Christmas Coffee

Ok you bloggers, let's see how many people are popping into the cookbook every now and then? We made our Christmas Coffee today, so if you are wanting to make it, here is a run down of the ingredients again, and start now, or it won't have time to blend :-)

Pick a Coffee that isn't too strong. We picked a Medium blend.





Let the orange peels dry before you put them in the mix!



First fresh ground coffee.... notice the blog in the background?



Break up 18 cinnamon sticks...





Slice Vanilla beans length wise......



....cut into small pieces...



add about a Tablespoon of cloves...



Seal container, shake it up and refrigerate. Shake it up often, enjoy Christmas Morn'

Random Facts about our Vegas Trip

Money spent on parking during our 5 visits to The Strip (in US Dollars) - 0

Parking is free and available everywhere. It is much less difficult to move around to any hotel on the strip using the easily accessible Interstate 15 than it is to park at Chinook Mall here in Calgary.

Money spent on gambling (in US dollars )- 22

The slot machines appear as soon as you get off the plane. They are about 25 feet from the gate. There are huge lines of them while you are waiting for your luggage (pictured below).

They're everywhere. Here is a line of
them in the baggage claim area at
McCarran International Airport.

Yearly average rainfall in Las Vegas (in inches) - 5

Amount of two day rainfall on November 27 and 28, 2008 (in inches) - .75

Our hosts (and probably most citizens of Las Vegas) were shocked at the amount of rain that fell during that two day period. Both days set records for daily rainfall according to Las Vegas meteorologists. Nearly 20% of the total yearly rainfall fell during that 48 hours period. The last time it rained before this? According to our hosts, the last drops fell in February 2008. In the picture below, you can see the flash flood the water created in the road. Apparently because it is so dry, Las Vegas lacks a sewer system that can handle this much water in this short a period of time.



Amount of turkey the MGM Grand Hotel prepared for Thanksgiving (in pounds) - 2000



All restaurants seem to have a Thankgiving menu nicely
priced that had everything you could ever want to eat for
Thankgiving.

Number of attractions that we went to see that closed mere seconds before we arrived - 2


The Star Trek Exhibit's former home. It ran for 11
years and just closed this past September. Damn!


The Titanic Exhibit was still advertised as open on cabs and
in magazines we read. It must have closed just days before
we got there. It will re-open in the Luxor hotel around
December 15th. Damn! Damn!

Happy Blogaversary

Well this little Blog, is a whole year old!! What started with a "welcome" has grown into a full fledged diary, and even has a book! We've come along way, thanx to all our readers for laughing with us ( and at sometimes ) here's to another year of Bloggin... Cheers

Focus

I have to do an ode to the Focus car we rented. Rental fees were only 9.00 a day from Payless rental, so we were joking about what kind of car we would get.... or maybe it was a bicycle?? It wasn't a bike. It was a cute little blue car that had unbelievable gas mileage. We bought a full tank, drove all over the great land of Nevada and the last day when the tank blinked low we put 5.00 in. There is a gage in the car that tells you how many miles you can drive. So after our whopping 5.00 the gage said... 100 miles!! Incredible!

We drove 410 miles on 1 tank!

Grave Yard

I have always said I wish there was a museum dedicated to the old signs from the Vegas Hotels. Well I found out there is such a place. Not quite a museum.... yet, but there is a collection of the signs in a fenced in parking lot down Las Vegas Blvd. You have to book tours, but by the time we emailed our request it was too late. :-( Barry and Sheila hadn't been to the"Bone yard, neon sign museum" yet and they were intrigued like us. Their son, said he used to hop the fence, so the 4 of us drove out to the site, to be criminals. (feel free to click and see better details...)

We were greeted by a big fence with nasty barbed wire all over it....

Being like a cat, I hopped up on the fence, still denied access, but at least I had a better view.

Some of the signs I had to google to see what they once were. This sign was from the Royal Nevada, which disappeared in the 60'2. I bet this is one of the oldest ones here?

I found a pic of the old sign in it's glory days.

This is from the hotel Treasure Island. Apparently whoever the idea man over at the hotel was he probably got fired over this one.... months before Pirates of the Caribbean opened, Treasure Island stripped itself of the pirate theme, and changed their name to TI, giving themselves a new look, who knew Pirates would be one of the hottest marketing ploys today! I guess they figured that out, because it's back to being Treasure Island and guess what? The pirates are back. Not this unlucky guy tho.

This is one of the Lamp's from the Aladdin. The latest Lamp was taken down before the hotel switched from the Aladdin to Planet Hollywood. It sits near Freemont street, all lit up. But this one, wasn't so lucky. Here it is now and below is where it sat before.

Perched up high above the Aladdin

These diamonds were driving me nuts trying to figure out where I had sen them before. When I got home I looked in my scrapbook from 1987, and there was a picture of the Stardust! Mystery solved.

I found these 2 pics online, one of the hotel down, and the other of the sign being dismantled in pieces, that explains why there are diamonds all over the boneyard, the sign is huge!

