Bottega Louie

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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

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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!

Long time

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By the time you read this post, I should bin the air on my way home from LA. Yup, you read that right, Los Angeles, The City of Angels. It’s not a vacation though I am here on account of a conference for my 9 to 5 job. But I didn’t come here to talk about work, I came here to dust the cobwebs off my old blog home.  I know it’s been a long time, apparently I inadvertently took a blogging break. There’s been a lot going on around these parts lately, and I’ve got A LOT to share and show you. But it’s going to take sometime to edit all the photos I want share with you. So stay tuned for those.

But for now, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite memories of LA.

Nom, nom, nom….

 

womp-womp

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It’s been so long since I last posted I don’t know if I’ll be able to put words into sentences. But let’s give it a shot shall we?

I will give you fair warning, this post probably won’t make much sense and will have abosolutely NO structure. So, if you enjoy a well rounded post, then I suggest you stop reading here. But if you don’t mind my ramblings and my random photos, then sit back and enjoy the show!

Recently, I’ve been trying to attack a few of my smaller projects. You know, those projects that don’t really take a lot of time, and really don’t make a huge impact. But they still make me feel good for doing them, because darn it, I’m gonna do something fun!

I saw this idea on Pinterest to make your own murcury glass lamps. I love the look of these, but I hate the price tag, so the thought of making them myself out of cheapie lamps was super appealing. The instructions suggested using Krylons Looking Glass spray paint and  lots of water, but I being the independent rule breaker I am, thought I’d try using a metallic spray paint.

Here’s my set-up:

A $3 Goodwill lamp, and her $3 cream brother in the background. And here’s pinky after my little experiment:

Imagine a big wop-wop sound effect as I studied the results of my labor. The process, is pretty simple, you drench the lamp in water with a trusty spray bottle, then spray it with your spray paint before it dries. It may have worked better if I had started out the with the correct product in the first place, and maybe covered the original pinky mauve with another color before water drenching step. So, I’ll be purchasing some Krylon Looking Glass spray paint to try this project one more time. Hopefully, I’ll end up with results that are similar to this:

Aside from getting a spray paint headache, I’ve also been playing around with art in the living room. Over the past year I’ve acquired quite the collection of discarded art from various thrift stores. Some of them are originals and pretty darn good, others aren’t so good, and still others are prints. I’ve decided I may need to be more discerning about what I bring home, and where I place my works of art.

Here’s my living room art wall way back in August of 2011:

Ignore the girls on the sofa, this is a recycled picture from this post. Honestly though, this is a typical scene in my living room, dogs sleeping on the couch and crooked pictures on the wall.

Here’s my little art wall last week before I started tweaking with it again:

Sorry for the poor white balance, it was night time and I didn’t want to wait until I had better lighting. But back to my art wall, as you can see, I’ve got way too many photos up here that really aren’t connected and brought together the way they should be. So, I took them all down except for the one that I knew I wanted to keep on that wall.

Then after fiddling for a while I came up with this:

Now it looks too sparse, and I’m not really sold on the two yellow bird paintings anymore. It might be time to do some art purging. Back to the drawing board on this one too. Chalk this one up to another womp-womp moment.

Hopefully, this weekend I’ll get a chance to tackle these womp-womp projects and make them into woot-woot projects!!

Have a great weekend folks!

Poke me with a stick, it’s Monday!

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Shall we start the week off with a weekend recap? I hope you said yes, because that’s what you’re getting!

This weekend was marvelous! It started out with dinner at our favorite pizza joint, JJ’s, I’ll be doing a post about that soon. (JJ has the best pizza in all of the Duke City, if you ask me!) Then on Saturday, my sweet mom and I went to see a live performance of Anne of Green Gables, performed at the Albuquerque Little Theater. Honestly, it was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had at a live performance. Then we had another yummy meal, this time it was at a chain, Taco Cabana. But still yummy. Sunday flew by, since we lost that hour. But that didn’t some me from trying a little project, I got ambitous and thought I’d clean out a spare room. The room where Bubba keeps his “gaming” equipment. This included 12 gaming systems, countless games, an excuriating amount of cables, and so many dust bunnies I’m still coughing them up.

