who needs sleep, anyway?

mere hours after getting home from our epic eras tour outing, the three of us were in the car heading right back the way we'd come - but this time, our destination was LAX for...this:

the bean and i hadn't gotten home from sofi stadium until after 1:30am.  while i scurried around trying to get myself packed as quickly as possible, the bean was resigned to staying up all night in order to watch a livestream of BTS' suga closing out his solo concert tour with a final show in korea while also getting packed for the trip.  absolute madness.

at this point, we only had a couple of weeks left before the new school year started so we were doing our best to squeeze in as much fun as possible.  i wasn't at all sure that we were going to be able to fit in any kind of a big summer getaway this year, but somehow the hub pulled off the impossible and off we were for a week in our favorite place.

we always rent a car despite the exorbitant parking fees everywhere, because while we love waikiki and hanging out at the beach we also really enjoy driving around the island.

because our flight was so early, we'd arrived right around lunchtime.  and after mulling over our options, we decided to hit up one of our most favorite holes-in-the-wall:  kyung's seafood in honolulu.

kyung's never disappoints.  the freshest sushi and sashimi and ice cold soju slushies were a fantastic way to kick off our visit to paradise.

while our go-to place to stay has been the moana surfrider for years, this time around we decided to try something new.  the "pink palace," also known as the royal hawaiian, is just down the street from the surfrider and was our home for the week.

look, i brought taylor to hawaii with us!

the cool, comfortable beds in our room were really inviting and we all ended up taking some well-deserved naps.  the hub and i woke up before the bean and decided to take a short walk just across the lawn to the international marketplace, where we hit up our favorite island vintage coffee for a pick-me-up.  i was pretty excited to have my first island latte of the trip:

when we got back to the room, the bean was awake.  we were all hungry again by then, and so we headed downstairs and over to duke's for one of their delicious cheeseburgers.

of course, duke's was poppin'.  we cruised around the dining area a few times looking for an available table with no luck.  the hub had us hang out in the waiting area while he went to try and sweet-talk the hostess into giving us a spot us and came back to report that we could be seated immediately as long as we were okay with sharing it with another family.  hell yeah, we were. bring on the cheeseburgers.

when we got to the table, we smiled and introduced ourselves to the family of four that were our stablemates.  and when i sat down, the mom looked at me and said "do you make cookies?"

<insert record player screech here>

after my initial shock, we started chatting and it turns out that i'd done cookies for her son's first birthday...in 2015.  she found this blog while googling for information on run disney races and actually ordered cookies from me twice.  absolutely wild.

we all had a great time having dinner together - trading ideas for things to do while in o'ahu, sharing disneyland tips for their next stop on their vacation, marveling at the craziness of randomly finding each other after all these years.  i don't know if she still reads the blog, but if so...hey gurl hey!

things that make you go hmmmmmmm

i have a bunch of random pictures that i snapped with the intent of blogging, but they wouldn't really create a full post of their own.  and so you know what that means...random photo dump time!

i forgot to show you how i kicked off mother's day weekend a couple of weeks ago...with a mega-mosa at brunch that kind of took me out for the rest of that day.  champagne turns me into such a lightweight, heh.  but look at this thing -it's as big as my face!

so one of my cookie requests was for a birthday party where succulents were going to be prominently featured as a decor element.  i did a little googling to see if i could come up with some ideas, but since i'm not a real artist nor did i want to do any major piping to create 3D designs, i ended up borrowing an idea from a tutorial i found using a mold for roses using fondant.  amazon came to my rescue with some of the items, with my local baking supply shop covering the rest:

making the flowers was easy enough.  and although they're roses and not actually succulents, using the green fondant actually worked really well.  popping the chunks of fondant in, pressing them into the mold and carefully pulling them out to dry was a fairly simple process.  and then i took a fluffy brush, dipped it into some matte finish edible dust, and they started looking even better.

and to finish it off, i used red and purple edible markers on the edges of the petals and here's how they came out:

i used my edible printer to make a background for some of the cookies that would match the invitation, and when all was said and done here's how they all looked:

speaking of birthdays, we celebrated my grandmother's 93rd birthday this weekend.  with the old lady present for once, i was pretty happy to finally get a complete "4 generations" photo.

my mom asked me to do cookies in the shape of dresses for the party, to honor my grandmother and her everlasting status of rockstar seamstress.  it was extra fun for me to do these, considering my own love for sewing started with her.

the bean has been enjoying the start of her lazy summer days - with summer day camp not starting till the last week of june, she has a full month to just relax and hang out.  of course, that means slime:

and look at this home version of skee ball we found at target!  we busted it out this weekend.

last week while the bean was at one of those final half days of school, i was excited to finally get a chance to do a morning hike with one of my favorite moms from school.  we'd been trying to pull it together for weeks to do this, and we squeezed it in just before the kids were home for the summer.

during a trip to home goods, i found this super cute ferris wheel that the hub actually let me take home.  i love it so much:

and lastly, i leave you with this gem taken from a local church that's known for posting amusing and interesting things on their marquee.  i didn't take this picture, but i had to borrow it to share:

doing a little antiquing

after running an errand with me one day last week, the old lady and i found ourselves with some time to kill before we had to pick up the bean from school.  we debated going to disneyland to try some of the treats at this year's food & wine festival, but we didn't want to have to rush back and potentially run late.  we'd both been craving some grub from urth cafe, and a quick check online told us that there was one in the old town area of orange.  it didn't take too long to get there, and we were pretty excited to have some delicious lunch and one of their delicious spanish lattes.

except that as we turned the corner, we were surprised...in the worst way.  the damn place was still under construction:

even though we were super bitter about it, the ridiculousness of the situation was just so damn funny and we couldn't stop laughing.  gah!

instead of finding somewhere else to have some lunch, we ended up walking through an antique mall and browsing through all the stuff for sale.  i love crap like this...the place is divided into small stalls that are rented out to people to tag and display their items for sale.  you find all sorts of the most random stuff here, like this $30 bottle of obama jones soda:

we stumbled across a ton of disney collectibles and spent a ridiculous amount of time inspecting it all.  there were tons and tons of pins:

there were cast member uniforms:

this super random pinball game:

somewhat creepy vintage stuffed mickeys.

and even signage from around the park:

this one was particularly interesting - i knew that there had been just one disneyland full marathon, and it must've been in 1995.  vintage run disney:

there was a whole display case full of other fun stuff, like unused attraction tickets and old cast member name tags.

and look at the price on this miniature snow white set:

we were fascinated by lots of super random non-disney items too, like this whole booth that was all decked out with stuff from the 60s and 70s:

one booth had a bunch of these miniature toy sewing machines that looked like they actually worked:

want some 20+ year old soda?

how about bottle caps?

look at this unopened ouija board from 1972!

an original cabbage patch kid astronaut:

i was fascinated by the sets of old school nancy drew and hardy boys books that looked just like the ones i read when i was younger.

and the old lady squealed as she spied this set of classic books she read when she was little.

want a police badge from the old "hawaii five-o" tv series?

in the end, we headed back home and hit up the new blaze pizza that had just opened near the house.  i love pizza.

gotta love all of the random shenanigans we find ourselves in, right?