In '87 I saw a show at the silver slipper, Boylesque was playing there. I found an interesting story online about this little malicious slipper.....

The Silver Slipper was a Las Vegas, Nevada casino that operated from September 1950 to November 29, 1988. . The casino was known for its rotating slipper that sat atop the casino.
On April 30, 1968, the Silver Slipper was purchased by billionaire Howard Hughes for $5.4 million in his famous spending spree of buying Vegas properties, which included the Frontier next door. Legend has it that he purchased the casino because the lights from the rotating slipper bothered him. This was a time when Mr. Hughes feared for his safety, and because the toe of the slipper always stopped and faced the window of his Desert Inn penthouse before rotating again, he feared a camera could be planted in the toe either by the government or someone else. After several attempts at requesting that the slipper be turned off, Hughes purchased the casino, had the slipper filled with concrete and dismantled the rotating mechanism.
The casino was purchased for $70 million on June 23, 1988 by Margaret Elardi, who by this time owned the Frontier. It was demolished several months later and turned into a parking lot. There were plans to build an addition to the Frontier on its former grounds; however, they had to eventually be scrapped due to a costly union strike taking place, which put a severe financial strain on the resort.

Here are more pieces of the Stardust, and random letters. I'm working on finding out what they came from, as of yet, mystery continues.

I wasn't going to put this pic on the bog because I couldn't for the life of me, figure out what it said. We tried every "S" word there was. Then once again,my scrapbook to the rescue, I went to a Museum in '87, little museum called.... LIBERACE, and his signature on the booklet matches the black sign. So it wasn't an "S" after all, it's an "L"

Thru Google I could not find a picture of the Sahara with the letters going downwards. All the sites had the letters left to right, and then I found it... yep, in my scrapbook, this sign in '87.

Always a reason to go back to Vegas, here is one of them, to actually get inside the fence of this very kewl tourist must see attraction!!

Vegas Through The Lens.

The amazing Wynn Hotel.

An exclusive french restaurant's menu at the MGM Grand.
Click on the pic and take a look at the price of a taster menu.
Hey, it's Vegas...


Las Vegas Boulevard otherwise known as The Strip
accidently blurred by Selena but wow one of my
favourite pics.

More food. From LBS Burger - aptly named The Perfect
Burger. It really was perfect. Wow.

The best hosts in the world, Barry and Sheila.

Only in Vegas it seems. A wine glass,

gently placed on the ground in a

parking garage outside the Red

Rock Casino, a 1 billion dollar

neighbourhood casino. No plastic cups

here! Neighbourhood means that it is way

off The Strip in the suburbs of Las Vegas

near where we stayed. They are all over

Las Vegas like Costcos are in Calgary.

The famous Fremont Street - featured
in a episode of CSI - even cooler in person.

The best omlette I've ever had. Oven baked filled

with Gouda cheese - it must have weighed 5 pounds.

The Luxor beams light into the night

Vegas Sky.

KA

We went to one of the Cirque De Soleil shows, this one was KA. The story line was about twins separated, and their journey back to each other. WOW! Is the one word to describe this, vertical show. I have NEVER seen a show that is upright,vertical, actors dropping off the stage, and nonstop motion in my life!! It was incredible! Anyone heading to sin city should see this performance. We got a great picture taken of us by the jesters that run around,but we have to scan it so I'll upload it after. For now, this is all you get, cause no cameras were allowed.

After the show we called our roomies to rave about the show!!!

Fortune

So this lovely lady told us our fortune, and it was that you will get riped off!! Her fortune never dropped out, so we lost .50. Instead of listening to her we preceded to drop a 20.00 into the slots, just to say we did, we got the same result as the fortune teller....nothing dropped out of the slot!

Red Rock Canyon

Believe it or not, it rains in Las Vegas, not just any kind of rain either, record rain! So I guess when Barry and Sheila talk about rain here they will remember us being here for the record fall.

Anyway despite the rain, we headed for the hills. We took the morning and went to Red Rock Canyon. How incredible! The color was intensified by the rain, and the cloud cap is pretty cool. So it turned out to be a great day to see the mountains!

We must have been following a wedding, because in amongst the dry earth, there were red rose petals. Great contrast.

This tree was so kewl, again, contrast in colors. We were at the highest point here.

Our license plate of our 9.00 rental car!

This is new! Graffiti on a living plant!

Sheila and I doing our part to preserve the area, keeping the rock from falling.

Proof! Rain on the window.

Here is an article from the Vegas Sun;

Anyone in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving Day witnessed something few have ever seen on the holiday. It rained.
The National Weather Service said 0.14 inches of rain fell at McCarran International Airport on Thursday. Since records have been kept, beginning in 1937, the airport never has recorded measurable rainfall on Thanksgiving Day -- that is, until this year.
The rain amount also broke a record for Nov. 27, set in 1981, when one-hundredth of an inch of rain fell in the city. It was the second day of record-breaking rainfall -- the 0.32 of an inch that fell Wednesday set a record for Nov. 26.!!

That's us!!