CHRISTMAS AND VISITING CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

MY WEEK IN PHOTOS: DECEMBER 24–30, 2018!

Christmas has come and gone, and my family takes our annual trip to wine country. Goats appear. And my dad catches a skunk.

Enjoy!

In the morning before I headed to work we did our last of the advent calendar stuff.

After work, I headed to South Pas and settled into my old room.

Put my wrapped packages under the tree

And then followed my dad to the cat trap that he’s been carefully monitoring. He’s still hopeful that Snow is in the neighborhood, and the neighbor’s kindly let him put the trap near where he was last spotted.

He’s been leaving food but not setting the trap for a while and he says there is a cat visiting cuz the food has been eaten twice a day.

Wish my dad finds Snow 😦

Christmas morning! Tubby fighting for yogurt.

We had coffee and pretty much jumped into opening some gifts.

Tubby what do you think of my Hufflepuff beanie?

Got my mom an Instant Pot! If you have a favorite recipe for the Instant Pot, please share!

Thank you Lauren! She brought me some sunscreen from Japan.

I gifted my mom the tall blue piece that she put on her sink. Yay!

Zach got me a little embroidery piece from @MirtleMakes

Got cleaned up and we headed out to my mom’s friend’s place for mochitsuki.

The steamed rice gets poked till it is sticky enough to form into a ball that can be rotated and pounded.

Then it’s time to form the mochi into balls.

Doggo named Mochi

Home from making mochi and time to cook up my spam musubis for my family lunch/dinner.

Cooked with some teriyaki sauce

All done, ready to clean

My mom’s ham looking beautiful

All ready to go! The cross sections truly reveal when the spam or rice are uneven ahah.

Merry Christmas!

Then the chaos of Christmas day at my cousin’s begins. Running around with the littlest cousins (note Syd holding a small ice cream cone).

Then we did the gift swapping for the kids and white elephant for the family. I ended up with a stress relieving coloring book for adults.

A robot my little cousin drew. So impressive, right?

Playing with some new Christmas toys

Went home to check the cat trap, indeed the food was eaten.

Early morning after Christmas we all got in the car and headed to San Luis Obispo. It’s a little over three hours away, so I brought Pokemon Let’s Go to keep me company.

Went to check in to the hotel, had lunch, met up with family friends and headed out to a winery.

Baileyana winery, the tasting room is a 1909 school house.

Lamb butt

The biggest tasting cups from Central Coast Brewing.

Finished up and headed out to dinner.

Mama’s Meatball

Garlic knots, and my parents shared a rack of lamb with bolognese on the side.

Capellini al Fresco, my first time trying this kind of pasta. It was so so good!

Back to the hotel

Has anybody been playing Let’s Go? The animation with Snorlax is the cutest but he walks too slooow.

A stormy looking day

The drive up to Paso Robles

Stopped at Tin City, a cluster of smaller wineries, breweries, distilleries and even an ice cream shop

For lunch we headed to Summerwood winery. For the past few years we’ve come here to have a picnic with a bunch of cheese, bread, and other snacks.

Melia hooked it up

We kept all the food in the windy shady area but clustered together in the sun. It was windy and cold, but the food was *delicious*

Clean up time

Mt. Olive Organic Farm

They sell olive oil and all kinds of pickled goodies.

Buying some olive oil, soap, and persimmon fruit roll up.

In the back, bunnnies!

And alpacas

Wandered into Eden Greenhouse

That farm life

I missed the worm beds and I am sad

Headed back to San Luis Obispo and walked down for dinner.

Goshi

The perfect udon meal

Walked back to the hotel through the Farmer’s Market

Gum wall

Hufflepuff repp

Checked out and headed back down to Los Angeles.

Avila Valley Barn my fav place to get that $1 bag of lettuce to feed to all the animals.

My mom so popular

Moo

I’m allergic but I am still up close here to Icicle

Tiny horse

All my new friends

Scone for the road

Linn’s of Cambria, there’s a bakery, and a shop with 50% off Christmas decor woo (no, sadly didn’t get the sloth)

Cute little Cambria cottage

Loving my Christmas pins

The way home

Stopped at Blackwell’s Corner, the place that was James Dean’s last stop before he ~died~ and I was very tempted to get that Dust Bowl shirt.

Memes are timeless

Made it home to Tubby

Took my parents to hot pot

The next day we were shocked to see that my dad had accidentally caught a baby skunk in the cat trap.

My dad threw a tarp over the cage and then got the door open, the skunk sprayed and ran. Truly exhilarating. We both got sprayed a bit ha, so some washing and scrubbing and soaking in vinegar later we were good.

Went to HMart with my mom, had some spicy noodles.

Tried to get a box to make my dumb costume idea for Tristan’s 2018-themed party.

It’s blurry, but this is my masterpiece.

Tubby took the good box so I was left with this sad small box and my ASMRist costume dream was left to die

Truly wish I took more photos, there were some gems

Sunday morn, mom is making potato salad, dad is sweeping the deck.

My dad borrowed a baby monitor from my cousin so we could see the back deck to see if Snow is coming by T_____T I truly hope he comes home soon.

Love you my Tubby

Napa cabbage needs to dry somewhere

Makin’ gyoza

I need to get better at folding them

Some…losers. “Informal”

Brown baby brown

Let’s steam these babies

And in a horrifying turn of events we accidentally burned the shit out them

Thankfully it was time to leave and go to dinner

Seeing Colee and fam and harassing her as I take her headshot

We got to the restaurant RIGHT AS they opened. First choice seats.

Everything I ate had garlic. Ended Sunday in heaven.

Thanks for reading!

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Some questions that you may or may not feel inclined to answer? So! Let’s do it. I invite you to answer in the comments:

1. What pasta dish do you think everybody should try and get into?
2. What is something you got for the holidays that you are pumped about?
3. What are you doing tonight?

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1. What pasta dish do you think everybody should try and get into?
   Cacio e pepe, so salty, so peppery, so cheesy, so good.
2. What is something you got for the holidays that you are pumped about?
   I got a set of clay tools and I’m very happy for them. I was saying that I’d get myself a set (and not borrow from the studio) once I was going to pottery for a full year, but the surprise came early!
3. What are you doing tonight?
   Seeing Bumblebee…never seen another Transformers movie so we’ll see how this goes. I also need to clean up my Christmas decorations wahhh.

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Much love friends. (And Happy New Year!)