Thanksgiving Tablescape 2011

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving spending time with the people you love. We had all the kids over and our friends, The Ricks, and we had a delicous dinner cooked by HH and talked late into the night.

My table when fully extended is too big for my dining room. Luckily for me, my dining room blends into my living room, so I moved the table out into the middle of the living room and it worked well. We had tons of room.

I set the table with my china that I received last year from my Handsome Husband.

I put together some flower arrangements from the grocery store. I find that it is really hard to put flowers in an urn because they tend to remind me of funeral flowers. So, I did my best to arrange them in a more casual manner and added a garland of acorns around the base of the flowers.

My favorite candlesticks that I received from my mother.

One of the things I like about my table when it is extended is that I use mix-matched chairs. I really like the look.

Have a great weekend!

Photo Challenge: Week 11: Close up and Landscape

Close up of barbed wire on the fence post.

A couple weeks back I went to Julian for the day. I took both of these pictures. It was a beautiful day.

Landscape

Pearls of Pi Beta Phi

Katie (first on left) received an award from her sorority last week. She received one of the Eight Pearls of Pi Phi. It is an honor to be chosen, voted by your peers. I can't tell you which pearl she received, it is a sorority secret. She was also voted in last year, receiving a different pearl. Eight girls out of 130 or so.

Aren't they just the picture of sisterhood?

The Eight Pearls of Pi Phi

Wounded Warrior Quilt

I've never made a quilt before. This is my first one. I've always wanted to make one, but I didn't want to do the actually quilting process. I like to sew the tops, but quilting? Well, in Sept. I joined a quilting guild. Why take baby steps? I just jumped right in. They have a Wounded Warrior philanthropy and I decided that I really wanted to be a part of this philanthropy. I made this quilt to be given to an injured soldier in the hospital in Afghanistan. I cut it out, sewed the pieces and put the binding on, but I did not quilt it.

My First Quilt

There is a member of the guild named Nancy Burch who quilts ALL the donated quilt tops the guild has sent to Afhanistan so far. She has a long arm quilting machine and has quilted over 60 quilts since summer began for the Wounded Warriors philanthropy for FREE. She spent two hours with me teaching me how to put the binding on this quilt. She is a wonderful, kind, selfless person and I wish I had a picture of her to show you.

Photo Challenge: Week 10: Water and Reminds me of Summer

Water

Actually this photo could serve for both topics. I spent everyday of my summer at the beach as a teenager. I also skipped school quite a bit to spend the day laying on the sand and dipping my toes in the whitewash working on my glorious tan. I was never a lover of going way out in the ocean like my girls. They must get that from their daddy, who loves the ocean.

Reminds me of summer

This is our friend's little boy, one of three triplets. He was showing off for us, we watched him float on his back, swim and jump in with wild abandon. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my mom would buy those 2 foot high plastic pools and I would try my hardest to "swim" in it. Now they have these great pools that you can actually swim in. Lucky little boy.

Iris - Cirque du Soleil, Kodak Theater, Hollywood

We had a visitor in town from London last week and so we took him to see all the touristy things in So. Cal, one being the Cirque du Soleil show Iris. It is currently at the Kodak Theater in downtown Hollywood. It was fun just to be in the Kodak Theater were the Oscars, American Idol and the Grammy's were all held. We really enjoyed the show. Iris is loosely based on the history of cinema. It cleverly interprets the stages of film history in a way that isn't pretentious.

There's plenty to enjoy in this show and there's tons of amazing acrobatics. I felt that the first half was stronger than the second. The first half focused on the evolution of film from the beginning to the 1950s. The second half of the show focused on Hollywood's shift to movie sets and large-scale film productions.

The best seats in the house are not in the orchestra section. We sat in the second row of the orchestra and everything was straight above us where we had to crane our necks in a 90 degree angle to see and we were too close to the stage. The best seats are probably in the 1st level mezzanine, first and second rows. You will have a great view of everything from there. The only fun thing about the orchestra section was that they dropped confetti on us.

The arial acrobats above were incredible! One of my favorites.

The contortionist were amazing!

We went on a week night for an 8:00pm show from Orange County and had brutal traffic. We ate dinner at Flemmings, L.A. Live which is about 8 miles from the Kodak. It took us 40 minutes to get from L.A. Live to the Kodak.

The Kodak Theater is steps away from Grauman's Chinese Theater, so we walked over after the show. It wasn't that crowded by 10:30pm so we could wonder over all the impressions and see them all.

There was a great mixture of old movie star legends and new movie stars. The earliest imprint we saw was Marion Davies: 1929. She was William Randulph Hearst's mistress and an early movie star. We saw Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Doris Day, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, the kids from Harry Potter, the cast of Star Trek and Star Wars and many, many, more. This was also the first time the Handsome Husband had been there and he enjoyed it.

In front of Grauman's Chinese is Hollywood Blvd. and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are so many stars, I couldn't possibly name them all. Also, at Grauman's you can get a open top bus tour that will take you through all the neighborhoods and show you current and former star homes. It sounds like fun and we think we may do it on another day.

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