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Lots of Halloween fun over the weekend! First off, last Friday, we met Starr and Sylvie at the library in Bay Ridge for a special Halloween storytime and craft. I was afraid to let Sienna wear her Thor costume too much in fear of ruining it so Starr was nice enough to bring something from her stash.

I think it’s hysterical that Robin is taller than Batman! They look cute regardless!


They made paper plate ghosts (which was one of the crafts I had set up for the kids for Shirley’s party Saturday!)

And speaking of Shirley’s party, it happened on the day we got a freak snowstorm! Thankfully, we didn’t have far to go. I set up a craft table for the kids with pom poms and pipe cleaners, markers and crayons, glue and tape, etc. I made pasta salad and apple cupcakes with chocolate buttercream and apple cider cupcakes with apple cider cream cheese frosting with fancy Halloween themed cupcake wrappers that I made with my Silhouette SD. AND I FORGOT MY CAMERA!! Boo hoo! So no photos from the party from me! Anyway, the apple cupcakes were good but I didn’t get a chance to try the apple cider cupcakes! And the craft table was big hit with the kids! Even the boys wanted in on it!

On Halloween, Sienna’s class had a party and the parents were invited to come during the last hour. We got to see a little bit of what they do during school.

Her class sitting on the rug. There are 18 kids in her class.

Eating goodies from the party

Dancing and Sienna turns and smiles at me (awwww!)

Sienna and her 2 best buds!

This is why Sienna loves this song:

Later on that day, we went trick or treating with Emma and Leah, like we did last year. I forgot to take a photo of all 3 of them posed together tho! Darn! Where is my brain?

Just like last year, Emma and Leah were ready to go home after about an hour but Sienna kept wanting to ring more doorbells! LOL! That’s funny because she didn’t even eat all the candy she had gotten from last year! I guess she just likes to get free stuff like her mom! HA!

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Last month, on September 29, I woke up at the insane hour of 5:30 to attend a taping of the new ABC show, The Chew. It was Rosh Hashanah so Sienna was off from school so I had my dad sleep over the night before since I had to leave so early! The Chew is a talk show centering around food with 5 co-hosts. It replaces the long running, now canceled All My Children so it already has that running against it. I have a friend who hopes the new show will be canceled so they could bring back AMC. I think she ignored me when I said even if they cancel The Chew, they aren’t going to bring back AMC, at least on tv! Anyway, the taping was at 7:30 allllll the way up by Lincoln Center. I went with Brenda, who told me about the tickets, and Joy. I won’t lie to you, I was hoping for some good swag or at least some good food to taste! Got neither (unless you consider a Mickey Mouse apron good swag!)

A self portrait

The taping was really like any other show taping. There’s a comedian there to get you in a good mood and to tell you when to clap. Paula Deen was on the show and although she is not my favorite chef, it was fun to see her. She really is like how she is on TV! Very personable. They did actual cooking on the show and it was such torture to smell all the goodness! The taping ended around 10:30 and there were seats available for the 2nd taping (there are 2 tapings on Thursdays). No way! We are going to go eat! I am actually surprised Brenda was able to keep her eyes open, having come home at 1 am the night before. No sympathy as she was at the Radiohead show at Roseland!

My bad photo of Paula Deen

Brenda dealing with work issues

All done!

I had wrote in my Facebook status that I was going to the taping and my friend told me to say hello to Clinton Kelly. She is good friends with him and they went to high school together. I actually had the chance as he was in the audience talking with someone. Nice guy! Michael Symon also seemed like a personable guy as I noticed he was chatting with several audience members. The others, well, they really didn’t even turn our way. Not a criticism, just an observation! And as a coincidence, Yves had videotaped Carla Hall the day before as she was a former Girl Scout!

Now, on to lunch! We decided to go to Shopsin’s! It’s been so long.

I ordered poutine (exact name on their menu, I don’t remember!) MMMMMMM!

Brenda got a pancake sandwich with bacon and eggs. They don’t skimp on bacon!

I think Joy got some sort of baked potato with fresh ricotta?

Of course, I had to stop off at Economy Candy! All in all a nice day!

