Amanda's Adventures in LA: Day 4

Wow, I'm tired. It was a long but very productive day. We started with crappy breakfast from the hotel this morning, and promptly decided never to eat there again. Then we hopped in car and drove over to FIDM where I jumped out and ran in to buy 5 more flower headbands. We began our journey in the fashion district at the dress store we bought a number of dresses at yesterday. Today we picked up at least 10 more. After arguing with the woman that ran it, we headed deeper into the district, dropped Patti off in childrens' land and went to some stores we'd visited on Tuesday/Wednesday and bought a couple more dresses. Next we hoofed it down to one of our favorite stores and bought even more dresses. That finished off our dress buying for the day. Lunch was at El Pollo Loco again where I decided I didn't want to eat any more crazy chicken on this trip. Following lunch we hit the ground running again and bought lots and lots and lots of fabrics. It was fabulous! I found three really cute pieces and am very excited about them. Tommy picked up some great stuff. We're hoping that tomorrow Patti has that much success. The last thing we had to do in the district was pick up our various purchases from various stores, which made for an adventure in and of itself. Finally, we had everything and headed back to the Fed Ex. Six boxes and one long package later and everything was packaged to be shipped to Logan. Tonight's dinner was at In-N-Out burger and all I have to say about that is YUMM-O! I'm really happy that we made it to the In-N-Out on this trip.

Favorite Stores of the Day: May Queen, Sal Tex, and J & S Fabrics

Favorite Purchases of the Day: My awesome skirt fabrics and all the taffetas and organzas we got

Fun Experience: We found this random store with a pretty good collection of organzas. We went in to check it out and ended up spending at least an hour in the store, buying yards upon yards of fabric, and meeting a really nice man who owned the store.

Amanda's Adventures in LA: Day 3

It was a great day today. We started out with breakfast from the McDonald's drive-through, which we ate on the way to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. We decided it would be a lot better than the crap we ate yesterday morning. At FIDM, we stopped first at the bookstore. Patti was hoping to find some good fashion books but they really didn't have anything. That didn't stop us from buying some fun stuff though, and I'm excited about little goodies I picked up. As we left the bookstore, we saw some racks of clothes outside on the corner and went to check them out. It turned out to be some type of scholarship fund store. There were a lot of clothes in the store, but the best part was the $1 a yard fabric and all the trims we found. We made a good haul of stuff and were really glad we stopped in there. After FIDM, we headed back over to the fashion district and made some great purchases. We got some basic supplies at B.Black and then headed on down to men's wear where we ended up with 8 suits for $300 dollars. It was awesome! But our mass-quantity purchases were just beginning because the next stop was a formal dress store where Tommy got some great ball gowns for Traviata. Following a quick lunch at McDonald's we hit another couple of stores then a wholesale store where we bought over a dozen more ball gowns. It was so crazy! By then we were pretty worn out so we made our way to a Fed Ex store so we could ship our goods back to Logan. That pretty much ended our day's adventures, or so we thought. Leaving the Fed Ex store, we started talking about what we wanted to do for dinner. We contemplated ordering pizza back at the hotel. That seemed like an ok idea but we kept driving anyway to see if we could find anything better. We wanted to eat at a cafe we'd driven by a couple of times but couldn't find a parking spot so that was out. Thirty to forty-five minutes later and numerous denied attempts at left-hand turns left us with our last resort of some crazy Chinese restaurant by our hotel. It was nestled amongst a number of Mexican stores and it looked a little shady--the Chinese worker even described the food in Spanish to us! We ordered anyway and came back to the hotel. It was probably the worst Chinese I've ever eaten. It just didn't have much flavor and wasn't super hot. Ick! Oh well, it was a great adventure, especially after we saw the fried sardine looking things. We've just been chilaxin at the hotel for the remainder of the evening as we regain our strength for another day of shopping. Woot!

Fun stores of the day: FIDM bookstore and scholarship store, Jennifer's Dresses, and May Queen

Crazy experience of the day: random Chinese restaurant

Amanda's Adventures in LA: Day 2

Day two of our adventures in LA has come and nearly gone. We started out the day with a continental breakfast in our hotel, if you can even call it that. I had what I think was Special K with strawberries and skim milk (bleck) as well as a slice of dry wheat bread (double bleck to the dryness). We then made our way over to the fashion district and commenced our search of fancy dresses that could be used for bases for Traviata ballgowns. After a couple of hours, a number of stores, and some bartering over wholesale prices, we decided to take a break and have some lunch. There aren't a whole lot of food choices to be found in the district so we settled on El Pollo Loco. I had my second set of tacos of the trip which weren't quite as good as last night's but were still good nonetheless. After lunch we journeyed into fabric world and scoped out what fabrics could be used to decorate the already-made ballgowns. Our shopping excursion finished up around 4:00 with the 4 of us pooped but pretty happy about what we'd accomplished. Dinner tonight was eaten at Red Lobster. It was great. I had lobster and shrimp. The service however, was slow and not super great. Oh well, I got to eat delicious seafood so it's all good. The final stop of the evening was Walgreens to pick up various things we had forgotten to pack as well as a case of bottled water. I had a fabulous day, got worn out, but am looking forward to tomorrow.

Finds of the day: 2 cute skirts, 2 pieces of fabric to make some church skirts, and a store where I want to purchase some really great scarves and fun jewelry

Store highlights: Mina's, Michael Levine's, Valentine's (totally crazy!!!), Krishma, and Jasmine Jewelry

Funny experience: As we were driving to dinner, we were stopped at a red light where a "bum" came up to our car with a sign announcing his availability for adoption. Anybody want to adopt a bum??? It was hilarious!!!

