Visit the kelpforest....

Another combo, this time around home...only six this time...

( close-ups, just for fun... )

Ignore the black & white beads; I forgot I'd already taken the bird picture.

March scavenger hunt (item list here) - I decided to just look around my desk at work and see how many items I had at hand. Turns out, quite a few!

( 14 things! )

Yay, that's almost half the list! If you click through to Flickr, there are notes on the pic - move cursor over pic to see more detail.

I did have a small bottle too, but somehow it didn't wind up in the picture. Actually, it wound up in another picture of the same arrangement, but meh, I'll just save it for later.

My daughter had a dental appointment this morning, so afterward we stopped at Starbucks and had a muffin, then walked around the nearby Westminster Civic Center for a little bit. Now, Westminster, the next town over from mine, likes to emulate its namesake in Merrie Olde Englande, thus an old red phonebooth near City Hall...

Red Telephone Booth
Westminster CA
Canon EOS 1000D
7 August 2009

( and... )

There were purple ribbons tied to every vertical post along this street. I was trying to figure out what they symbolized; turns out it's a a bunch of different things.

Ribbons
Seal Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
1 May 2009

YayfinallyoncurrentmonthI'mnot?dammit

I haven't bought any jewelry for awhile so I treated myself to a pair of earrings (on sale) from The Rainforest Site. One of my few nods to femininity is I have a weakness for dangly earrings.

Eye of Shiva
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
23 April 2009

My family has had these since I was a child. They were always my favorites, like pink soap bubbles with snow on them, and I loved finding them as we opened the ornament boxes every year. It used to be a set of three or four, but gradually over the years, they succumbed to dropping, kittens, and other hazards. This one survived my kids' babyhood, but not something falling from an upper shelf onto the box of ornaments. Bye-bye, pink soap bubble. *sniff*

Putting away the decorations
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
07 January 2009

I ordered a set of these raku pottery ornaments from theanimalrescuesite.com thinking I could give them as gifts, but when they arrived two of the set were snapped off at the neck. Their customer service rep was very gracious and said they would send out a replacement immediately, this is the pick I sent in as proof. Don't think they'll arrive in time though. I liked these because they could also be worn as brooches.

Ornaments
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
20 December 2008

My friend asked me to help out with the Orange County District flower show. The design section was all Holiday-themed table settings, so Happy Holidays.

Happy Chanukkah!
Sherman Library and Gardens
Newport Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
22 November 2008

( ...and Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Father's Day! )

Above the steam table at our favorite nearby Chinese Mom-n-Pop takeout. It seems to be a contest as to how many coins patrons can stack up on Hotei's head. And I had never seen one of those lucky cats that had so many kittens and a big red fish before, so I had to look up what it meant. We like this place - the lady behind the steam table always remembers us and her eyes get big at how much the kids have grown (even though we only come in once a month or so). While the rest of my family always orders something that's already on the table, I like mu-shu, which is not. So she yells my order to her husband in the back, and he yells back at her; I don't understand what they're saying but I suspect he's swearing at having to cook something. And they go back and forth for a bit like that. Avalon usually asks something about the decorations; once she got a lesson on the Asian zodiac and found out she is a serpent child (her brothers are a tiger and a rabbit).

Hong Kong Bowl
Huntington Beach CA
Kyocera Switchback phone camera
09 October 2008

( angle )

A coworker visited family (that he'd never met before) in Vietnam - and brought us all back these bracelets. And our scientific aide is practicing his cooking and brought us all flan.

Gifts
Los Alamitos CA
Sharp VE-CG30
29 August 2008