Mexican Food and Surfboards

This week has been pretty busy at work and on Wednesday, we headed out to the East Bay for meetings. I was up so early and left at 7am to get out there. I was so tired by 4pm but we had a team dinner last night since a coworker is in town visiting from another office.

We went to Dona Tomas in Oakland. This restaurant was on Telegraph Ave and was in the Mission-like neighborhood of SF. Lots of restaurants and shops!


We ordered a bunch of things to share but I stuck with the chicken tortilla soup, which was delish! I was so tired and had been on the go for so long, I needed something light so I could go home and go to bed!

In other news, Erik finished shaping that surfboard he was working on. He dropped it off at Sunset Shapers for them to glass it. Can't wait to see the finished project! He wants to get some more blanks to create another board. HUGE reason why we loved the outdoor space our friends have at their Rockridge apartment - area to shape surfboards!!

This weekend is looking to be another fun one. Oh and we just realized THANKSGIVING is in two weeks. When did it suddenly become the holidays!?!

Weekend & Rockridge

This weekend was pretty laid back and we got a lot done. On Friday, we stayed in and Erik did some brewing. It was our first Friday since June that we did not have to go to bed early to get up and run or had plans of some sort. 

On Saturday, we ran, I got my hair done, and Erik surfed. We also went to the movies to see Cloud Atlas. 

This was an interesting but strange movie. I'm pretty sure it was about past lives. haha. What was cool was that there were only a few main actors who kept changing their look throughout different parts of the movie. 

On Sunday, we had a fun day. We went out to the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland to check it out. We drove around and then met up with our friends Andrea & Carrie. They just moved to Rockridge after living in SF for over 10 years!! 

Rockridge was SO cute! Erik and I both loved it. The main street there is College Ave and is filled with restaurants, shops, and open markets.

 We met up with our friends and had lunch at Southie. Their tagline is "East Coast Mentality. West Coast Sensibility." We had delicious sandwiches and salads for lunch. We strolled College Ave stopping at an old school candy store and checking out what the street had to offer. 

We also stopped into a bar, Ben & Nick's, for a beer. They have a lot of beers on tap and our friends said they really like that place. Well, we walked in there around 2 or 3pm and didn't leave until 7pm!! haha. Lunch turned into Sunday Funday but it was really fun. 

It was really a great weekend. We got to catch up on errands, see a movie, and check out a part of Oakland.

Halloween 2012

Our Halloween was pretty low key! We had a great soup for dinner - Pumpkin Sage Soup.

This is totally not my photo but it is from Skinnytaste, a blog I have been getting a lot of recipes from. They are healthy and easy to make. 

Ingredients:

• 4-5 cups of canned pumpkin

• 1 tbsp butter (olive oil for dairy-free)
• 3/4 cup shallots, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 4 cups fat free, low sodium chicken broth (vegetarians can use vegetable stock)
• 1 tbsp fresh sage, plus more for garnish
• salt and fresh pepper to taste

Directions

• Add butter to a large pot or Dutch oven, on medium heat; add shallots and sauté until tender, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook an additional minute. Add pumpkin and broth to the pot, along with sage, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer, covered for about 15 minutes.
  
  Blend in a blender or immersion blender and blend the soup until smooth. 

So good!

We also watched Walking Dead and Halloween (from the 70's). I wish we lived in a neighborhood with houses so we could give out candy. I saw a few kids in costumes who looked so cute including a Wolverine on BART who got some candy from people!  

 Happy Halloween!

 

Winchester Mystery House

On Sunday, we went down to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. I have been wanting to go here since we moved here so it was fun to finally see it!
 

This house & the story behind it are pretty cool. Essentially, this chick Sarah married William Winchester, of the Winchester family that made and sold rifles. After her husband died, she moved to CA and built this mansion with all of the money she had from marrying rich, thanks to the success of the rifle company.

She apparently had spirits that told her to keep building onto this mansion in a strange way. Construction went on for 30+ years, around the clock, to create this weird house. She wouldn't tear down walls to create new rooms, she would have a new room just built right next to the old one. Therefore, there are doors and staircases in the oddest places such as a set of stairs that leads to the ceiling and doors that open into other doors.

 Um, these were in the gift shop and we did not know what the heck they were made of. You know what they look like! haha

Check out these cool Halloween shades....

 We went on a tour that took about 1.5 hours. You weren't suppooooosed to take pics in the house but I HAD to see if I could get any ghostly orbs in the photos. hah. We have seen this house on various ghost hunter shows!

 Old kitchen

 Ball room with an organ that does not work, but some people hear organ music in the house. Eek!

 Old walls

 More kitchen shots & old appliances

 Windows in the middle of the house because she built onto existing rooms. Here, she put walls up around the outside porch to make a new room!

 Stairway to the ceiling. Now, this might seem "spooky" but really what happened was she had a room built over the staircase & never took into consideration that the staircase would get cut off!

 Beautiful glass windows in her "storage" room made by Tiffany's!

 This is the Switchback Staircase that is super narrow & the steps are small and flat. This was put in when Sarah got bad arthritis.

 One of a kind glass window, that is not facing the sun so it never gets lit up!

 From the top floor, you can see all of the different roofs on the house thanks to all of the construction

 After the house tour, we did the basement tour. We also saw the front gardens and statues.

Sarah's lucky number was 13 so they have this shrub to showcase that.

No basement photos because we were a small group and the tour guide would've seen me. haha. After the house, we stopped on Santana Row for a snack. Santana Row is a little area with lots of shops and restaurants - tons of people were sitting outside because it was SO nice out!

We came back to our place for dinner and Erik's Mom made us Chicken, rice & beans. So good!

Luna Winery & New Restaurant

 After Sonoma, we rode over to Napa to go to Luna Vineyards. We are members here so we tasted for free! We also bought a bottle of the red blend and sat outside with it. It was so warm and breezy - it was a perfect spot!

 
 Erik's Dad bought a Luna hat so of course, we all had to take turns trying it on....

 Family Shot!

After Luna, we headed over to a new restaurant in the area called Cindy Pawlcyn's Wood Grill and Wine Bar. Cindy Pawlcyn is a prominent chef in the Bay Area and this is her newest restaurant.

 The food was classic dishes like chicken, pork chops, burgers...We started with the eggplant fries which were delicious! Erik and I had burgers and those were great! Dessert was the fun part though.

 Erik had a "cookies and ice cream" dish and his Mom had a grown-up milkshake - aka milk shake with some liquer in it.

 We also shared a bottle of wine, also by Cindy Pawlcyn. Apparently, she owns  some vineyards and has wine made under her label "CP wines" - very good!

Well, after our fun day, we headed home. It was a warm, sunny, wine country day!