poppy festival and vasquez rocks

Jesse and I went to the California Poppy Festival last weekend. We expected a nice little festival on the edge of a field that looked something like this:

Um, no. (And, by the way, I did NOT take that picture. It's from the official festival website.)

First of all, the festival itself was in the middle of the city of Lancaster, nowhere near any poppies, besides a very few that were at the entrance to the festival. You can just barely see them in the bottom left of the below picture.

It was a pretty typical festival for a mid-sized city, with mediocre craft stands and carnival rides. The highlight for us was our BBQ lunch. (We miss having a grill so much!) And, of course, festivals are just cheery places to be, so we were enjoyed ourselves despite the mediocrity.

Apparently the whole idea of the poppy festival is to introduce out-of-towners like us to the poppies in the surrounding area. So while we were at the festival, we got some suggestions for where to see poppies, with a warning that poppies don't like the wind too much.

We drove off to the area where we had been directed, and we saw this:

There were poppies growing in the field - you can see a hint of orange throughout the photo. But because of the wind, the poppies were all closed up and nearly invisible. :( It was quite disappointing. But we still enjoyed getting out of the city for the day, and we will just plan to go back next year on a day with good weather. We might skip the festival next time around, though!

On our way home (Lancaster is about 1 hour and 15 minutes away) we turned off at the Vasquez Rocks County Park, where we had seen beautiful rock formations on our way to the festival. The park was so beautiful in the setting sun. Again, it just felt nice to be out of the city and it was so fun to discover this amazing natural beauty so close to home. We walked around a little until the park closed. We found out later that (unsurprisingly) the park has been filmed for many movies and TV shows, including Star Trek in the 1960s. The rest of the pictures are from Vasquez Rocks.

design stores

Jesse and I have found that our Midwestern-sized sofa is not very proportionate in size to our urban LA apartment, and thus have been casually looking for a new, sleeker sofa. (The same is actually true of our dog, but we won't be replacing him - giant, adorable monster that he is.)

The couch-shopping has provided the perfect excuse to check out some of the many, many design-oriented stores in LA. We've often driven through neighborhoods with interesting storefronts, and we've also been seeing a lot of LA-based stores featured on various HGTV shows. So one day we decided to park our car in one of those neighborhoods and wander a bit. And we found some fun stuff! It felt nice to be surrounded by so many interesting and beautiful things in all the stores we stopped by, which was more the main point of the afternoon than actually making a purchase anyway.

A week or two after we randomly stopped in this store, it was featured in Emily Henderson's Secrets from a Stylist. I love recognizing places on TV. :)

This picture was taken in a store that was filled with vintage hardware pieces - drawer pulls, doorknobs, keyholes, and all sorts of little bits from buildings past. If you were renovating a historic home, this place would be an absolute treasure trove. I've never seen so much hardware in one place.

This fabric store kind of made me want to be a designer just to bring my clients here. So pretty.

This place had all vintage Asian furniture. It was a giant place and was a little much altogether, but individually, many of the pieces were beautiful and definitely had a very strong historic feeling.

We've been pretty interested in mid-century modern furniture lately, but we only went to one shop that had that - and it wasn't really the type of place that I felt comfortable taking pictures (I had already gotten reprimanded once in a different store). But with all of the stores around town, I am sure we'll do this again!

art day in pasadena

Lately, I've been really geeking out over my new Museum Companion to Los Angeles: A Guide to Museums, Historic Houses, Libraries, Special Collections, Botanical Gardens and Zoos in Los Angeles County. (That book was written for me.) I've been dreaming up little day trips in various regions, and a couple weeks ago we took one to Pasadena. We tried a new cafe for lunch, and then went to see the Gamble House and the Norton Simon Museum. The weather was pretty ugly, but the sites were great.


The Gamble House was built in the arts and crafts style by famous architects Greene and Greene, who designed not just the home, but the landscaping and furniture as well. I love checking out famous architectural homes. And I especially like ones (like this one) that focus on the integration of the interior and exterior and the connection between aesthetics and functionality.





The Norton Simon Museum is a perfect size. We were only there an hour and a half or so, but it was enough time for a cursory tour of all the galleries and a more thorough viewing of the ones we really liked. Highlights: SO many Degas sculptures, a nicely designed gallery for SE Asian art, and a good book shop.