MY WEEK IN PHOTOS: DECEMBER 11–17, 2017!

MY WEEK IN PHOTOS: DECEMBER 11–17, 2017!

A week of holiday parties at work, celebrating Zach’s birthday on his real birthday, and road tripping to Vegas to continue the festivities. Stopping at a ghost town, experiencing peak Vegas kitsch at the Peppermill, and enjoying all the food and drinks Vegas has to offer.

Enjoy!

Chocorooms and a panda hand washcloth thinggy in the advent calendar Monday.

Layer 1—who’s that girl, what’s that pose?!

Layer 2

Layer 3, a full bundle.

Makeshift wrapping job with my coworker’s wrapping paper.

Visiting the archives for a Getty anniversary project.

Passed this pile of breadsticks and bread in the hallway…tonight is the Getty’s Winter Celebration.

New department’s pre-Winter celebration gathering with fancy drinks and a sweet gift exchange.

White Elephant

I got this sweet salt lamp!!

I plugged it in intending to leave it at work but it had such a nice warm vibe that I decided to take it home.

On the way over to the holiday party. I invited my parents and Zach this year.

A beautiful clear evening tonight.

Found Zach!

Waiting for my parents at the tram.

They have arrived!

Lots of eating and drinking holiday treats

Should have taken off my badge.

So happy my parents had a good time.

What a nice Monday night

Tuesday—Zach’s real birthday! He opens one little gift from my parents haha.

Met a friend for a puzzle swap, I stood out in the loading dock with my puzzle ready to trade.

Birthday shot

I made some rosemary chicken and we had salad together before setting up the poker table.

Lil’ Bub yule log

Poker night for Zach

Poker face

Score

Warm and happy

Chips on chips.

Wednesday! A beautiful sunset.

Look carefully, you can see into the conservation studio and a conservator working on a painting.

Ninja who just wanted to take a quick break for a snack.

So. FULL.

Heading back home

Passed a Christmas tree lot so we just stopped in to smell all the goodness.

Love this log reindeer.

A cozy Tweedy is one of the best things.

Tonight is another work holiday party so I tried to be a little festive.

Work trip to test out some medium format digital cameras.

Beautiful evening

Party begins

Fidget spinner collection

Got this in the white elephant, pretty pleased with myself.

Our boss always gives a very very generous gift to somebody in the department, determined by a random number draw. Tristan won this years and his reaction…truly priceless.

Morn! Today we leave for Vegas—a present I got for Zach’s birthday, two nights at the Flamingo.

Finally took the shoulder pads out of this thrifted coat so it is coming on the road.

They are suspicious. Sorry boyos, goodbye!!!

Animals are set, later apartment!

Stopped to get a Jamba Juice for the road and waited for the juice next to this perfect birthday balloon.

Hitting the road. It’s about a four hour drive but we’re planning on stopping at a ghost town halfway.

Coffee break.

We made it to Calico Ghost Town!

A lil’ history because I can never resist: Calico is now a ghost town that was once (at its peak) a silver mining town in the Calico Mountains in the Mojave Desert. It started in 1882 and reached its peak in 1890…another 8 years went by and the town basically dried up. By 1907, the town was completely abandoned and many of the original buildings were moved to nearby towns. In 1951, the founder of Knott’s Berry Farm purchased the town and rebuilt it using old photographs as a reference.

So these are not original structures, but everything is basically in the original place including the post office, jail, school house/church and the mine.

We wandered around a bit, I complained that every building was basically a gift shop hah.

But it was still a nice break from the drive to Vegas.

We paid an extra $3 to go into the mine.

We were the only people just wandering around in the mine alone.

Successfully escaped the mine

Didn’t find any silver unfortunately.

A view overlooking the ghost town.

America’s Next Top Model desert status

Casual hangman

Last glimpses of the ghost town

Back on the road

Into the sunset

We had a little time to kill before our reservations at the Neon Museum so we stopped at a dive for a beer and enough time for me to kick Zach’s butt at pool.

