Tag Archives: plants

Time For Another Dad Visit (or How Much Can We Get Done In One Day)

My dad was in town this weekend. This trip was planned back in the spring when my dad picked out a show that he wanted to go to at my work. So after I won tickets for being top salesperson, I got us tickets for the show.

My dad flew in early Friday morning. We now have a tradition of going to IHOP for breakfast whenever he flies in, so we headed there first. After breakfast, we headed out to Burbank to visit one of my dad’s childhood friends. This friend is very into gardening (like my dad), so he wanted to show off what he had been working on at his house.

While we were there, we mentioned that I was trying to replant some of my plants in my front yard, so he took us to a plant store and my dad and I found a new pot that we could use in my front yard.

After the visit in Burbank, my dad and I headed back to my house to do a few projects that I’ve been wanting to do.

First was finally hanging up the medal holder that my Aunt Cindy gave to me a few months ago.

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I think it’s looking pretty good with all the medals that I’ve gotten so far this year!

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The next project was a bit of a surprise for me. My dad makes these planters that are covered in bark and I got one from him back in 2010 that I have outside. But over the years, my dad has learned how to make them better and better. So he brought me a new bark planter, but this time it was a small one that could go inside. So we put it on my dining room table and made a quick run to Michael’s to buy some silk flowers to put in it.

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It really looks nice in my dining room and adds a lot of color to my house.

The final project was to work on replanting my outside plants and adding in the new plants that my dad’s friend gave to me. Since my dad is much better and all the gardening type stuff, he did most of the work while I tried to help with the design. I think that all my planters look pretty nice now.

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Finally, after all of that, we had a bit of time to relax before heading over to my work for the show. We saw Arturo Sandoval that night. He had a 20 piece band with him and it was such an amazing show! Lots of high energy music and our seats were practically on the stage! It was a great evening.

Coming up in my next post: my dad goes to SoulCycle with me for the first time!

Life Updates (or Some Of What’s Going On)

Today, I’ve decided to update you all on a couple of little things going on in my life.

First of all, the most recent car accident I’ve had. I haven’t gotten my car fixed, or even gotten an estimate. I’m hoping to do that sometime in the next few weeks. I haven’t decided if I’m going to fix it at all. It doesn’t look horrible, and right now I don’t have the money for the deductible (I could get it together in time, I just don’t know if that’s a priority for me right now).

Also, I’ve finally decided what I’m going to wear to my brother’s wedding. I’m nowhere near the weight loss goal I had for myself, but that’s ok. The wedding is in Hawaii, and it’s black tie optional. I don’t want to wear a full length dress, so I’m going to wear the same dress that I wore to my friend Marie’s wedding last year in Texas. The dress is fancy and I think the color is tropical. Here’s a little picture of it.

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I still need to figure out what I’m wearing for the rehearsal dinner and need to go out and buy another bathing suit (I only have 1 right now), but I’ve got some time to get those done. At least the most important outfit for the trip is figured out.

I also wrote about how I have a black thumb a while back. I’ve been trying really hard to not kill my plants this time. I think I’ve succeeded in not killing my plants (yet).

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I sent this photo to my dad, and he thinks that it looks like the plants are thriving. Hopefully they will still look this good when he comes to visit me in the fall.

And finally, a long overdue update. I said last year that I was thinking of getting rid of cable. I kept my cable but tried to only watch my shows through Hulu, Netflix, and the internet. And while it worked for many of my shows, it just wasn’t a good solution for them all. In order for me to do my research, it would get to be pretty difficult to not have cable and a DVR.

But I am trying to expand my shows to be things that don’t air on traditional TV. I had yesterday off (there was an awards show filming at my work and it wasn’t safe for us to be there), and I watched all 13 episodes of “Orange Is The New Black”, which is a Netflix original series. If you haven’t watched this show yet, start now! It’s amazing! It might be one of the best shows on tv (and it’s pretty much an all female cast which is amazing and pretty much unheard of).

So that’s what has been going on in my life. I’m feeling pretty reflective as I’m coming to the last week of my 20’s. I’ve been looking back at some photos and just thinking about how much I changed over the last decade. And how so much will change again for me in this next decade. I know I’m probably sounding very sappy, but big birthdays will do that to a person. And when I turned 20, I had no idea that I would be in the place that I am now. So my imagination has been going wild thinking of the possibilities that could be when I’m looking back at my 30’s ten years from now.

Starting New (or Hoping My Black Thumb Turns Into A Green Thumb)

I’ve never been very good at keeping plants alive. I’m not sure what I do wrong. I water them regularly, I take the dead leaves off, and I make sure they get enough (but not too much) sunlight. But so many times I have something start out like this:

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And before I know it, it looks like this:

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My dad is great at keeping plants alive. In fact, he is the one who gave me the gardenia plant I killed (and he also made the bark planter that it was in). He has given me so many plants over the years, and not one is still alive.

I’m a plant serial killer.

When my dad was visiting me last year, we went to Huntington Gardens and he pointed out what plants would be harder for me to kill. But I don’t trust that any plants are hard to kill. I’m good at doing things that shouldn’t happen. Like when I go bowling, if there are bumpers, I’m still able to get a gutter ball (that takes true talent)!

But this weekend, I decided to take advantage of the “no sales tax” sale at Orchard and add some new plants to my life.

I took my dad’s advice and got succulents. I’m just hoping that they are hard to kill, like my dad says. I got 5 different plants. I picked some based on cool names like California Sunset and ET Fingers (I also pick nail polish by cool names, so it’s a thing). I also got an Aloe plant because that seemed pretty cool to have.

I took out my dead gardenia out of my bark planter and also took another planter that was in front of my house but nobody was using and planted my new purchases. I didn’t get enough dirt so I do have to fix that soon.

But for now, the front of my house looks pretty nice.

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I did a ton of research on how not to kill succulents. I’m hoping that I can keep these alive. If not, I think I need to stop murdering plants and move on to silk flowers to decorate my front yard.