Work Weekend in Pasadena

After leaving Las Vegas last Friday morning I headed out to Southern California for another work assignment. I guess that if you are in a situation where you need to work over the weekend it is better to have to do it somewhere warm and sunny like Pasadena instead of back home in the cold and snow.

The hotel we were all staying at was in Old Pasadena which is a fun area full of great shops and restaurants. After I finished checking in I had a little bit of time before my meeting so I grabbed a fast lunch at Chada Thai. I had one of my favorite Thai dishes, pad see ew with beef, which also included soup. The food was tasty, came out quick, and was inexpensive - everything that I look for in a lunch place.

After work on Friday evening my colleagues and I headed to Choza Mama for a dinner of Peruvian food. My entree of pulled pork and yams was okay, but I enjoyed the ceviche appetizer that we shared. When we were walking to the restaurant we spotted an adorable cupcake shop, Dots Cupcakes, so we decided to grab dessert there. I had a wonderfully moist red velvet cupcake that was just as tasty as it looked.

We were spending the weekend working at the Pasadena Convention Center which just so happened to be across the street from the Pasadena Antique Center. On our lunch break on Saturday one of the other women and I couldn't resist heading over there to wander around for a few minutes. It was packed with all sorts of things and it was fun browsing. I ended up buying a cool old ravioli rolling pin for my kitchen and some vintage reproduction California postcards for fun.

For dinner on Saturday night we went to Mi Piace for some amazing Italian food. We shared a wonderful charcuterie plate and then I had a delicious plate of ravioli for dinner. The homemade pasta of the ravioli was spectacular and I loved the citrus zest on top. For dessert we split a tiramisu that was wonderfully moist without being soggy. 

On Sunday during our lunch break we couldn't resist a quick run to Dots Cupcakes again. I wanted to try some additional varieties so I got three yummy mini cupcakes, mint chocolate, chocolate coconut, and fleur de sel. They definitely kept me going for the rest of the afternoon at work.

By the time we wrapped up on Sunday evening I was completely exhausted and not up for going out to dinner (lame, I know) so I ordered room service. Monday I was up bright and early at four in the morning to head to LAX for my flight back to Michigan.  It had been a long week and I was excited to be finally going home.

Viva Las Vegas

During the rest of my business trip to Las Vegas the week before last I was busy during the day at CES but I had some opportunities to eat some great food outside of work.

On Wednesday morning I had the special treat of being able to get breakfast with a friend of mine from undergrad, Lee, who was also in town for CES. It was great to be able to catch up and hear how his quickly growing family was doing. We went to Bouchon at the Venetian, which was fantastic. I had the Bouchon French Toast which was in a bread pudding style with layers of brioche, custard and apples. Wonderful company and wonderful food is a great way to start the day.

After breakfast I headed to the conference center for another full and busy day. At the end of the day I had a work dinner with a supplier at Smith & Wollensky for fabulous steak. I started with the Wollensky salad which had bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, and fried potato cubes on a bed of lettuce. For dinner I tried the beef tenderloin trio with three filet medallions featuring a fig demi-glace, Cajun seasoning and my favorite of the three, a gorgonzola crust with applewood smoked bacon. We were stuffed after the steaks but I just couldn't resist ordering the apple tart for dessert. Delicious!

 
My friend from work got us invitations to the iHeartRadio party DJed by will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas so we headed there after dinner. The party was held at Haze Nightclub in the Aria and was awesome. Will.i.am played great music and the lighting effects were really cool. You could definitely tell there was a large nerd contingent there since everyone (including me) was unabashedly taking tons of cell phone pictures.

On Thursday night after I was done with work for the day I had a supplier dinner at Zeffirino in the Venetian with colleagues.  The restaurant had a nice atmosphere overlooking the Grand Canal and it was a fun evening. To start we had carpaccio with shaved parmigiano and rucola sprouts followed by a salad of mixed sprouts, toasted almonds and smoked tofu. For my main I choose sea bass with capers and then we had a trio of mini pastries for dessert. Everything was great but my favorite by far was the carpaccio.

Friday morning I headed to the airport for my flight to LAX since I had to spend the weekend in Pasadena for work. Even after all the times I have been in the Las Vegas airport it always cracks me up that there are slot machines throughout the airport. That is some serious dedication to gambling!

If you are interested, check out the first part of my Las Vegas trip here: Hello From Las Vegas

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Baby Quilt for Carla's Little Man

I caught a bad bug this past weekend while I was working in Pasadena so since I came home on Monday evening I haven't really been feeling up to working on projects. While I am under the weather I thought I would share a baby quilt I made last year for my friend, Carla, who was my roommate my senior year in undergrad.

Carla's son's nursery was decorated with a Classic Winnie the Pooh theme complete with a mural on the wall. I used the soft yellows and browns to match for the color pallette for the quilt.

To start I cut 1-1/2" wide pieces of yellow and brown scrap fabric in lengths from 1-1/2" to 3". I then joined the pieces together to make a very long 1-1/2" wide strip. As a foundation for the blocks I cut 24 squares that were 10-1/2" x 10-1/2".

To make the quilt I needed 16 of what I'll call Block A to go around the outside of the quilt and 8 of Block B for the center of the quilt. To make Block A I lined up a ruler on the diagonal of the square and measured up 3" from one corner and marked it with a disappearing ink quilting marker. I then cut off a triangle that went through that point, saving the cut-off triangle. I reassembled the block by sewing a section of the brown and yellow strip to the block, adding the cut-off triangle back on, and them trimming the resulting block back down to 10-1/2" x 10-1/2". To make Block B I did the same thing as Block A but instead of just adding the yellow and brown stripe in across one corner I did it for two opposite corners on the block.

Once I had made all the blocks I joined them in the following rows: Row 1: A, A, A, A, A, A; Row 2: A, B, B, B, B, A; Row 3: A, B, B, B, B, A; Row 4: A, A, A, A, A, A.  In order to make the blocks form the squares you need to flip the orientation of every other block but if you lay it out it is easy to see how it works. I then joined the rows together, used some tan fabric for the back, quilted it with a straight, diagonal pattern between the squares and finally bound the edges with dark brown fabric.

Carla and her husband loved the quilt and even sent me some cute pictures of their son with the quilt in front of his Winnie the Pooh mural.

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