Category — Los Angeles

R&B singer sets record with six Grammy Awards, but also Taylor Swift and Kings of Leon were big winners at the 2010 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Get the details now!

Greetings from La La land! While most of you have already headed back to work or school, I’m luckily enough to be in week 2 of my vacay. Sigh. Life is good. Did I mention it’s been sunny and warm?! The BF and I have been pretty busy seeing friends, family and not to mention throwing a New Year’s Eve party! This past weekend, the BF, being the good BF he is, drove me to Laguna Hills to meet Mo from Pink Argyle. Mo and I had pondered where exactly to meet since she’s in San Deigo, and I’m in LA. Luckily, someone on Chowhound had already posed the question and in response, the Break of Dawn was recommended. Now this was the second time I had met someone through my blog, the first being Jess from JessReads whom I met at the Sash & Bustle opening. With Jess, neither of us knew what we looked like, we just knew each other’s names and we both live in Toronto – akin to a ‘blind friend date.’ With Mo, it was a bit different since we’ve gotten to know each other through our blogs and have even exchanged emails. In other words, I really feel like I know Mo…..even though we had never met. Oh how technology brings us all together! Mo and I (and the BF aka my chauffeur) had a great time chatting. It was really like seeing an old friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. Mo and I discovered we had a lot in common….we are both of Asian descent, we both have 2 sisters, we are both wedding bloggers and we both have ex-boyfriends who became ‘mystics’ in exotic countries (long stories).

In addition to the great conversation, we chowed down on some delicious breakfast. I had the Potato Skillet.

And the BF had the yummy omelet.

In you live in the O.C., I highly recommend Break of Dawn. Thanks Mo for a great time!

Have you met your ‘blogger friends’? What was it like?

As you all know, my cousin D is having a baby and a couple of weeks ago, I helped throw a baby shower for her. We decided to have the shower at the Chado Tea Room in Pasadena, CA. The staff at Chado Tea Room were great. So friendly and helpful. Here are a few pics from the shower.

Chado has over 300 varieties of tea. We were lucky enough to try quite a few flavours including White Champagne Raspberry, Chocolate Mint and Ginger Peach. Some of us even bought some to take home!

Remember the baby graphic the BF’s partner whipped up for the invitations? Well, I also incorporated it into the favours and the ’shower game kits.’

I bought the favour circle stickers from Michael’s. They came with a printing template which made printing super easy. The ribbon is also from Michael’s.

The ’shower game kit’ was an envelope that came with three games: 1) Baby Scramble (i.e. Jumble with baby words); 2) Dirty Diaper (more on that later); and 3) TV Kids Trivia.

How cute is this floral centrepiece? Love the glass baby block vase. We had two of these at the table.

The afternoon tea menu at Chado is delicious! Sandwiches included smoked chicken with cranberry sauce, cucumber with cream cheese and green onions, and smoked salmon. Each tea rack came with freshly baked scones with fresh cream, fresh berries and jams. Since we had ordered a cake from Vanilla Bake Shop for D, we decided to skip Chado’s usual slice of cake and opted for chocolate dipped strawberries.

After gorging ourselves on the yummy food, we opened up the ’shower game kit’ and got started on the games. The ‘Baby Scramble’ and ‘TV Kids Trivia’ were pretty straightforward. ‘Dirty Diaper’ was probably the most disgusting yet fun game. The night before the shower, the BF and I bought a handful of chocolate bars and melted them in diapers. Yep, super gross. At the shower, each diaper were passed around and the guests had to guess what chocolate bar was melted in the diaper.

After the games, the Vanilla Lemon Berry cake from Vanilla Bake Shop was brought out. All I can say is the cake was 9 inches round of pure heaven.

D elected not to open gifts at the shower since we really didn’t have the space and D didn’t want to subject her guests to an endless barrage of onesies.

However, I had to share a pic of one of the adorable gifts she received. One of D’s friend made her this amazing onesies/socks/shoes tiered ‘cake’ as a gift. Cute non?

D and her guests had such a great time. I highly recommend Chado Tea Room for any type of shower or maybe for a ‘ladies’ luncheon.’

Do you heart afternoon/high tea as much I do?

….with this wedding. The dress, the shoes, the swiss dot veil, the venue (Marvimon), the photo candy (by Sarah K Chen). To see more, click here to tak you to Sarah’s blog. You won’t be disappointed.

Singer/actress Beyonce Knowles attends the 40th NAACP Image Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium with her gorgeous long wavy hairstyle in Los Angeles, California.

Beyonce Knowles’ long curly hairstyle