Craft...

Last Saturday, completely out of the blue my husband said to me, "Baby, I am going to take you to a fancy dinner tonight, we are going to Craft!"  I was ecstatic!  What a sweet, romantic little surprise!  I am a huge fan of Bravo's Top Chef, and especially a fan of Tom Colicchio, the shows host, and have been wanting to visit his new LA post Craft since it opened in Century City last year.  We first sampled the chef's food at his NYC restaurant, Craft.  We loved it!  It is sort of an upscale steak house type place, where you order your protein, starch and vegetables all a la cart.  He serves the food in little roasting dishes, which is so much fun.  

When we were in Las Vegas last summer for the Michael Buble concert, which was held at the MGM Grand, we had dinner at Craft Las Vegas, also located in the MGM Grand.  I actually have pretty amazing photographic evidence of this evening... You see, right after we sat down, and woman came over and offered to take our picture, and we happily posed away... 

When she came back right before dessert, she handed us this:  

Which opened into this: 

Please notice the lion super-imposed into our photo, and the location/date stamp.  And this my friends, is why I LOVE Vegas!  HA!  So cheesy I can barely stand it!  I insisted we buy it, if for no other reason than I didn't want this just floating around if we didn't buy it. 

So we headed over to Century City to try Craft LA, I am sort of a Craft groupie at this point... 

The style and decor of the place were very similar to NY and LV, I guess, if it ain't broke...  

We had to wait a minute or two to be seated, so we sat in the bar and had a cocktail.  I was a little disappointed in their cocktail list.  One of my favorite things is the signature cocktail list, and this one was limited and strange.  They did have a list of flavored vodkas, so I tried blueberry with 7-Up.  The drink was tasty enough, but it was served in a tall clear glass with ice and a straw. Hmpf.  So plain.  I think a little sprig of mint, or some real blueberries would have been nice.  I suppose this might be a tad nit-picky, but oh well.  

When we were seated, we perused the menu and everything looked good!  Double edged sword.  I started with the endive, bacon and candied pecan salad, which was delicious!  The bitterness of the endive paired with the smoky bacon and sweet pecans was amazing.  I sort of could hear Tom Colicchio saying that was his intention, in my head.  S had a mixed green salad, which was equally yum.  We shared two entrees - the prawns and the roasted chicken.  For sides, we had pureed potatoes for moi, and fingerling potatoes for him.  So GOOD.  The portions were a little on the small side, but it was all so tasty!  

For dessert, we had caramel roasted apples with vanilla ice cream and coconut sorbet, which were both very good!

I have photos of the food - but stupid blogger is not allowing me to add them properly!  Does the photo uploading process of blogger annoy anyone else?  Is there something I am missing? It uploads them upside down, all at the top, and they are nearly impossible to move around the page.  I will leave you with this shot that the valet took... sorry that my husband's head is cut off...

Comme Si, Comme Ca

Last night I went to dinner with two of my best friends, MK & Splashie.  We dubbed the evening "Sex & Smog City" night and vowed to get together at least once a month to try a new fabulous restaurant.  So to kick off the series, we headed to Comme Ca on Melrose.  I parked somewhat far away, as I was resisting the valet since I had golf clubs in my trunk that I was afraid would go missing in a valet situation.  But it was pretty easy to find street parking if you aren't afraid to walk a little bit.  I was a few minutes late and the girls were already seated when I walked in.  The restaurant is bustling to say the least.  The decor is very chic french bistro, white tile, black wood, quaint chalkboards and cozy little tables pushed closed together.  MK had a cocktail that looked like a snow cone The food was very tasty.  I had the steak frites, and the fries were delicious!  The steak was cooked very nicely and served with an herbed butter melted atop, mmmmmmm.  MK had the salmon, which was equally as delicious, and I am not really a big fan of salmon.  Splashie had the sole, which I didn't try, but she said was fabulous.  We had a lovely dinner and I can't wait for the next one!

Thank you for the kind words about the incident yesterday, knowing that I was not alone in my grieving for this creature was so comforting :)  

So sad...

I was driving home this morning from my spinning class, along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, and I saw a seagull fly down to pick up some food that was lying in the middle of the street.  Then, before I knew it, the guy in front of me hit the seagull.  ugh.  It was the single saddest thing I have seen in a long time, and I am absolutely heartbroken about it.  It was more than I could handle and I just stopped my car and bawled my eyes out until the other drivers on the road started to go around me.  I was paralyzed in the middle of the street.  I had no idea what I could do, if I could do anything to save this bird.  And it was like everyone just went about their day, especially the guy who hit the bird, he didn't even look back.  I know this is not the most pleasant blog entry, and my intention is not to bring this sadness onto anyone, but it has been on my mind all morning, and I thought writing about it may be cathartic.  I realize that these birds are not endangered, and there are hundreds of thousands of them, but this just knocked the wind out of me.  I have a very soft spot for all animals.  But I will say this: that bird may not have been killed if someone hadn't littered up the streets with their garbage.  Santa Monica is such a beautiful city, but it has gotten so gross if you ask me, and it needs to be cleaned up.  It is always littered with crap.  I am sorry if this makes anyone sad, I know I am not the only one who gets upset by these sorts of things.  I do promise a more uplifting post tomorrow, because tonight I am going to dinner with 2 of my best girl friends and this time, there will be photos :) 

A few days in the desert...

