Balsam Hill Treelot 2016 - Burlingame

The Balsam Hill annual Treelot event is one of my favorite holiday events to attend. At their Burlingame show room, rows of trees are displayed and walls are covered in wreaths, garlands, and ornaments. Last year's event was a spectacular evening and this year had much of the same wonderful spirit.

The marvelous wine, cheese, bread, and cold cuts table




Wreaths, garlands, and ornaments adorning the walls.

The part I look forward to the most is the wreath decorating contest. Balsam Hill items were displayed on the tables. After a brief introduction from interior designers on this year's trends and decorating tips, it was a mad dash to gather items for our wreath.

Tran and I are so proud of how our wreath turned out this year. It was really all her aesthetic eye. I only helped with assembly. Our design won second place this year! I'm so excited. We didn't win anything last year and all the other wreaths were amazing this year too. 

Here are some of the other trendy and high quality Christmas decor by Balsam Hill. Their trees are very realistic and the ornaments are really high quality.

Balsam Hill Tree Lot Christmas Event - Burlingame

This year is a year of brand new things for the blog as I begin to branch out to topics other than food. Among those things is how I gear up for my favorite holiday of the year, Christmas. I recently attended an exclusive blogger event by Balsam Hill Tree Lot in Burlingame for the opening of their show room. Balsam Hill makes high end artificial trees and they look so real! It was a fun filled and family oriented event. I brought my friend Tran along since I knew she loves home decor and she would appreciate all the things we would see.

We both signed up for the wreath decorating contest. We spent the first half of the event munching on snacks, drinking wine, and feasting our eyes on all the Christmas galore of the show room gathering inspiration.

These trees are so much lovelier than the $7 clearance tree I bought from Target one year and decided never to decorate my house again.

Ornament lane was filled with even more trees of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. They were decorated with even more options in colored lights and ornaments. Nothing gets me in the Christmas spirit more than lights. Before the wreath decorating contest started, there was a raffle drawn where I won this cute white table top tree.

After gathering inspiration around the show room, we were given a quick demo by Brad Schmidt, an award winning decorator. He whipped this elegant wreath up in less than 30 minutes.

These were a few of the ornaments at our disposal to decorate the California Baby Redwood wreath.

Then it was Ready, Set, Decorate for 45 minutes!

Photos from Balsam Hill

Before the judges revealed the winning wreath, the children presented their own small wreaths. It was so cute!

I didn't win but I was still very proud of my wreath. Here it is!

Photos by Balsam Hill

My inspiration for the wreath was the color scheme of my house and what's trendy. The theme in my house is brown and blues against all our stark white walls. I thought the ornaments went well with the theme. The gold ribbons added a variety of texture to the wreath and a pop of color. Following the demonstration from Brad Schmidt, I made one big bow on top and two smaller ones at the bottom to balance. The silver leaves were sprinkled in to fill out the wreath. When it's plugged in with the white lights, the whole wreath just looks amazing in my house.

You can view more about this event on Balsam Hill's blog. Thanks again to Balsam Hills for this wonderful opportunity. It's a great brand with quality products and the tree lot has a family oriented environment. I also love that it's as close as Burlingame. Had a blast, hope to be invited back next year too!

Cherimoya - Burlingame

 We noticed the Quickly's in downtown Burlingame had closed and was replaced by a Vietnamese cafe. Always on the lookout to support my people and satisfy my milk tea cravings, I had to give Cherimoya a chance.

Cherimoya is the name of this fruit. It looks and tastes similar to a soursop but to some of you, that was the same as defining poop with poo.

The cafe was mainly a to-go establishment with only one table indoors and 2 outside. 

 (Left) $3.75 Mango smoothie, (right) $2.29 milk black tea. Mango smoothie: probably made of a powder or frozen form of mango and not bad but not flavorful and must have contained a larger portion of ingredients other than mango. Milk black tea: tastes mostly like tea which is a bit too dark for me. It was definitely not sweet enough. We were only in the mood for drinks so this review of Cherimoya is only based on these two drinks.

The only good thing that came out of this was that for once, my item cost less than Phil's. WIN FOR ME!

Cherimoya on Yelp - wow this place got 4 stars? Maybe I should reconsider, but nah, I like to go against the grain. I stick to my assessment.

Zambra Tapas - Burlingame

I am having a hard time writing this entry for Zambra Tapas because I can't remember the food names or my opinions on them, and that in itself is my review of Zambra, just another place I won't remember. Well here are some basics to begin with: Zambra Tapas in Burlingame with Philsky and VS for happy hour, $5 a plate, $5 well drinks, $3 draft beers.

Merlot served in a small carafe that makes it look fancier than it is.

Wines at the bar (These aren't really the ones on the happy hour menu. How deceiving!)

Ceviche, one of my favorite tapas, but not here. There was not alot, and it was just alright, and the plantain chip tasted like crispy nothingness.

Calamari - eh. Can't go wrong with it but also didn't go right either.

Some sort of potato cake? I don't know. It just tasted like potato slices piled together like a pie and served with some sauce.

Tasted like beef stir fry. Yes, it did taste like Chinese food. This was probably the best plate of the whole night.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

I guess it was cheap. Service was good enough, nothing memorable. Portions were small. Oh I'm sorry, could you not read that? I said portions were small. Which is also why I said I guess it was cheap because I wasn't sure if considering portion size if it all balanced out. Maybe I'd be happier if it was $3 a plate. Wouldn't we all?

Zambra Tapas on Yelp

Shabu House - Burlingame

Happy belated birthday to VS and thanks to her, I got to try Shabu House in Burlingame, Japanese beef fondue.

We had soup options of Spicy Miso, Ginger Chicken Broth, and Traditional Water (is that like regular water?). Pictured above is the spicy miso soup with a ponzu soy sauce to the left and a peanut sauce on the right.

And here's the yummy yummy American Style Kobe beef platter, thinly sliced to perfection. Vegetable platters are pictured in the background.

Here's a yelp reviewer demonstrating the action of dipping the meat in the soup. This is why it's called shabu shabu, because when you swirl the meat in the soup, it makes a "shabu shabu" sound (you'll have to use your imaginations on this one). And how do I know this? Because my Japanese teacher told me.

However, adding insult to Japanese tradition, we just dumped all the meat and veggies in at once, and let it cook instead of dipping one piece at a time. So we basically ate hot pot style. Haha, way to entirely defeat the purpose of shabu shabu, but oh well, food is food.

No birthday celebration at a Japanese eatery is complete without sake bombs. Two parts Sapporo, one part sake, and all parts BOMB!

Green tea ice cream and wet bean. Yeah, you heard me, wet bean.

Because I think I'm losing readers lately, I'm going to add pictures of happy people. Such as the happy couple on the far left. Look how lovingly Julio rests on Kevin's shoulder.

On the other side of the table, feeling overly ecstatic about being the bread in a four female sandwich, Aaron and Richard decide to lean in closer like the creepers that they are. And someone on the right is trying to show off their baller status with a wad of cash.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

The food was good. I'm not a huge fan of hot pot-style food but Shabu tastes better than Chinese style hot pot. I think what makes it is the ponzu dipping sauce. The peanut sauce was good too. The service was slow but they were so packed with large parties so I guess I'll go easy. Overall, great food, great people, great time! 

Shabu House on Yelp