A lot to be thankful for

I love home tours,  sometimes it’s just going to open houses in the neighborhood and sometimes it’s a chance to see wonderful historic homes.  A friend gave me two tickets for the Pacific Palisades annual home tour. So I grabbed another friend and off we went.

P1120578I took this picture out on the street. Of course we weren’t allowed to take pictures of peoples private homes. What surprised me is that a few of the homes were at the top of a hill, with no view of the ocean.  Off in the distance is the Palo Verdes Peninsula, behind the tree on the right Catalina Island sparkled. P1120579Here you can see the tip of Catalina in the distance. It takes bright clear days for the island to be visible. Even though this isn’t my daily view – I am so grateful to leave so close to this.P1120581An amazing thing about Los Angeles, or in this case, Santa Monica, look at that large swath of white sandy beach. Many of our beaches look like this, not some skimpy 2″ of sand with massive high rises. Sure we are getting more tall buildings near the beaches, but our beaches are wide and spacious.  I don’t swim in the ocean here, way to cold for me, but I love a day with a walk along one of these beaches.

Thanksgiving is here. A uniquely American holiday – yes, we have all kinds of traditional food, but it’s wonderful as a nation, that we take a day to simply be thankful

 

IMG_3919I had seen an image in a magazine of using winter gourds as flower vases.  I hope to remember this next year so I can buy them before Halloween, very few remain in the stores by Thanksgiving. I found some! Bought some supermarket flowers, and even used some uncooked cranberries.IMG_3920These gorgeous gerbera daisies are from the local supermarket, what a find.IMG_3921In preparation for all the food, Aytan came over and helped me layer the pot with sweet potatoes, apples and brown sugar.  I didn’t light the stove until the pot was full, he did want to give a stir with his little stick.IMG_3922Then we found a You Tube video on how to make a turkey mask. I helped some but he did most of the work.IMG_3923As I mentioned, a lot to be thankful for.

Leah