This weekend we went down to Palm Desert, one of our absolute favorite places to get away for a little break.  We got engaged in Palm Desert, so it is near and dear to my heart.  The reason for the trip was to see our friends Adrienne & Joe, who live in San Francisco.  Joey is my husband's best friend from growing up, they have known each other since they were very little, and have managed to keep up their great friendship through the years, despite having lived on opposite coasts for most of their adult lives.  Joe & Adrienne got married last summer in Napa, and right before their wedding they moved cross country from NYC to San Francisco. We are very happy that they are at least on the same coast as us now!  We had a great time, shopping around, enjoying the nice sunny weather, playing scrabble, and driving around.  

The good news is that my camera is back in the game!  The bad news is, I sort of forgot to take a lot of pictures of us doing any of the fun stuff we did, oppps.  But we did take a few shots before we headed home.  

Belated Holiday Post...

I realized that I never blogged about our fantastic trip to Colorado for Christmas, so although belatedly, here it is!  We went to Colorado Springs, which is about an hour outside of Denver to visit my family for the holiday.  I didn't grow up in Colorado, I grew up  in Minneapolis, but when I left for college in California, my parents picked up and moved to the Rockies.  I can't complain, I love visiting there, and I much prefer Colorado to the ice box of Minnesota!  We had a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner.  My mom does all of the cooking, and she is am amazing chef.  What I really love about Christmas Eve at our house is that what ever your favorite food is, you get to have!  Usually she will make beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, the whole deal.  But years ago my littlest sister Marie wanted lasagna instead, so lasagna is always on the menu.  My husband loves french fries, and hates mashed potatoes (blasphemy) so he got french fries!  It is so much fun!  

(please excuse the small size of the photos, my dad's camera was set to a really low resolution on accident!)

My Parents:

My husband and I with my sister Haley: (pretty sure I had a mouth-full of potatoes in this one)

My mom, and sisters Haley & Marie: (interesting photo :)

On Christmas Day we left "the springs" (as the locals call it!) to go skiing for a few days.  I grew up skiing, although I have not done it in a verrrrry long time.  And my husband has never been skiing, so we were both a little nervous about the adventure. It turned out to be a great success!  After a few lessons, he was up and skiing like an old pro! He is very athletic, so I never had any real fear that he wouldn't be able to do it.  We had so much fun, and we are definitely looking forward to the next time we can hit the slopes.  We only got in 2 days of skiing, because on the 3rd day - it was -7 degrees.  Umyeah, no thanks!

Brrrrrrrr!!!! (us in our helmets - I had no idea but helmets have become the must have ski equipment)

With our instructor Steve.  (I wanted to ring Steve's neck at the end of day 2 - but that could be a whole nuther blog entry!)  

At dinner...

We had a great trip to Colorado, and can't wait to get back there!  

213/Ribbon Mission

This morning MK and I headed downtown to Gold Lea Trims on a ribbon finding mission.  She is getting married in June, and her gorgeous save the-dates need a little embellishment.  We had no trouble maneuvering around downtown, and we actually met a few interesting characters along the way, including Miss Lea herself!  The ribbons were abounding, and beautiful.  Such inspiration!  We also visited a spot a few blocks down called Michael Levine, although far more organized than Gold Lea, the selection was not as impressive.

  

We were looking for a very specific ribbon, which proved a little bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.  So we headed back to the west side to good old F & S on Pico.  

They really have some beautiful ribbons, unfortunately, quantity is not their thing.  They never seem to have more than a few yards of anything.  But we were able to find what we were looking for, so it was a very successful trip!  And a fun one too :)  

These pictures are courtesy of my new iPhone, which I got for Christmas!  Yay!  I really love this thing, it takes some getting used to, but I do love all that it can do.  

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it is 2008 already!  

So much happened in 2007, we got married, sold a business, subsequently became unemployed, attempted to start a new business, started a blog :) it was a.lot.  I am a little sad that the year has passed, although I am excited and invigorated about the year to come.  I was spinning this morning with MK and we were chatting about new year's resolutions.  I have a few, but upon further reflection, I suppose my resolutions for 2008 are very simple, really.  I would like to live each day to the fullest (to vague?).  I want to get up a little earlier each day, maybe go to bed a little earlier too.  Spend more than a few minutes with my husband in the morning before he rushes off to work.  I want to be more positive.  I am a pretty positive person by nature, but I tend to get brought down by stupid things like traffic, and malfunctioning technology, argh.  I want to practice a little more patience when dealing with these things.  I tend to negative about Los Angeles, instead, I want to embrace it (for now) and take in the things that make this city special.  The traffic is terrible, the smog is unbearable, the home prices are astronomical and it might not be the easiest place to consider raising a family, but it is our home.  And the weather doesn't suck either.  I want to make each day a little more productive, and try to be more efficient.  I want to go to the grocery store 1-2 times a week, instead of every day because I can't plan ahead.  I want to blog more, I want to be more aware, I want to try to make it to spinning 3 times a week.  I want to be more focused on my new business.  Overall, I want to be more motivated.  And if there ever was a time for motivation, it is the new year.  

My camera is still broken, so this will be a picture-less post, although I am hoping to get a few pictures from my Dad that I can post from our trip to Colorado for Christmas.  We had the best trip, and I can't wait to share it!