My parents flew in for Thanksgiving weekend this year. Nearly every day for the last six months Sam and I had been preparing for this in some big or small way. There were lots of furniture, accessories, repairs, etc. that needed to be examined in our new condo before our first overnight guests could set foot in it.
On Tuesday our friend brought over a delivery of plants, mostly for our patio. In the last month we’d also visited Ikea and other home supply stores more often than I’d like to admit. As we did final prep of the inside of the home on Wednesday night I took some photos.
A potted plant from our friend.
Sam’s quick fix for a Christmas tree since I’m allergic (it’s rosemary).
Potted succulents from our friend. This pot used to hold the christmas cactus that my mother gave me a few years ago. Now that cactus is spreading roots out in our garden.
Our living room.
The new table and Sam’s interior design accessorizing.
It looks crooked, I know. Our floor actually isn’t level, so it’s the table that’s slightly rising to the right, but the photo makes it look like the painting is off. If we ever get hardwood floors we’ll have them fix the floor when they rip out the carpet. For the time being though we’ll save the money and stay with the new carpeting that was in the condo when we bought it (albeit over an uneven floor).
Sam doing a last bit of cleaning in the kitchen.
The next morning we put the final touches on the patio.
That is, of course, after Sam tested her idea for a planned Saturday brunch on me. I didn’t mind.
Agave plant in one of our pots. These pots are actually the original clay and plastic (the taller ones are plastic) pots that were left in the patio when we bought the condo. Sam didn’t like the color much so she had the idea of painting them white before we gave them to our friend to fill with plants, I think her idea worked out great.
The larger (plastic) pots were filled with Banana plants and flowers.
There were two larger pots made of plastic and three smaller ones made of clay. One of the smaller ones had an agave and the other two had these more “tall grass” like plants. Our friend told us what everything was when he delivered them, but we don’t remember what they are.
We put some of these fellows in the garden. Opinions were mixed on whether they will flower only once or keep flowering seasonally.
It was Sam’s idea to buy an outdoor shelf and fill it with little plants (many of which can aid in her cooking) to cover up the outside AC vent next to the patio door.
We are trying to sell that old dining set – we don’t plan on keeping it on the patio – but there’s nowhere else to put it for now.
View of patio looking left (Northwest).
And during construction of patio:
View of patio looking right (Southeast).
And during construction:
Don’t forget, here is what it looked like when we bought it (note the clay and plastic pots with dead/dying shrubs):
The friend of ours that did the plants in the pots and some of the indoor ones too runs a business called Branch of Life.
Around 1pm we picked up my parents at LAX and headed to Hummus House, a local middle-eastern themed restaurant. My parents, who don’t eat things like this often, thought it was great. It was pretty good (the hummus choices were creative and delicious), but the meat was all overcooked and rough. However, due to our requirements; A) something near LAX and B) something OPEN on Thanksgiving day other than McDonalds, I think we did fairly well. Our next stop was Alta Loma Terrace. This had been a request of my mother, an interesting walkway very close to our condo. I only took one photo, for a more comprehensive write-up check out this blog.
We had originally planned to go to ThaiTown and eat noodles for dinner after Alta Loma, but Sam’s employer had given her a free thanksgiving Turkey the night before so we headed home and ate that for dinner. On the way we tried to stop by the Hollywood reservoir, but we found the parking lot gated off, and after parking on the street and walking up we found the access to the reservoir was also gated off. A city employee drove up and told us it would be open the rest of the weekend. We never did have time to make it back, but Sam and I aren’t going anywhere for a while, so mom and dad can see it on their next visit.
After the early dinner we watched Super 8 on Netflix and my parents headed to bed. They had been up since about 1am PST in order to make their flight out of Akron (?).
All the photos from their entire trip can be found here.
(yes, I will be blogging each day, eventually)
