all of the cacti ever

One of the places my mom and I checked out when in Palm Springs was the Morton botanical gardens. I had heard them mentioned a few times before and on Sunday we decided to check it out. It's a small botanical garden but a really wondrous array of succulents. There were a bunch of paths running through the larger ones outdoors, and then a spectacular greenhouse full of more crazy looking cacti than I've ever seen before as well as a nursery area if you wanted to bring some of the different varieties home with you. I would totally recommend seeking out this spot, though I do think it would have been even more enjoyable if we had not gone on the hottest day of our visit.

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Houses of Palm Springs

On Saturday my mom and I rented bikes (from this place and they were awesome) and did a bit of a self guided tour of Palm Springs neighborhoods. We said we were looking for some pretty houses were pointed in the right direction by the guys at the shop. We got our bikes at about 9 in the morning and rode for a few hours until it was too hot and we were too tired to continue and so we called it and got lunch. These were just a few of my favorite places I saw, as you can see, I have a thing for doors, gates and hedges!

The above door was my favorite (how could it not be it looks like a pink chocolate bar!) and I was so so excited to find it. So the moral of the story is, if you are visiting Palm Springs, I highly suggest biking as a way to see a bunch more of the area, and some of the beautiful midcentury design that it's known for. As you can see below, I very much enjoyed myself.

Palm Springs

I just got back from a long weekend in Palm Springs. I've never been there before but always heard great things and from the pictures it looked like such a beautiful place I have had it on my to-visit list for a while. My mom and I made a deal when I was seven, that we would meet for a trip the year I turned 30, so when we finally sat down to figure out where to go this past January, and both wanted to go somewhere warm with water and things and pretty shops and maybe a pool and some tropical drinks, we ended up deciding on Palm Springs.
We drove down from the bay area, and while it wasn't a short drive, it was very beautiful winding through the desert We saw a bunch of spectacular clouds and even got rained on. Twice!

The place we ended up staying at was found on Airbnb. It was a little condo on the edge of town. The neighborhood was quiet, it had a pool and bocce ball and a small kitchen and a big private patio out back. As Palm Springs isn't that big we actually found it very nice to be on the edge, since it was so easy to walk to the main street and anywhere we would like to go, and then retreat back to our little oasis when we wanted to hang by the pool.



The whole place was very color coordinated, everything was orange or hot pink and there was lots of mirrored furniture pieces. It made for a fun home for our vacation.


There was a lot of wandering around during our stay, checking out houses and poking around it shops. I found that most of the pictures I took were of succulents or doors. The light was just so nice that everything ended up looking pretty great.

We ate at several pretty delicious spots but we went to Cheeky's Sunday for a mother's day breakfast and that was by far the best meal of the whole trip. The fresh juices were perfect ( and I loved the little individual beakers they were served in) and in addition to the excellent pulled pork hash with avocado I also got a bacon flight (!!!!) for us to taste which was amazing.

(there was tons and tons of bougainvillea covering every wall and climbing most of the fences. I have never seen it in so many different shades of pink and purple. I have about a hundred similar pictures because I just loved every bit of it)

We also visited a few of the hotels, even though we weren't staying in any of them, the design was fantastic. The Parker in particular had the most amazing mix of furniture and some very lovely grounds to wander. I loved the little couches and hammocks tucked into nooks along the paths. It really added to the luxurious and relaxed feel of the place.

As I said all the food we had was pretty excellent, but I do feel like I should mention Great Shakes (I wanted to try every single milkshake on their menu and their five star yelp review is totally warranted) and Birba (right next door to Cheekys) where we got a super tasty dinner our last night in town. In fact the meal was so good (and the cocktails, I had something with grapefruit and bitters and st Germain and it was wonderfully refreshing) that I didn't take any pictures. I was too busy scarfing it all down! So I will just have to make due with this picture of the nifty marquee light "B" that they had outside.

Since there are so many of them I am still editing down all the photos of houses that I took on our bike tour so I will try to have those pulled together by tomorrow.

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message board (a validation of my craft hoarding)

I have trouble throwing things away. Even when they are broken, ruined, pretty much garbage I still always feel like the moment it is gone I will come up with something great to do with it. So I hang on to stuff. Case in point, last year my upstairs neighbors dropped something or were bowling or whatever they do, and a frame in the living room fell off it's hook and shattered on the ground. I carefully gathered all the broken glass and cleaned up, and I was able to rescue the artwork inside, but they I took the bare, glassless frame and set it aside. It's just an ikea frame but it's big and I kept feeling like I should do something with it. 

One day I was reading through all one million blogs I follow and I saw this project from A Beautiful Mess and pinned it because I love letter art, and something I can continuously change around?? Even better. Then I went home and saw this guy sitting in the corner by my desk and thought.... maybe I can tweak this idea a bit. 

I used balsa wood to build out some ledges within the frame, and then glued them on and spray painted the whole thing with numerous coats of high gloss navy spray paint. Then I cut down sheets of balsa and added some tall 3" sticker letters. I was planning initially to stain the wood letter pieces before adding the white letters, but I tested one out and really liked the way they looked like this so I thought I would keep it for a while. 

I've hung it up in the entry hallway and it's a fun place for leaving or arriving messages, silly motivational stuff, and I've got a little dish with more letter cards so it's really easy to change the message when I feel like it. Overall a simple and pretty customization project and a justification of my supply hoarding. I'll call it a win.

April muni people

I'm still going strong with the weekly muni people project and with a third of the year under my belt it now feels like an easy habit to keep up. You can see the previous three months here, here and here.