Guess who's back?!?!

Grrrrrrrrr-eatings!!! Sorry for the radio silence - I've been off having far too much fun to find the time to sit and tell you all about it! But now that I have a quiet moment, let me share some of the photos from the last couple of months .....

As always, wine has played a rather large part in our social life and adventures! First up was a trip to one of our favourite wineries - Guglielmo in Morgan Hill - with Jared and Erin. It was Bottle Your Own day again and we couldn't resist stocking up on a couple of cases of their wonderful $6-a-bottle bargains!







Hubby had a lot of fun filling up the bottles!!

And my beloved little friend Paco was very brave riding on the conveyor belt!!

And then the boys had fun seeing how many boxes of wine they could fit in Jared's beautiful Ford Fairlane .....

Next, Jared & Erin took us to a new winery, Sycamore Creek, where the wine was simply amazing. Normally at wine tastings there are one or two that I don't like as much, but here everything was delicious so we promptly signed up to be members! Hurrah!!!

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, so after the tasting we sat outside and shared a bottle of wine while we admired the view

On the Saturday of Easter weekend, 19 of us hired a bus and went on a tour of 3 wineries in the Santa Cruz mountains. The first stop was at Savannah Chanelle, which is a lovely little place with some very lovely wine!

We were led on a tour of the vines by a rather entertaining guide, and got to sample the wines while we were out there rather than back in the tasting room, which I thought was a nice touch!

Sadly I don't have any decent photos of the other two places, but I can tell you that the second establishment, Cooper Garrod, utterly sucked balls!! I wouldn't have washed my toilet with the crap they were serving! The final stop was Mountain Winery which is a wonderful place, and just for you dear readers, I will make sure I go back and get some nice shots for you soon!

The highlight of that last couple of months has been my friend Cara's visit from Scotland! Sadly she could only come for a week, which isn't nearly enough time, but we managed to fit in a bit of shopping, a fair few cocktails, a wee day out in San Francisco, and even a trip to the ice hockey which I think was Cara's favourite part of her trip!

GO SHARKS!!!

And the week would not have been complete without a wee party to introduce her to all our wonderful friends over here! We decided to make it a cocktail party and the mojitos and lemon drops were flowing freely and absolutely delicious!

And that pretty much brings us up to date! There have been other adventures, but none that I have enough photos of to warrant a mention. As usual, I will promise to try harder, take more photos, and keep you up to date, but I know you wont hold your breath! Thank you for tuning in again!! :-)

And how was your weekend?

Happy Tuesday, my friends! Did you have a nice weekend? We had a rather busy one.

We were supposed to be going to a classical concert outside San Jose State University on Friday night but I was exhausted and incredibly sore after a new routine at the gym and three hours of baking, so we joined the neighbours for some wine and hot tubbing instead. It was a wonderful way to spend a Friday night and my
muscles were very grateful!



Saturday morning we were off to the Guglielmo Winery nearby for their quarterly bottle your own wine event. This is a great wee event where they blend up their excess wine and sell it off for $7 a bottle, and if you buy a case you get free access to the buffet of sausage, garlic bread, cured meats, cheeses and baguette.

The wine can be a bit hit and miss depending on the blend, and sadly this was not one of the better ones. It's still better than a lot of the crap you can get for the money in the supermarket so we got a case to put by for when Greeny & Nadine get here next month (5 weeks today to be precise - WOOHOOOOOO!!!)




Once we were home we had a short space of time to frost the mountain of mini cupcakes I had made the previous day to take to John & Teo's housewarming party. Luckily my handsome assistant, aka the Hubby, took care of the frosting duties while I was busy clearing up and working out how to successfully transport 70 mini cupcakes on a train. The answer? Carefully!!!

The featured cupcake this weekend was the butterscotch with salted caramel frosting, and everyone appeared to enjoy them. They might even be rivalling my chocolate chip cookies and my Oreo truffles for the top spot in my friends' affections!!

Fun times were had at the party, including a thorough testing of John's new BB gun. No people or animals were injured during these tests, but a Diet Coke can was disintegrated and a broken garden chair was, well, destroyed further!

Just another Saturday night in sunny California!!











After a brief hangover on Sunday I surprised everyone, including myself, by making it to the gym - more for a muscle stretch than a real workout it, but I felt better for at least trying.



In the evening we finally made it to one of the free classical concerts that Symphony Silicon Valley and San Jose State University put on every summer. We really enjoyed the ones we went to last year with Eric and Rose and were looking forward to them again this year, but unfortunately we managed to miss all but the final one on Sunday :-(

We spent a lovely hour or so listening to the music in the sunshine and enjoying a glass of wine and some leftover cupcakes. Oh yeah, and some free ice cream! :-)

Well, I'm off to the gym now. I have a fun afternoon of tidying out my shoe closet to look forward to - but don't worry, I'm not getting rid of any of my babies!! We just ran out of room so we got some more shelves to help make them more comfortable :-) If you behave yourselves I might show you some pics when I'm done ......!!

Laters .... x

Wine tasting in the sun :-)

On Sunday we were delighted to be invited to the Vintage Santa Clara Wine & Food Festival with Eric and Rose - an annual alumni event at Santa Clara University where Eric was a student. Now, this most likely conjures up an image of elegantly dressed people sniffing, swirling and spitting fine wines in the sunshine - and you would almost be right! There were many elegantly dressed people, there were lots of very fine wines, but not a whole lot of "tasting" going on!!






So, I'll set the scene. We're in a courtyard at the uni and it's full of little white tented stalls representing all the local wineries. Once you had paid for your ticket, everything at the event was free, so you just picked up your glass on arrival and started making your way round the stalls.

Now, we tried to be methodical so we could fit all the stalls in but that plan soon fell by the wayside!! (At this point I should probably point out that we were only getting wee taster pours at each stand, although there was nothing to stop you going back repeatedly if you found one you liked!)




There was every kind of wine under the sun, and even a few beers if you were that way inclined, but I stuck to the red and soon lost track of what I had and hadn't tried! My personal favourite was easy to remember though, as it was a rather delicious cabernet sauvignon from the Punch Vineyard, which was the name of my dog when I was a kid! :-)




Luckily some local restaurants also had stands and we were able to line our stomachs with chicken skewers, calamari, roast hog, and a Mexican ground beef pasty which was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten!!






A wonderful ageing rock band provided the sound track for the afternoon, and inevitably there was much dancing as the wine took hold!








It was a wonderful afternoon, and full of many moments where Hubby and I had to pinch ourselves as we still cannot quite believe that this is our life now!







But our day was not over yet. Custom dictates that when the festival ends everyone make there way to the local student bar a short walk away - and I mean everyone!! I have never seen so many people crammed in to one place, and it was incredibly uncomfortable so we didn't stay long.



Eric told us an interesting story, though, of how everyone comes after graduation and pins a dollar bill with their business card (or some just write their name on the bill) to the ceiling, and if they get made redundant they can come back and take the dollar down and get a free drink. I thought that was a nice story, and all the dollar bills made an impressive sight!



Any sane person would have gone home at this point, but we stayed out for another hour or two, luckily in a much quieter bar, before we headed for the train home - very drunk and very happy ..... *hic*

A HUGE thank you to Eric and Rose for an awesome day out!!! x