Living in Long Beach

Or in other words…boy, am I pooped! (This was going to be one post about three "parties" but I got so carried away with the first one that I am going to spare you all by creating separate posts. You can thank me later...) Since this is my last year in my unit at Stoneybrook, it was decided that we would have Thanksgiving here. Wait, first let me back up. For those of you who don’t know, I love, love, love anything Jacqueline Susann and anything Valley of the Dolls (but NOT Beyond Valley of the Dolls!!) What does this have to do with Thanksgiving? Well, I have been talking about having a Valley of the Dolls party for like for-ev-er. So, I enticed my sister to come earlier than everyone else if I finally had this party. Due to my dwindling funds, I kept the party very small, plus a few of my friends had other plans that couldn’t change. The only props I bought were some “silver” trays from the dollar store to throw all my “pills” onto (actually candy.) I made several props ...

If you haven’t noticed, I have a link to My 365 Project to the left. I will be taking one picture a day, every day, for 365 days.  I try to post the picture the same day but sometimes it gets posted later. However, I do take a picture every day. Some days it is hard to squeeze in a picture and others it is so hard to chose only one. I am trying to pick subjects that are not covered in my blog. Each day is like a short online diary entry but with a picture. My life is in such flux right now and I don’t even know where I’ll be in a month. I hope this project will be a nice way for me to really appreciate each day and to look back at where I’ve been.  So, here’s the link to November’s pictures . When you get there, you can look at each picture individually if you want (or not). Most of them come with a description as well. Note that I started on November 4th so it’s not a complete month but I did not miss any days.

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...

Many squirrels reside on the grounds of our condos. They are well fed, unafraid of humans or cats, and have lots of offspring. I have many stories about these lively squirrels but will spare you for fear of becoming known as that crazy squirrel lady. Here is a picture of two of them hanging out in the tree in front of my deck. (Can you find them? Click on picture to bigify.) They create endless hours of fascination for my cats (and sometimes myself - the young ones are so cute.) Last year they created havoc on my Halloween pumpkin. So I after seeing this picture on flickr , I decided to copy it but with a twist. I stitched this cute little thing in a weekend and after I was done, I got the pattern emailed to me! That would have made it a lot easier but I am so impatient… So you are wondering why did I choose the words “It’s Your Screen Squirrel”?? See below for a daily occurrence. Thinking about all these squirrels gave me an idea when Karen made chicken pot pies. ...

It's been a while since I've watched What a Way to Go ! with Shirley MacLaine and all her leading men so I convinced Karen to come over and watch it with me. As the movie progressed, I realized that it would be more fun to try wear some of my vintage furs while watching the movie to emulate Shirley and her many fur changes... (This blog has a great post about all the different furs in the movie, with lots of pictures.) Surprisingly, I do have many vintage furs that kinda match the movie. (I have not bought any furs in years and years and I would never buy a new fur so please no comments about that.) During this scene, I ran out of the living room and then ran back in and sat on the sofa with this very fur wrapped around my head (sans the bow.) Karen freaked. This is a picture I took after the fact with some of the furs. The one on my head is the one that started it all. Here are two that prompted me to get out my blue marabou. Then I just brought them a...

Over the past few years, I have picked up quite a few vintage cookbooks. I love looking through them, especially the pictures and illustrations. My friend Karen and I found quite a few Better Homes and Garden cookbooks from the 60's the other day at a thrift shop. Since we are both broke, we each only bought one. It took us forever to only choose those two. One that got away that we both wanted was Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Cookbook, hint hint. The reason I mention this is because later that evening, I started a new project called 365project. (I’ve created a permanent link on the sidebar to the left.) It’s a site where you take one picture a day and upload it. So I thought I would start by having my first picture be of a few of my most recent cookbook acquisitions.  Then that got me to thinking. Besides challenging myself to take a picture every day for a year, how about if I created a cooking challenge stemming from my new, old cookbooks? And what if I managed to get so...