Is there anything better than the various stages of a roast especially when you can cook it all day?

 And I always think, "I should have worn something red" when I go to a party.  In my quest to piece together outfits before the night of the party, I went for this look consciously picking this red skirt.  The dots on this Anne Klein blouse almost look like Christmas ornaments as do the glass beads of the bracelet.  My first New Year' resolution: I need to stand up straighter.

I am queen of the smokey eye.  I have to wear a smokey eye, or I feel like my eyes just disappear into my face, but lately I've been admiring the eye done with a light shadow, a lot of black eyeliner on the top lashes and lots of mascara.  I've been experimenting and while I don't have it down yet, I'm getting better. The eyeshadow is Bare Escentuals Ginger Peach Smoothie which is a honey coral color.  I'm finding Buxom Smokey Eye Stick hard to work with unfortunately, and the texture of the pencil makes it drag really roughly.  I think the Buxom Lash mascara is amazing though.  Two coats and no clumps.

I have always said that these BCBG booties are my Mary Poppins shoes because they remind me of the shoes Julie Andrews wears while singing SuperCalifragilisticexpialidocious, but in trying to find a picture of her wearing the shoes, I found out that my recollection is really wrong.  First off, she's wearing white shoes.  They are pointy, but I think hers have laces.  The picture quality of everything I found was really horrible.  It's been that kind of day for me.  Today also reminded me that I don't like jeans with lycra which is why there is no full body shot of me wearing these Nine West jeans.  I will still refer to these as my Mary Poppins shoes out of habit (and spite).

We are extremely lucky to have basically no damage to our house and our power back on after a little under 48 hours.  People within a few miles of us have severe damage to their homes and/or cars and are still without electricity and in some cases water.  This was an extremely rare weather condition for Southern California, and we really weren't prepared for something like this.  Three days later, most of the streets still look like this.  People have taken it upon themselves to hire people to clear trees out of the streets since the city just can't be everywhere, and the people feel a sense of responsibility since most of the trees were on their property and not the city's anyway.

Our house was left with a tree with a scar to remind us of the storm.


This is a school two blocks from our house.  If you saw any storm coverage, you probably saw a flattened Shell gas station.  That gas station is on this street about four blocks down.



The majority of streets looked like this the first morning.


These red light cameras are out of commission.


Target lost their sign.


Most of the billboards on Colorado Blvd. looked like flags.


And most of the street signs looked like this.




This is our old backyard.  There used to be a fence there.


And this is our old front yard.


Although the tree missed his truck, he can't use it.


We saw too much of this.


And this.

Our neighborhood was hit pretty hard by the wind storm that hit Southern California. Our power has been out more than 24 hours and is not expected to be back for at least another 24 hours. I'll have some interesting pictures to post when we are back on-line. I have such respect for those of you who go through severe weather regularly. Our ability to recover here doesn't get tested very often. The kids are enjoying the "wind" days with no school though.