Memorial Day Weekend Travel

For our (I should say Charles') long weekend, we drove down to Ventura, CA. The main reason for the visit was for Charles to have a second shot at qualifying for the Boston Marathon at the Mountains to Beach Marathon. We used the opportunity to see what Ventura and Santa Barbara had to offer.

On our first day in Ventura we visited Pete's Breakfast House for brunch. It was delicious! I had the waffle sundae and it was the perfect combination of slightly crunchy but still soft waffle, ice cream, chocolate sauce, fruit and crunchy granola.

One thing we had not done while living in California is visit any of the many missions. Missions, according to Wikipedia, comprise a series of 21 religious outposts; established by Catholic priests of the Franciscan order between 1769 and 1833, to expand Christianity among the Native Americans northwards into what is today the U.S. state of California.

The Old Mission San Buenaventura is a small one, but has a beautiful courtyard garden and a lovely church. 

Design: Brunch Invitation

For the Alpha Omega Alumni weekend, I love creating invitations to share in an email. With so many alumni, it is not cost effective to send paper invitations each year. We reserve mailed invitations for our Reunion every five years. I will often use the same design for several years and then when I get tired of it, I'll create something new. For this year's Alumni Weekend I created a couple new designs. One was for the Alumni Brunch.

The actives usually have a theme for the brunch, but we don't typically find out until the event itself. So I tend to keep the design of the invitation pretty general and brunch-like. I found this great sunrise (or sunset?) image somewhere and thought it would be fun.

Fonts used:
Cursif
Modern No. 20

The Land of Beer and Cheese

Charles has a goal of going to as many countries and states as he possibly can in his lifetime. He also loves to use long weekends and take vacations whenever possible. He had a 4-day weekend for Memorial Day, so we decided to go to Milwaukee. Some of you might wonder, why Milwaukee? Well, he's never been to Wisconsin, so we could check that off his list. And Milwaukee is only about 7 hours from us so it was easy to get there in a day.

We got a really good deal on a hotel room via Name Your Own Price on Priceline. We're big fans of this service; we use it pretty much anytime we go anywhere. If you ever want to try using it and need some help or pointers, please feel free to ask. We stayed at the Hilton right in downtown Milwaukee.

The first night there we went to a Milwaukee Brewers game (baseball, if you didn't already know). We got the cheap tickets and ended up sitting near a bunch of drunk people. That wasn't so pleasant. It was the first time I heard the f-word used so many times in one 2-minute period of time. Anyway, the Brewers lost so it was kind of a let down.

The next day we ate at this great little breakfast/lunch spot called Blue's Egg. I had french toast that was covered in berries, white chocolate sauce and the most amazing almond crumble. It was delicious! Then we drove to Franklin. My family used to live in Franklin and I hadn't been back since we lived there. We found my old house and drove around for a bit. It was nice to see it and have some memories come back. Then we went back to Milwaukee and walked around. They have a nice river walk downtown. Then we walked to a neat little movie theater, The Oriental Theater. It was built back in the 20's and has been restored. It was beautiful inside. We saw Everything Must Go. It has Will Ferrell in it; it was a pretty good movie. Afterward, we took a cab back to the hotel and went to Kopp's for dinner. Kopp's is a local burger and frozen custard place. Frozen custard is very similar to ice cream. Another delicious meal.

We left on Sunday morning, but not until after eating breakfast. We had brunch at a local place called Cafe Central. I had the Fat Elvis which was French toast with banana and peanut butter in-between the slices and topped with chocolate sauce. It was yummy! I'm not sure which French toast was better; they were both great in different ways.

On our way home we drove through some really crappy weather. At one point Charles was very concerned that a tornado might come and sweep us away. Luckily we made it through and made great time home. We had left the kitties at home alone this weekend. They survived and didn't break anything!

Milwaukee was the first major city that I could envision myself living in. Typically I am not a city girl. Cities make me feel uneasy and overwhelmed. But Milwaukee seemed more approachable. I recommend visiting...just not in the winter.