Living in Long Beach

At my mother's request, I just published a guest post on her blog here . Check it out!

For the few of you who have been to my house, this isn't news...but my friendly little garden gnome is now joined by some colorful mushrooms... And here's Fluffy's view... Also, my mother recently put up a post about my place and there's a picture of my deck in the post. You can see her awesome blog (which was just featured in a magazine!) here... Recollections of a Vagabonde

This picture from my 365 Project sums it all up: So, as I was saying in my last post before I got all caught up with Neely, Ann, and Jennifer (the dolls!!), this year Thanksgiving was celebrated at my little place in Long Beach. We ended up having 14 people, although one didn’t eat at the table with us because he is only 4 month old! I borrowed a table and many chairs from two different neighbors. One neighbor emptied out most of her refrigerator and freezer for me to use for the week. I also used a different neighbor’s oven for several dishes when we figured out that the turkey was sitting in an oven that had been turned off an hour earlier! Nothing like a little Thanksgiving turkey drama. I made several copies of the dinner menu for guests to peruse before dinner. My mother got many compliments from Tinu’s cousins about her cheese ball. We’ve all been making her recipe for years. It’s a family favorite. She also got raves for a new recipe that she created – Blue Cheese Slaw. ...

Last night, we had our monthly book club gathering. This month’s book was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. When I was first invited to join the Stoneybrook  Book Club, the books had already been selected for several months. A different member of the club hosts the gathering each month and for my month the book that had been preselected was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I loved this book and went on to read the other two in the series. For my first book club gathering, I added a Swedish dinner. It was really a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of my delicious princess cupcakes. They tasted a LOT better than they looked and had all the requisite layers. If you want to see the look I was going for (and the recipe), go to the cookie shop blog. This is very labor intensive but way better than the Ikea ones (which are good in a pinch.) Plus, mine had alcohol in them!!   Anyway, I digress. The reason I give you all this backstory is that I had so m...

My Mother has posted some nice fall pictures on her blog and my cousin, Ken, posted some gorgeous fall photos on Facebook. Click on pictures to bigify! Inspired, I walked around my condo and took these photos. This is as “fall” as it gets here in Long Beach. Some evenings I have to wear pants instead of shorts and use a blanket on the bed but then during the afternoons, shorts are still a must. But I do feel like it is slowly getting  cooler. Speaking of fall or autumn, I found a guest towel on sale at Michael’s and was inspired to whip up a cute fall towel. I have loads of thread that I have bought at Estate sales. The problem with these is that many colors don’t have any identification on them or are from defunct companies. Therefore, they can’t really be used with specific patterns. There are several French blogs that I follow for their nice, free cross stitch designs. My favorite is Gazette 94 ; I decided to use one of her designs. It has everyth...

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 Mother is the best. She routinely lets me celebrate Mother's Day later in the month (May 31 or should I say 31 mai?) via Fête des Mères (French Mother's Day!!) Since she is still waiting for my very thoughtful gifts to arrive in the mail in time for Fête des Mères, I thought I would post some pictures of Mothers... I took this picture of Mother and Grandma  in our front yard in Marietta, GA in June 1987 when  Grandma was visiting for my high school gradulation. I took this picture of Mémère in a cafe in La Samaritaine when I was vacationing in Paris with Jessica in July 1981.  Back then, it was not part of the LVMH group. 

For Christmas, I gave to my parents and to the Ohio Thomases each a super expensive* calendar of Long Beach that is mostly pictures taken around my part (ahem, the good part) of Long Beach. This way every month they can reminisce about me and places we've been together in the LBC. When Scott was here, we mimicked the January picture. While my parents were here, we were able to capture March and April. Any volunteers for future months? JANUARY (In front of the Bayshore library - 2nd Steet - Belmont Shores) (The day we took Scott's picture it wasn't as clear as the calendar. If you look really closely, you can see the mountains in the background.) MARCH (Rancho Los Cerritos) Looks like we had much better sun than the calendar photographer!! APRIL (Hilltop Park - Signal Hill overlooking Long Beach) Obviously, we didn't take these pictures with the calendar in mind, so the shots aren't exactly the same. Can you find the oops?? *Okay, the calendars were actually free f...

My parents have been visiting with me this past week. My mother's birthday is in March and my father's birthday is in February, so we celebrated them both while they were here. I let them each request a special cupcake...Father requested a groundhog and Mother a frog (big surprise, right?) I also made a "G" cupcake in honor of Greg's birthday which was Saturday. (I ate it for him too!!) I had a lot of fun making these cupcakes. And since they were double chocolate Kahlua cupcakes filled with a Starbucks liquor cream center, we had lots of fun eating them.

A cute email "postcard" from my mom...