a birthday outing and an outfit post.

 so, my actual birthday was on friday (since james was home the three of us celebrated with disneyland and lots of ice cream) and today my mom threw me a little family lunch party (with a fabulous gluten free feast that ill tell you more about tomorrow). but my big birthday thing was yesterday, when james, my sister, and i went up to silverlake for an adventure:

first, my friends marisa and stacie met up with us at the silverlake art craft and vintage market for some shopping:

which was really, really fun. ive wanted to go to this market for like, three years (im not kidding) and even though it happens every month it never works out for us to be able to go. since it was my birthday i made SURE that we would be able to go, and im really glad we went. its not a huge market, but it had a really great selection of vendors. 

a couple weeks ago james sold some cards so that i could have spending money for my birthday (seriously the sweetest thing ever, i can never justify spending household money on myself), and id been saving it for what felt like FOREVER because somehow i KNEW that this was going to be the perfect opportunity for me to get the new clothes that i (badly) need. 

AND I WAS TOTALLY RIGHT! im not going to post pictures of all the stuff i got, because i really want to start doing outfit posts more regularly (and now i have a TON of great pieces to work with), but i got at least half of the "things my wardrobe really, REALLY needs" list crossed off. AND to make it even better knitted dove was having a sample sale, so i was able to get this skirt (in red!) and this dress (plus a sweater!) for $45!!! it was seriously the greatest part of the day. 

until we went to lunch, that is. i spent a LONG time searching for a gluten-free friendly (but still enjoyable) restaurant in the silverlake area, and after poking around urbanspoon for a bit i came across heywood grilled cheese shoppe:

which, like the name implies, only sells really, really fancy grilled cheese sandwiches. they have several signature sandwiches on their menu, or you can build your own with their list of breads, cheeses and toppings. i had "the heywood" (2 year aged english cheddar and caramelized onion confit) on gluten free bread, "inside out" (meaning it had a THICK crust of cheddar cheese on the outside of the bread) and it was BY FAR the best (gluten free or otherwise) sandwich of my ENTIRE LIFE:

even though the sandwiches are on the expensive side ($10-12, and the gluten free bread and cheese crust cost extra), they do come with soup and salad (the soup isnt gluten free so they made me an extra big salad). and more importantly, the gluten free bread is TOTALLY NORMAL SIZED AND DECENT TASTING. see, one of the big problems with eating gluten-free at restaurants, is that you usually end up having to pay extra for significantly LESS food.

 but that wasnt the case here. yeah i had to pay extra for the bread but at least i still got a regular sized sandwich. and more important, it was an ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC SANDWICH. but the best part? for the first time in i dont know how long, i felt satisfied and FULL after eating (literally two days prior i was crying my eyes out about never getting to feel full). and if i can finally feel full, honestly i dont care if that sandwich costs $100. 

anyways, remember back in the beginning of this post, before i started gushing about sandwiches, how i said i wanted to start doing more outfit posts? no? well i totally did. and heres what i wore out shopping yesterday:

dress: hand-me-down (originally from simply wonderful, belt: target (from a skirt), tights cotton on, glasses: zenni optical, bag: vintage camera case, bracelet: vintage, necklace: target, shoes: urban outfitters

 like most of my dresses, this one is a hand-me-down from my sister, from when she worked at a super cute boutique at the mall. even though i LOVE the squirrel print, this dress has just been hanging out in my closet because i remembered it being a really weird tunic length on my sister and i wasnt sure how to style it. of course, i totally forgot to consider that my sister is like six inches taller than me and its a totally normal dress on me. 

the only problem though was that its kind of shapeless, and i didnt have any belts that fit my new somehow smaller than pre-pregnancy waist. at least i thought i didnt, i found this one on a skirt that i bought right after alice was born (that of course i wore non-stop for a few months and now kind of hate), and it was perfect. 

i finished the outfit off with just a couple small accessories (for a girl, im REALLY terrible at remembering to accessorize my outfits), this dress-and-scissors necklace i found while cleaning out my jewelry box:

a vintage kodak camera case for a purse, and a very, very special vintage silver charm bracelet:

james got me the bracelet when he worked as a gold buyer in arizona, and its actually the only piece of jewelry that james has ever bought for me. a lady sold it to his shop and he thought id like it so he bought it from his boss for whatever the silver cost, and its been one of my most prized possessions ever since. all the charms are old, dainty, sterling silver charms that make the cutest little jingle with every movement, AND they are just THE most bizzare assortment of charms you could imagine. seriously. theres a wheelbarrow, an elephant, a buffalo, a mailbox, a ladder, a pair of ice tongs (?), all kinds of crazy stuff. i wish i knew more about whoever collected them. 

