New Year is my favorite holiday! I love staying up late with friends, toasting with champagne, making a list of resolutions, and the idea of a fresh start. Last year at this time I had my appendix removed and was really out of it on pain medicine and was so grateful to be alive that I never made any true new years resolutions. Have you already made a list? The first thing on my list is cooking, I'm going to learn how to cook. So, this morning I'm going to bake some banana bread, yummy (I hope) and try to come up with a few more new years resolutions for 2012.

Happy New Year my Friends!!!!

May 2012 be good to you all!

PS I'm in love with this Phylis Dillon song and keep playing it over and over.

The next time you visit Old San Juan I would recommend stopping by El Morro Fortress to get a sense of it's history. El Morro was built to protect attacks by sea and is a massive six level fortress that is in amazing condition. I had a blast walking around the space making these photographs.

Going out to eat in Old San Juan can be a lot of fun. While we where visiting we tried a lot of different places and found most of the restaurants that we wanted to try listed on trip-advisor. Our all time favorite restaurant in Old San Juan is Marmalade Restaurant & Wine Bar, I would go back to Old San Juan just eat here again, it's out of control AMAZING!!! We also liked Al Dente for italian, Aguaviva where the seafood and the service was perfect, El Jibarita for it's 'mom and pop' goodness, Aromas Coffeehouse for a yummy breakfast, and the food was good at Baru but the service was extremely bad that I would never go back. Please feel free to add your favorite place to eat in Old San Juan below and happy dining.

How much fun would it be to vacation on this tropical island yacht?

The above photo was what the sky looked like on Christmas day, lovely!!!

Counting down the days till 2012 and wondering what to do to bring in the new year on St Thomas. Are you planning on going out to celebrate the New Year? For the last few years my good friends 'The Bobs' have come down to celebrate and I feel a bit lost without them this year and looking for fun suggestions.

Wishing everyone a warm and joyful Christmas Holiday Weekend from the USVI!!!

XOXO

Have you ever heard of this - aquaponics?

I would have never thought of anything like this, yet it's really simple, hydroponics in a symbiotic environment with traditional aquaculture. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to taste the lettuce.