

point. The cricut cut 3 letters per page and I had extra space

on the paper left so I figured why not utilize the void. Ha!

Next step, cut the front piece of the garland!

The cricut didn't like the paper we selected for the Y,

S, and H.  It totally hated the paper we selected for T

and promptly ate it up, hence the missing T.

The final step was to put it all together with some yarn as our string. We decided we would "sandwich" the yarn between the card stock backing and the front pretty letters via double sided stickers. Tape the top together, place string underneath tape position, then tape right below the string. Easy enough right? Fail. Obviously, no craft is ever complete without a road block. The sticker just wasn't strong enough to bind the two different types of paper together. I knew I couldn't use glue as this would cause "bubbles" to appear in the paper. What to do, what to do? Super frustrated, the hubby said use staples! Say whaaa? That's definitely not going to be pretty! Tacky even! He reasoned the camera would be far enough away and the staples would blend in with the paper we chose, it wouldn't be noticeable. With the photo shoot being the next day, I had no other choice but agree and proceed. I cringed each time the hubby stapled as I imagined the hideous staples making its debut in our photo.

Saturday afternoon came much too quick. After closing up shop and running our errands, I had less than 30 minutes to get showered up and look somewhat decent for the photo shoot. With just concealer on, I went sans makeup to the shoot. Ew! Here's how the shoot went. Beware: loads of pictures ahead!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think of our garland? Guess the hubby was right about the staples. Hate it when he's right! Ha!

Not sure if you noticed or not, but our "replica" picture failed also. The white walls of the building washed out the few last letters of our garland. Mrs. Deanna made a valiant effort to "fix" the problem, but no can do. However, Mrs. Deanna turned these pictures around to us in 2 days!! That's just unheard of! Thanks, Mrs. Deanna!

Which picture do you think we chose for our Christmas Card? By the way, they were mailed and received by our friends and family prior to Christmas. Score!





*all pictures above were taken by Deanna Campbell Photography

Random Mondays

Since I'm (sort of) resuming normal programming now, what better way to resume it with an oldie, but a goodie series - Random Mondays!

Today's Random Monday Emoticon:

{source}

Item in question:
The little town that our donut shop resides in just recently opened up a Second Hand Retail Store. They have quite a bit of few neat little things in there! Collectibles like these along with a huge assortment of vases for example:

 

The hubby even bought the town's authentic football helmet for a steal of $7.99. Go Fighting Farmers!

And this neat lil tennis memorabilia of how the tennis racket has evolved. The hubby is an avid tennis player and loves the sport:

Each week, the store posts up their specials to bring in business. This one week's special:

Yikes!

Oh. my. word.  I couldn't even begin to tell you what exactly they were offering this week! What do you think they meant to say?

Happy New Year!

I know, I know, I know, I know! I'm 4 days late, but due to my (sadly) lack of posts recently, what's another 4 days right??? Lots has happened so I'll try to do a quick recap soon and get you up to speed on what's on around here. Like the craziness of work, a small purchase of 20.5 acres(!), and our recent annual Christmas trip where tonss of good food was eaten somewhere in the NW!

Work is lightening up just a smidge so I have a teeny tiny bit of availability to blog! Yay!

In the meantime, what's new with y'all?

Diarrhea of the brain

Today's post is just a brain dump/whiny waa waa poor me blurb so feel free to move along to other happier and well thought out posts! I just need to vent.

.... Are we clear now? Cool.

Firstly, I had a pretty crappy 1 year wedding anniversary and am coming to terms with it. 3 weeks after the fact. Yea, I have a slight thing for holding grudges so sue me.

Secondly, work is overwhelmingly busy/stressful. As in 12+ hours a day busy. Where I come home and plop on the bed without changing out of work clothes and pass the eff out busy. And will continue to be so until January 2012. One of our managers quit and while I was originally hired on for IT stuff, I've inherited all international financial stuff also. That's what you get for double majoring in MIS and Accounting in college. While I don't mind helping out a lil, this is overload galore on my plate for being the low man on the totem pole. Aka I'm super under paid for what I'm doing. Optimistically, at least I have a job and am glad my managers trust me to handle it all. However, I hope my other managers see what I'm doing and how hard I'm working so maybe there will be light at the end of the tunnel?? Oh here's another bonus! I've lost 3 lbs and am at my go happy ideal weight! Yay me!!

Thirdly, we recently bought 21.55 acres that came with a 2000 sq ft manufactured home, a barn, and three sheds. Fun stuff. The place was neglected so it's a mess and we're cleaning it up. However, we have interested parties in renting the place already. Which is great but hello! Place is not ready for renters. Hubby is a social butterfly so we pretty much have a family standing in our doorway ready to sign lease papers. Um. I have never done this before so on top of 12+ hour work days, I'm researching on being landlords and drafting up tenant applications and lease agreements.

Fourthly (is that a word??), our pool sprung a leak (somehow two holes decided to make my pool their home) so add finding a reputable but cheap contractor to my to do list.

5) yea I totally just changed up the sequential format. Any who, we have a potential buyer for our shop. While it means I get my weekends back (whoa! Weekends? Free time?? What's that?) I'm also frightened. I absolutely LOVE our shop and I'm not sure I'm quite ready to part with it just yet. The shop has enabled us to be financially sound. Heck, our un-conceived kids have more money than we do right now! It was also the hubby's job. I'm worried about what his next steps will be. It's a long story so just pray for him. For the both of us. Meanwhile, no donut shop means we can start thinking about kids. And EVERYONE knows the hubster has baby fever. Bad! But are we mentally ready? Let's reconvene late 2012 mmmk? k!

6) laundry and dishes are always clean, but the house is never guest ready. I'm uber embarrassed but just don't have the energy to clean. Any recommendations on house cleaners in North Dallas or how to hire a trustworthy one?? I'm skeptical on hiring anybody. It is my home after all. Messy or not!

7) all this stress is making my face break out like I'm going through puberty again. I'm so embarrassed and it's not cute in corporate world or in life. Talk about low self esteem. Sigh.

Major props to people/parents that do it all. In style. Without complaints. Like a pro. Teach this grasshopper how you do it please? Seriously.