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Category Archives: cupckaes

California Riviera Gardens

21 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by ninagarden in California Riviera, cupckaes, fountains, garden, gardening, Laguna Beach, outdoor rooms, pumpkins

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California, fountains, Laguna, Rogers Gardens

A few weekends ago, I had the chance to get together with my high school friends for a great girls’ weekend and reunion in Laguna Beach, California.  One of my all time favorite garden stores is nearby—Rogers Gardens, and we had planned to end our trip with a visit to Rogers and a Sprinkles cupcake. What could be better!

Along the way, we discovered a second wonderful garden shop—a quirky place full of unexpected and wonderful gardening ideas. Laguna Nursery on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) was not hard to miss with its red hearts and funky metal garden sculptures standing out as we drove by. A quick u-turn and we parked in the back and entered the garden shop that seemed right out of a fantasy novel.

In the front garden, a giant white glass orb floats on the water’s mirror surface and seemed to glow in the bright morning sunlight.

Fountains at every turn, some with smoke (or steam) coming out of them.

This downspout fountain really intrigued me. You could hang this in a tree and run a drip line up the tree and onto the top of the downspout, and then the water flows into a pool or basin below. I want to try this.

This garden room was a big hit. With soft, fresh pine needles on the floor, it smelled like a forest. The moose also gave a forest look to the place. That was eclectic!

Little finches in fancy cages:

This passion flower was something we all took pictures of:

Well, that was a fun tour—I bought some seeds too. I recommend stopping in and exploring.

Then we went by Corona Del Mar and drove through the beautiful neighborhoods. What is it with that place?  Every garden is perfect—no mildew on the roses, no wilt, not one piece of grass out of place. It’s all cubical boxwoods, iceberg roses and fox gloves. There are maybe four or five perfect blocks of gardens. Maybe they all get advice at Rogers Gardens up the hill! We stopped at the house where I first met my husband.  It was totally remodeled and almost unrecognizable. The night I met him, we walked through that neighborhood after dinner and he picked rose petals off the rose bushes lining the streets and “popped” them, which means you smack them in a certain way that they kind of pop like a balloon and fly apart.

That’s a funny memory of this neighborhood. I guess it was a perfect place to meet.

: – )

Anyway, we stopped in Rogers for a quick tour of the Halloween shop there, which is incredible and the home goods, not to mention the plants. I just look away. “Look away,” I tell myself. You can’t drive home with all these!

It’s really hard for me to create an order and cohesive look in my yard when I am attracted to so many different plants.  I’m like a crow that can’t resist shiny objects…. Maybe that’s why I can’t live in Corona Del Mar! My gardening style is not that organized.

We ended our garden touring at Sprinkles, a sweet ending to a fabulous weekend.

Here’s to the getaway gals—thanks for decades of friendship (did I just say decades?):

Sorry, Michelle, you’re in the photo above!

And here’s a little Flashback Heart Attack for you!

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Garden Party

28 Monday May 2012

Posted by ninagarden in bohemian, champagne cocktail, chickens, cupckaes, garden, garden party, gardening, honey, insects, recipe

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chickens, cupcakes, garden party

We recently remodeled our backyard (or almost) and it looked so nice I decided it would be fun to have a garden party.  Often my ideas are bigger and more complicated than I can execute, especially when we weren’t done with the sprinklers or clean up. I scheduled the party early May, and had to reschedule it, making it very confusing for all my friends. The actual day of the party the weather was beautiful–perfect, sunny yet cool weather that San Diego often lacks in May (typically, we have what’s called “May gray,” when the marine layer sits over the beach for most of the month) so we were lucky. And it was wonderful fun!

The theme was “bohemian garden”, something I made up and wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I got to use a lot of my odds and ends from inside the house and cook a lot of eggplant dishes. I made lemon squares and honey cupcakes with honey buttercream frosting from the recipe on the Romancing the Bee blog–really yummy!

Oh yes, we had a drink called Le Romantique, which is a champagne cocktail served at one of our local restaurants. My husband bartended (thank you for being the lone man! Apparently, we were really loud and scared the dog into hiding inside or maybe he didn’t think eggplant caviar was worth begging for).  Anyway, we made our own version of Le Romantique with rose water, raspberry vodka, pomegranate juice, simple syrup, champagne and real edible rose petals my sister brought me from England. The rose petals looked so good in the drink that had a friendly visitor drop in for a drink (see slideshow below).

Everyone visited the chickens and the new chicken coop and took photos in my hanging photo frame. You can see it hanging here in the tree next to the paper decorations I made.

Here are more pictures. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did! Thank you all for coming!

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