Stranger Things The Drive Into Experience

Happy New Year!

Sooooo, I failed at keeping up with blogging last year - let's just call it a slow start ;)  I've managed to stay very busy during the pandemic & stay at home orders (I'm in California, so it's been fairly strict here, which, whatever - I'm ok with it).  All of this time at home has been making me nest, so I've gotten lots of things done here around the house: got new patio furtniture, a new BBQ grill, built a sofa table, built an extension for my workbench - I even bought some plants!  I have a black thumb, so that's actually a big deal. lol  I do have plans for more projects, so I’ll be sharing more & hopefully soon!

In the meantime, I want to share about the Stranger Things The Drive Into Experience that I took my niece to back in November!  This special event started at the end of October & is happening thru March 21st in Downtown Los Angeles.  It basically puts you into the Stranger Things world, via your car, and you "drive into" scenes that are happening all around you.  I've attached the link to the event page above, but our tickets were just regular (non-VIP) and it was $97.50 for the 2 of us (cost was per person, not per car & depended on which day of the week you went) and it was about 1 hour long.  It is a little pricey, but with the limited amount of things to do in California and with our love for this TV series, we thought it would be worth it.  Spoiler - we really had a great time!

Speaking of spoilers, I will be sharing some photos I took during the event, so if you plan on going or just don't want to see, this is your warning.

Knott's Berry Farm's Taste of Fall-O-Ween

 Happy October! It's officially my favorite month of the year!

I know I'm supposed to be making an effort on posting more on here and I'm slowly, but surely working on it - I swear!  (Really! I have a couple of drafts that I'm working on).  Ultimately, I have no excuse - it's mostly just taking me time to get back into the routine of blogging again since it's been such a long time.

I'll get into those projects another time, but for now I wanted to share about Knott's Berry Farm's Taste of Fall-O-Ween. This experience is an "...outdoor dining & retail experience celebrating the Halloween season and the flavors of Fall..." starting September 25 through November 1 on Fridays through Sundays (they have since added Columbus Day October 12 and select Wednesdays & Thursdays) . Knott's has opened their entire park (sans rides) and completely decorated for Halloween.  Included in the adult ticket ($35 plus tax) includes a tasting card for 5 tastings, while the children's ticket ($20 plus tax) is for a tasting card for 3 tastings plus the Camp Snoopy trick-or-treat trail.  Adults may also participate in the trick-or-treat trail for an extra fee of $8. Guests of ALL ages are allowed to wear costumes (please see their website for their costume guidelines). Parking is currently free, which was awesome.  Unfortunately, if you were thinking of going to the event & don't already have tickets, all dates are already SOLD OUT.

Spring Fun 2015

I know Summer is almost over, but I just realized I never shared my Spring Fun post.  Oopsie!  So, let's get started...

Spring started out with a visit to see family for my nephew's birthday.  It also happened to be Easter weekend, so we dyed eggs also.

Winter Fun 2014/2015

Now that Spring has officially sprung, let's take a look back at my Winter fun!  (Apparently a lot of it had to do with Disney).

We celebrated a friend's birthday by going to Disneyland after work.  Christmas-time is always a great time to go there - so pretty!  We saw actor Alfred Enoch who is currently on ABC's "How to Get Away With Murder" and is also known for playing Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter movies (didn't snap a picture, but we walked right by him).

Fall Fun 2014

Hello!  I hope everyone's year is off to a good start!  Can you believe it's February already?  Did you catch the Superbowl?  Even though I wasn't rooting for either team, it was a pretty exciting game!

Anyhoo, I know we're already in the middle of winter, but I never shared pictures from all the fun happenings from the Fall (my favorite season).  So, here we go...

The Totally 80's Bar & Grille opened up right by my friend's house.  Since we *heart* 80s music, we went to opening night and it was a blast!  This place has become a popular spot.  They often host cover bands, but have even hosted some of the real deal like Missing Persons, ABC, Tiffany and Berlin is going to be playing there in April.  If you live in the Fullerton, CA area, go check them out! It's an awesome place (and yes, that's a Delorian, like the one in "Back to the Future".  It's the owner's car, so you'll see it parked out in front all the time).

