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:

half day at disneyland

for the last week of school, every day was a half day.  so on tuesday after the bean got out of class, we headed down to the 'land to grab some lunch and soak up some of that disney magic.  we're still experiencing that lovely "may gray," so it was actually pretty chilly when we got there just after 1:00.  after debating in the car on the way down, we decided to go into the disneyland side and enjoy some delicious fried chicken at plaza inn.

the last time i had some of that pixarfest cake it was just the old lady and me, so of course when she saw the slices there i figured she needed to try it too.

the required castle selfie:

having secured fastpasses for hyperspace mountain, we decided to go into frontierland and check out the line for big thunder mountain.  on our way there we came across a crowd of people standing around watching a family of ducks make their way across the path, with a couple of cast members standing guard to make sure they didn't get stepped on.

with the standby line wait time for thunder mountain at 45 minutes, we passed it up and instead got onto the disneyland railroad for a nice ride around the park.  as we pulled into the main street station, we caught a glimpse of one of the famous disneyland cats.

this was also the first chance i'd gotten to sport my brand new club 33-themed crossbody bag.

as we rode around, i got this shot of the bean and marveled at how grown-up she looks in it.

i asked her to take a picture of me and along with that one, i found this one on my camera roll:

checking the app, i noticed that the line for the gadget go-coaster in toon town was a mere 10 minutes.  we hopped off the train and found ourselves on the ride in just about that amount of time, and then the bean decided she wanted to spend a little time at the playground at goofy's house.

there's a fun churro challenge happening at the parks right now for annual passholders. for $5 you get this map:

and then you hit up all of the kiosks with the special pixarfest-themed churros, collecting these stickers at each stop:

and after you finish them all, you head to the AP corner at california adventure to collect a surprise.  our first stop on the map was in frontierland, for the coco-themed churro.  it comes with this little cup of cinnamon-chocolate sauce that i thought was delicious, but the bean said it was a little spicy.

by then, it was time for our hyperspace mountain fastpass.

we'd also snagged one for matterhorn:

the bean had a rare craving for some popcorn, so we grabbed a scoop on main street and found a spot on the curb to sit and eat it as we waited for the pixar parade to begin.  she was really proud of herself for figuring out a way to get easy access to the goods once the top half was gone:

and then out of the corner of my eye i spied one of the VIP plaids coming through, followed by a super bright neon yellow jacket-clad guest.  i'd seen on instagram that the kardashians were in the parks, so i snapped this even though i wasn't completely sure which one it was (it was kim, as confirmed by the old lady when i sent this to her).  i'm not a fan AT ALL, so while i didn't really care about this "celeb" sighting i figured it was worth taking just so i could share it with you.

a few minutes later, her sister kourtney strolled on by.

and it was right then that another cast member came over to tell us that if we were waiting for the parade, we were out of luck because we happened to be sitting on a section of the street that wasn't part of the route.  d-oh.  but by then, we were kind of tired and ready to head on out anyway.  so we got up, snagged one last selfie:

grabbed a couple of treats to go, and headed out.  our timing was pretty good, because there was no wait to get onto a tram and getting to our car and out of the structure was easy breezy.

hopefully we'll get to squeeze in a few more visits before all of the local school districts start letting out and the parks get even more crowded than they already are.  although that doesn't really stop us anyway.  we're still gonna go as often as we feel like it, crowds or no crowds.  it'll just get a little more challenging as it starts to warm up out there.

time to dig out those fans and misters again!  yaaaaaaaay.

summer break officially begins...NOW!

it's over!  the bean is officially a 5th grader...yikes!

of course, we had to take the required chalkboard photo.

and of course, i had to do the side-by-side comparison of first day vs. last day.

she was dropped off at the normal time, with my promise to be back in a couple of hours as i was bringing supplies for an ice cream sundae bar.  i had just enough time to head home, make myself some coffee, see the hub for about 5 minutes and then head back out to buy the ice cream.  my co-room parents were bringing the toppings and i had enough paper goods in stock at home to cover the class.

and once they'd devoured as much ice cream as they could, we balanced it out with something savory while they played games and watched "the lego movie."

