All posts in: Sonoma

14 Dec 2018

Car Ride to Calistoga

It often feels like there is never a shortage of places to go when you’re living in Northern California. Over Memorial Day Weekend, Pat, Manan and I found ourselves with zero plans, which meant it was perfect for taking a day trip. I had never been to Calistoga before and was excited to finally see it! On our way, we stopped in Sonoma at the market which I had also never been to despite going to Sonoma many times before. 

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06 May 2015

How We Unwind: Sonoma/Napa

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We recently ventured out of town a couple of weeks as a company for our annual retreat to Sonoma/Napa and it was the best short-term getaway I’ve had in awhile! I obviously need to give myself more vacations. Honestly, it was nice to just get off the grid, unplug (sort of!) and relax. I’m really fortunate that I get to work for a company that cares a lot about doing this for their employees and I’m especially grateful that if I ever want to go up to Sonoma/Napa that it’s never too far away. I’ve probably been up more than a handful of times now with co-workers and always with friends and family that visit from out of town and they seem to love it. I wanted to write this post right after I had gotten back, but when you unplug, your emails and your work catch up with you so I needed a little bit more time to get back into the blogging rhythm. Here are a few snaps that I took and a couple that I “borrowed” from my co-worker Wenwen at the end of the post!

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06 Jul 2014

The Weekend: Lots of Things!

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It’s been two weeks since we’ve had one of these posts and so much has happened! I didn’t have time to post last weekend’s highlights so I’m combining it with this lovely holiday weekend. Some of my best girl friends from Seattle flew to see Ash and I for the long weekend and like any vacation we jam packed our days from start to finish. It’s interesting how the trips you plan when you are out of college and “more of an adult” shift from the vacation breaks you had when you were in school. Instead of traveling to cities where you plan on drinking constantly and sleeping in because of your hangovers, you’re waking up at 8:00 and getting your morning started. (Sort of like how the five of us would any day!) Instead of drinking, we put our money towards amazing meals and instead of going to bars, we went wine tasting in Sonoma. So there.

– also don’t those fireworks look great?! They went off Wednesday evening in San Francisco after the Giant’s game and they looked a whole lot better than the ones we tried to watch on 4th of July from this view.

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I did my first hike with some co-workers at Rancho San Antonio Open Space last weekend! There really are some gorgeous views here in the Bay Area.

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On Sunday afternoon, we caught a free concert from Yuna and Allen Stone at Stern Grove. We had never been over to this area before, but we loved how it was just kind of hidden in this park and large enough to hold a concert and fit THIS many people. It’s definitely one of the prettiest venues I’ve ever been to.

We’ve been watching episodes of this on Netflix.

We got athletic and competitive during our pre 4th of July company picnic with Bubble Soccer.

Happy 4th from the Seattle gang!

Visiting our Ash at Stanford

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

07 May 2014

Bay Area Eats:

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I don’t think there is ever a chance that I will ever go hungry living here. I feel really grateful for several things:

a) that I’m not a picky eater

b) that I care more about the quality of food than most other things that people spend money on

c) that my parents feel the same way about all of the above.

While we were wine country trippin’ this past weekend, we decided to go all out for a nice dinner at Glen Ellen Star – a place that was recommended to me and one that I needed to call in advance for a reservation. I felt pretty lucky that we were even able to snag a 5:30 PM on a Friday. We sat on the patio of the restaurant and after a day of wine tasting, we still weren’t tired of it. We each had our own glass before diving into our very extravagant meal.

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We ordered and shared:

  • Simple green salad, champagne vinaigrette
  • Golden beets, harissa crumble, blood orange oil
  • Spanish rock octopus, fingerling potatoes, salsa verde, black olive oil (so good we ordered it twice! The second time was when we had the option of dessert. Instead, chose this.)
  • Spring lamb ragu, gnocchi, artichokes, calabrian chile
  • Whole roasted dourade, preserved meyer lemon, sauce “romesco”  

Naturally, we had to order the fish. I mean, we’re from Seattle.

