pre-school photo book

I love this idea of making a photo book when your child starts pre-school. This mom went to her son's pre-school and took photos of everything there, printed them and then labeled them in Picnik. Then she put them all together to make a little book. She said it is her son's favorite book to read with her and she finds him looking through it all the time too.
from modernparentsmessykids via sayyestohoboken

home sweet home

Danielle moved this last week to Santa Barbara and as you can see from this photo she is already enjoying being back in California and close to the beach. We are so happy she is here to stay! We had a fun reunion with Britt and the kids at her house in Temecula. We got a lot of quality time with Emeri and Noah. Britt made us a delicious taco dinner a favorite of all of ours. One night we spent hilariously going over photos of my brothers and sister when I was young. My brother Bill who is really involved in family history took all of our old slides from the 50's and 60's and put them on DVD and gave us all a copy. We are so grateful to him as these pictures are priceless! Let it just be said that the styles we wore as kids back then kept us laughing for a long time. After we left Britt's Danielle and I spent an entire day and night at South Coast Plaza {something we have not done in a while}. Danielle was shopping for a couch and we fell in love with this one at Crate and Barrel that I think she will be getting. She also found some things in Zara and Madewell and I got my favorite lunch the Turkey Cranberry Sandwich at Nordstroms cafe, yum! On Tuesday my Mom took Danielle and I to Park Avenue one of my favorite new restaurants that I found in Sunset magazine. They have their own garden so you can get a delicious fresh and local salad. The decor is Mad Men like from the 60's so it  is obliviously my fave. I am so excited that with Danielle close like this we will be able to have weekends like this a lot more often.

Hello Kitty entirely made out of Tuna cans on display at South Coast Plaza

Garden at Park Avenue

Beautiful fresh salad straight from the Garden

timeline & mad men

Ok, so Lionsgate took down Eric Leist's video I posted comparing the selling of the Carousel for slides in the 60's to the new Facebook timeline. Obviously they were not happy he had used a past clip from Mad Men to make the video of Don Drapers timeline. So this video is of the new Timeline that will be rolling out on Facebook profiles soon. You can still see the original Mad Men clip here with Don Draper amazing sales pitch using nostalgia to sell the Carousel. This has got to be one or my favorite clips from all their shows! Eric's comments as to why he compared the carousel episode on Mad Men to the new timeline in Facebook are below.

Who knew that Facebook's newest feature timeline was originally conceived by the Mad Men of the 1960s? In all seriousness, the most compelling elements of Facebook's Timeline are the ones that made Kodak's Carousel popular. Reminiscing is a social activity. It always has been, and now Facebook is bringing that activity online.    Eric Leist

fall

Friday was the first day of Fall. That means I'll be wearing one of my favorite things all the time now.....Cardigan's.
via: Boden

inspiration

But I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.    Olivia Wilde

danielle's homecoming

I put this on Facebook but wanted it here on my blog too because Facebook scrolls into oblivion and this is too huge to not document! This is a picture of Danielle her first time living away from home after we dropped her off to start college at UC Santa Cruz. Little did I know that she would be living far away from us for 14 YEARS! All the way from Florida to South Africa to Japan to Washington DC. We are super happy because after all these years she will be moving back near us to Santa Barbara. Her boyfriend is starting graduate school at UCSB {the reason for the move, lucky us}. Danielle will be able to keep her same job. A lot of it is travel which she will continue to do and the rest she will telecommute from home. She arrives on Friday night and then the next morning we are heading out to Britt's. I got Matt to break away from his friends and he will be meeting us there too. Danielle has not even seen Emeri yet, so we will be having a ton of fun with everyone back together. I'm sure Noah will be the life of the party though because he is at the funniest stage right now. Just as an example the other day when Britt was in line at Target with him he started talking to the little girl in front of him. After talking for a few minutes he said to her "that is a pretty cute dress you are wearing." He is quite the little smoozer and he just turned 3! So excited, only 2 more days!

scalloped flats

Way expensive but so cute by Marc Jacobs.
via: oh joy