It was a great weekend, and if I’d had half a brain there would be pictures to share with you. But alas, my half brain wasn’t working this weekend, so I have no pictures. Only the sweet memories of a great weekend.

I do however, have pictures from past weekends that pretty much sum up an average Saturday and Sunday in my life right now.

I usually try to cram in a chore or two, nothing too involved. That’s something I have to build up to. (Like cleaning out Bubba’s toys. Not that I don’t have any of my own.) A couple of weekends ago, I finally pulled out a new shop vaccuum that sweet mom bought us. It was time to vaccuum all the Goldie needles and Annie fuzz out of the car anyway. This would be a great test of how much this thing sucked.

I must say, I’m mighty pleased, and it even rolls now that I’ve installed the wheels! I’ll spare you the hairy before and afters though.

After cleaning the car out, it was time to take the girls somewhere so they could re-needle and re-fuzz up the car.

They only tolerate the camera when they know there is a car ride and eventual walk in it for them.

On this particular day, we went on a picnic to a quiet and empty elementary school. (Where dogs are allowed I might add.)

(Yummy red enchiladas! No wonder my jeans are in a constant state of panic.)

The girls wanted some, can you tell?

After lunch and begging it was time to run, and then eventually get poked with the ball thrower for not coming when called. Annie is the only shepherd dog I know that must be shepherded herself. She would never last on a ranch.

While Annie was getting herded I took a random shot of this school bell. There is something about the texture of the brick and the color of the bell. I love these old school buildings. It’s a shame they don’t build them like this anymore.

What did you do this weekend? Have a picnic? Poke your dog with a stick?

The many faucets of life…

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Tell me, why is it so hard to get a post up? I think about blogging all the time, I take tons, and I mean TONS, of photos to include in these imaginary blog posts, and yet, very rarely do any of them come to futrition. Like my story of our faucet. You may remember a few weeks ago I had mentioned my longing for a new kitchen faucet. Well, I finally found the one, the perfect faucet. Just in case you forgot what the old one looked like and why I am so giddy about the newest here’s what we started out with:

Apparently, the installer of the last faucet wanted to make sure it never came loose, evidenced by the many layers of plumbers putty. After two hours of chipping away at the putty we were left with this :

And this:

Thanks to overstock, this beauty is now in my possession. So, our sink is currently looking like this:

Aww…much better and shinier. Here’s another view:

I love that curve, and the separate hot and cold water handles. As well as, the sprayer, it actually sprays and isn’t made of plastic!

Yeah, I know how weird it is to be this excited about a new faucet. But when you are dishwasher-less and end up spending most of your time at the sink, it’s so very important to have something pretty and functional to look at. Especially when your backsplash is old and the grout is dirty. I’m experimenting with different techniques to rid the backsplash of the many years of grime that have settled into the grout. Stay tuned for that update.

Also stay tuned for many random posts about some pretty random things I’ve been up to. All those photos I’ve been taking have got to be recorded somewhere right?

Quirk

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I love quirk, it’s my friend and constant companion. Quirk is preferable to some of my other companions like guilt, anger, and that other not so pleasant tag-a-long, jealousy and his friend covetousness. But quirk, quirk I embrace, quirk is the type of friend you call up to see the latest chick flick with. The buddy who still wants to hang out with you, even if you snort-laugh in public. Quirk is the fun friend, but  guilt always brings ya down, anger is just too unpleasant, jealousy is too judgy and that other acquaintance covetousness always wants what it can’t have and makes everyone miserable because of it.

Since I’ve been hanging out with quirk more often, I’ve become more aware of her presence around my home. Like my budding interest in owls:

Or my new favorite old things, pineapple bookends. When I brought these home Bubba thought they were…interesting…and…pokey. I am hoping that one day we will share a love of pineapple bookends.

