Vacation Rewind

Excellent adventures occurred during my vacation, including:

• Baking way too many banana muffins on Christmas Day
• Driving down to Portland on Boxing Day with the boy and Hubert for a 4-day getaway
• Shopping and eating at Mother's Bistro (comfort food like what your mom would make), Kenny & Zuke's (amazing sandwiches and cozy deli), and Toro Bravo (the best Spanish tapas ever, prompting the boy to declare, "12 hour drive--that's how long it'd take to come down here for dinner and drive back home")
• Ringing in the New Year with an Italian dinner, good conversation, and some Wii swordfighting and bowling

Speaking of Portland and Kenny & Zuke's sandwiches, no visit is complete without a meet-up with the brilliant, drop-dead funny blogger behind Daddy Likey! (On another note, they should really put "meet Winona for brunch/lunch/coffee/dinner" in the Portland guidebooks. Or she could be an enterprising genius and start her own Portland welcome wagon business.) Wielding a hefty bag of Canadian candy and the copy of Closet Confidential I'd purchased at Powell's Books so I could get her autograph, we all met up for some tasty reubens. (Well, I decided on a kosher salami sandwich instead.) She was so sweet and hilarious, and we had a wonderful time chatting and mugging for photos after lunch.

And now for some vacation pics. Enjoy!

The boy bonds with Hubert the labbit, our trip mascot.

Our cozy hotel room at the Hotel Monaco Portland

I loved this striped couch in the hotel lobby so much, I asked the boy to snap a picture of me sitting on it.

Going into a purse-gasm over the Chanel 2.55