Vacation - Staycation

I've been on vacation since Christmas and it's been nice to stay home, visit local museums, and see old friends.  I've been sleeping and napping non-stop!  I must have been tired. 

Here's my list of what I wanted to do while on break (and I'm happy to say I've done most of them):
-Make oatcakes via the recipe from 3191 Quarterly and eat with apples and cheddar . . . also really good with blackberry jam.
-Buy ingredients at the Indian grocery store to make kitchari (bought the ingredients but haven't made the kitchari yet).
-Go on a long hike with Cody (this unfortunately was cut short due to spotting two coyotes).  Sigh, I don't think I can take him on hikes anymore due to the coyotes--they're everywhere in Southern California!  Cody and I did get to go on a nice long walk with my friend, Cynthia and her son Milo through their quiet neighborhood.  The last picture is from our walk.
-Visit the Autry Museum to see this exhibit.  So amazing!  I cried watching one of the artist videos . . . will have to write about that later.

Ah, I'm so grateful that I have a job that gives me this long of a break.

Life

Portrait

 

My friend, Serenity--a very talented photographer--took some photos of me at my old apartment as a gift for me last summer.  Here's one of my favorites (because Cody looks so silly and I like how my hair looks).  

Home

I just wanted to share some pictures of my new home in L.A. 

A very nice surprise: My plants have been growing twice their size here in L.A.

I've also been enjoying our version of fall here in So Cal.
I found some magnolia leaves and created a small fall arrangement to complement the pumpkins.

My friend, L, an inspiring home chef who is both intuitive and practical in her approach to cooking posted a recipe on cooking with pumpkins here so I took the opportunity to experiment with my pumpkins before they went bad.

My pumpkin seeds are a honeyed curry version.

I also made this salad with roasted pumpkin, broccoli, walnuts, and pomegranate seeds with a light curry mayo dressing (gotta love my current hippie bent towards cooking) but if I were to do it again, I would roast the broccoli and maybe add bacon and shallots (and take out the walnuts and pomegranate seeds).  It was a pretty good salad though.

On another note, for my Korean readers--do your parents forage?  My parents seem to find things in the forest or at local parks that most Americans don't eat or use but are more common in Korea.  Their latest find was mistletoe (I think) for tea.  I think it's supposed to lower your blood pressure.  Hehe, it's nice to know where MY foraging tendencies come from.
 

I dedicate this post to all my pregnant friends

I'm going to be an aunt to many little babies in the spring and summer.  More and more of my friends are starting to have kids!  I can't wait until they can all start saying funny things.

One thing I find really cool is the opportunity to decorate nurseries once you start having kids (although I'm pretty sure that by kid #2 you're not as eager to exercise your creativity). 

My friend K who is extremely talented (she creates the best decorations for parties and makes her own cards) painted a mural for her baby boy with some leftover paint she had from another home project.  So creative!

My friend K hand painted the mural.

I also really loved this nursery featured in Covet Garden magazine for a little baby girl.  I fell in love with the ceiling installations!  Hmm, I could have something like that in my house . . .

Image from http://covetgarden.com/

Organized Chaos

I try to clean up but my desk always ends up looking this way.  Kind of nice in it's own way :)