Celebrate Andrea: Day One

How do you make sure you get your proper yearly "me-day" when your birthday is the day after valentine's day?

How about when valentine's day is on a Monday and your birthday is on a Tuesday?

You get a little partying the weekend before and a little the weekend after, of course!

So this year we kicked off Andrea-fest with breaking her out of jail early (truth be told, she has half day every Friday at work, so this wasn't that big of a deal). BUT, when she finally made her way out she had a little surprise waiting for her in the car, A PRESENT!!

The little photographer already has a 4-lens camera and has taken such photos as:

,

,

and

!

She also found an app on the Android Market (ohhh, fancy!) for her new phone that lets her take lamography-like pictures such as:

!!!!!

So that's all nice and fancy, but what's a camera with out something to take a picture of? So off we went, and aided by Andrea's phone (thank you google maps!!!!) we avoided the horrendous (and compleatly normal) LA traffic on the freeway and Santa Monica Boulevard and instead took a detour along Sunset.

And FINALLY we made it to our very picturesque destination: the Griffiths Observatory!

As you can see it's got some great views, and I definitely recommend stopping by if you have the chance.

After the observatory we started our journey back and went by Amoeba Records, and just HAD to stop in (how could we not when this is what the outside looked like?).

I hate to say it and I'm sure they hate to hear it, but with how cheap and easy it is to get music online and a Netflix account it was not very much fun to peruse the merchandise. WITH THE EXCEPTIONS of the awesome posters they had (if they weren't so expensive I'm sure we would have left with a few), and they did have some cool collectors albums/magazines/junk, and even this little beauty:

After that little experience we headed off once again, this time toward the Volcom shop where I got a jacket and Andrea a shirt that we'd end up wearing on Day Two of our celebration.

Year of the Rabbit

As you may know, this past Thursday was the beginning of the Chinese new year and 2011 is the year of the rabbit.

To honor this ancient holiday we decided to go to Chinatown for the 112th Golden Dragon Parade and Festival. It was FUN! When we got to Chinatown it looked like parking was going to be a pain, but luckily, Boy Scouts were there to happily take our money and give us somewhere to park. Since we figured it'd be expensive everywhere, we might as well support the Boy Scouts in the process.

After wandering over to the main Chinatown Plaza we figured first things first - find some treats (this seems to be a common thread throughout our outings)! Wehehellllloooo... it seemed to be Andre's lucky day! We were able to find some sesame balls (two doughy balls in a sac!! what luck!!) which he has searched far and wide for (even having me seek them out on my last trip to Hawaii where I tried several Asian bakeries with no luck)! I was excited to try them, but a little skeptical too, so I got a pretty safe looking coconut bun for myself. Oh my was Andre just so pleased as punch to hear me admit that I liked his even more than mine - and I'm a little coconut nut so that was shocking to us both.

While enjoying our treats we were also treated to a show! All throughout the day there were different performances going on at the main stage from a dragon fight to some cool pole dancing... I mean acrobatic displays.

Then we wandered around and found way more than we even expected!! The only thing I planned on looking for was a pair of cheap sunglasses (this IS Chinatown, after all!). There were plenty of shops selling the cloth mary janes and little silk dresses *yawn* (what is this, Chinatown?!) but there were ALSO lots of sweet tents with stuff I'd lusted after from a distance following their etsys and blogs. This was one of those "oh my gosh were in LA... like the LA where all my favorite bloggers are!" moments. Yes I am a dork thankyouverymuch and sometimes I'm a little slow too.

There was also a yelp tent that gave me FREE sunglasses for "checking-in" to Chinatown. This also inspired me to actually play around with the yelp app I'd downloaded a few days ago and hadn't yet opened and I love it! Also present were a number of LA's finest food trucks including Coolhaus my new favorite ice cream sandwich place. On today's menu were even some flavors I'd been dying to try (Dirty Mint Chip, Rootbeer, and Nutella Almond Crunch or something like that). I decided to be responsible and at least eat SOME real food before second dessert - I'm pretty sure it was still morning at this point.

