Winter Holiday 2014

Happy Holidays! 

I'm glad I got all my shopping done and Christmas set up done early, so all I had to worry about was catching the fun stuff of the holidays. I was able to see a lot of holiday decorations and lights thought that it would be best to share them. I've seen so many different Christmas trees, decorated houses, and light show and was able to go ice skating. But, I'm hoping I will go ice skating again!

Oakland California Temple

One of the most memorable holiday lights I seen were in Oakland at the Oakland California Temple. Lily suggested we visited the place and I'm glad we did.

Tree in Arden

Tree in Union Square, SF

I've seen so many Christmas trees that I'm not going to post them all.

Tree in Folsom

Tree in Japantown, SF

 

I don't know what it is about ice skating that I enjoy so much, but I love it!

A lot of the decorated houses I seen I found out about through the Lights of the Valley website or simple just searching in Google "best decorated houses in Elk Grove". I looked up places in both Sacramento and Elk Grove.

Rick's Light show was great. I really enjoyed it. I was nervous when there was traffic on the way there because I wanted to make it by 5pm because the show starts at 5pm and I didn't want to miss any of it. Luckily, I made it on time to see the whole thing :).

Macy's Theater of Lights in Old Sacramento definitely had the most people. And, the show was good. I definitely enjoyed it. I also like the Christmas tree.

I can't catch every single holiday decorated place, but I can enjoy what I can. I wish everyone a happy holiday or wonderful winter season.

San Francisco with Lily and Chen

It was the last week that me and Chen met up with Lily again. I was surprised that Lily would come to California again this year. I told her that I plan on going to New York next year, so I hope that happens!

I originally planned on going to San Francisco at 7am, but I had to take care of some stuff that morning and didn't want to bring my laptop along. We ended up in Oakland around 11 and picked up Lily and headed to our hotel. We also got our bus passes ready and was able to obtain a map with bus routes at our hotel. Our first destination was Fishermen's Wharf. I been there a few times already, but it was Lily's first time. Lily liked it because it was touristy.

Our first goal was to eat and we dined at Fog Harbor at Pier 39. We had a great view of the Pier and a part of the city.

Me and Chen shared some fried stuff and I ordered the clam chowder and a orange juice.

There was some nice decorations at Pier 39, including a big Christmas tree that's pretty skinny.

There's lots of heart statues in San Francisco. One of them is in Union Square. And, another one is at Fishermen's Wharf.

After Fishermen's Wharf, we took the bus to Lombard Street to see the Crooked Street. It was rather nice looking and looked exactly like it did in pictures. There's only houses around though from what I could see.

After our visit to Crooked Street, we headed to Chinatown for some boba and had some Cool Tea Bar.

We walked around Union Square for a bit. I ended up getting some items at Uniqlo and didn't plan on shopping.

 The nicest decorations were at the park. There was a view of Macy's, which was decorated really nice and the park had a big tree.

We took the bus to Japantown and ended up eating Korean food at New Korea House. After dinner, we made our last stop of the night to the Palace of Fine Arts, which looked great at night. There was nobody else around though.

The next day, we went to Japantown and had lunch at Kui Shin Bo. I thought it was a cool place to have lunch. It seems casual in there and it had good lunch specials.

One of the stops me and my friend always make in Japantown is Daiso. Daiso is a nice place to get cute goods for a cheap price. That day, they had really cute socks for sale and we all ended up with a few of them. I also got a sign that said "Merry Christmas" to help decorate my home.

After walking around Japantown for a bit, we got crepes. Chen bought crepes from Sophie's Crepe and me and Lily got crepes from Belly Good Cafe. I used to think that the only difference between the two places was that Sophie's has a crispier crepe and Belly Good has a softer crepe. I found out that Sophie's Crepe only serves vanilla ice cream and only has other kind of flavors in gelato. At Belly Good Cafe, there's many different ice cream flavors to choose from and you can even have a green tea crepe. Also, it's easier to eat the whole crepe since you can just rip off the red paper that is given at Belly Good versus at Sophie's you have one hard paper holding the whole crepe and you can't really rip that off.

 We visited a few museums the next day in San Francisco. We visited Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Cartoon Art Museum, and Museum of Craft and Design. I was able to obtained a few informational flyers of the work that was currently in the museums. I been saving up flyers or whatever I can for my special scrapbook I'm going to work on next year.

Before we took Lily back, we went to Purplekow and then headed to Oakland. Lily suggested that we visit the Oakland Temple, which was nicely decorated.

 We also made a trip inside the visitor center to look around and ended up staying longer than planned. I didn't expect there to be a great view of Oakland and San Francisco at the temple. But, it was nice to see.

We dropped off Lily at her grandma's place and hopefully we will see Lily in New York next year!

My 24th Birthday

Yesterday was my 24th birthday. It was way faster than I would have liked. A few months ago, I planned to create a list of things that I have learned by now, but then I had a change of mind. I also made a scavenger hunt list for me to do, but I eventually decided not to do it, but I did keep the list.

In the morning, my mom forced me to eat porridge she claim was healthy before I headed out and afterwards she gave me a red envelope.

I had lunch at Cafe Rolle with one of my friends on my birthday.  I ordered the chicken breast sandwich, while my friend ordered the salmon sandwich. We also ordered the vanilla creme brulee. I haven't tried creme brulee before and I was expecting it to taste different and I didn't really like it although it does look great.

After lunch, I headed to the mall and because I really wanted to get Urban Decay eyeliner. I bought some a while back and I suddenly lost all of them and I really liked their eyeliner. I ended up getting a mini pack of eyeliner and a Ibuki protective moisturizer.

My mom bought me a cake. I was surprised because I usually ask her for it in my previous birthday, but this time she asked me and she got me it.

The next day, I met up with friends at BJ's in Elk Grove. We had to wait a bit since they were busy during lunch time and more of our party arrived as we waited.

Me and Jessey were the only ones to have a drink there. I thought my drink was ok though and not to my liking.

Half of the table ordered their own dishes and the other half shared. The half that I shared with decided on the bbq spareribs, fried calamari, and chicken wings. It wasn't until later that I realized I wanted the pizza.

Since it was my birthday, I also got a pizookie. As I got it, my friends sang happy birthday and I ate some of the pizookie.

I was able to get a picture of all the guests who attended my birthday lunch. Next time, I will have my birthday gathering at a place with a round table because I like being closer to my guests and that way it's easier to share food.

I was surprised by each person that I got from each person. I was happy with the gifts that I got from each person. There was some stuff that I been wanting for a long time, but I didn't want to get it. I didn't expect to get that many gifts :).

Overall, I think this is one of the best birthdays I've had. I got a chocolate cake. I was able to have a birthday celebration with friends and got lots of gifts from friends.