Denver eBay Sellers Group at White Fence Farm w/ Griff

The first time we were here was back in Aug.  This time was early December with all their Christmas decorations up.

The Denver eBay Meetup group met here and "Griff" eBay's 8th employee, eBay radio host, and Dean of Eduction was the guest speaker.  

They are famous for their fried chicken served family style with several sides. 

Each room had a different tree or theme.

This pink tree was in the kids area with a treasure chest for good kids to pick prizes.

"Griff" a very special eBay representative and a strong seller advocate.

Gene, Griff and yours truly!


White Fence Farm is sorta buried in the west side of Denver but well worth a visit. It's one of those kind of places that locals take visitors to.  Then they talk about it back home and friends, who come to Denver, want to go there too.

I wrote more about the restaurant in my blog from August.

Why we love living in Florida!

The weather has been awesome with gorgeous blue sky days!  So far it has been a warm winter . . . 70-80's during the day, 50-60's at night . . . NO SNOW . . . NO AFTERNOON STORMS . . . NO HUMIDITY!!  It has been a great time to enjoy the beauty of Florida and explore the outdoors.  Great time to visit this part of the world . . . no wonder the snowbirds descend upon us this time of year!


The Captain and I have been getting out more and experiencing the outdoors . . . often enjoying an early morning adventure of fishing, exploring local parks and the historic culture that Tampa has to offer.


As a result there are a ton of photos I have yet to process, but I have not forgotten!  I also haven't forgotten about the series on Vintage Disney.  We haven't even scratched the surface of exploring Busch Gardens and the area beaches.  I promise to get to these projects soon!


The Gasparilla pirates will invade Tampa at the end of January and we plan to be right in the middle of it this year.  We will be taking lots of photos and reporting on the festivities.


Subscribe to My Florida Paradise so you won't miss out on future posts!

Come on down to Florida!

2011 Trip Recap, Part I

Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! あけましておめでとうございます *^-^* Hope that 2012 will be a good year for everyone. 

To celebrate the new year, a look back at 2011's trip to Japan which we made and ended just a few weeks ago. Hopefully, there'll be more Japan trips for us in the future! (Although we *agreed* to take a break from visiting Japan in 2012 & 2013). 

We went sightseeing in Yokohama on our second day in Japan, the first day being too late to do anything other than checking-in and sleeping in a hotel near Haneda Airport for us.

From Yokohama, we made our way to Yufuin. Checked-in at a pretty cool cottage and had two baths all to ourselves. 

The first half of Day 4 was spent sightseeing in Yufuin. Pity it rained after I had my morning run there because after we checked-out, we were unable to travel much around the area because it was a tad cold with the rain. But we made it to Lake Kinrinko and walked around the town area.

Day 5 was spent at Huis Ten Bosch, feeling like we were not in Japan but in Holland albeit Japanese speaking part of Holland. LOL

The evening was spent with a blogging friend, Hanny who lives in Kitakyushu, making and eating takoyaki with her two boys.

From Hakata, we made our way to Shikoku Island on Day 6 of our trip. Lrong was in Takamatsu that day and had kindly suggested to meet for lunch but as luck would have it, we were unable to secure any early train seats reservations and with the one we had, we arrived too late to meet-up for lunch.

So instead of heading straight to Takamatsu as planned earlier, we made our way to Matsuyama first. Walked from Matsuyama Station to Dogo Onsen and stopped whenever we see nice/interesting sites; which I will post more of soon.

Day 7 was spent visiting Shikoku Mura and Ritsurin Koen and the evening was spent walking around the port area and what is touted to be the biggest shopping street in Japan.

There were rainy and gloomy days when we were there but through Day 7, we were lucky that the rain didn't spoil our plan much. How were the days after that? Stay tuned!

Day 8 - Day 14 recap soon!

Postcards To Home

Rather than sending them to others back home, we love sending postcards to ourselves from each city we visited when we are vacationing in Japan.

It's fun to look at the postcards and the stamps not to mention if there's any special postmark on it. ^^

This year, we have Hakodate, Yufuin, Dogo Onsen (Matsuyama), Nara, Enoshima, Kagawa added to our postcard collection.

And we have a new set of stamps added too.

Cute, right? *^-^*

Our Manger and Decorations for Christmas

Our upstairs decorations are blue and white snowmen and snowflakes. The out side lights are also blue along with a large plastic manger.  