Boop

You may remember that I visited the Neon Boneyard/Museum once before with Kiki and Anders. You can see that post from March 2017 here.

Last time we went during the day, this time I booked a night tour. They have 10 working signs and they light them up for the evening tours.

I love the Neon Museum because the guides do a great job of tracing Vegas’s history through the development of neon signage.

Hot pot for dinner! Zach really focusing on his sauce at the build your own sauce bar.

Perfect amount.

Made it to the Flamingo with very full bellies.

For some reason I really loved this image.

We got to our room around 9pm and then went out to wander around the hotel and casino.

Taking bath products to the next level

Darth and Chewbacca in the background.

Derpin’ on the Strip

Zeen wins $7.00

Good morning!

Checkin’ out the flamingo yard at the Flamingo

Coffee

Brunch slash breakfast

We shared a chorizo scramble

Kept seeing this little dog all over the Flamingo. WHO ARE YOU.

Bugsy Siegal opened the Flamingo in 1946. Bugsy was a notorious mobster…he actually died a year later in 1947. Suspicious…

We did some walking down the Strip. First stop: Paris!

We got Zach a special “bling bottle” filled with rum and watermelon slushie.

I call this series: Zach and the Bling Bottle, sequel to Jack and the Bean Stalk.

Into Caesers Palace

Pretty insane decorations. Apparently Caesers Palace is one of the first fully immersive casinos.

Finally went back into our hotel to get some coffees and chill out after walking around a lot.

Before dinner nap and rest

Post-nap Zach

Zach’s birthday dinner at the Peppermill! The Peppermill opened in the 70s and remains as it was to be a reminder of how the strip used to be.

Eyeing this guy’s curly fries

All the fake trees and the neon lights, this place was so much fun.

Meats and old fashioneds. “Robert De Niro was in that one scene in Casino here.” –Lyft Driver

A post shared by Sarah Waldorf (@sleepywaldo) on Dec 17, 2017 at 12:00am PST

My Instagram embeds only work part of the time. Here’s the link to the original post, but you can see a little more of the Peppermill here!

Goodnight, Peppermill.

So in a turn of events (and some last minute cocktail-fueled decisions) we decided to see who this little dog was and get tickets to the show.

Turns out that Piff is a magician that went on America’s Got Talent and got second place and he has a sidekick dog named Mr. Piffles. So delightful. Here’s a clip from YouTube of him on America’s Got Talent.

Ended the night with a little slot machine playing.

Our last morning! Went for another stroll for coffee.

Popped into the Gordon Ramsay fish and chips place but decided we weren’t too hungry yet so we settled on deep dish pizza. We knew it’d take a while to make so we were hoping we’d be hungry by then.

Found me

Got a little salad to hold us over. They told us that a deep dish pizza would take 45 minutes to make and bake…but unfortunately a mix up happened with our order and it actually took 90 minutes! We got free beers and 20% of everything…

We were SO excited to eat after waiting that long.

Gratiutous pizza eating moment.

Final stop at Golden Tiki, a place Tristan recommended and I didn’t want to miss it.

Magic

My drink was on fire.

Very fun atmosphere, I can only imagine how busy it gets on the weekend at night time.

Zach can never resist dumplings

Ate a few before hopping in the car and journeying home.

All the smoke in the casinos and the unhealthy food has really amplified the ezcema (and yessss my little eyebrow hairs come out because of the eczema not fun) and a terrible chapped lip. I dream of the day when I can do one of those Twitter threads on how I solved my skin problems. *Sigh*

Let’s go!

Goodbye, Vegas!

We followed the sunset back to Los Angeles.

Leftover pizza when we made it home.

Hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season!!!!! I’m back home in South Pas now, spent a few days in North Carolina with Zach’s family which was very very nice.

Merry Christmas eve!

Much love friends.