April’s photo dump

As I may have mentioned a time or two, I have a penchant for taking a ridiculous amount of photos, but sadly I don’t have the same penchant for blogging about them. So to remedy that problem, you have the honor of witnessing my first ever photo dump. Yeah, I’ve done monthly wrap ups, and I even did an entire blog recap when I hit 100 posts. But this time, I don’t really have a reason for sharing random photos, except just for the sheer joy of putting them out there. So, grab a tall glass of sweet tea and get comfy…

During the month of April I celebrated my 20+10+1 birthday. (I’ll let you do the math.)

Bubba makes a homemade birthday cake for me every year. And every year Annie-dog supervises.

Besides the delicious cake, I also received tulips for my birthday. Purple ones…

And white ones! Oh, and I finally got to use my owl vase!

The weekend before my birthday we took a little trip down to Las Cruces  where we viewed the raging Rio Grande River.

Visited with Bubba’s family…

Dined at one of our favorite Italian food establishments…

Then on our way home, saw many desolate areas…

After all the birthday celebrating had calmed down, it was time to celebrate Easter. One of my favorite holidays, not only is it a holiday filled with pretty pastels and Peeps (come on how could you not love sugar covered marshmallows?) it’s also a day to celebrate our Savior’s glorious resurrection.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 1 Peter 1:3

Apparently, this photo dump turned into a recap of April, and of course a recap of a national holiday, my birthday!!

Advertisement

Los Angeles: The Sights

Woo hoo! The final post of my Los Angeles shots, aren’t you excited to see all the sights that I deemed worthy to shoot, edit, and ultimately post on Casa de Yellow? I know, I can’t wait either…

So, where to start…how about with some random shots? Is that ok?? Well, since no one answered, I’ll start with some of my favorites.

I’m a sucker for interesting architecture, there were so many grogeous buildings downtown.

Aside from ooohing and aawwing over the architecture, I went on a few tours of the grand city. Mostly I got to ride by several interesting spots.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall

Capital Records

The hotel where Whitney Houston died.

An old coffee shop that I am told is used as set in many films and TV shows.

CBS, I was hoping to get a glimpse of Craig Ferguson, but no luck.

Sony Pictures, where our tour guide ran into Will Smith. They wouldn’t let me wait around for anther Will appearance, so instead I did a little shopping. Well, window shopping, and the window was on the bus as we were driving by at  50 mph.

This was as close to the beach I got on this trip. Darn those work trips that don’t allow much time for relaxation.

At one point we took a little 15 minute break at the Griffith Observatory.

Despite the crowds, the views were spectacular!

The next day I got to go on a tour to Disneyland! Yeah, I know totally sacrificing there, all for the price of professional development. It was actually pretty cool, they showed us how the park was planned and how it’s changed the city of Anaheim over the past 60 years. (Sorry, I got all Plannery on you, my 9 to 5 is in City Planning. Exciting stuff!)

“Someday I’ll be part of his world.” If she meant Mickey, then she is definitely in his world…or in this case land.

In between conferencing and touring, I had a little time do some sight seeing on my own.

Boats, actually in the water! This is not something you see too often in the southwest, considering all we have is sandy beach.

I loved the landscaping throughout, apparently since the weather is so mild those in LA can pretty much grow anything.

 

Then I got to do some window shopping outside of a tour bus.

Doesn’t this bed look like the bed from Mad Men that Don and Betty Draper share?

Who wants a horse head lamp?

How about the whole horse? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

And everyday that I was in LA I got to walk by the Staples Center, and everyday there was an event that would draw THOUSANDS of people. And those thousands would wander around the Nokia Center.

Which is across the street from the Staples Center. With loads of statues of sporting greats that I don’t really know. Except for Magic Johnson and Wayne Gretzky.

And that my friends, sums up my work trip to Los Angeles. Sorry for the 500 words and the 40 kazillion photos!

Have you ever been to the City of Angels? What was your favorite part? I have to admit, my fave place out of the entire trip, had to have been Bottega Louie. Which has to be pretty obvious since I dedicated an entire post to it!

2nd Blogiversary

Today marks my 2nd Blogiversary! I’ve posted 150 posts since this little blog that could was born, and many many more words and pictures, too many to count! My sweet Bubba is so glad that I started this blog, he claims it’s a good way for me to get all my words in without talking too much at home. Ha, proved him wrong, I still don’t get all my daily words in and still talk his ears off at the end of the day!

Anywho, I  just wanted to wish myself a happy blogiversary, and a happy day to you!

From me and the office ninjas…

Bottega Louie

When you heard from me last I went on about my lodging while in Los Angeles. Today I wanted to talk about where I ate while in LA., honestly there should be more pictures of food as I did eat at more than one restaurant and did have more than just beautiful baked goods. But apparently other meals weren’t nearly as camera ready as this particular dining experience.

The first meal was had at the beautiful Bottega Louie in downtown LA. I had the lasagna with the traditional meat sauce. It was pretty good, not amazing, but very edible.

Honestly though, the draw for me was the gorgeous baked goods and sweets that ol’ Louie offered.

