sunset celebration weekend and a give-away

I know it was a month ago, but here are my pictures from the sunset celebration weekend held at the sunset magazine headquarters in menlo park. much the same format as last year but still so many cool things to see, great foods to taste, wines to sip and gardens to see :)

first stop for us was some food and wine and then we found these tillamook love loaf buses which bryce instantly bonded with

they were pretty cool - and so nicely fitted out

then it was on to the glam camping area

this was the Paws Up tent, a place where you can camp without roughing it, a place where you can have your own camping butler... I kid you not!

the airstream was more my idea of glam camping

and if I wasn't so claustrophobic this little guy might work

they even rigged up an outdoor shower

Hawaiian airlines had a station to make lei's, which I planned on going back to but ran out of time

Richard Branson had a stall advertising tickets for flights into space
on this plane here - for about $US120K (bargain!)
then it was on to the test garden. I thought this idea for garden beds was genius and so simple.
love their little glasshouse
we met the sunset chickens

the grounds are really gorgeous - be a great place to work

in the test kitchen we learned that the people who work there aren't chefs but real people who cook the family meal. once the recipes have been created they all have to try them out and give feedback before they are published. doesn't that sound like a cool job?this little guy was the messenger on how the recipe went - if the flag is green you can help yourself to the food
if this flag is flying... well I think you can probably figure that one out for yourselves :)I guess this is how they decide what travel articles they'll write for the year - people just stuck pins on this map
then we were off to the courtyard for some wine tasting

this was our favourite wine we tastedwe really didn't get enough time to see everything and they started packing up before we could see it all
so we snapped some pics

and called it a day - next year we'll go earlier!

and now about that give-away... I have a 1 year subscription to Sunset magazine to give away to a lucky reader in the USA (sorry rest of the world, doesn't seem like they ship to you). All you have to do is leave me a comment below to say hi and tell me what city you're in (just for fun) and I will pick a random winner on Sunday 18 July, 2010.

:)

Kate