Living in Long Beach

My Facebook friends have already seen these adorable and yummy Mummy Meatloaves but I had to post them for Halloween. They were delicious and relatively easy (not including the piping of the mashed potatoes) so I will make them again. Plus, they are healthy! The secret ingredient is a grape tomato in the center of each one. I halved the recipe since it was just for me and my BFF, Karen. (And the kitties had just a little too!) I’ll leave you with a few pictures that I took around my neighborhood. Happy Halloween to all.

Notice the Chococat bookmark?  I just started reading the book "As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto." Much to my surprise, I am loving it! Not only does it reveal Julia's cooking techniques and her road to publishing the first volume of the legendary "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"  but it also illuminates the attitudes and political climate of the 50's. In one letter Avis tells Julia that all her friends have electric dishwashers and how horrid she thinks the whole concept is. She refuses to ever get one. I still have a long way to go with the book but based on what I've already read, I just know I will continue to love it. I took a break and watched Julie and Julia , a movie which I taped a long time ago and never got around to watching. Do NOT watch this movie if you are also reading "As Always, Julia." From the very beginning, there are huge inconsistencies with the portion of the movie that deals with J...

On Friday nights, I sometimes go to the Friday Film Forum   "... a volunteer program dedicated to the art and history of motion pictures." They show classic movies released prior to 1976. Because of them I have seen two Charlie Chaplin movies, a great Tony Curtis movie (The Sweet Smell of Success), Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely, Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid, and White Christmas on the big screen! (There are others but I can't think of them right now.) As you can see, I do gravitate to the later movies. So when I heard that they were going to show The Last of Sheila from 1973, I was very excited. (Remember, I am in to all things 70's right now!) Well, besides this movie having lots of twists and turns in the plot, I really loved it because it was totally 70's all the way. Maybe even more than The Bob Newhart Show, my current guilty pleasure. Within the first 10 minutes of the movie, the following things happened: 1) The mushroom l...

We have a Social Committee for the condos where I live. This month they put on a Day of the Dead/Pumpkin Carving Party. These parties are always a LOT of fun because even though there are more than 500 units, it seems that mostly my neighbors show up. So it's like a block party or something. There are always plenty of drinks for the adults! Some of the spooky food included cemetary brownies that my friend Maria made, popcorn in baggies that looked like skeletal hands and mice eating cheese. Of course, I used my candy corn tray again and there was a cool punch with finders and hands in it. Crafts for the kids (and adults!) included skeleton making with wine corks, pumpkin carving and paper flowers. Although I helped with other pumpkins, here is my Owl Jack O'Lantern. It was quite tedious but a margarita helped me power on! I also made two paper flowers. (You can click on any of the pictures to bigify.)

No, really, it is! You can find it lots of places on the web, such as here and here . According to Wikipedia , " In  France  name days (in  French : fête) have long been very important in everyday culture and it's still traditional to give a small gift to a friend or family member on their name day." Here is a card that my Mother gave me years ago.

My good friend and neighbor invited me to attend her Bunco Night last night. (I was a substitute.) It really was a fun night with a great group of ladies! And I had the high score for the evening. Whee! Beginner's luck, I guess. Anyway, I asked her if I could bring dessert as I wanted to try and recreate these cute candy corn cupcakes that I found on the cool blog The Sugar Turntable. I used a chocolate cake recipe that I like because they are so light and moist (secret ingredient in them is sour cream and of course I added additional cocoa powder!!) I had never made them as cupcakes but so far every cake that I like works as cupcakes too. And for the filling, I completely made up a recipe that was delicious! Very light and fluffy. Email me if you want it! So I started by using only cupcake liners that mimicked the colors of a classic candy corn. Once the cupcakes were baked, it was very hard to tell unless you were really looking for it. After I...

I guess I've always had a thing for owls. I've heard one in the trees when I lived in Georgia but I've never actually seen one wild in person. But one can dream.... Anyway, I thought I'd show you some of the owls in my home right now, besides the already mentioned owl wreath . I have many owl "projects" in the works so this is only a sampling.  The green owls were a surprise gift from a good friend. (Yes, that's me in the picture. My mom blogged about that very picture here: Wishing For Snow .) The large owl on the wall is a bread basket. I had a clock up there but my cats kept trying to nibble on the owl, so I hastily threw him up there to keep him from harm's way. And that's where he has stayed. The owl with the scissor eyeglasses is a recent birthday gift from my parents. It also holds string and had been hanging in their laundry room for years. And it's covering up an eyesore, a blank plastic switch plate, too! The owl outside w...

As I was doing laundry today, I thought I'd share this cute little apron that I made a while ago. My friend Arlene got me two cute dish towels for Christmas last year. I took some organza ribbon that I had on hand, pulled out my Hello Kitty sewing machine , and tada!! A cute little apron that I use all the time!! (click on picture above to "bigify") Wanna closer look at the cute Hello Kitty spoons? They are from a past Yogurtland promotion.

My good friend Arlene started a blog Lemon & Wildwood and has inspired me to start blogging again. So over the next few weeks, I'll try to catch up on a few of the crazy "projects" that I've been doing while I am also looking for work. In case you hadn't already heard, I am currently into all things late 60's and early to mid 70's. I saw this cute idea to make a pom pom wreath over here . However, I decided I was going to make it as cheaply as possible. I bought a straw wreath from the dollar store and vowed not to spend more than a dollar for each yarn. Ugh...I went so many places and it was much harder than I thought it would be to find dollar yarn. So I didn't really get the colors that I wanted and some of the yarn was not the greatest quality. Plus, the yarns were different textures resulting in different looking pom poms. I made over 70 pom poms. Since I thought I would only be making 40 or so, I used my little st...