Summer Fun 2014

Fall is quickly approaching, although, here in Southern California, it still feels like we're in the middle of summer!  It's my favorite time of year and my calendar is already loaded up with things to do!  So, before Fall officially starts, I thought I'd share my summer fun with you.

Disneyland's Rock Your Disney Side 24 Hour Event
(click above for the blog post I previously shared)...We didn't spend the entire 24 hours at the parks, but went down there after work.  There were so many people there - when we left at 2am, there were still a lot of people showing up!  But, they made it like a party atmosphere, so it didn't seem so bad and we had a blast!

Movies In The Park: "Monsters Vs. Aliens"

What I like about the city I live in is that it's a smaller city with a small-town feel, but we are nearby bigger cities and even some major cities (San Diego is about 1 1/2 hours away.  Los Angeles is 1 - 1 1/2 hours away - it all depends on traffic, of course).  So when I want to do some good shopping or go to major concerts or sporting events, it's definitely manageable.

Part of that small-town feel that I love is the sense of community - there are constantly local events going on and now that it's summer time, there's lots to do.   Weekly market nights, monthly festivals, a free summer concert series (with decent singers/bands! sometimes even famous!).  And every Monday night, they have movies in the park.  For FREE!  My sister's only day off from running her restaurant is on Mondays, so it's perfect that we can all have a night to enjoy together.  

We took the kids this week and the movie was "Monsters Vs Aliens".  I took my nephew to see it when it came out years ago, but he hadn't seen it since then and this was the first time that the rest of the family saw it.  It's a cute movie with lots of laughs for the adults too.  What's nice is that before the movie, they allow you to picnic, have bounce houses for the kids, contests for the kids, snacks to buy, and even roasting marshmallows & making smores.  The kids had a ton of fun and we look forward to going to many more of these.

Hope you are all enjoying your summer so far!

Originally posted by Adventures in DIY  

Summer Fun - Disneyland

My nephew's school let out for summer vacation last week, so I wanted to start his summer with some major fun.  Our Disney annual passes will be blocked after June for most of the summer, so I wanted to take him before that.  We got there soon after the park opened, which was perfect because there were less crowds and the weather wasn't so bad (it was actually chilly until about 11:30 or 12).  We took advantage of the short wait times and Fastpasses and rode most of the bigger rides.

We stopped at California Adventure first and got our Fastpasses for Radiator Springs Racers.  Every single time we go, the Fastpasses sell out by 10 or 10:30am and if you don't get one, it's a guaranteed 90-180 minute wait!  On the way out, we got our picture with the Mickey & Walt statue.

More Summer Fun: Ziplines!

I know a lot of you have kids that have already started back to school or will start this week, but for me, summer is still in gear.  The weather has been almost too unbearable (100+ for the last week or two) to be hanging out outside.  This past weekend was pretty bad because we had thunderstorms and a bit of rain, so it also brought the humidity.  Humidity = m.i.s.e.r.y!  But, I did do something pretty fun and was able to get out of this gross weather.

Hang loose!

I went ziplining with some friends in Big Bear and it was super fun!  I had never been ziplining before and will admit that I was a bit nervous.   I've always wanted to try it, but thought I would chicken out once I would have to step off the platform.  I was surprised that it didn't take much for me to just step off and let myself fly and after the first few ziplines, I got the hang of it.  From what we were told, this was "real" ziplining, in which we would be controlling our movements and braking with our own hands.  I am going to share a few more pictures and I know I might look like I'm not having fun, but I was just trying to concentrate on keeping myself straight so I wouldn't spin and also was paying attention for the hand signals of when to brake, etc from our guides (a couple of times I had a pretty fast landing!).   But, it was a lot of fun and I would do it again.

This picture shows me braking.  You put one of your hands on the cable behind you and grab on.  This causes the friction that slows you down.

Here's a birdseye view from one of the platforms

 On the way up the mountain, we got lots of rain - HUGE rain drops and were worried about the zipline tour being cancelled.  But when we got to the office, they said that the ziplines are at a higher elevation and had been sunny at the site all day.  But the rain and the higher elevation meant we were having much cooler weather than we had been used to down the hill, which was a nice relief.  And sure enough, at the ziplines, the weather was sunny with few scattered clouds and was really nice.  Perfect ziplining weather!  If you live in the area (I live in Southern California and the zipline tour is in Big Bear Lake) and are interested in this particular zipline tour, here is their website: Action Zipline Tours.  It's open year round.  At their office, they even had pictures of people ziplining after it had snowed.  I think it would be fun to go during the winter and do it with the snow in the background - the tour guides said that people even throw snowballs at the person who is zipping down the line!  How fun! 

