VINTAGE TIE GUITAR STRAP - recycle, reuse

I decided I wanted to learn how to play the guitar and of course with all of that excitement comes the fun of finding the accompanying accessories...like a guitar strap! I of course went to my fave handmade shopping site, etsy. I found some gorgeous options...hand tooled leather guitar straps and fun fabric ones. Then I came across these über cool guitar straps that were made from vintage ties. At this point I've ordered two. The one above I ended up giving as a gift, and this is the one I kept for my gorgeous Mini Martin acoustic.


For those of you that have an iPhone, there's also a great app called Guitar Toolkit. It's expensive for an app ($9.99), but it has so many things that you would normally pay more for...a tuner, a metronome, guitar chord guide and a guide for scales. The tuner and the metronome alone come to at least $20 and most likely more. Neato Bandido!

Image by ipresents via Flickr

Image by ipresents via Flickr

Image by ipresents via Flickr

PICTURE MOSAIC - for someone who has everything

I was trying to figure out what to do for one of my best friend's 40th birthday. I knew I wanted to do something with photographs (I had soo many of them of him), and this man has everything, so it had to be original and personal. I happened upon some sites for photo mosaics, but quickly found that there a lot of companies that do them in a "fake" way. They just put all of the photos together, and then print the main photo on top of those photos, as opposed to arranging the photos according to color, etc, in order to form the shapes and shades of the photograph.


I finally came upon a company called Picture Mosaics. They do the real deal and honestly it's a fairly reasonable process. You have the choice of printing on photo paper or on canvas. I opted for photo paper and a 20" x 30" size. I found 400 photos and chose one photo to be the main one. It was a portrait I did of him when were on a trip together in New York and it was taken at the Bowery Hotel. It's a pic that he always said he loved. At first I was concerned that the image wouldn't be clear enough, but I found that this worked better than the close-up photographs the site recommended. It felt more like an art piece.

The only thing is that since I was using a vertical photo as the main image, they recommended that all of the photos going into this mosaic had to be vertical (although you can select all horizontal as well...you just have to choose one or the other). That meant cropping those 400 photos individually to ensure that the images worked. It took some time, but it was worth it. I was able to do all of it online. They sent me a proof, I made some changes, and by the 2nd try they had it right. There's a lot more than 400 images in this poster sized print so most of the photos were duplicated (click on the photo to see a close-up look).

I got it custom framed at Aaron Brothers in a beautiful, simple black frame with a simple thick white matte. They framed it with more space at the bottom of the frame to give it more of a gallery feel. Gorgeous.

VERANA - heaven is in yelapa, mexico

I've travelled to a lot of countries, mostly with family. Only recently in my life have I been travelling with friends, which is a different experience altogether. This last January, I took a 5 day vacation, starting in Puerto Vallarta for 2 nights at a bed & breakfast inn, Casa Sin Tiempo that worked in conjunction with the place we stayed in for last 3 nights - VERANA. Our first 2 nights were wonderful. We ate wonderful food, my favorite being a little Spanish Tapas restaurant around the corner from the B&B that was the size of my bedroom.


It's called Esquina de los Caprichos and the owners there apparently have a cow fetish. Sonia, who runs Casa Sin Tiempo was the one that directed us to it. We took a cooking lesson with her too which was fun. Our last day there, we were running around, getting some last minute shopping in when another couple arrived. They chilled on the veranda...ALL DAY. We saw them in the morning there, we left, came back, and they were STILL there. We found out that they had done 3 days in Verana, and had come to Puerta Vallarta for their last 2 days. We were boggled by their spaciness until we arrived at Verana.

We took a 30 minute boat ride from PV to Yelapa where we saw 3 whales along the way. The guy driving the boat would be able to see in still water where they would be coming up...it was incredible. We arrived and they hauled our bags up by mules while we made our own hike up the stairs. That took about 15 or 20 minutes uphill, which was pretty rough, but they had fresh lemonade waiting for us when we got up there. This place has maybe 22 people max at full capacity. There are about 9 houses on the property and each one is different and has its own style.


We had chosen the Palapa, a palm thatched roof and walls that only came up about 3 ft.. It was a rustic bungalow with an outdoor shower and two beautiful beds.



You prepay for all the meals, which made things so wonderfully easy. All I ever carried with me was a camera. Lunch was served near the pool. And dinner? Oyy...enough said.



The menu was VERY fresh and they had a nice variety of flavors, none of which were too heavy. Breakfast was served near the bar...scrumptious.

This is the perfect place to absolutely nothing. The highlight of our stay was the Starlight Soak. It started with a couples massage, followed by dinner, and the final was a hot water bath with coconut milk and aromatherapy oils.


They pointed out to us the massage table so that we could exchange massages, a floor bed where we could "lay" and look at the stars, and a personal pool that was heated to 98.7 degrees...the clincher, we had it ALL NIGHT LONG. I thought we had won the lottery.
I can't say enough about this place. It was unbelievably beautiful and the service was unsurpassed. The owner was a production designer and it shows. I <3 this place!


