P.S., I love Palm Springs...

I went to Palm Springs with some girlfriends this weekend and I had such a great time! It was a nice getaway from work and all-things landscaping (which I don't even WANT to talk about right now, such a change, eh?), we had a blast.

On the road trip up, we were temporarily waylaid at the outlet stores outside of Palm Springs - dangerous! I bought a new little Coach purse now dubbed "Pursella, Queen of the Desert". While in Burberry, I got kicked out for taking a photo, but it was worth it. Seriously those undies are horrible!

When we got to our hotel, we were cracking up about just how much crap we had brought for 1 freakin' night away. Here's the pack mules showing off our baggage:

Hanging in the room:

And then we hit the pool! We were cracking up about how white trash we were...drinking our white wine and margs out of plastic cups and eating pretzels and Easy Cheese (note to self: lesson learned, one should NEVER go snack shopping after drinking wine...you end up making some poor choices, that's for sure).

And after a long glorious afternoon at the pool, we headed out for dinner and drinks! Here's Carol and I enjoying our Key Lime Martinis

I have to mention that poor Carol was getting over a nasty cold at the beginning of our trip, and somehow margaritas and martinis seemed to make it all better!

Frankly, a bucket o' margarita makes ANYTHING better:

Here's us reviewing our weekend nicknames:

The next morning after Carol had a crazy surge of early morning energy (@$%^&!&!&&^!!!!), we headed down to breakfast and a day at the pool again. The perfect recovery...Holly had bought us Runaways shirts since you know, we were runaways!

Rob and I bought an underwater camera for Kauai and I was able to test it out in the pool - that thing is so much fun! I love love love this pic of Holly:

And Carol is looking all glam:

We were cracking up, Sarah and I had to take like 15 shots before this one turned out - girlfriend tended to flail like a drowning victim as soon as we would go under water.

Thus, the video making fun of her flailing:

Love this video of us all swimming...

What a fun weekend!!!

Hmmmm....maybe our landscaper reads our blog?

Clearly our peevishness at no-progress last week was picked up by our landscaper dude, because things started happening again today. Our guy picked us up and took us to a nursery to talk about plant options. I'll spare you all the deets until the yard is done, but here's some highlights:

Our landscaper recommended a Rusty Leaf Fig for Walter's corner - it can grow up to 80 to 90 feet eventually (if we can eat healthy and stick around for another hundred years, that is), but should be big and full enough to eventually cover up the stoplight in all it's "no turn on red" glory. It's got more rubber leaves than pretty leafy ones, but it should be cool. For you locals, they're the same kind of tree as those HUGE glorious trees in Balboa Park right behind the History Museum - so cool! (oh wait, here's 2 pics of them):


All down the busy road in the back we chose a strawberry tree - it's in the ficus family and it has a red bark like a manzanita. pretty cool: For privacy on the west side of the house, we chose this Niddia ficus tree - very full and pretty green leaves:
Here's the ground cover we chose for around the concrete steps, it's called Baby's Tears. Who's the weirdo who names this stuff? Ain't no babies allowed to cry in our backyard! It's only happiness allowed all up in here.
On the right of those steps against the wall of the house we chose Canna Lillies: the orangey color should look cool next to the red stucco.
Oh, and we've decided I will get a rose garden! As you look at the front of the house, it'll be to the right. woot! I love roses and I've always wanted them...and now to learn how to not kill a rose bush. Check.

And a dude finally came to start the grouting, looks good so far.G's still not impressed.

Holy crap, we have....a porta potty?

And no freakin' landscaper's butts to go on said porta potty, might I mention.

In what might be a "let's sit back and watch how the Warrenskis handle THIS aggravation" moment, a crew came to deliver a porta potty to our front yard this week.

And that was it.

The entire progress of the landscaping.

A damn porta potty.

And have I mentioned, no actual butts to use said potty?

Hmph.

Beach days!

The weather has been absolutely glorious - it feels like the official start to summer. We went to the beach last weekend for our first beach day in a while, it was lovely.
Zoe got passed around, clearly she will never lack any lovin... (and please note her freakin' adorable bumble bee swimsuit, could you just die?)Bennett had his share of fun too, digging in the sand and hanging with his uncles.

snowcones! My favorite flavor must have been sponsored by Charlie Sheen: "Tigers Blood". Hmmmm, I think I prefer Genes of Adonis.

We have slate! (and about 18 pounds of dust)

I'm simply amazed our landscaping dudes don't wear masks - they've been cutting our slate solid over the last week and it is DUSTY! I mean freaking dusty, like plague of locusts, end of times, looks like someone had a all day flour-fight, dusty. Between the loud stone saw, the endless supply of dust and the cranked "Santana" playing all day long, our poor neighbors must hate us. But, it will all be worth it when our backyard is glorious.

The guys have been working so hard - it took them all week to cut, place and stick down (yah, I don't know the technical terms, suck it) the slate. First they started by placing 12x12's around the border of our courtyard...and then they started sawing the huge chunks into random pieces. It's been fun watching it all come together like a big puzzle.
It's all monochromatically dust colored right now, but they rinsed a tiny section off (which was clean for all of 2 minutes, I swear) and we got a glimpse of how beautiful it's going to be:
And, voila! It's all stuck down and waiting for grouting. They need to re-do a few pieces that cracked too, we were laughing about this particular gem. It's hard to see but there is a hairline crack throughout the whole thing and a big pacman shaped broken piece at the left edge. Someone had the genius idea to "fill it in" with a tiny piece and needless to say, it looks like poo. That one's going. heh heh, nice try.