one more photo op with one of her oldest and best friends.  his mom and i are so glad they're such great sports about taking pictures together, even though they're getting older and tween-ier.

a little later, we headed over to the salon for my usual appointment and to trim off a few more inches of her hair.  she was super excited because she loves having her hair cut and blown out.  this is the only "before" shot i took:

the stylist chopped off a couple of inches and then busted out the thinning scissors to help keep the bushiness at bay.  her hair was almost all one length, which made for somewhat of a weird al look (don't yell at me for that one, the hub came up with it).  and so with it thinned out a little, i think it'll be easier to maintain...and hopefully less tangly.  she loves it so much, and so do i.

and then we headed out to the movies to catch the new han solo movie.  like my shirt?

it was really good, by the way.  i wasn't sure if i was going to like it, but i'd say that even if you aren't a big star wars fan you'd be entertained by it.  we all enjoyed it, and i'm really glad we didn't wait to watch it.

yay for no more bedtime!  no crazy morning rushing around!  hello easy breezy summer days!

(we'll be over it in a couple of weeks)

hey hey hey, WHAT is going on here??

when i heard that a "saved by the bell"-themed cafe was coming to l.a., i knew there was a group of my friends who'd be all over it right along with me.  we coordinated via email, text and facebook and as soon as the reservations became available, we booked it.

we had weeks and weeks to plan for our totally awesome outing, and with dailygluttony's help we even managed to coordinate matching t-shirts.  she and lilcee and i attempted to do the matchy-matchy thing and ordered maroon cheer skirts from amazon, but mine never arrived and dailygluttony's didn't fit her properly.  i found a length of fabric in my stash that was the perfect color to make a quick skirt, and took my too-long tee and chopped off the bottom to turn it into a knotted hem shirt.  it started out looking like this:

and ended up like this.

i met up with lilcee so that we could carpool out to west hollywood, and we arrived with some time to spare.  as we made our way towards the restaurant, we came across first nanette, followed by trish and dailygluttony, and finally we ran right into weezermonkey.  she took one look at our outfits and ran back to her car to find some props she had left over from a paw patrol show (hilarious in itself).

before we went inside, we managed to get a couple who was waiting outside to take a group picture of us.

i was so excited to be there that i probably missed a ton of photo ops, but that's okay.  i think i got enough for you to get the git.  as we walked in, we passed a graffiti'd wall and a row of lockers stuffed full of props that the characters on the show would have had on hand.

the restaurant looked just like the one the bayside gang frequented on the show in pretty much every episode.

 and episodes were playing on the screens above the bar.

this row of lockers led to the restrooms, with these signs on the doors to indicate which one was for boys and which one for girls.

there was also a separate dining room (which required a separate reservation, apparently) modeled after the principal's office.

the "museum" was full of memorabilia and props from the show.

we took our seats in the booth we were led to and settled in for our allotted 90-minute dining window.

even the table sported the familiar shapes that were used in the shows opening and closing credit sequences.

menus:

when you make a reservation, you basically prepay for your meal.  it consists of an appetizer and an entree, with sides, drinks and dessert offered at an additional cost.  we decided to order one of each of the appetizers (except the salad - boring), doubling up on the wings and poutine.

they were okay, which we'd anticipated.  after all, this isn't the kind of place you go expecting top-notch food.  here, it's all about the photo ops.  and the peoplewatching.  we were super amused to see two separate parties who were treating their reservation as one big photo shoot.

this was the "kelly kapowski, basically their take on a monte carlo-style sandwich.

i shared it with lilcee, who split her order of fried chicken and waffles with me.

and this was the bacon burger, with the bayside tigers logo to make it extra "saved by the bell"-y.

with the eating part over and done with, we vacated our booth and started making our way around the place to take more pictures.

 a quick visit to the principal's office:

and of course, weezermonkey's and my best attempt at recreating the famous "i'm so excited!  i'm so excited!  i'm so...SCARED!" scene.  this will never stop being funny to me.

we took a couple more fun boomerang videos before we called it a night.

we went outside for a quick group hug, and then we parted ways and headed home.

now time to plan for another super fun GTG!  wonder what sort of shenanigans we'll get up to next.