Happy Thanksgiving!!

SF: Helicopter tour of the City (Day 2 part 2)

My chin hit the floor when Barrett told me he actually wanted to take a helicopter tour! I was super excited and we booked it before he could change his mind! ha ha. It was definitely cool to see the city from a bird's eye view! We were able to go under the Golden Gate Bridge and over and under the Bay Bridge. Too bad there was fog surrounding the GGB, but I guess that is just a normal day for the area.

Our helicopter! There were also two hilarious British guys on the tour with us...

Sausalito...city across the GGB from SF

Going under the GGB

So much fog!

SF Skyline

One lonely sail boat in the bay

Downtown and the Bay Bridge (I think it's 8 miles long connecting SF and Oakland)

Ferry Building

Alcatraz

AT&T Park

Candlestick Park - Where the SF 49ers play

Bonus Picture again! After dinner that night we walked by Boudin bakery and for once there weren't a ton of people surrounding it so we could actually see inside! Can you believe they made that alligator out of bread?!!?

SF: AT&T Park (Day 2 part 1)

AT&T Park aka The Park on the Bay aka the Home of the 2012 World Series Champions. The day we arrived in SF was the day of the parade and it was a mad house!! So visiting the ball park the day after we thought wouldn't be so bad, but there were still a ton of people there stocking up on gear! I don't think you could ever know how excited I was to be at the current home stadium of Hunter Pence! If only he had been there ;)

Bonus picture of the bay bridge! The sun finally came out on our walk back to the ferry building from the ball park and I couldn't miss a great photo op :)

SF: Fishermans Wharf/Pier 39/Ghirardelli Square (Day 1)

The boyfriend and I decided to take a quick 4 day trip to San Francisco! The main reason we wanted to go to SF was to see/visit Alcatraz and the ball park, but we packed much much more into our time there. We left our first day open since you never know what will happen when you travel, so after we arrived at our hotel we explored FishermansWharf, Pier 39 and Ghirardelli Square!

Pier 39 is home to just a few a ton of sea lions! They sure do make a lot of noise!!

It was very hard to capture all the flags out at once...ha ha

The view of Alcatraz from Pier 39

At the Wharf there was an old Navy sub you could tour...

It was very interesting to see how much they can pack into a small space!

Also at the Wharf was the S.S Jeremiah O'brien that you could tour...

It only took 56 days to build this giant!!!

The ship was used during the days of World War II and now serves as a living memorial

This engine room was the engine room they filmed for the movie Titanic! They said to make it look bigger on camera they added mirrors to the room and if you go back and watch the movie you'll notice the mirrors! Crazy!

mmmmm....chocolate!

We all know I'm a little obsessed with chocolate, so all my souvenirs for people just so happened to be chocolate!

Bunco Hostess Gift

One of my good friends hosts a bunco night occasionally and had one this past Friday (and I actually won for once! woo hoo!) Her birthday also happens to be right around the corner so I thought this would make the perfect hostess/birthday gift for a bunco queen!!

Bunco towels to match her pink and black bunco set!! Thanks to Elizabeth and her mom for making these happen. :)

It wouldn't be a true bunco gift without a bottle of wine! I heard by word of mouth (or maybe just Erica) that the cupcake wine in Angel Food and Red Velvet is really good. So I picked up a bottle to give her along with the towels...Now can you guess how I wrapped everything?!?!

If you answered a gift with a gift, you are correct! I think I saw somewhere (probably pinterst) the idea of wrapping a wine bottle in a towel so I just kind of ran with that idea...

At first, I tried wrapping the bottle with both towels like the black one, but decided I liked the look of the pink one acting like a koozie better. To secure the pink one I used a small piece of tape in the back and as you can see to make the black towel stay up I tied some checkered ribbon around it. I just love how it turned out!!!

Pumpkin Spice Popcorn

A little variation on my chocolate covered popcorn. Back at the beginning of October when we were at the ranch, my brother's girlfriend and I discussed how good pumpkin spice popcorn might be after eating an entire square of pumpkin fudge! Well I decided to put it to the test and what do ya know...it's pretty darn good!

Above is everything I used for this batch. As you can see there is no chocolate candy coating and no toffee bits. I was unsure of how the toffee bits and the pumpkin kisses would mix and I also thought adding chocolate candy coating would hide the pumpkin flavor which we wanted. I also forgot to buy the regular popcorn I use (Orville Redenbacher's Natural Popcorn Simply Salted 50% less fat) so I used the Jolly Time Healthy Pop Butter variety I had on hand instead.

Here's what I did...

Step 1. Pop the popcorn and then pick out the un-popped kernels and lay on a wax paper covered baking sheet.

Step 2. Melt your vanilla candy coating according to the package and try and spread as evenly as possible over the popcorn

Step 3. Melt your pumpkin kisses in the microwave with intervals of 30 seconds and then spread over popcorn as well

Step 4. Sprinkle half a bag of your Fall Harvest M&Ms over the wet chocolate

Step 5. Stick in fridge for a few minutes so the melted kisses will harden

Step 6. Enjoy!

The entire batch was intended for my brother's girlfriend, but once my brother and her dad got a hold of it they didn't want to share. I already have requests to make more for Thanksgiving when they are back in town...ha ha.

Movie Round Up

I hope everyone had a very happy Halloween! In honor of Halloween and to check another thing off my fall bucket list I went and saw a scary movie...eek!

Paranormal Activity 4


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When I heard they were making another one of these, I was super excited. I love being scared...I know I'm weird. I rounded up my new scary movie buddy and headed to the theater after work Monday. This movie was freaky, creepy and good! I think the best part is that they left it open for more...woo hoo!

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In other movie news...I've been watching a ton of Netflix (ok mainly Rules of Engagement). Here are my most recent movie watchings from good ol' Netflix...

The Five Year Engagement



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I don't think I can actually put into words how bored I was with this movie. First of all, I'm not a huge fan of Jason Segel. Yes I have laughed at some of his stuff before, but overall he in general bores me. However, I tend to like the movies Emily Blunt does so that is my main reason for wanting to watch this movie. Sadly she didn't impress me this time. I felt like the whole movie was really soft spoken and I couldn't get the movie loud enough...so maybe I just didn't hear the funny parts.

Mary and Max



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Yet another boring movie. Some parts were cute and it had a good ending, but overall I couldn't wait for it to be over. This was a claymation movie with not much color. If I recall correctly, red was the actual color shown and everything else was shades of brown in Mary's world or shades of grey in Max's world. Anyways, since I had never heard of this movie until it was recommended to me, I figured most of you reading this probably haven't heard of it either. It's about a little girl in Australia who becomes pen pals with a older man in New York. They are both friendless and have a mutual love for chocolate. They write each other for years with a few breaks in between when one or the other have mental issues.