05 May 2014

The Weekend: 5 Things

Sushi Tomi

Happy Monday everyone! We’re not having a Wedding Mondays this week because we simply just believe in quality over quantity and there hasn’t been enough quality to post. However, we’re making up for it with a lot of personal posts 🙂 My parents were in town this weekend to visit me and we had a grand ‘ol time exploring the beautiful Bay Area! We ate until we each gained 5 pounds and even though I’ve been here for almost a year now it still felt like I was on a family vacation.

On their second night, we went out to Sushi Tomi in Mountain View. Here is just a little snapshot of what we put into our tummies.

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I ventured over to Napa for the first time. BIG DEAL because I feel like I always preference Sonoma. I had discovered on Quora that Artesa was one of the prettiest wineries to visit so we put it at the top of our list! It really was as amazing as this photograph looks and so much more. Napa and Sonoma are both just full of hidden gems.

No matter how old I get, I think I will still really enjoy staying at hotels. That’s something that I think my Mom and I share a love for. We called The Lodge in Sonoma home for a night! I didn’t get to experience the pool while I was there. It was my biggest regret.

What would a family trip be without a family movie night about a fake family?

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One of my close friends from college was in town this weekend and better yet – on his 24th birthday! We had to take him out, naturally. After dinner at Range and dessert, we were sent off with these adorable mini macarons. The boys pretty much swallowed it whole, but Hailey and I still treated it as if it were regular size and took bites into it. I want these forever.

20 Apr 2014

The Weekend: 5 Things

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We kicked off this weekend with a trip to Planet Granite with the co-workers! I didn’t do any bouldering this time, but I did climb twice before I called it quits. It has been a long week, you guys. Instead of going to the usual Sunnyvale gym, we ventured over to the one in Belmont. As much as I love climbing and how strong it makes me feel, I know that it’s no cardio. I wish I could be incorporating a little bit of that into my activities too. Nevertheless, I was still feeling the pain this morning on my shoulders and fore arms.

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Henry’s sister Grace was in town this weekend visiting so naturally we had to take her to our favorite Sonoma winery – Ram’s Gate! We sampled 8 different kinds each of us favoring one more than the other. I was pretty partial to the very sweet white wine. Don’t ask me to tell you what it exactly was because I definitely don’t remember.

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One pretty happy family here.

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Is there anything better than lounging on this deck? Absolutely not.

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I find that on Sundays I always have very intense cravings for food. Today, it happened to be sushi so I drove 20 minutes away for these nomz right here. I just polished this off and I don’t plan on moving or getting up anytime soon. Thanks for the grub Niji’s!

22 Oct 2013

The Weekend: 5 Things

pumpkin patch

*This post should probably be re-titled “The Weekend: More Than 5 Things”

This weekend was yet another weekend for milestones! I lived out a childhood dream of mine by finally visiting a pumpkin patch. It’s cool; it only took me until I was a 20-something, but we made it! It’s funny because I think as a kid I probably would’ve loved the pumpkin patch, but the one time I had a chance to go for a field trip in Kindergarten (at age 5! ADORABLE!) I got the flu and had to miss it. If you’re a kid, the worst days to miss are the ones with field trips and unfortunately for me, it had to be pumpkin patch day. So what happened was…I had a chance to go this year with Bree and I made sure I was dressed up as lumberjack for it.

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18 Oct 2013

Take Me There:

It is extremely fitting today that our “Take Me There:” is highlighting Tuscany! This weekend, I’m taking my first trip up to Sonoma and I couldn’t be more thrilled about my very first wine tasting experience – another thing that I  could have done while living in Washington, but didn’t. I hear that wineries are some of the most gorgeous places to visit and of course, that has to be true since every year many weddings take place there. Stay posted for Instagrams and a post on my experience with it this weekend!

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