get sh*t done monday

Being as today was a national holiday and all, I had big plans to sit outside on my patio to be lazy and attempt to make a dent in this ginormous magazine pile....

However, I woke up all motivated... and Home Depot was calling my name... for the third time in nine days. So back I went. 

I picked up eggplant / dark purple Behr paint swatches to debate as the potential new color of my soon-to-be-new front door. I'm thinking something less purple than "Exotic Eggplant" and more purple than "Curtain Call." Or a little less lavender than the top one. (This is so stressful!) Thoughts??

I also bought a new can of dark brown wood stain for two projects that have been on my to-do list for years that I am going to get to by the end of June. 

I also bought a pretty wildflower blue can of spray paint for another project that's been on the list since I bought my house. 

I bought more mouse traps for the attic. (These are just for mice... no rats. Pretty please.)

I bought a cool new yard tool I'll be writing about after I use it next weekend. 

I bought chicken manure to fertilize my orange tree that I fear is still in shock after getting trimmed back in January. It had flowered and there are little green wanna-be-big-oranges on it, but a lot were blown off when it was super windy a few weeks ago. And I've yet to see any of them turning orange. Here's hoping the chicken manure (and the massive soaking I gave it... shhh!) make it happy and fruity.

I also bought three more bags of my go-to Scott's brown mulch and finished laying mulch in the big rose garden and neighboring flower garden. Also fed the roses again for spring and tilled the soil around their roots so they stay as hydrated as possible under current watering restrictions. (See, I'm a good citizen. The grass in my backyard is practically dead to prove it.)

Then I got to work on the patio. In my herb garden, I planted a new rosemary plant and thyme I got at Trader Joe's last night 

I also planted a pot of lemon balm, after reading that it repels mosquitoes (who love me). It's that green leafy plant behind the candle, behind the wine on my patio table this lovely evening... :)

Since lavender also repels mosquitoes, I took some cuttings off my giant lavender bush in the front yard and am propagating that (along with some rosemary too) to hopefully keep potted on the back patio after it roots. I was inspired to try "propagating" by this article on Pinterest this morning (That's it! That's what derailed my lazy day...  damn you Pinterest! oh well!)

Finally, while at Home Depot, I walked past these cute white-washed planter crates from The Hip Gardener and decided to see if Mexican Heather will survive on my newly-painted window ledges in front of my house (ie: in direct sunlight most of the day). The planters are super-cute.. you can write on one side of them -- the side I have facing the house because I haven't decided what to write yet. (Maybe my house address?? What do you think?) I put terracotta pots inside them to hold the heather, and weighted them down with river rock pebbles so they don't blow away. I think I might need a third one.. we'll see :)

get sh*t done sunday - the sequel

This weekend continued more of what I started and/or discovered last weekend... but I got it done in half the time :)

First, after trimming the out-of-control rosemary and lavender bushes last weekend, this morning I sanded down the chipped paint on the planter ledges (that I've yet to put planters on) in front of my two front windows and repainted those in the same exterior Behr paint I used for the garage trim.

Then I dumped and spread out four bags of Scott's Earthgro Color Advantage brown mulch in the front garden and in two of the four gardens in the back yard. I need to go back for at least two more bags to recover the main rose garden.

I also planted a big pink Hydrangea I broke down and spent way too much money on at Home Depot yesterday. It better not die like the last one did. I'm hoping this new spot along the back wall will provide a better mix of morning sun and afternoon shade. I also planted it right in front of a sprinkler, just to be safe ;)

Then in this weekend's outdoor critter update, Part 1, I decided to be nice and give free food to the three families of birds that have nested in one of my trees, my jasmine vine and under the eaves of my house in a mud nest. This is my supposedly-squirrel resistant feeder... last year they learned how to pry the top off, so this year it's tied shut with wire ties. We'll see how long it takes them to figure that out...

And in critter update, Part 2, I decided to see if I can deal with whatever is under my house on my own before paying people. First, I closed up the grate on my patio that I'd discovered something had pushed open during the winter. Second, I bought a plastic pre-baited rat/mouse trap and put it the crawlspace under the house. (I've decided that it's something small because I heard something in the wall behind my bar Thursday. Eek!) In a week, my dad gets to come and pull the trap out from under the house and let me know if there is something in it or not. If not, then I'll call for an inspection. 

Although... I had a somewhat more pleasant thought as I drove home tonight and the neighbor's one-eyed cat (who has taken up a second residence on my back patio) ran across my driveway. Maybe poor Susy (who lives outside because the neighbor's now-ex wife was allergic) got cold this winter and she's the one who pushed the grate in. And maybe she actually caught and ate the mice under there. Or maybe there were no mice and I was just having a psychosomatic hearing episode. 

Either way, here's hoping I don't hear anything else in the walls ever and that grate stays put. 

old school eating

Saw this article/list online recently ...

Offbeat L.A.: The Oldest Surviving Los Angeles Restaurants… A Master List of the Vintage, Historic and Old School

.... and thought:
1) that's a really cool list

2) it's amazing there are so many vintage, original, independent restaurants left in LA's land of corporate franchises

and

3) I can't believe I've actually been to A LOT of these restaurants (41 to be exact!)... the best ones on the list being Casa Vega (that I used to live around the corner from) and Little Toni's (that I used to work down the street from).

But for those of you that like to debate who invented the French Dip first, Philippes and Cole's are both on here.

As is El Coyote, which I have wanted to go to forEVER but have still never been too.

