ARCHIVES: JULY 2009

Sunday, July 19

Summer list making is here, on paper, at the last possible moment. It's the things you need to do before summer is gone. It can be food-related or not! Make yours now before you're at the mall buying new sweaters.

Here's my quickly-made, not overly-thought-out list, in random order:
1. Eat a snow cone
2. Roller skate
3. Make homemade lemonade
4. Make homemade ice cream
5. Make caprese salad
6. Grill a whole fish - Done! (That's a red snapper stuff with aromatics, as they say.)
7. Fry okra, from Dana and Johnny's garden - Tonight!!
8. See at movie at the Paramount
9. Make a fruity frozen drink - last year was watermelon margaritas. Maybe strawberry ones. Mango?
10. (just to round out the list) Get in a swimming pool. Preferrably with cheeseburger digesting in belly and ice cream or popsicles waiting, poolside.

This is a good start.

Thursday, July 16

NITE BIRD!!
As we left a neighborhood coffee shop and were walking back to our car, we spotted this bird sitting in the middle of someone's yard. He didn't do much of anything but just stand there. I would guess he was about 3 feet tall. Can't find my central texas bird chart right now. For now I like to think of him as just... mysterious.

Monday, July 13

(Adam took these pictures at the Huntington, in Los Angeles)

It's not enough that the Huntington has a big garden of cactus and succulents, but they were having a sidewalk sale out front while we were there too.

That's where I first laid eyes on that little one in the middle -- though pretty hard to overlook the frosted one to the right.... sigh. You can't tell scale from this picture but those pots were only about 3 or 4 inches in diameter. It's an Avonia Quinaria. There's some great photos of grown-up versions - like this one and this one. It's from South Africa. It's leaves drop in the winter, and grow back in the spring. I don't know if I have the patience or room to take on another frost-intolerant plant but it's a nice one. Love the bonsai-ed one especially.

Sunday, July 12

I am coming to you from a coffee shop tonight - yes, this is the first sleepypie blog post via satellite. I got a new laptop - Sleepypie is mobile! Agile and versatile! I'm living the 2009 internet coffee house educated-slacker dream! (what a relief that I'm not the only one in here without a mac....whew)

I am celebrating with a soy chai latte and Adam is reading a Juxtapoz magazine.

It takes some time to get a new computer up and running. Oh the downloads and installs and file tranferring... and a bit of frustration. Alas, I believe that our biggest hurdles are behind us and look forward to much fun ahead.

Friday, July 3rd

We returned from our vacation to Los Angeles early last week. There is much to talk about the town itself, things we saw and did and of course the Dwell Home Tour.

I prefer to give vacation summaries in the form of a random list of highlights, excerpts, etc.:

1. Beard Papa's - a franchise of chain stores. Cream puffs!
2. We stayed in Little Tokyo and we walking distance to nearly endless sushi places! There was bubble tea, frozen yogurt, Katsu, asian bookstores and more. It was heaven.
3. Went to the Huntington. You must get to the Huntington if you're in LA. It was Henry & Arabella Huntington's house that was built in the 1920's, plus the surrounding botanical gardens which covers 120 acres. There's also a couple of museums. The cactus garden there is humungous and all of the plants are thriving. There's a plethora of wildlife, too, including squirrels, lizards, hummingbirds, other birds, a family of quail!, bees and more.
4. Went to the Getty Villa in Malibu - this is where the orginal Getty was before the fancy one on the hill was built. It was constructed in the 70's after a roman villa, buried by Mt. Vesuvius. It houses a lovely pool and gardens plus a lot of antiquities.
5. We popped by the Dwell on Design trade show and we able to cover it in about an hour. It was good --mostly tile, flooring and cabinet samples. Didn't really feel like I discovered too much that was new. I'm glad we went though.
6. The Dwell home tour included 6 houses in the eastside on Saturday and 6 houses on the westsite on Sunday. It was amazing - I highly recommend a homes tour if you ever have the chance. Inspiring.

....oh June. sigh.