One more note, we did venture into the town of Yelapa for an afternoon. I know some people have said that they enjoyed their trek there, but I have to say that all we found was flat diet cokes, donkey dung, and they sell shrimp at the laundry...

NECKLUSH - i've actually slept in it

If you've never seen the site etsy.com, you should really check it out. It's full of handmade things made by people for people and other creatures. I recently found on there this thingy called a Necklush. It's super comfortable, made out of cotton, and it starts as one long loop around the neck, which can then be doubled or tripled over to form different styles of a "scarf". I kind of see it like a scarf or a fabulous new form of jewelry.


It's literally so comfortable that I've gone to sleep with it on a couple of times. It keeps my neck warm without being overheated, so it's nice for those breezy days in Los Angeles...and especially for now since our weather has been more Portland style. I get compliments on it whenever I wear it and one of my friends threatened to kill me so that he could take mine from me.

This is the one that I have...it's so good:

SIZZLER - 2 meals in 1

I know... not the finest in dining establishments, but I have a soft spot for cafeteria style food, and Sizzler's salad bar definitely falls in that category. I think it must remind me of school food...that awesome greasy square cut pizza we used to get in the plastic molded tray. Anyhoo, I went there recently with my friend Sharon to get our usual salad bar (goddamn those chicken wings at the hot bar are SOOOO good), and the lovely cashier woman pointed out to us that for the $9.99 we were going to spend on the salad bar, we could order one of 3 items on their menu which INCLUDES the salad bar (fried shrimp, hamburger, malibu chicken).

Sharon got the hamburger, I got the malibu chicken. This is far too much food, even for someone who loves food as much as I do. I went for my usual round of salad, and then 4 chicken wings. Sharon managed 6! She's a rockstar. She said the burger was actually really good. I saw that it was slightly pink on the inside and pretty darn juicy, so I was convinced. Plus, the girl used to be the photo editor at Bon Appetit so if she says it's good, I totally believe her.


The malibu chicken frankly didn't look appetizing to me, so I decided to take it home for another meal. It's made of a chicken patty (it's obviously processed into a shape), ham, melted cheese and a dijon sauce that conveniently comes in a little plastic container that you can just drop into your styrofoam to go box. I got the baked potato with it which also comes with a side of sour cream & chopped green onions and butter. I loaded all of that stuff up, minus the butter (I prefer to use my own Earth Balance at home... the buttery goodness without the gamey animal taste of butter and no trans fats - Hurrah!). The dish also comes with CHEESE TOAST!


Cheese toast makes me happy. It brings me back to good ol' Stockton when there used to be a joint called Happy Steak (pre-Sizzler). It was awesome... I'm guessing it might have been a branch of Lawry's since they always had the Lawry's seasoned salt on the tables. The H in Happy actually had a smiley face on it. They ALWAYS had the cheese toast and that's where I got addicted to putting Lawry's seasoned salt on my baked potato. I can't have it any other way anymore.
So of course I packed my 2 slices of cheese toast into my styrofoam and hit the dessert bar. Where else in Los Angeles can you find Ambrosia salad (a white mess of marshmallows, sour cream, shredded coconut and canned tropical fruit)? I actually dig their little soft serve ice cream machine...the combo swirl of vanilla & chocolate in one of those plain cones with some chopped peanuts.

CUT TO: NEXT DAY LUNCH... I decided to go for the malibu chicken plate. The patty fits perfectly between the 2 slices of cheese toast and I spread some of the dijon sauce on the bread before heating it all back up in the oven. I have my baked potato, my earth balance, the sour cream & green onions from Sizzler, and my own personal shaker of Lawry's seasoned salt.
This was actually really shockingly delicious.

POPKILLER meets HAPPY EYES via OLD FOCALS

Laser eye surgery totally freaks me out. I'll never forget when one of my best friends just had it done, and in a drug induced haze post op, he called me and told me "Don't EVER do it...remember that scene in Clockwork Orange when they had his eyelids pried open?" Of course later he said it was the best thing ever, but that was enough to scare me away from it forever. PLUS I love glasses...they make fun accessories.

I love expensive glasses, but I also <3 v="UiwjtyQjP8M." style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6b8Y18AmroU/SjKjjxGwMWI/AAAAAAAAADI/ipxOb6Znphk/s400/DSC_1630.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346515542514610530" border="0">
A lot of optical places won't fill a cheap pair of glasses because the quality isn't there..yada yada yada. Same goes for vintage glasses. I had bought a pair of beautiful (and reasonably priced, I might add) vintage glasses (see below) at this fantastic shop in Pasadena called Old Focals (45 W. Green Street). Another great find, by the way...




These wonderful people at Old Focals told me about a place called Happy Eyes Optical (114 E. Wilson Avenue) in Glendale who will put prescription lenses into pretty much ANY pair of glasses you bring to them. They are really friendly and I've now gotten two pair of glasses done there. Their prices are reasonable and they do a great job.