So is Heart's Coffee Shop up Balboa Blvd. from my house... I should go there for breakfast one day. That's an easy hit for 42 :)

get sh*t done sunday

Today I slept in until 10:30. It was awesome. Then I got up, threw on an old t-shirt and went outside to work on projects. I came back inside at 8:30pm. I rocked my home improvement to-do list! Therefore, today shall be deemed "Get Sh*t Done Sunday." Here's what I got done:






1) Sanded and painted my garage door trim that's been peeling since at least Thanksgiving when I put up my Christmas lights. Every time I pull up to the garage in daylight hours I see it and think, "I really need to repaint that." Today I did, and my across-the-street neighbor Juan, who does paint and drywall for a living, complimented my work and informed me it's been at least 7-8 years since it was last painted... and noted that he paints his trim every two years. I guess that's a helpful hint. ;)

2) Cleaned out my front gardens, cut back a ton of out-of-control rosemary and lavender, planted some new baby cactus' in the garden and on the porch, sprayed for bugs, fixed my wayward sprinkler that was watering the driveway, and fertilized the front and back lawns. Oh, and I cleaned about four years of smog and soot off my white mailbox using this awesome Earth Brite cleaner my mom found on HSN in the middle of the night (which I borrowed a while ago and haven't given back yet. Oops!). It cleans EVERYTHING. Next weekend I'm going to use it to clean my white fence that also has four years of smog and soot on it. :)

3) It's been four months since I trimmed and fed all my back gardens and planted spring flowers. Some of those flowers have died, and weeds have grown. So I went and got some new "full sun" flowers that do better with less water. I also trimmed the roses again. Next weekend, I will lay mulch. I ran out of daylight today :(

4) The vine on my trellis was also out-of-control, growing up into the rain gutter and over the fence, and a lot of the under-growth was dead and spider-infested. So I cut it all back ... and discovered a hornets nest under the eaves of the house in the process. The hornets are now dead. The vine is cut back and bug spray abounds. I also discovered that one of the grates on my patio that's supposed to keep creatures out from under my house is missing. So I now will be calling an exterminator to make sure the opossum I saw last summer isn't living under there and to repair the grate. Ugh.

5) While all that was going on outside, I also did a load each of laundry and dishes. Now I'm going to sleep. Hopefully, I'll be able to move tomorrow....

things that make me smile

My 60+ year-old next door neighbor arriving home from playing tennis, blaring AC DC's "Back in Black" out his Porsche's open windows.

luuuuuuuc the statuuuuuuue

If you know me, you know I love hockey. You also probably know that I love the LA Kings. And the reason I first went to a Kings game (circa 1988) and fell in love with hockey was a cute French Canadian named Luc Robitaille (who I'd seen playing at a celebrity softball game at USC that I originally went to in order to drool over long-haired rocker boys from '80s hair bands... but I digress.)

Turns out, that cute Luc Robitaille was also a pretty good hockey player. Like the top-scoring-left-wing-in-NHL-history kind of good. 

And over the years -- after I learned about hockey from listening to Bob Miller call games on TV, and eventually became a season ticket holder -- I watched him score his 500th goal on January 7, 1999 at the Great Western Forum. I watched him leave the team (for the second time) to win the Stanley Cup (for the first time) with the Detroit Red Wings in 2002. And once he returned home to LA, I was there for his final home game on April 15, 2006, chanting "Luuuuuuuuuuc" as he skated a final lap around Staples Center ice before he retired from the NHL. 

In January 2007, I sat through quite possibly the longest jersey retirement ceremony ever as his #20 was raised to the rafters of Staples Center. And on June 11, 2012, I cried as I watched him raise the Stanley Cup over his head as a King when the Kings won it for the first time, with Luc serving as President of Business Operations for the team. 

So I was, of course, standing outside Staples Center in Star Plaza on March 7, 2015, when Luuuuuuc was immortalized in bronze, as only the second LA hockey player to be honored with a statue outside the arena. His statue is in the front of the plaza, and unlike most of the others (Wayne Gretzky, Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Chick Hearn, Oscar de La Hoya) his statue is in color, with him wearing a white classic Kings jersey, his stick raised over his head and a smile on his face in a celebratory goal-scoring pose. 

Wayne Gretzky showed up to speak in his honor. Mario Lemieux, his Pittsburgh Penguin teammate, also came to the ceremony. Quite possibly the two greatest hockey players ever, were there to honor Luc. That's how respected he his. His Kings teammate and current front-office co-worker Rob Blake spoke. So did Lakers great Jerry West. And Kings fans showed up an hour before game time to watch it all happen. 

Here are some photos :)

Stacia and Luc Robitaille walk the red carpet to the ceremony

 

The Great One

         

Bob Miller's back, Luc's side and the statue under wraps

Rob Blake and Wayne Gretzky in the front row 

The statue is unveiled

View from the front, with (l-r) Mario Lemieux, Luc, Rob Blake, Jerry West, AEG President
Dan Beckerman, Jesse Robitaille, Wayne Gretzky

pop it, hike it, work it out!

So this is the week I've chosen to finally -- after three months off during which I was extremely lethargic following my January colds/flus/what the doctor told me last week could've been mono (thanks airplane flights to/from NYC for NYE) -- get back to being healthy and working out.

Last night, I went back to Pop Physique and was extremely disappointed to find out that I *am* as out of shape as I thought I was. My planking was pathetic, my push ups even worse. I can, however, still squeeze that pink ball while standing on my tippy toes like a ballet-boss! Today, my hamstrings and the sides of my ribcage hurt like hell. Tomorrow night, I'm going back for more. 

I also want to start hiking again, even though half of my hiking club has abandoned me to NYC or complaining, "It's too hot now." To that I can now say HA! Look at this -- The 15 Best Summer Hikes in Southern California! Note: Some of these fall under the awesome category of "Shade." 

Now I just need to figure out how to get to there :)

Who's in?