so that was my outfit for the day. stay tuned for tomorrow because monday is weekly wishes day!

studio dinners. a lesson in flexibility.

if you dont know me in real life, i feel like i should tell you that im a little OCD and have a tendency to be kind of uptight. and if you do know me in real life you know that what i said was so much of an understatement that it was pretty much an outright lie. i feel like most of the time i do a really good job at hiding this particular flaw of mine (unless, of course youve been in the car with me when ive gotten lost or forgotten something) by doing my best to channel it into something productive. like to-do lists. and schedules. and groceries. 

and if you havent noticed, weve had a rather, well unusual couple weeks (read more here and  here) and this has been a bit more of a challenge than usual. especially in the food department. see, i make my weekly meal plan and buy our groceries on wednesdays, and our apartment flooded on friday. meaning that meals were already planned and groceries were already purchased, and now i had to spend the week in an apartment with an even smaller and less functional kitchen without access to all the supplies id need to prepare said meals (not to mention, several of them were very labor/equipment intensive). and now i had to re-plan almost everything while still using up as much of our existing groceries as possible (especially since the studio didnt have any pantry space). honestly i was more upset about that than i was about spending nine nights sleeping on our crappy futon. 

i seriously contemplated just going to fresh & easy and getting like 700 frozen dinners and just eating those all week, but i knew i could do better than that. instead i challenged myself to make real dinners, good dinners, every night that we were home (which ended up not being that many). i had two main challenges: 1. obviously one big weekly grocery trip wasnt going to work, so i had to resign myself to going to the store  as needed for just a few things (which is terribly inefficient but i just had to get over that) and 2. the physical limitations of the studio kitchen meant that all meals had to use as few dishes as possible, since the sink/counter area was tiny and all dishes had to be washed and dried immediately after using them. 

and now i am very, very proud to announce that i did it! i present to you, for your viewing pleasure, our "real dinners" for the week:

hash brown potatoes with vegetarian chili

salmon with rice and roasted broccoli

mini pizzas with yellow squash

tuna melts with roasted broccoli

so it turns out, the world will not fall apart if i have to re-arrange my meal plan a bit and skip the grocery schedule for a week. who knew?

$20 family fun day, san pedro edition.

yesterday i had a rare saturday off, so we spent the day in san pedro, going to a couple of my favorite places. first we went to crafted at the port of los angeles for lunch and shopping, then headed over to the cabrillo aquarium. not only was this a really great, relaxing day having fun together as a family, but it was mostly free!

crafted is basically a permanent craft fair thats open every weekend, and i really love it for three reasons: 
1. its got free admission AND free parking (which in the la area is nearly impossible to find) 2. there are all kinds of crafters and artisans, and since its permanent, everyone makes a cute little miniature store rather than a craft booth and you never know what kind of neat things youll find.
3. but most importantly, they have a different gourmet food truck every day. 

that last one is actually why we went, because the grilled cheese truck was there! on my only saturday off for the whole month! how perfect was that? and let me tell you, that was one fantastic lunch. i got the cheesy mac melt (sharp cheddar and mac and cheese on french bread), james got the french onion soup melt (gruyere with caramelized onions on french bread with au jus for dipping), and we shared a half order of tots with roasted garlic aioli. 

and goodness gracious this was one of the most delicious meals ive ever had! everything from the cheese to the bread to the sauces was perfect, after we finished it was tempting to get back in line for another sandwich, not because we were still hungry (because we certainly werent), but because the food was SOOOOO GOOOD. the entire meal cost $15.50, which wasnt exactly expensive, just not really something we can do all the time (though i intentionally keep our grocery budget strictly at $50 a week so we have room for this kind of indulgence at least once a week). 

after crafted we went down the street to the cabrillo aquarium to learn about the fishies. as a kid we went to this aquarium a lot so it was really nice to get to share it with james and alice. cause as you can see alice REALLY loves fish. 

cabrillo is one of my favorite field trips cause not only is it really fun with lots to look at (and a tidepool touch tank!), while still being small enough for a toddler to enjoy, but admission is free (with suggested donation), and parking is only $1 an hour.  basically its a poor persons aquarium of the pacific. 

since alice is only one we only lasted about an hour and a half at the aquarium before we needed to get home, but all in all it was a wonderful day out as a family, AND set us back less than $20.