Checking In

*taps mic* Is this thing on?

Well hello out there! I have clearly been neglecting my blog (this is par for the course, sadly), and I thought I should try and get back onto a regular-ish schedule. Johanna from Making it Well makes a very good point about being okay with "un-Pinteresty" pictures. This is never going to be a Pinterest-content-mill blog and why should it be? You all are just going to have to be happy with the pictures I am able to get.

I also wanted to try and set some time aside to blog each week because I think I'm developing RSI in my right hand. So, I thought I'd give it a break from the constant knitting and sewing. We'll see how things develop, I may soon be sporting a super sexy wrist brace (or is it a knitter's glove?).

Anyways, things have been super busy for me, so it's a bit of a crapshoot whether or not this blog resurrection is going to stick.

Have some pictures of a bird from the San Diego Wild Animal Park :)





Isn't it gorgeous?

Oh, and here's how close I was standing to it!


And a sneak peak of a soon to be blogged top!

Happy New Year!

Ok, yes it is February, isn't it? Let's just say Happy Lunar New Year and pretend like I've been getting my act together to revive this old blog a little bit ;) Here's hoping for a little more regular posting since I actually do have a lot of projects to share!

Brief administrative aside: I tried to implement Disqus on my blog a few months ago so I could reply to all your lovely comments, but the damned thing doesn't play nice with Blogger - in fact, it's a known issue. So, I've reverted back to the native Blogger comment form which is good enough (you'll just have to come back to see my reply or do email notifications of replies), let me know if it's not working since I half-assed the uninstall of Disqus.

Anyways, have some photos of Half Moon Bay where I briefly visited while I was in Northern California over the holidays.













More new posts hopefully coming soon! Let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see more of here :)

Philadelphia Art Museum

Since I'm such a SoCal girl, snow is still magical to me, so I couldn't resist taking some pretty snow pictures while I was in Philadelphia. I'm just glad I didn't get stuck at the airport like last year!







I've been to the snow in the mountains before, but it just feels so different to see snow in such an urban setting. I would love to live in a snowy area - I think I'd make a good East Coaster ;)

Pets on Parade

If you are in need of the best pick-me-up this (cold) winter, then save the date for the annual Gaslamp Pet Parade.  This Sunday, December 8, parade starts at 2:30 pm! More information at their website.  Free to watch! You know you want to :)

If you really need more convincing, I took a couple pictures at last year's parade.  It's mostly doggies, but there's a few kitties and horses thrown in for good measure.  It's just fun to see all the little costumes.



I think this fluffy little guy ended up being best in show. His human was controlling the car with his iPad, isn't that an incredible setup?



Lots of sweet dogs dressed up, mostly in Christmas gear, but a few standouts like these in "other" genres.  I love the lion haircut, so funny!



I guess this is officially a thing now, cute dogs in toy vehicles?

Our late spring/early summer garden

Warning, this post is very picture heavy!

We are having pretty decent success with our container garden this year.  We have quite a variety of things: cherry and heirloom Mr. Stripey tomatoes, snow peas, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, parsley (or is it cilantro?), bell peppers, Japanese eggplants, cucumbers, Serrano peppers, Anaheim peppers, sweet peas, and beets.




These are Scented Streamer sweet peas that we bought a packet of seeds of at the Flower Fields in Carlsbad last year.  They smell amazing!  They were definitely late bloomers, these are the first flowers since they were planted in like February in our big trough.  All of the seeds sprouted but only one or two of them actually grew :(  I'm hoping things are looking up now!






I think these Japanese eggplants are so neat! They have spikes in the middle of the leaves, how weird is that? Plus, these things are pretty much a miracle since we tried to grow black beauty eggplants last year and those always blossomed but never fruited. 


And these are our awesome handmade wooden troughs! Sweet peas in the left and beets on the right.  Each trough is made out of one long board that was cut into four pieces, it's about 4 feet long so it holds a ton of dirt.  We just screwed the boards onto the sides using long wood screws and at the same time learned the importance of drilling pilot holes :)

April Showers Bring May Flowers

I love these big fluffy flowers. I'm not actually sure what kinds they are, fuschias? Camellias?  No thanks to my parents' black thumbs, these few bushes have managed to survive in their backyard.  I thought that they might be better admired inside the house, so I plucked a few blooms and put them into a vase.





I love the bright blue marbles against the soft colors of the flowers.



So fluffy and pastel and feathery, ahh..



I love that color splash effect, so pretty!

Haha, funny story: when my parents came home my mom asked who had brought over the flowers, and when I told them I just picked some flowers from the backyard, my dad asked when I learned flower arranging.

I do actually have a quick tip for flower arranging; use a rubber band to secure the stems after arranging the flowers in your hand.  It'll keep the flowers from settling out of the bouquet when you set them into the vase.

Sleepy Kitty, purr, purr, purr

Gratuitous kitty picture, anyone?



That is all. Just wanted to share the sleepy sweetness.

Playing Fetch

This is one of the photos I submitted for the photography contest.  It's not one of my best photos, in fact, it's one of the earliest I took with my camera, so I was definitely not paying proper attention to aperture or shutter speed.  It's actually kind of amazing that it even turned out.  I was shooting in manual (dumb choice for a beginner and for trying to shoot an action-y shot).  This woman had her two extremely well-behaved dogs playing fetch around this little bit of stream. 

This photo feels very summery to me.  Doesn't it make you just want to go frolic around at the beach?

Free Flight in Del Mar, CA

I have to say, this was a pretty cool little place just down the street from the Del Mar Fairgrounds.  It's tucked away back into this weird shopping center, but Free Flight is a really neat exotic bird sanctuary that let's you get up close and personal with (mostly) friendly birds.  The friendliest birds are out on perches and can be pet and fed with fruits if you want to buy some from the staff (I recommend it). 

One caveat: the staff are not going to babysit you, so if you don't have any experience with birds, they're not going to watch and keep you from getting bitten.  However, there are plenty of bird enthusiasts who come by to hang out with their favorite birds and are usually happy to answer questions. 

There's also a cool Koi fish pond to boot.

Definitely a pretty neat little place to spend an hour or two when in Del Mar.

See more reviews at TripAdvisor here.

Mission Trails in January

Don't let the pretty autumn colors fool you, but we hiked the Mission Trails in early January after several days of rain so that we could see if the cacti were blooming.  We just hiked around for 4 hours enjoying the scenery, but not really picking any particular trail.  We ended up way out by the northern perimeter and Shepherd's Pond.

This is a really excellent regional park with great hiking trails of all skill/effort levels.



This is a seasonal crossing, so we actually had to wade through the water a bit to get over to the trails. Normally, it isn't quite so wet here.








"It's like the English countryside, except for the cacti."

The Rest of the Cuteness

By popular demand (but mostly self-pride?) here is the full set of pictures in our 2013 Calendar featuring Pumpkin the Guinea Pig!

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

A Secret Holiday Project!

I've been working on a secret little project with N as a holiday present.  Remember his guinea pig Pumpkin from before?  We shot a themed calendar, one picture for each month.  It's the cutest thing ever.

Here's our January shot, one of my favorites!



Isn't this adorable? N calls this "weaponized cuteness".

Pumpkin was such a cool cavy about the whole thing, he really hammed it up :)  No guinea pigs were harmed in the making of this calendar, and plenty of treats and veggies were had :)

And yes, there was definitely some frantic crafting/crocheting to make all the props.