Amanda's Adventures in LA: Day 1

The day has finally come, the day that I've been waiting for for a very long time. Things finally worked out so that I could accompany my mom and Patti on their fabric buying trip to LA. This year we're fortunate to have Tommy along with us and I couldn't be more excited.
We left Logan about noon today and made our way to the airport. Our flight left Salt Lake at 3:00. As we were getting ready to board, a man in a suit walked up to the gate. My mom looked at him and then said to me, "I think he's a General Authority." I tried to get a look at him but he was talking on the phone and his face was obstructed by his arm. He finally turned around and I got saw who he was. It turned out to be Elder Dahlquist, the former General Young Men's President. Patti made the comment that we'd be safe on our flight since he was on it. Right after we boarded and got settled, I looked up and saw a priest walking down the aisle. I commented that we'd definitely be safe since there was a priest on board as well.
Our flight took off and it was pretty uneventful. After finishing my magazine and a couple rounds of in-flight trivia, we arrived in LA. We quickly made our way to the baggage carousel where we saw our third/fourth ecclesiastical representative of the day. As we were waiting for our luggage, a man with a Moses-type beard walked by. I remarked that we were on a role since Moses had just walked by. He could count as a Jewish man since he is a major part of the Jewish religion. Not a minute passed before an actual Jewish man and his family walked by, complete with yarmoulkes and all. It was so crazy!
The next task at hand was picking up our rental car. We retrieved our Chevy Impala and decided to drive around a bit while we waited for Tommy's flight to come in. We ended up at a Wendy's where we had a frosty and discussed a few places we'd like to visit and how to get there. After finishing our frosty's we drove around a bit more, spent some time in a Carl's Jr parking lot, and finally went back to the airport to pick up Tommy.
Tommy quickly livened up our group and it made me so excited to be on this trip. We journeyed to our hotel to drop off our luggage then went back out to grab some dinner. We decided on the California Pizza Kitchen. I'd never been there but was definitely pleased with my dinner. I had some steak tacos and they were delicious.
We're now back in our hotel winding down for the night. We've got a big couple of days ahead of us and I'm looking forward to finding out what this fabric shopping trip really entails. Tommy informed me that , since I am the youngest, I will pretty much be the pack horse. I guess we'll see...

P.S. I apologize for ending a lot of my sentences with prepositions but it's late and I don't want to take the time to be grammatically correct. ;o)

I've been crafting again...

So I got a new sewing machine for my birthday last September and I've loved using it. I've made some fun things and my latest project was no exception. At the end of last year, as I was coming up with ideas for Christmas gifts for the Michelle's, I wanted to do something in relation to our plans to take many, many, many trips together. The idea I came up with was travel accessories. Well, things didn't go as planned at Christmastime and I only got part of their gifts done. I made each of them a travel journal and gave them travel guides for 2 out of at least a dozen places we plan to go. Michelle 1 got a book on Route 66 and Michelle 2 got one about Australia. I was pretty excited to give them their presents but also a little sad that I didn't get the rest of them finished. Fast forward to Christmas day when I received a sewing calendar. It's a year's worth of sewing projects. I think there's one for every three days or so. Anyway...as I was checking out my calendar, I came across ideas for luggage tags and passport holders. I'd already picked up an idea for suitcase identifiers and had planned on a passport holder anyway. But with the instructions right there, I knew I had to make it. January and February quickly slipped by and I realized that it was getting closer to my trips to LA and Peru. I wanted to make some travel accessories for my trips and remembered that I'd promised myself I'd make the rest of the Michelle's gifts before I left.So I took a couple of nights between last week and this week and whipped these little babies out:

The square things wrap around the handles on your luggage so that you can tell which suitcase is yours on the baggage carousel. There's also two luggage tags, which we still will need to make labels for, and then monogrammed passport holders. I think they all turned out pretty cute. If I do say so myself.

5 Days of Argyle

I love argyle. I think it is a classy pattern and really like to wear it. One of my friends told me a couple of months ago that it fit me to wear it, seeing as how I'm a history teacher and whatnot. I love it!

This week, being the 1st week of March and the 1st week of Spring in my book, I decided to say goodbye to winter by wearing a weeks worth of argyle sweaters. Yes, I have that many...I figured that I'd satisfy my desire to wear my argyle sweaters one more time and then head off to California for a week in the sun. It's my hope that by the time I return, I'll be able to start wearing something besides sweaters and slacks to work. Is this wishful thinking??? I guess time will only tell. Here's the week in pictures ->

Monday:

Black sweater with purple, grey, and black argyle

Plus matching socks!

Tuesday:

Grey sweater with pink and grey argyle

Again, matching socks

Wednesday:

  

Green sweater with white and grey argyle

And yes, I do own argyle tights...told you I loved the pattern!

Thursday:

Black sweater with turquoise, green, and black argyle

Matching socks...

Friday:

Red sweater with white and grey argyle

And the matching socks

I don't know if I really have a favorite out of all these sweaters. Tuesday and Thursday were cashmere days. Wednesday and Friday were my JCP days which were pretty much the same outfits, just in different colors.

Sometimes in life you just have to do nutty things, like wearing argyle sweaters 5 days in a row.

Happy March!

Happy March Everybody!!!
To me, March marks the beginning of Spring. I don't care if there is still snow on the ground, if the temperature is the same as it was in February, or if the actual beginning of Spring doesn't come until nearly the end of the month. Come March 1st, my mindset changes and I start viewing the world through the fresh lense of a new season. Don't get me wrong, I love snow and winter and cold, etc but by the end of February I'm ready for Spring and everything that comes with it. I guess that's why I can never definitively say which season is my favorite. I think every season has its ups and downs and I feel very blessed to live in an area where I can experience them all! So welcome spring...please bring me a bit warmer weather, the end of inversions, mesmorizing rain showers, and beautiful flowers.