Oh yeah, and those colorful cookies up there are called macarons they are not pronounced nor anything similar to their coconut laden cookie cousin macaroons. Theses guys are the most light and DE-licous thing I’ve had, well ever. I want to learn how to make them and decorate my home with them, they are that pretty and yummy. And of course I had to buy some to bring home. If you ever find yourself in downtown LA, I highly suggest you pay Bottega Louie a visit, but expect to pay a pretty penny. My box of five cookies was $10.

But oh so worth it, I even saved the box. Isn’t it pretty? I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but my hoarding tendencies tell me to hang on to it. Maybe I’ll keep it to store stray earrings.

Aside from the cute little cookie hamburgers, I brought back truffles for the ladies in my office:

And butter cookies for my Bubba:

All baked goods were gone in less than two days, I’d say they went over very well with their recipients!

Meals had after Bottega Louie were just as delicious but apparently weren’t nearly as photo worthy, but believe me when I say I had more to eat other than lasagna and cookies while visiting the great City of Angels. Although cookies and lasagna wouldn’t be a horrible diet, but my jeans would say probably say otherwise.

Stay tuned for the next post, I’ll be sharing all the sights I saw while in LA!

The O in hOtel

Wow-wee, it’s been way too long since I last posted. I miss my little blog-y home, and all my readers (hi Mom!!).

As promised, I’ll be sharing some photos from my little work trip to Los Angeles. I will apologize in advance as I realize most of you will find fire escapes and yet another sky scraper quite boring. But for this girl from a town that has only one tall building, it was a pretty awesome sight!

Honestly, I’m not really sure how to organize these pictures into posts. When I forced you to see, when I shared with you my shots from our Charleston trip I broke those down into each day we were there. However, with these it’s a little more difficult, because some days I took loads of photos and others not so much. So, I’ll break them down into 3 categories: room, board, and sites.  I’ll try to make them into three posts, but we’ll see what happens, remember I have that itchy shutter finger, so I’ve got LOADS of shots I just can’t wait to share!

On with the room, we stayed at a boutique hotel called The O Hotel. I have no idea what the “O” stands for unless it stands for “O, this hotel is dang expensive!”. But I shouldn’t complain, the cost of lodging did not come out of my pocket, and it was pretty nice and more importantly clean.

The room itself was pretty basic, bed, desk, tv, bathroom.

Sorry for the fuzzy photos, it was pretty dark in there!

Aside from the small-ish but comfy bed, I had a great view!

Yup, that’s a block wall. Apparently in the big city you have to pay big bucks for a view. This was a hard pill for this southwestern girl to swallow, where views and wide open spaces are free to all.

Here’s the view when laying on the bed, it’s a little more interesting than what you get when standing in front of the window.

Yup a parking garage, while visiting the City of Angels I came to understand that Los Angeles residents really do love their cars. But since they all loved their cars so and insist on driving them everywhere, they must park them somewhere, hence the 50 million parking garages I counted while in downtown LA.

Aside from the great views, the hotel room offered storage for the weary travelers treasures.

Sorry for mess, I didn’t bother to pick things up. It was the last day and I had forgotten to take photos of the room before I messed it up.

They offered a luggage rack and a small closet, which was fine as I am not one to really unpack while traveling, I’m more of a throw it in a suit case and don’t worry about organizing it type of girl.

My favorite part of the entire hotel was probably all of the marble, I LOVE marble and would love to incorporate it somewhere in the yellow shoebox. But cost restraints and the high maintenance have been a slight marble deterrent to me.

Here’s the shower, I didn’t really care for the hand held only shower option, but the water was hot and the pressure was good.

Oh yeah, and the shower area didn’t completely close off, so if you weren’t careful you could easily flood the bathroom while singing “Oops I did it Again” during hair washing. They had tracks for a shower door, but no shower door. Hmm…very curious indeed.

Oh, and I should mention the shower gel/shampoo/conditioner holder. I loved this idea, I didn’t use any of the products due to my ridiculously sensitive skin, but it’s a great way to keep essentials handy without having them fall off shelves and bruise big toes. Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Remember when I mentioned the marble? Oh, the marble, it was deliciously creamy, light and bright. They had it everywhere, the vessel sink was even made of marble.

I learned that if I were to ever get a vessel sink, it would need to be slightly more rounded on the bottom. This one didn’t really drain all that well as there was frequently water standing in the bottom.

This may have been mentioned previously, but I loved all the creamy marble, but I didn’t love the slate flooring they paired it with. It seemed a little cold.

The room was small and stylish, but so was the lobby. It was cozy and quaint, but with a restaurant and bar it could get pretty loud and crowded on a Saturday night.  But on a Friday afternoon it was pretty quiet.

The fireplace was a little modern for my taste, but the brick work and lighting were very chic. And I would be remiss not to mention the high ceilings, they really do open up a small space.

Honestly, most of the hotel was a little too modern for my taste, but I guess I’m just an old lady who enjoys well worn, curvy vintage finds opposed to the sleek clean lines of the modern style. Thankfully though, I didn’t spend very much time hanging around the room or the hotel in general. There was way too many things to see, eat, and photograph. In the next couple of days I’ll show you what I saw and most importantly what I ate while visiting the fair city of LA.

Don’t be scared, I promise  I won’t rattle on as much next time!