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On Friday, Yves and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! 10 years ago on Friday, we went to Vegas to get married and a handful of our friends and family joined us. We had planned it earlier that year as October is my favorite month. It was nice to get so many well wishes on my Facebook page. Our friend, Rob, who went to Vegas with us, reminded us of how his room in the Tropicana hotel had mirrors on the ceiling! LOL! He also wanted to make note that he did not request the mirrors! HA! Yeah, ok! Anyway, we celebrated on Friday by going to Morton’s Steakhouse. I knew of the place, having bought a gift card for friends Bill and Laura, who were moving from New York to Chicago a few years ago (all the cdmomers chipped in!). Our friend, Jana, highly recommended the place so we said, why not?

Here’s the photo they took of us. The service was wonderful and everyone wished us a happy anniversary. The food was so good! I am still full from the dinner on Friday! We opted for the steak and seafood special. They started us off with warm onion bread. I could have easily eaten the whole thing! But I only cut off 2 pieces! I ordered the chopped salad and Yves got the caesar. I love that salad! It was so delicious! I’m going to have to attempt to make that at home. I got the Shrimp Alexander with my filet mignon. The shrimp was jumbo, lightly breaded with a butter wine sauce. MMMM. I also ordered the brussel sprouts sauteed in bacon and shallots! Yves got the lump crab cake with his filet and the grilled asparagus with balsamic glaze. I was already half way full when our entrees came! I was only able to eat half of my warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream! It was so good but I felt like I was going to burst! Yves got carrot cake. It was very light and fresh but it had cloves in it, something that Yves doesn’t like. If it wasn’t for that, it would be the perfect carrot cake! He ended up taking home the carrot cake. It’s too bad I couldn’t take the warm chocolate cake home!

My chopped salad, you can see the onion bread in the back!

Sorry for the bad vegetable photos but I just wanted to make sure I document them. We ended up taking them home too.

Afterwards we had originally thought of going to check out a movie. Going to the movies is not something we do often since Yves has unofficially banned going to movies. He ALWAYS seems to get stuck sitting by the noise makers! But since it was a special occasion, we were thinking of giving it a go. Well, we were so stuffed from dinner that sitting down for a movie did not appeal to us. We had to walk it off! So we decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade. It was very nice! We haven’t been down there in awhile. We also took a few night shots, which we used to love doing!

All in all, a very nice evening! Oh, here is the card I made for Yves too! Very simple.

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Yves’ mom came for a visit in August and stayed with us for a week. She was actually here for 2 days in July but that was really a stopover before heading to France to meet the Chopards at Il de Seine for 3 weeks. Sienna took to her right away! That was a relief! I wasn’t sure how she would be because the last time my mother in law was here, it took a couple of days for Sienna to warm up to her. Yves and I even went out on a date! Dinner AND a movie! In the city! We don’t usually venture too far when my dad watches her but I think she is old enough to be able to handle grandpa! Anyway, I digress. We went shopping at Ikea on Long Island one day, grandma took Sienna to the playground while I got my hair done, we went to Coney Island, we went to the Bronx Zoo and did more shopping! Not necessarily in that order! Here are some highlights:

Sienna likes the pretty dress Grandma bought from Jamaica!

Grandma takes us out to lunch at Johnny Rockets at the Broadway Mall. Cute braids courtesy of Grandma!

The “face”

Coney Island!

Skeeball (at 75 cents a game! WHAT?!)

I used to love Tilt-a-Whirl when I was younger too. Now Sienna loves it. (photo by grandma)

a trip to Coney Island isn’t complete without going to Nathan’s!

Yves’ cousin, David, comes by.

With the giraffes at the Bronx Zoo. Sienna was grumpy from walking and being hot.

Another famous face!

Here’s a funny video I took of Sienna while we were shopping in Kohl’s with grandma. This was in July. (Taken with my Ipad2)

Entertaining herself at Kohl’s from Lisa on Vimeo.

I got some fun animal photos while at the zoo. I’d like to do another post on that.

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I’m going to separate our vacation to Myrtle Beach into 3 parts. Part 1 will be the drive down, part 2 will be the actual Myrtle Beach vacation and part 3 will be the drive home. So here is part 1!