Right now these lovlies are living on the living room coffee table, hanging out with my small vintage camera collection.

I couldn’t bear to put my pineapples in the front room where we keep all of our books. (A place I usually avoid, since I haven’t allowed quirk in that space.)  I just had to have them front and center, where I spend most of my time, in the living room, sadly, in front of the TV.

Alongwith my owls and pineapples I’ve noticed that quirk is showing herself in my other newest interest, globes. I love the colors, and it’s really nice to have visual aids when it comes to learning that Africa is not a country, but a continent.

This isn’t quirk, but she’s one of my other favorite and nearly constant companions:

(Never mind the floating head, I’m still experimenting with bokeh. And yes, the dog does match the carpet, many a night has she been stepped on in a sleepy stumble to the kitchen for a drink. )

Goldie dog tags along with me throughout all of my adventures, at least in the adventures where dogs are allowed.

Quirk is showing her face in the fact that I can’t bring myself to letting my Valentine Tulips bite the dust. I change their water and trim their stems every day. Obsessive Complusive? Or quirky?

Have you found quirk in your home recently? Is quirk something you want to keep around, or the friend you choose to ignore?

P.S. I’m linking up to a linky party hosted by the Nester, we are all celebrating our imperfections. Whether those imperfections be in the home, personal, or found in our quirkiness.  Click the banner below to be directed over to Nester’s celebration of imperfections.

Doomsday Preppers and Tulips

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Bubba and I keep it pretty low key for Valentine’s Day, we typically don’t fight the crowds at restaurants, or pay a ridiculous amounts of money on roses or chocolates.  He and I usually stay in, cook dinner and enjoy one another. Some years, I even talk him into watching a romantic comedy, this year was not one of those years. Instead we watched Doomsday Preppers on Nat Geo, I think it’s obvious who won out on the great remote battle that evening. Maybe I let him win because he surprised me with these:

Flowers actuallyon Valentine’s Day! Not the day after (which would have been fine since they are much cheaper then) and not the day before, but on the actual day. I was so proud of him, and so proud of myself for telling him what to buy. Not that I’m that kind of wife…who am I kidding…I so totally am that kind of wife!

What did you do for Valentine’s Day? Did your sweetie fake surprise you with something?

House Nuisance

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In my Home Goals for 2012 I mentioned a quote that has been floating around the blogosphere for a while now:

“Have nothing your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” William Morris

In keeping with this thought, I’ve been trying to tackle those areas in my home that have been of particular stress inducing, hair pulling, wanna-give-away-all-of-my-earthly-possessions-and live in a yert nuisance.

One of those many nuisances has been our mini-linen closet in the hall. You see, we have this weird half closet that houses bath and bed linens. The other half, the top half, of this closet opens into the bathroom by the sink, this is where we store toiletries. That’s another story for another day, I’m taking baby steps, and believe me when I tell you the bathroom closet is not a baby step, it’s a giant I’m a big girl look how I can organize my home with one hand tied behind my back while juggling two rabid squirrels with the other type of step. (Yes, I got tired of hyphenating.)

Anywho, here’s where I’m at with our bed and bath linens:

 

Do you have any frustratingly cluttered areas in your home, or is your entire home frustratingly cluttered?  Hair pullin-let’s-just-buy-a-new-house-because-this-one-is-dirty sort of cluttered, not that I know what that would feel like.

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbors Faucet

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Our kitchen faucet is leaking, it’s been leaking for a good year and a half. It’s annoying, but I’ve put off fixing it because I want a new faucet. However my wine tastes and beer budget keep getting in the way of me finding that perfect faucet. So, on the back burner it goes.

The other night though, as I was shopping for that perfect faucet, it dawned on me that I have no idea how many holes our sink has. If you aren’t aware, you need to know how many holes your sink can accomodate. For instance, if you were to buy a faucet that required 4 holes, but your sink only has space for 3, well I guess you’ll be having to let go of that perfect faucet and exchange it for one that fits the spaces on your sink. But, if you were to buy a 3 hole faucet but have 4 holes, you can always cover the 4th hole that won’t be used.

