making pastry

my friend "won" a pastry class at a silent auction with a real life pastry chef!
and invited me to come play along
we got to get our hands dirty

make fancy things

play with fire

and enjoy the fruits of our labor
can you guess what we made?


if you guessed...
bread pudding

creme brulee

and panna cotta

then you were right!
how can you go wrong?

vacation - st kitts

the last leg of our trip was st kitts
if you're an avid reader of this blog you should know it well by now
we met up with some dear friends there
i thought as a change of pace this time
i'd show you around the island
this is where we stayed

this is where all the cruise ships come in and all the shopping happens

this is how they put big boats in the ocean

this is the golf course sean enjoys
most photos of the golf course are compliments of sean
(wasn't he fancy with the different angles and selfies???)

this is the money shot

this is the beautiful ocean water

this is us with our friends on the new side of the island we explored this trip
this place is growing!

this is some of the beautiful flowers around

this is the beautiful full moon we saw from our patio

and this is us enjoying the last bits of our trip we could
(and with crazy humidity hair)

i hope you enjoyed our trip as much as we did!

vacation - st maarten

our second stop was st maarten
or st martin
depending on which side of the island you're on
one side french and one side dutch
we didn't stay long - were just passing through
that's just how we roll
we booked the aruba week and the st kitts week
without thinking about how we would get from one to the other
so after lots of searching and multiple travel agents
staying in st maarten for two nights was the solution
not a bad solution when the little island offers you sunrises like this...

we didn't have a lick of sun the entire week in aruba
so we spent all our time lounging poolside finally enjoying some rays

i mean, how could you not want to just lounge around
when you can have someone bring you food and drinks all day with the raise of a flag

our resort was technically on the dutch side but very near the border
so we headed to the french side for some amazing french cuisine
we sat on the front porch
i had french onion soup...

i also took a little time to practice some moving water photography skills
i'm not 100% pleased with any of these but they have some interest to them

ok, so that last one wasn't moving water but it was caused by some moving water...

vacation - aruba

and who doesn't?
this girl
that is, until i actually went there
the first part of our trip was to aruba
which i didn't really want to go to
cuz everyone goes there
but it turned out to be a great time
i most enjoyed just driving around in the areas with no streets in the jeep
i least enjoyed the lack of sunshine we had
once we switched rooms so it no longer overlooked the office of the company we work for...
we had this view...

not sure how that little bird's nest stayed on that palm prawn
did you know aruba has a lighthouse at both ends of the island?
there's the one they bus all the tourists to

and then there's the one you don't want to go to
because it's in a sketchy area
and isn't much of a looker

but has beautiful views like this

did you know aruba also have lizards?

everywhere...

we may or may not have had a few of these

aren't those koozies awesome???
my favorite part was taking this road...yes, that's a road

to this beautiful, natural pool

i don't have much to say about these next photos, except, enjoy!

here is some proof that we were actually there

this is what crazy humid weather does to my hair - makes it crazy! 

aren't those the tallest cacti you've ever seen???
i made him stand there so you could get an idea of how big they really were
we may or may not have taken a road we shouldn't have...oops!

and this last picture...
hmmmmm
on someone's hotel door