Downstairs is red and green Western themed. If we have 2 trees - one is real.  This year tho' we did only 1 tree and decorated upstairs.  eBay and all the craft shows kept us very busy!! Please enjoy our decorations.

This guy lights up with different fiber optic lights.

The kneeling Santa was my Mom's favorite decoration.  She always put it in her big bay window.

My collection of toys including the Feliz Navidad Chihuahua and the Chicken who sings and does the chicken dance.

Believe it not - Santa comes to our house every year and fills Sebastian's stocking, hanging in the middle.

Not only the couch but more importantly the view out our front 9' window.  That is Pikes Peak!! We really did have a white Christmas this year.

The little guy all lit up.  The colors constantly change.  Only thing missing is that he doesn't play music!!

I have a photo of me laying on the floor when I was about 10 looking at this manger all set up under the Christmas tree.  

Merry Christmas 2011!

An End To An Awesome Trip

Gah! How did the two weeks vacation went by so quickly? What did we do in these two weeks? I wish we have more time! But home we must return and earn more money so that we can afford another vacation in the future. xD

Our flight back to Kuala Lumpur was a red-eye flight so we had a whole day in Japan for us to do last minute sightseeing and we just spent the day in Yokohama. Had some thoughts of going to Kirin Beer Village because... we went to Yebisu Beer Museum last year, so it'll be unfair if we didn't check out Kirin. Right? And why Beer Museum you ask, when I don't even drink beer? Simply because it's there.

Spent some time over at Nissan Gallery

Mommy looked at some cars, Daddy had a rest - sitting on one of the many chairs and couches there and Raimie "learnt" how to drive.

 Did last minute soft drink purchase for Raimie

Mommy drooled over some colourful running shoes and somehow miraculously managed to refrain from buying anything

Raimie wasn't happy to be dragged over to Anpanman Museum. See the "forced" smile on his face? LOL "Mommy! Anpanman is for little kids!" he whines but did we listen? Nope.

Had some ice cream at Baskin Robbins to help the traumatised 9 year old  recover from visiting that Anpanman Museum

 Saw some illuminations

and ate dinner. I've had enough of rice so I insisted on a pasta dinner and got it; but of course with a Japanese twist. They serve a ginormous L sized omuraisu there too, which we were lucky enough to see, because the guys at the next table ordered one. They were enough to feed three adults! I kid you not! @.@

Daddy made some last minute duty-free purchases afterwards and before you know, it we were onboard our AirAsia flight and on our way home. 

No fault with the Air Asia staff but the cabin smelled ranging from dead carcass to rotten cheese to wet dog to damp towel and finally my nose got used to the stank of sweaty, stinky socks and I was able to have some shut eye only to be woken up by this genius of a guy who was playing games very loudly in front of me. If I was his wife or daughter, he'll already be whacked and reminded to not be so noisy and inconsiderate. Meiwaku, and that sort of thing ya'know.

Next time I'm taking AirAsia flights, I'm bringing over some face masks! I think Air Asia can make good money selling air fresheners to passengers onboard too, if the ventilation doesn't improve. Hu~

Merry Christmas

From our family to yours

Merry Christmas!

Hope your day is happy, festive

and full of love :)

LUMiNARIA - A New Mexican Tradition to Light the Way for the Christ Child

Walk way up to our front door. Red is a lighted Chile Ristera.

Lumineria = a candle in a brown paper bag. In some areas they are called Farilitos.  

Front walk out to sidewalk.  We are on a corner and the house faces the side street.

Front Sidewalk

Side sidewalk and driveway

Blessed Mother in our backyard.  We put candles every year for my oldest son - Stevie, my Mom and Dad and Gene's Mom & Dad.

Just one bag - It is a plain, brown lunch bag with the top folded down.  We put out 100 bags every year.

There is sand / dirt in the bottom to help hold it open.  The candle is a special votive candle that is alot harder than regular votives. It burns into itself and will burn for at least 10 hours. 

In New Mexico the folks in adobe houses line the edges of the roofs, whole neighborhoods do them, and all the graves in  the cemetery in Gene's hometown -Belen- are edged with the luminerias.  Albuquerque has tours of the Old Town and Country Club areas. Tickets are sold out almost right away.  

We took the tour one year and the parade of buses and cars seemed to be endless.  We sang Christmas carols and drank hot spiced cider.  It was a very memorable event that happens for one night only  - on Christmas Eve just to LIGHT THE WAY FOR THE CHRIST CHILD!!.