Life Lately + CHA-Bound!

January has been really busy so far. Since I work as a accounting/finance analyst, year-end and beginning of the year is always super-busy at work. On the one hand I have to wrap up the year and run all the financial reports and reconcile revenue and close the books. On the other hand I have to finalize the 2013 budget and prepare detailed reports for that.

But being busy at work doesn’t mean I haven’t had some fun as well! :) On January 1st, we woke up and watched ESPN College Gameday in bed.

And we watched some of the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena in bed. Having been to the parade and the Rose Bowl game a couple of years ago, seeing it on TV really brings back great memories!

We received a gift from one of my coworkers who lives in Minnesota. He gave us some Penzey’s spices and hot chocolate!

We LOVE getting spices from Penzeys, ever since my friend Becky talked about it on her blog a few years ago. We used to order it online, but now there is a Penzey’s store in Hillcrest in San Diego! 

There’s been a lot of Noodle snuggling.


This past Saturday we got to try out a new-to-us Taiwanese restaurant in the Kearny Mesa area called Liang’s Kitchen. Taiwanese food has a special place in my heart, because my family is from Taiwan and I was born there! Whenever I eat it, some very fond childhood memories come flooding back. :)


The restaurant had one wall decorated with Mama Liang’s stuff.

By the way, I love any restaurant that has “mama” in it. Mama Cella, Mama’s Lebanese Kitchen, etc. They always have great food for some reason.

We had “pao cai”, which is marinated cabbage and carrots that taste sweet and a little sour. You eat it cold.


We had beef wrapped in onion pancakes. This was fantastic.


We had pork and veggie wonton soup with seaweed in it. It was really good!


And for dessert, we had snowy ice! I was SO excited that we found a place in San Diego that has snowy ice! The first time I had it was a few months ago in LA with my cousin Bernice. I hadn’t been able to find it in San Diego until now.

You pick the snow flavor, then you add toppings.

We got the mini size sweet milk snowy ice, topped with sweetened condensed milk and red beans.


Very cool snowy ice texture!


Wow, it was really good. I’m very excited but kind of scared at the same time that there’s snowy ice in San Diego. I think I want to eat it every week, ha ha!

I am so excited because I’ll be attending the CHA (Craft & Hobby Association) convention in Anaheim this weekend! I am going as press/reporter with Write.Click.Scrapbook. I will have media credential to snap photos of manufacturers’ new collections, and also will be posting them to the Write Click Scrapbook Facebook page, and Twitter.  Deb Duty will also be reporting for Write Click Scrapbook. So if you don’t follow already, you should! I will be up in Anaheim for CHA on Saturday and Sunday. (Driving up Friday after work.) I’m so excited because I will get to meet some friends that I’ve talked to online but have not met in person yet! I will also see Peppermint and Liz again. (Saw them this past summer when Peppermint came to visit.) And my friend Cassi will be there reporting for Craft Critique. I will have more CHA photos on my blog next week!  :)