SoCal checklist: O La La

Unfortunately I totally spaced on pictures but I totally got to hit O La La as soon as I arrived into SoCal. The best part was that six awesome people joined me--some for the first time! It was heavenly. Unfortunately Vy Da was closed (as they are every Monday) but it remains on the list...

Crafty Sunday

The girl had some friends over and the best part (besides feeding them pizza and totally getting dissed when offered my microphone skills in RockBand)? A lot of them totally dug the cleaned up spare room/craft room:

Though I spent more time sharing supplies and demonstrating how to use the big Dymo labeler than making stuff myself, I loved that crafting was being done!

The girl had a plucking awesome day

The girl's orchestra teacher uses the word "plucking" as one would use another famous verb-cum-adverb, e.g., "you better believe I am dead plucking serious." Clever man--tip of the cap.

Anyhoo, the County Honors Orchestra proved a new experience and challenge for the middle schoolers. After auditioning singly with music previously handed out, the kids come from various middle schools and play together for the first time in a strenuous day and a half rehearsal session before this afternoon's concert. On top of that, even the conductor is a guest conductor who has never worked with any of these kids before. The guest conductor was a Honduran native currently pursuing a DMA in Orchestral Conducting here at USC. Apparently the high expectations he had threw some of the kids for a loop, especially when he reassigned a boy to a lower chair in the orchestra that morning, but it all came together beautifully:


Unfortunately for the girl, I had frugally glossed over the black and white dress requirement and pulled stuff from my closet rather than buy new clothes that she'd outgrow too soon. Until I saw her in the first chair I realized that the black skirt I lent her looked so much shorter on her longer legs and well, among a bunch of kids in black pants.


But overall, it was a great experience for the girl:


Afterward, she went to a birthday sleepover that featured a campout in their backyard. I lent our tent and they built a campfire and had s'mores:

Plucking lucky girl.

Fueling the inspiration

I'm set to fly out to SoCal on Monday to spend quality time with friends and I have a checklist of things I want to do while I'm out there (mostly to do with places to eat). I also have a few self-assignments to do while I'm out there and I wanted to get a little inspiration before I went. I checked out this great exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art, "Who Shot Rock & Roll":

There were great live shots, great styled shots, and great videos. One of my favorites was the shot of the band "Kiss" in full make-up and suits on a New York City street. It became the cover of their album, "Dressed to Kill". I plan on going back again to absorb stuff I missed.

And serendipitously, I spied this window display in a shop around the corner from the museum:

Anyone else loving that green coat and hat ensemble?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, practice, practice.

Apparently it's the same answer to getting into the County Honors Orchestra. Tip of the cap to the girl for trying out and earning First Chair, Viola, in the middle school County Honors Orchestra. Not only did she best her fellow 6th graders but also 7th and 8th graders. Tomorrow they have an all-day practice and then a performance on Saturday. Very proud of her.

Even Opa and Oma sent a card congratulating her:

And tip of the cap to Nana for embellishing the card she sent:

So glad this paid off:

This...less so:

It went by too soon

My sweet baby nephew's visit came and went so fast, it was like a blur. Still wondering if I kissed these sweet cheeks enough:

Or if I took enough selfies with him:

P.S. I love these whale footy pajamas on his so much. I told my sister that I'll probably need him to wear a version of this until he's an adult. Come on Augie, time to wear the whales for Auntie Frances!

We managed to squeeze in some "skoogie boarding" (yes that's a boogie board on top of a skateboard) and Velina managed to beat Augie's dad in every race:


Velina also got to hold the cutie a number of times--man I love this baby in hoodies!

We got to give this sweetie a bath:

And of course, we ate. Like the #3 Big Pig BBQ platter enjoyed by Augie's dad:

And the oyster shooters we tried with a Bud chaser:

And the grits with sea bass and collard greens:

And a little pubbing. Here's my wheat beer sampler--that's Hoegaarden, Spaten Franziskaner, Blue Moon, Allagash White, and Weihenstephaner, clockwise from the top right (BTW, my new favorite is the Hoegaarden):

And dessert was had as well--this is my cinnamon ice cream. Man it must be forever since I've had straight up ice cream because this was sooo good:

And since there is no Sonic in NYC and it is one of Velina's favorite places, we picked up some shakes (Cherry Lime Cooler and Vanilla Malted) from there as well one night.

Unfortunately, the weather cooled down (and even rained--gaaaah!) so we didn't get to hang on the porch that much, though I would take the baby out for a short spells:

Because he was somewhat hypnotized by the lights:

And it was also our lucky weekend. Augie's dad bought a few of these scratchers and mine won a $1:

Which only added to our gambling hubris (he's won his fantasy football league twice and I've won the overall in my football pool twice), so who knows what might be worth gambling on next...

Sigh, anyhoo, they left yesterday and the house seems so quiet. Until next time, Augie...

And don't forget to wear the whale outfit!

Porch Redo

Another area I wanted to spruce up before my sister and her family's arrival was the back porch. They love being in the fresh air and since it's been getting milder here, I thought it'd be nice to have an area where we could enjoy beverages and some snacks:


Previously, we had been using the back porch just as a convenient place to bring out the trash and put out recyclables.


Though I spent about $35 investing in the artificial grass rug, a few cans of spray paint, and a couple of Dollar Store LED-lit paper lanterns, I really wanted to use what I had on hand. I used folding chairs and an old folding table we had as well as icicle lights.


I attempted to spruce up the folding table with some color. I have dubbed this table "The Learning Experience". I had tried different spray paints (e.g., one for plastic since there is a laminate on the table) and realized that some reacted unevenly with each other and the surface. Also, I learned a couple of lessons the hard way about using hand-made stencils. Anyhoo, it'll do for now:


Also the girl had this faded blue paper lamp that I spray painted in Chrome to make it pop against the paper lanterns:


It all came together quickly and fairly painlessly and I was pleased with the simple redo. To summarize, here is Before:


Here is After:


And here is After-Dark:


I stuffed some icicles inside the chrome star paper lamp. And since the green paper lanterns' LED lights didn't work, I stuffed a few icicles inside of one as well. Who would have thought there would be such shoddy workmanship from the Dollar Store?


The girl liked it a lot--she said she looks forward to hanging out there with food and friends.


Hope my sister's family enjoys it!