Yves’ plan was to leave at 8 am on Saturday and we actually left on time!!! Since the drive to Myrtle Beach is supposed to take 12 hours (and that’s without stops), we were going to stop somewhere past the 6 hour mark and stay in a hotel. I sat in the back with Sienna since this was going to be such a long trip. Things went pretty smoothly. We stopped at a rest stop after 2 hours and then for lunch after about 4 hours. We somehow ended up at Frank’s Diner in Jessup, MD. Pretty unassuming place and kinda happy we didn’t end up at a chain (we took care of that on the way home! LOL). It’s an old diner that smelled like old people when you walked in and even had mini jukeboxes at each table! There were only a few tables occupied but like 6 waitresses. Sienna got a grilled cheese and both me and Yves got patty melts with different bread and cheeses. Something must have happened in the kitchen because our food took awhile to come out. The waitress apologized to us and even when Sienna and Yves’ dish came out, mine took another 5 minutes to come out. I do have to say, tho, that it was pretty good!

With the help of our ipad2, we found a Hampton Inn in Colonial Heights, VA to stay in. Although it was not really super necessary to use the ipad to find a hotel, it sure helped us find one with free wifi (which most hotels offer), LCD tvs (which not every hotel offers), indoor pool and vacancies without getting out of the car! Come on, that’s cool, right? We almost picked a hotel with the tube tvs, which would not have worked with the apple tv we brought along, so quickly found one with the LCD. It ended up not working anyway because their wifi was not so high speed. We relaxed a bit in the pool and jacuzzi (woohoo!) before having dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. Yes, a chain but unfortunately, I did not have the energy to try and find a local place. Surprisingly, the food was pretty tasty! We even got dessert! They had one of 4 mini cupcakes (2 red velvet and 2 carrot cake), which was perfect for us!

The next morning we ate the breakfast the hotel offered and off we went! Sienna decided to take over my camera and wanted to take photos too, just like mommy and daddy! Here are her feet:

Find her set of photos on my flickr page here.

We had a planned stop at South of the Border, a place I really wanted to check out! We were going to even eat lunch there but after some investigating, decided we would rather stop somewhere before that to eat (reviews were pretty bad for the restaurants). I used my ipad to find a restaurant and found rave reviews at the restaurant we ended up at. Well, what a disappointment! It wasn’t horrible but wasn’t all that. I can’t even remember the name or where it was!

Anyway, we made it!

It was a pretty hot day so we didn’t stay that long here. If it wasn’t for Sienna, me and Yves probably could have spent a couple of hours walking around the place taking photos! But that’s ok, we got some nice photos.

and some ice cream!

(You can see more in my flickr set!)

Here’s another Shot by Sienna photo that I would like to end this post with. After South of the Border when we were back in the car. Cracks me up!

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Well, I’ll probably say this every year for the appropriate age so here goes this year’s! I can’t believe my little girl is 4 years old!! I was just telling Yves how I can remember her birth like it was yesterday. Yes, I really can! Everything else after that is pretty much a blur but the birth I can remember! Anyway, she already had 2 celebrations before today! One with my parents on Thursday and one at school on Friday. It’s good to be 4, huh? Today we are heading to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia and our friend Pete is coming along. Even though it is only 2 hours away, we are making it an overnight trip. Sienna likes staying over in a hotel with a pool, which is exactly what we are doing. We almost had a party for her but after doing some research at some party places, we decided it was just too expensive. We would have to invite all the kids in her class and then with her other friends outside of school, it would just be too much. And for 2 hours! I’ll wait to spend that money for her birthday parties when she is older and I’m sure there will be plenty of them!

Chowing down on the cake from my parents. Strawberry!

Birthday crown at school

Cupcakes for class. I like how they turned out! I’m getting the knack of the decorating tip!

Sienna in between Abby and Sarah

Sienna in between Caius and Darany

Happy Birthday circle with Sienna in the middle

A big birthday hug from Elli

Zipper pulls I made for the goody bags

The goody bags

Happy Birthday Sienna! from Lisa on Vimeo.

I’ll sure I’ll have another post about our Philadelphia adventures!

