Author: thestampsinmypassport

A professional serving the travel industry for 25 years. Expertise and knowledge in sales, customer care and knowledge of the world. Sharing my knowledge, travel stories and tales from around the world in an engaging way.

Dreams do come true

On By thestampsinmypassportIn 30 Rock, Bucket List, Chick Lit, Rom ComLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

If you are a friend of mine on facebook, by now you know that I made a lifetime dream come true this past weekend. I have been very fortunate in my adult working life to be a travel consultant. It has taken me around the world and back again, and to think that a short one hour flight away there was an amazing dream that had not yet come true for me. Until now.

If you are a friend of mine off facebook, you may know this hidden (or not so) fact about me. I love New York. I love all shows filmed in New York. I love movies that are filmed in New York, all of it. If there is a RomCom movie on, even if I have seen it 100 times, I am in – Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve got mail, Serendipity, Annie, Maid in Manhattan, Uptown Girls, too many to even put here – you name it…you will find me watching. 

In fact, I also love chick lit books, and if I pick up the back of a book and it talks about the lead character living and/or working in Manhattan, I buy it. I haven’t always enjoyed the book, but the references to the city I love are worth the buy in.

Bucket list – made famous by the movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman – saw two men fighting life threatening illness. One man took another on a journey of life experiences that everyone should see or do before they die. Sounds good, doesn’t it? I was a work conference last week and was told that the estimated cost of the experiences they had was $250,000. That is not something the average person can do.

But what can the average person do? Well, funny enough, in today’s world, put your question in the form of your status update – “Would really like to make bucket list dream come true – to see the Rockafeller Christmas tree – who’s in?” and thankfully, someone said they were in. I have thrown out a lot of travel suggestions before and people always “want” to be in, but for whatever the situation, they can’t be all in. But as luck would finally be on my side, my friend worked it out and we were on our way to the Big Apple in December!

And so it began. On September 26th we booked the tickets and hotel to make it happen.

If you followed me for the weeks to come you would have seen that I changed my facebook profile picture every day until the week I left. Challenging huh? For almost 70 days I changed my picture to reflect on the city that I love. One friend mentioned that it was like an Advent Calendar counting down the days to Christmas. One friend mentioned the photos were making her jealous because she loves New York as well.

I know that making dreams come true quite often comes with a price tag attached to it. I am lucky enough that this one dream had a price tag that I could manage and therefore make happen for myself and my friend.

When is a chocolate chip not a chocolate chip?

On By thestampsinmypassportIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Well, that I have found out is easy – a chocolate chip is not a chocolate chip when it is the no name brand from Sobeys…that’s when.

And I found this out – how you may ask? I will gladly share with you this very important piece of chocolate chip purchasing detail.

Last weekend I was coming home from a friends house late at night and realized that I had wanted to make cookies for a friend of mine…so, where do you go – Sobeys open 24 hours. All I have to say is they compensate for their staff’s 24 hour a day wages by the prices that they charge in that store. WOW!

I normally ONLY by either PC decadent brand semi sweet or Chipits semi sweet chocolate chips. I had already seen the Chipits at No Frills earlier that day for $7.19 for the largest bag they had. Forgot to add it to my cart and realized I didn’t buy them half way to my friends house.

PC The Decadent Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

The SAME bag of Chipits was $9.99 at Sobeys. Really? I couldn’t pay it….but in retrospect should have paid it, because I bought this bag of no name chips for $2.49 and then of course, had to buy the good stuff for $7.19 so I paid almost the $9.99 to get what I wanted. I digress….

I opened the bag last week….and tasted the chips….really, were these even real chocolate? I had already thrown out the bag and put them in my choco chip jar (yes I have a jar for my chips) so I can’t tell you what these were made of, but I can tell you that I dumped the whole jar in the garbage. They were NASTY!

So, now I have my chipits (the PC ones were sold out) and the holiday baking can begin. I know that I have a few houses I am invited to over the holidays and I was hoping to get a jump start to holiday baking. It hasn’t happened yet, and I am out of the town this weekend…so next week it is.

Here is a fool proof Chocolate Chip cookie reciepe:

2/3 cup of soft butter or margarine (do NOT use becel)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar (packed)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla

1 and 1/2 cup of flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
6 oz pkg of chocolate chips
1/2 c chopped nuts if desired.

Method:
Blend butter, sugar, egg and vanilla.
Sift dry ingredients together and stir into batter.
Stir in chocolate chips and optional nuts.
Drop from teaspoon onto an ungreased baking sheet about 2″ apart.  (I use a spray for the tray).
Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes
cool slightly before removing from tray

Additional Notes:
– for softer chewier cookies, bake shorter amount of time – my oven works out to about 7 1/2 minutes.
– you can make the dough and add all kinds of different things into the cookies to change them up – I have done white chocolate chunks and dried cranberries, skor bits, raisins and pecans.
– you can also melt chocolate and at it to the blended wet ingredients before adding the dry.

Enjoy….oh yeah, btw…the freeze well and are VERY GOOD to eat frozen! Seriously, don’t knock it ’til you try it….

Sweet dreams y’all…………….

November 30th – could it really be here?

On By thestampsinmypassportIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have to admit – I didn’t quite get to 30 published posts in 30 days. I do have several in my drafts folder that will be published, but past the November 30th deadline. Faithful readers, don’t worry, just because November is over, doesn’t mean I will stop writing.

I was trying to formulate the thoughts about what I wanted this last day of the NaBloPoMo to be about.

How does one start to write about thoughts in their head? It is a crazy process that sometimes starts off in the middle of the night and actually wakes you up and if you don’t get up to write about it, you will forget your thoughts (that has happened). You start to listen to people’s conversations in a different way, or listen to the radio and pick up on something that someone has said that sparks a thought in your head.

One day I sat down to write and had the thought in my head. When I sat down at the keyboard and the post was finished, it was actually about a completely different thought that my subconscious had more control over my hands then I did. It was a great post, but the original story was never told.

I can say that this experience has made me want to write more. My mother keeps telling me I need to write a book. But what would it be about? I read so many novels and get so swept up in them, could I write the next great Canadian novel? How would I start? I wonder how Margaret Attwod, Danielle Steele, Emily Giffen, Lauren Weisberger or any of the number of women novel writers I read sat down to write their first words, sentences, paragraphs?

Maybe my lead character will be a travel agent who has been in the business of making people’s dreams come true for over 20 years and wants to know is there more out there? Maybe she needs to meet her Mr. Right and let him tell her all the amazing things about herself that she already knows and how to make her dreams a reality? Maybe she figures out that living life on the side lines vs. playing the game really isn’t the way to live.

I hope you will continue to check back on this blog and see what other stories I have to share with you. I have enjoyed writing and I hope you have enjoyed reading!

to be continued…..