It’s no secret to readers of my blog that I am often late in putting together posts. I have a huge backlog of photos and posts to be made. And I’m trying to get through them methodically. In this case, I am 8 months overdue…

So yes, here we are in September, and I am finally putting up our Valentine’s Day getaway weekend on Vancouver Island with Allan.

Our first stop for the weekend was Victoria. Victoria has charm, no doubt, but really I love to travel there for the food, and for the accomodations.

One of my favourite places to stay in the whole world… the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Yes, it is old, traditional, and a little bit stodgy… but that’s why I love it.

It’s all about attention to detail. Beautiful fabrics, wallpaper, patterns, furniture, lighting, moulding…

The rooms are small and simple. Ours had a great view of the Victoria harbour…

A quick walk on some cobblestone streets in the moonlight for some fresh air, and then off to dinner…

Victoria is well-known for its fantastic restaurants… but my favourite happens to be right in the hotel. The “Empress Room” is the main dining room at the hotel. Whenever I eat here, I am whisked away to another world from another time…

Nothing is modern here. There’s nothing innovative or unusual about the decor or the food. This isn’t a trendy place to go. It’s not the place to see-or-be-seen. This is where you go if you want delicious, traditional food that is incredibly rich with absolutely the best service in all of BC.

The Empress has recently reworked their drink menu and their bartenders have gone through extensive training to mix drinks the “classic” Victorian way. I don’t know what that is, but each drink we had was strong, clean, fragrant, and tasty.

The food is SO good here. While it may not be for everyone’s palate, it really does suit mine. The flavours are always spot on, and their menu is always local and seasonal. But best of all, it’s always extremely rich. Nothing subtle here. I can’t say enough about the service. Although we always try to be seated at Earl’s table (my favourite waiter), every member of staff is impeccable and courteous. Yes, the silver platters are an over-the-top traditional touch. I don’t care. It’s awesome.

Dessert is always amazing too. This time Allan tried a peach cobbler, and I had the chocolate marshmallows with gold leaf. No ordinary marshmallow, it was filled with homemade marshmallows, hazelnut filling, and a crumbly dark chocolate crust at the bottom… then dipped in dark chocolate. Mmmmm.

You can’t help but feel a little small in the room. All the furniture, lighting, wallpapers and fabrics are ridiculously decadent. But there’s a large wood burning fireplace at the end of the room that softens it all and makes you feel like you’re at home. It’s kind of like being in your rich grandma’s house from another life.

Every floor has different patterns, decor, and antique pieces and fine art on display.

We love to wander the hallways in the hotel.

I loved this lamp in our room.

Of course, no Valentine’s Day is complete without a little cherry-red lace!

I fell in love with this antique armoire in our hallway.

The morning came a little too early and of course we had to order room service.

Then it was off to the Empress Spa for a couple’s massage and some rest and relaxation in their mineral pool. We definitely felt pampered.

We said goodbye to the hotel. Opened in 1908. It’s one of those places you go to visit because you know everything is going to stay the same.

And well, as for the rest of the weekend? I had already covered that in a previous post. It was off to Mount Washington near Courtenay on Vancouver Island to visit friends and snowboard our little hearts out.

IF any cast members would like their photo removed, please let me know and I would be happy to honour your request!

It’s been a long past couple weeks since Amy and I, and friends, started visiting the Twilight sets. I’m pretty exhausted. This may be the last of it for us

My morning alarm went off 30 minutes ago… but here’s the catch — we just got back home. Yup, we were out all night at the Cullen House set. We saw the new outfits for the birthday party scene. And yes, to Amy’s excitement, Rob was there. Let me explain.

We’d been meaning to visit the Cullen house set in North Vancouver for some time now. Amy and Ranelle managed to guess the location of the set (thanks Ranelle for all the update!).! However… with work and Canucks playoff games though, it just didn’t work out and we weren’t able to visit until tonight after the (awesome) game.

We rolled up to the set tonight at around 12:30 am to find it packed with about 30 teenage girls. Some even camped out in sleeping bags, lawn chairs, etc! Wow, crazy! We knew that it would be about their “lunch time” when we got there since they were shooting overnight, and so we hoped to get some glimpses of the cast leaving in the vehicles for the catering site.

After a few blinding headlights and lots of waiting, believe it or not… yes… Rob Pattison (Edward) and Kristen Stewart (Bella) streaked by in their car.

We couldn’t see too much of the set, except that the parts of the house we could see looked quite like the one in Twilight. It was surrounded by a forest… completely lit up by the filming below. It was actually really surreal.

Another car drives by, and here’s a strange one: Edi Gathegi (Laurent) and Rachelle Lefevre (Victoria). I wonder what they were doing there. Were they visiting the set? Were they filming a scene for Eclipse? Were they filming a new scene for New Moon that wasn’t in the book? Hmmmm….

Everything died down at around 1:00 AM once all the cast had taken off for lunch. The entire sidewalk of girls emptied, down to pretty much us four (Amy, Mandylicious (so cool in person!), Mel, and myself) and a group of young girls in sleeping bags. The security guards had been super strict for the past 3 days and no one was even getting a real glimpse at anything. At this point we weren’t really sure what to do. I was pretty burnt out myself, but Amy hadn’t seen Rob yet and it was Friday night after all… so we decided to stick it out.

We made quite a few Tim Horton’s runs that night for hot tea. We were cold, really cold. I wasn’t planning on camping out like that so I was freezing as I wasn’t really dressed appropriately (my hockey jersey and a mini skirt and leggings).

But we did it. We froze our asses off until 6 AM in the morning and wow, were we ever rewarded!