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As if I don’t have enough things to keep me on the computer, I discovered something called pinterest! It’s like a virtual bulletin board or a visual bookmark. You create boards (categories) and while you are surfing around the ‘net and find something interesting, you can pin it onto one of your boards. I do a lot of bookmarking but most of the time I forget about them so having a virtual representation will most likely help me remember them. You can follow other people to see what they pinned too. Here’s my pinterest in case you are interested in what I pinned! I’m not surprised that my crafty and food boards have the most stuff!

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We rang out 2010 with a big feast and welcomed 2011 with a big feast!

My friends Jana and Allen invited us over for a 5 course dinner on New Year’s Eve. It was nice to get together without the kids around (they are the parents of Emma and Leah seen here) I haven’t eaten that late or stayed up past midnight in awhile! Allen did all the cooking and he did a great job. I do regret not taking a photo of our wonderful hosts but hey, here’s the food (priorities!)

1st course!

I believe Allen might have said these were veal meatballs but honestly, I wasn’t listening to him because I was so hungry. LOL
2nd course!

Because of Allen, I now add sliced almonds and avocados to our salad! MMMM
3rd course!

I think this speaks for itself!
4th course!

Juicy, tender pork! MMMMM
Dessert!

I’m sure the brownie on the left is great on it’s own but totally got overshadowed by the awesome apple cake on the right!
I also forgot to take a photo of the sparkling wine we brought over to toast in the new year. Allen and Jana don’t drink so it was fun to see Jana get a little tipsy after a few sips. We should have opened the wine earlier! LOL

My dad stayed over to watch Sienna (although there wasn’t any watching since he came over when she went to bed) so we took him and my mom to dim sum on New Year’s day. We usually go to East Harbor for dim sum but decided to check out Bamboo Garden for a change (we’ve been there before but not in awhile.) It’s not as good as East Harbor but they have some different things that East Harbor doesn’t have. I was pleasantly surprised that they serve Shanghai soup dumplings! MMMM! I’ve been craving them since the big blizzard put the kabosh on our Chinatown soup dumpling outing! The meat part of the dumpling tasted good but sadly there was no soup in the soup dumpling! (I still ate like 6 of them!)

soup dumpling

Veggie dumping (the skin was too thick and chewy)

Sienna’s favorite, Shumai

Taro Dumpling

Har Gow aka shrimp dumplings

I’m not sure what this is really called but I call it chow fun rolls. I’ve only seen it here and it’s quite tasty. I think we got this twice!

Dumpling soup, it was just eh but it’s something I don’t usually see so I wanted to try it.

The bill. $37 for 4 and a half people. Pretty good! There was more we ate that I didn’t take photos of. After a certain point, I just forgot and just stuffed myself!

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Before I post about Christmas, here are some photos from a little snow we got yesterday. It started around 10 am on Sunday and was still going when I went to bed around 11:30pm! This is how it looked when we woke up this morning and went outside.

It’s very windy so there are a lot of snow drifts. See how lucky that tan car across the street is? The wind blew the snow in a way that made a snow free moat around his car! Not so lucky for that black car on our side of the street!

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As much as I want to curl up in a ball and wallow in self pity from dealing with some health stuff, today is not the day for that (besides which, it really isn’t so bad, it could be worse!) I want to take this day to be grateful for all I do have and I am truly thankful. I am thankful for my family. My wonderful husband who is supportive and always there for me and who is a great father. My miracle, my daughter. What a joy to hear her singing or talking to herself in the morning as we are getting up from sleep. She truly is a joy and I have to remember that with the few times she does upset the applecart, they are so few and far between. For my parents. Although we have a difficult relationship most of the time, I am grateful they are alive and live close by. I am grateful for the little time they spend with Sienna. I am grateful for the roof over our heads, for the money that buys our food and for the opportunity to be able to stay home full time to take care of Sienna and do crafts in between. I hope I have these things to be grateful for for a long time to come.

And to keep this post from being all sappy, here are some photos I took at Sienna’s school. She had a Thanksgiving party and the parents were invited. There is also a cute video at the end of her singing and dancing to the Please and Thank You song.

Chowing down!

Sienna and Yves looking at something

Dancing with her teacher, Mrs. D.

The chicken dance with Julian

Saying cheese with Kostas

The last 3 photos were taken of photos posted on the wall from when they went pumpkin picking back in October. So cute!!

Please and Thank You from Lisa on Vimeo.

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