With the thought of having to return a much searched for faucet that may not fit, I took a deep a breath and dove under the sink.

In my attempt to get under the sink, I realized I couldn’t. Not because of limited space, but because of all the junk! And even if it weren’t for all of the junk, I’m not sure I’d want down there anyways, it’s kind of scary, and dark, and smelly. And I’m not really sure what that fuzzy stuff is growing on the cabinet floor.

Everything had to come out, so I could investigate:

And when I say everything, I mean everything:

Don’t ask me why I need 3 Febreezes, I just do. If you lived in my house, with two stinky dogs and a man that occasionally has a certain odor, you would totally understand. Not that I don’t have my stinky’s every once in a while. But being the only one in the house that seems to be able to smell anything, air freshener is a must.

After taking all of my household cleaners and hoard of air fresheners out from under the sink it was time to scrub. I thought that scrubbing the offending area would take care of that old musty smell that is always permiating from that area. Wrong. After removing all my not-used-enough cleaners and hoard of air fresheners, and scrubbing I found this:

Water damage from a previous leak. I don’t know when the leak happened, or if it even happened while I’ve been living in this house, but there definitely was a leak at one time or another. And it definitely caused some damage. And a nice smell. If you can’t imagine, picture moldy wood, mixed in with the smell of rotten broccoli. Yuck-O!

Yeah, I watch Holmes Inspection, I know how scary moldy places can be. But I don’t have a crew of brawny Canadians to come out and fix the issue. Instead, I scrubbed, tried to ignore the smell and how disgusting the whole mess actually is. And put things back.

They aren’t put  back in a very organized manner, but it was 11 pm on a work night. I got tired. And made a pact with myself to either keep praying the new cabinet fairy’s come during the night and wave their little fairy wands and give me a new kitchen, or paint the ones I have until I have enough beans saved to pay for new, non-smelly, non-scary cabinets.

Ah yes, the joys of living in an old house with mostly original fixtures. Since buying the Yellow Casa back in 2008, I’ve had a wish list of upgrades I’d like to make to my little castle. If your curious, here’s what I’ve planned on doing, and some of what I have accomplished:

1. New Windows. YAY! We accomplished this little upgrade September of 2009, exactly one year after I purchased our little abode. What a difference windows that actually close can make.

2. New hard surface flooring throughout entire house. Carpet+2 dogs+2 humans with dirty shoes=really nasty flooring. We’ve tried shampooing, and spot cleaning, but it’s just not taking away the nasties. Plus, the carpet is starting to get that flat look.

3. Central Heating and Air. We currently use one wall heater in the front of the house and space heaters in the bathroom and bedrooms. It’s cold! And in the summer we use a swamp cooler. That works pretty well in the dryer part of the summer, but come the desert monsoon season, it gets pretty sticky.

4. Kitchen Cabinets, the origianl 1957 cabinets just aren’t working as well as they did in say, 1957.

5. Install a secondary bathroom. One bathroom works pretty well when it’s just me and Bubba, but when we have company a second bathroom would be nice. There’s a space in our garage that could work as a two piece bath. Now all I need is the plumbing run to that little corner. Oh, and walls, and tile, and a toilet and sink. Maybe that one isn’t exactly an easy fix.

6. Privacy wall in backyard. This one got done in May 2011, you can read all about that here.

7. Vent in bathroom. We got this installed in May of 2010, that made a huge difference in the way our bathroom felt. No more scary sticky things growing on the walls! (scary sticky things seem to be the bane of my existence, I encounter them at every turn!) You can read about that little project in this post of yore.

There are so many other things that I would like to do to make this little casa even sweeter, but I’m trying to focus on the important issues. The pressing things that need to be done, the necessary over the aesthetic.

Which brings me back the point of this post, the sink has 4 holes. Maybe I can get that faucet I’ve been coveting afterall. Is it normal to covet a faucet?

Happy Friday Everyone!