...But first, coffee (with Jen)

Last week was super busy, and this week promises to be just as action packed! We have a bunch of family visiting and a group of the cousins spent some quality time in Petty Harbour . The town of Petty Harbour is beautiful!  The roads are narrow, the scent of the sea is everywhere, and there are great places to eat.  We certainly love our food here on the island. We all met at Chafe's Landing for great food, toe-tapping music and much needed catching up. It was a great time!  I was the last to arrive because I was waiting for a shuttle from work to the car dealership, so that I could pick up my SUV from a service appointment.  But, that was ok, I arrived in typical family fashion - late (LOL). Next stop was Hooked for ice cream.  I went way into the dark side of bad (but delicious!) eating this evening. Ha ha!  Hooked has a menu listing of a variety of ice cream options, one being "Freak Milkshakes" (I think that's the term) - and it d...

Myself and my husband love breaking out a board game on quiet evenings at home.  Sometimes the weather is bad, while other times we are looking for something different to break up the mundane. Either way, we always have a blast and we have built up quite the collection over the years.  This post will focus on the newest game to our collection. (This post contains affiliated links.  Meaning that I may college a share of the sales or other compensation from the Amazon links on this page.) For my birthday this year hubby bought me my favorite game to date - Ticket to Ride Europe !  We started playing this game, and a few others, at a local gaming hangout called Doughnuts & Dragons (now closed). They had a wide assortment of games ranging from 2-6 (or 8?) players and the game boxes were color coded with stickers so you could easily pick out a game to play based on how many people were in your party.  This was the second of this type of hangout in the city...

This game is fantastic!  Build your castles, extend your roads and claim farm land by placing your meeples on the board.  This is a point building game. Through picking up and placing random tiles the point of this game is to build up the most points.  There are a set number of points per connected road tile, per castle tile, for the number of castles that connect to your farmer meeple, and there are shields on some castle tiles to add more points to the completed castle point count.  This can either be a fun game among family/friends, or an all out war if you intrude on the points that a team member is building for themselves. We typically try to play a nice and fair game, but sometimes one of us makes a menacing move just to mess with the other persons plans (just for giggles lol). Since you build the game board by picking up tiles at random, this is a game that is never the same twice.  And, there are so many expansions to the original game that you real...

The races were 'A Go!' for the 200th Royal St. John's Regatta - and we weren't going to miss the action. (from  @ StJohnsRegatta  on Twitter) Although, truth be told, we are not going with the intention to watch many of the races.  We go for the food, the games of chance, and the time spent with friends and family. This year, like the year before it, and the year before that, hubby checked out the Hindu Temple tent for his lunch - and he was not disappointed. I had a feed of chicken pierogi (not pictured because I ate most of the dish before thinking of getting a pic for my blog). I did, however, remember to get a pic of us before the heat of the day sunk in. I don't think that I have even been to the St. John's Regatta on a day like this before.  It was hot!  Like, reapply the sun screen and still get sun burned hot. Usually, on Regatta day we have mild temps, and sometimes a little rain.  Some years it is far too windy for the races and ...

There is a little restaurant tucked away behind a wall of greenery in Holyrood, and it's called The Tea Garden .  I have been here a few times - celebrating our anniversary, for my husband's sister's wedding, for a Pink Days in Bloom event, and most recently for my Mom's birthday. It is recommended that reservations are made as they do be quite busy during their open season.  And, they are only open a few days a week.  But - it is so worth getting to dine here! On Sunday's they serve the traditional Newfoundland turkey dinner as their special.  If that is not your style, then they do have other options, like chicken, lamp, ribs, etc. All of the menu items that I have had are delicious! After dining there is a deck that you can explore and many photo opportunities either with the amazing ocean in the background, or in the garden with the lush greenery creating a great backdrop.  We will definitely be back for future events.  Not only for the food ...