I hope everyone has had a great summer or is still enjoying their summer and if not - go have some fun!

Thanks for stopping by!
Posted by http://adventuresindiy1759.blogspot.com/

Summer Vacation

Well, hello there - long time, no talk!  It's been...holy moly!  It's been over 2 weeks since I last posted.  I've been very, very busy this month and boy, am I exhausted!  One of my best friends who lives in Utah came out with her family to spend their vacation with me here in Southern California.   We went here...

(Disneyland & California Adventure)

And here...

(Sea World - San Diego)

We did tons of walking and my legs, ankle, and feet were hurting so bad, I had to skip out on the beach day (which totally bummed me out!  I was looking forward to going).  But, I had such a great time visiting with them.  It had been many years since I had seen her and her husband and their two older kids and had never met their youngest!  It was a jam-packed week, but we had a blast.  And to top that off, her extremely handy hubby helped me with some house stuff!  Score!  (I'll be posting more on that later).

After my friends left, I took my nephew here...

(Universal Studios - Hollywood)

The new Transformers ride is pretty fun!  We even went on it twice.  I heard that they will be making a Harry Potter section like they have in Florida, which I'm looking forward to.  And oh. my. goodness.  I just noticed in the picture above that my nephew is almost as tall as me now.  Geez - I hate when the kiddos start passing me up in height.  :)

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and stay tuned for more posts soon to come!

Posted by Adventures in DIY

Updates & Goings-on

Hello - I'm back, up & running!  In my last post, I mentioned that I wasn't able to write the new post I wanted to because my trusty 'ole Macbook's memory was almost full.  Well, tonight, I backed it up on the external hard drive, burned pictures onto CDs and deleted a lot of those pictures off of my computer.  So, I'm back in business (for now).  I will probably have to get a new Macbook somewhere in the near future - mine can only hold 2GB (and that was with me putting the max amount of extra memory my computer will hold), while the newer ones hold double the amount or more.  My Macbook has served me well (knock on wood) and yes, they are expensive, so I'm getting the most out of this baby that I can.

The last several weeks have been very busy.  I worked on my Interior Doors project and completed that a week ago.  And once I was done with that, I had to get the house in order for a BBQ I had this past Saturday.  Right now, my living room, dining room, and kitchen look good, but I kind of threw some stuff into my craft room & garage, so I'll have some re-organizing to do.  Anyhoo, since I've been so busy, I took the time today to just relax, take naps, watch TV, and caught up on blog reading.  I've been go, go, going, that it's been awhile that I've had a chance to just chill out.   Here's a quick picture from my BBQ.

Hilarious, right?  There was a mishap with the BBQ.  It sort of, well, caught on fire, but it wasn't serious and we were able to get the fire out pretty quickly.  But, the first batch of burgers didn't survive.  RIP.

I also wanted to share a couple of pictures from So Long Davey!'s performance at the Del Mar Fair in San Diego last weekend.  My brother is the lead singer and they are pretty awesome.  And my brother has tons of crazy energy - you should see how high he can jump!  I'm always amazed when I see him jumping around on stage and that is one of my favorite parts of their shows!  Their performance was part of a contest to win $5000.  Unfortunately, they didn't win first prize, but they did win a brand-new Taylor guitar, which is pretty darn cool!

 

A few weeks ago, I also was able to go to the Cast Member (employee) preview of the new Cars Land at Disney's California Adventure before it opened to the public.  I posted about it here.  I updated that post with two pictures from that day (they didn't allow any photography or videos, but had their Photopass photographers available to take pictures that would be available once Cars Land was opened to the public), so you can click on over to that post to see them.  I'll also be writing a review of it as well since I can give more details now.

I have a post coming up for you shortly and have some other projects I'll be starting up soon.  I've had the motivation to get these bigger projects done, so I need to do them while I'm motivated or they will never to get done.  That's how I roll.  :)

Thanks for stopping by!
Posted by http://adventuresindiy1759.blogspot.com/