After seeing all around the Plaza, we ventured out to the streets surrounding and over to see where the parade stuff was. We walked past pretty much the whole parade lined up before it started and didn't even have to sit cramped on the side of the road to watch it at normal speed (which always seems so slowwww). This is when one of the highlights of my year happened. You see, I have a strange love of classic cars, and if it's aqua colored I tend to be especially smitten. So I see this gorgeous car as I'm walking past and all I can do is stare. Andre asks if I want him to take a picture of me by it, which I don't because I feel so foolish, but he convinces me to anyway. I do the "Hi I'm a tourist" pose and he takes the picture (wearing my new sunglasses!).

WELL, as he's taking the picture the guy who apparently owns the car comes up and asks if I'd like to *SIT* in it. OF COURSE I DO!!! Ensue giddy 2-year old with a face full of candy smile. I think my cheeks hurt a little after that because I couldn't stop smiling for a while, but i guess it was worth it : )

We were finally starting to get a little hungry for real food at this point so upon walking back through the food carts and plaza eateries with a little help from yelp we decided to go to Via Cafe, a Vietnamese restaurant.

Andre got Pho Tai (rice noodle soup) and I got a Banh Mi Bo (baguette sandwich). I think these are my new favorite sandwiches - grilled beef, thinly sliced carrot & some other veg, cucumber, dill, cilantro (and then I added some sprouts from Andre's Pho as well as some Sriracha).

The parade had finally started by the time we were done so we decided to relax and digest by watching the show on stage (crazy guys doing stuff on poles) and check in on the parade so Andre could see the dragons (all Andre really cared about).

By the time we saw what we wanted to, we were ready for dessert and made our way over to Coolhaus only to find they were OUT of cookies and only had beer flavored, green tea flavored, and vanilla - gross, gross, and boring : (At this point we were forced to do the only thing we could - watch some more dragons

and then get dessert elsewhere...SPRINKLES! Which was especially exciting given the new flavors I had to try - Red HOT Velvet and Raspberry Chocolate Chip. Well I'd heard the rumors about the long lines but it was really unreal. Last time we went on a Thursday night and I was able to go right in

Saturday late afternoon was a different story.

Andre was quite the trooper. Since we were in Beverly Hills anyway, we walked around to all the fancy stores (the coolest display we saw was one that was underground with windows in the ground to look down at it). As if our day wasn't eventful enough we then went home to change and go to our church's "ADULT valentines party" scandalous or what? We weren't sure what to expect. It was pretty cool though - yummy croissants and we even met some new cool peeps we'll have to hang out with sometime! What a fun and loooong day.

First Friday - Westchester

Today is our second "First Friday" spent in LA.  We decided to keep it a little more low-key; checking out the local Westchester First Friday and hoping to try some new yummy food truck goodies. When we got there (right about the beginning) many of the trucks were still setting up and after perusing our options, we ended up going to the immensely popular Grilled Cheese Truck (I've read about people waiting in line for an hour and a half for this stuff and I believe it b/c it's always got the longest line!).  

I got the Gruyere on French Bread  with Arugula (I ordered Basil, but they were out) with a cup of Homemade Tomato Soup and Andre got the Special Melt of the Day (Muenster with Pastrami, Dijon Mustard, and Grilled Onions).  

We also got a S'more Melt for dessert (Marshmallow cream, Nutella, and crumbled graham crackers on sweet brioche bread).  

While Westchester is definitely not as happening as Venice, we still had a good time, waited in a much shorter line, saw a greasy weiner and left in time to stop by Costco and get the latest coupons along with some nom noms for our empty cupboards!

ps I love how you can tell the difference between the pictures I took with my favorite "toycam" app and the ones Andre took with the boring old default phone cam