Holidays in the Sakura Household :)

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday week! Belated Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to everyone!! I've got lots of random things to post (including a holiday-tour of Calgary courtesy of my cousins) but I wanted to share a few snapshots from the holidays at my house this year. 

I'm pretty sure that at this point my house was a fire hazard... no clear exit routes.... XD

Holidays at Holt Renfrew

Is it a sign that I spend too much time (and money) at Holt Renfrew if they send me Christmas cards? I mean not the store in general, but I got Christmas cards (that are designed to look like the HR boxes) from the Shu Uemura and Giorgio Armani cosmetics counters... thankfully the two counters with nice SAs that I like!

In any case the content of this post actually happened a month ago (obviously despite my best intentions I forgot to post... again) and a kind reminder from my dear Old Cow reminded me that I should update... at least so that the few readers of this blog who I don't also stalk on twitter would know I was a live!

Holt Renfrew is almost the only store in the Core (Calgary's downtown shopping district) that decorated for Christmas as a number of parts are still under construction and the Core actually donated its decorating budget to the United Way (which is nice, though I do miss the Christmas trees everywhere)! For the fellow Calgarians, the Core is MUCH MUCH MUCH nicer than it was even 6 months ago - no more exposed piping every metre! There's still a bit of construction but I think the mall looks beautiful and it's now one of my favourite places to be

The gigantic skylight doesn't hurt :)

My holiday trips to Holt Renfrew actually happened over two weeks...

Shiny Pretty Things

You know that feeling when an object sticks in your head, and you tell yourself there's no point in buying it, but it never really leaves your mind? That was the story with me and the Jill Stuart 5th Anniversary box! I've loved since I first saw it last year, but first I didn't really own any jewellery and then couldn't rationalize WHY I needed it. Plus, I had a lovely case from Yume that fit all my earrings nicely... and then I began to read more blogs and my jewellery collection suddenly outgrew my storage space!

I made do, keeping things in their original boxes, but after having an awful day at work a couple of weeks ago, AND with it being my birthday, I decided to give in and order the jewellery box I'd been thinking of on-and-off for more than a year... and I'm SO happy with it! I purchased from Gooddealer and everything was wrapped perfectly - styrofoam and bubble wrap with fragile stickers galore - and a tracking number.

As I wanted to show off my shiny new storage, I thought I should show off the shiny things that now live in it. This post for my dear Old Cow who is the reason my collection expanded so quickly AND why I started to wear necklaces :)

Warm Holiday Collections (and Wishes!)

Thus far, the least wonky self-portraits tend to happen in my car :)

I actually have more than ONE post worth of content, and under the threat  encouragement of several of my favourite girls online, I'm going to try to post more than once this month... we'll see how it goes. I tend to have grand plans about blogging and then I get distracted and end up tweeting everything and never posting. It's a vicious cycle.

In any case: I usually don't post 'haul' posts since I don't find my own purchases to be all that interesting after I gush about them (or at least they don't seem interesting enough to talk about) but after a hellish two weeks at work, not only did I end up with a LOT of new makeup - but I didn't have any chance to play with any of it! Two weeks ago was the beginning of my awful stretch of shifts (partly my own fault, partly the scheduler's) and on the minimal days (3 in 14... bearing in mind I do 12 hour day/night shifts) I wasn't at work I apparently had to maximize my time and buy as much of the collections as I wanted as possible.

Before you have a heart attack: part of this was truly spending, and the other part was all free thanks to the Shoppers Drug Mart Optimum program.

So what did I end up with?

Celebrations & Giving Thanks

At O Shima Restaurant

For all the Canadians out there, today is the last of a long weekend, as it's the 'Canadian' thanksgiving - and the weekend has been beautiful! We've had a lovely amount of sunshine over the last week, so it was nice to be able to wear a dress to celebrate my birthday without shivering to death!

This weekend has been all about food, friends, family, and more food for me :) It was a lovely way to celebrate my birthday!

Except I didn't actually take a lot of food pictures AT my birthday dinner with my friends! I was too excited for a tonkatsu curry plate, I guess ;). This was the first time I'd ever had all my besties together at once (usually at least once schedule interferes) and it was a lot of fun. The restaurant was surprisingly good! I had booked it wanting to eat sushi, but they had quite an expansive menu (so in the end, only 2/9 of us got sushi, haha)

We did go for dessert afterwards though! This is my mini-trio of birthday cakes. I hate being sung to - especially in public - since I always get embarrassed, so I browbeat the besties into staying silent... no pictures at the second restaurant as the lounge was SO dark (and I haven't quite mastered the use of my camera yet).

E and I shared this :) The best part was the first cake (why can't I remember the name?) though I remember the last cake was supposed to be a sticky toffee pudding, but we both thought it tasted more like warm banana bread. Still good :D

Thanksgiving day was all about the food....

24, New Camera, Mooks

My new camera has a 'soft focus' feature

Yikes, only 3 hours away!! I know I tend to post sporadically, but it went to posting nil after my beloved Sony DSC-T200 camera died :( I couldn't take pictures AND I had no idea what to talk about.

My birthday is tomorrow, and I'd been contemplating a beginner's DSLR anyway, so I bought myself a new camera as an early birthday present and replacement for mine (though I will probably pick up another point-and-shoot since they are more portable, and I am lazy). I picked up an Olympus PEN E-PL1 but I am still mostly using the auto settings... definitely need to find a good beginner's guide to DSLR cameras (suggestions welcome).

In any case, to prove I am alive (and hopefully to kick my butt into posting more), my latest mook purchases (I say 'latest' but one is really old, and the other two were posted about weeks ago by other people.

San Francisco Day 3: Japantown, Union Square, Fisherman's Wharf

Honestly, I am going to try to finish talking about this trip before I go to San Diego but I'm being honest with myself when I say it probably isn't going to happen. XD; I don't know why I don't have as many pictures with my mom... I think she is holding the camera a lot of the time :P

Anyway Day 3 we spent in downtown San Francisco, and we saw all the tourist-y things as neither Kuya A nor Ate M had seen them before (it's about a 3 hr drive for them, so quite a distance - and hotels are expensive!). The weather was gorgeous, and after another train ride on the BART from the airport we bought day passes to tour more of the city. It was cheaper for us to get the day pass as it is valid on the regular bus system and the cable cars :)