The teenage girls took off, and we were the final four. We were just about to give up hope when some headlights blinded us and a white SUV pulled up… but instead of screeching off like normal… they SLOWED DOWN!

We saw Peter roll down his window…

And believe it or not… Peter Facinelli (Carlisle), Kristen Stewart (Bella), and Nikki Reed (Rosalie) in full hair and make up got out of the van! Peter said, “We just have to get out and give you girls hugs for waiting all this time!” Hugs all around. Kristen asked Amy how long we’d been there, and Amy said “10 minutes” at first and then eventually told her the truth. Nikki was just beaming… she looked great and her new wig looked amazing.

We were super excited to see they were in full hair and makeup, all dressed up in the new costumes for the Birthday Party scene!

Peter looked absolutely stunning in person in his “vamp” look. Wow, he honestly looked a little supernatural in person. It looked like his outfit was a gray cashmere button up sweater, a gray and white striped scarf, over a white checked stiff dress shirt and an ice blue textured tie, with gray slacks. Very sleek!

Kristen and Nikki were covered up, but they both looked great. Kristen was wearing a bathrobe to keep warm over the birthday party dress which was cleverly covered! However… we have clues. It appears she is wearing a frothy light blue and turquoise striped cocktail dress. You can see in the top picture with her and Rob that the bottom of the dress is ruffled and layered. Looks very pretty from what we can see! Nikki has an amazing warm smile and she is so gracious. She beamed at us the entire time taking photos and waved when they left. We’re not sure about Rosalie’s outfit… any guesses?

I made sure to get Amy, Mandy and Mel in a photo with them.

Thanks for taking photos with us!

Soon another van pulled out and Jackson got out! He also wanted to thank us for hanging out for so long and he also gave Amy a big hug. Mandy let him know they were at the concert on Tuesday and Jackson seemed stoked about that and mentioned the other shows coming up.

It was so neat to see the cast members with their makeup and contacts, especially after seeing them at the concert/bar as “normal” people having fun.

It looks like “Jasper”’s outfit for the scene will be a handsome dark blue button-up collared dress shirt, a bold square belt, dark blue jeans, and some really great black oxford shoes with a stacked heel, pointed toe, and matte leather. Nice! Jackson looked very sexy.

So of course we snapped a couple photos with Jackson!

And last, but not least…

Rob Pattison’s car pulled up and stopped in front of us with Rob and Ashley Greene. You can see that “Edward”’s outfit for the scene consists of a sharp black blazer, a charcoal ribbed heavy sweater, and tight gray jeans. Unfortunately we can’t see Ashley’s outfit. I’m guessing that jacket isn’t part of it?

They rolled down the window and Rob exclaimed in his accent, “You guys are crazy!.” The girls got pretty excited and snapped a couple rare pics. Rob and Ashley smiled at us and put up with our photos and said bye to us before leaving. Very cool of them to roll down the window and say hi! Amy mentioned how uncomfortable Rob is about photos, so that must have been tough for him to do but we really appreciated it! And they both looked gorgeous.

And that’s it! We were super stoked, very tired, and definitely impressed again by the graciousness of the cast and the opportunity just to see them. And those outfits look GOOD! I’m excited to see the scene in the movie.

And now, it is time for bed. It’s 9 AM and I need sleep. Goodnight

Today is one of the busiest days I’ve had yet! I’m just going to write a short post before we head out tomorrow to the Island for Valentine’s Day stuff and snowboarding.

When I woke up today, I had no intention of cooking a Valentine’s Day dinner… however by the end of the day I suddenly decided I wanted to cook something up before we left to eat while watching “Lost”. In fact, I shouldn’t even really call it a Valentine’s Day dinner because it’s definitely not how I would have liked to do it. Our real V-Day dinner out is tomorrow

I knew I wanted to buy Allan the pasta maker he’s been eyeing at Williams-Sonoma, so I headed over there at the end of the day. I got him a couple supplies to get started quickly if he wanted to.. even though in the future I want to make the pasta from scratch.

I also picked up a little present for myself while I was there… a Cuisinart Pressure Cooker! What I desperately want one day is a beautiful proper slow cooker, but for now… and for my busy life, I think a pressure cooker is more appropriate.

So Allan opened his presents after work today and he was super stoked. He got an Imperia pasta maker made in Italy, a silicon rolling pin (these things are amazing), some pasta sauce, and some pasta flour.

I didn’t really have a plan for dinner tonight so I decided to make something with the new pressure cooker… Caribbean style braised beef short ribs. I picked up some nice Alberta fed short ribs from Granville Island and grabbed some mushrooms, carrots, and potatoes to go with it.

While it cooked in the pressure cooker for an hour and a half, Allan started using his new pasta maker! It did a really nice job.

The ribs didn’t turn out too bad. I was a little disappointed with how fatty they were, but they really were tender. They literally fell off the bone while cooking. The sauce was nice but next time I think I will pick a less fatty cut of meat.

It all went together pretty good… it was a neat experiment. Next time we’ll make the pasta a lot thinner and I want to season it a bit more to be more flavourful. I think a cream sauce would have been better with the fresh pasta.

Anyway, all in all, a fun experiment and I can’t wait to cook more!

Tomorrow morning I have a quick skate at 8 Rinks and then it is off on the ferry to Victoria! We’re staying in my favourite BC hotel… the Fairmont Empress.. and eating at one of my favourite restaurants… the Empress Room. Wohooo! I can’t wait. It’ll be nice to have a mini getaway with all the stress that’s been going on lately. Then it’s up to Courtenay for the snowboarding weekend.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine’s Day and weekend!