Hello, Summer Garden! - A Giveaway

California is fickle. 

It can be 100 degrees one day and back down to 65 the next. It's been a relatively mild Spring and we are now barreling towards summer and that means Outdoor Entertaining Season. Can I get an "Amen?"

Eric and I have been planning a Big Birthday Bash. It should have taken place this weekend. However, because California is acting out like a spoiled child right now and the weather is not cooperating with our plans, we've had to bump our celebration out another month. 

I'm okay with that. It just gives us more time to attend to last minute garden details.

Remember last month when we started loving and feeding and refreshing our lawn and garden? Scotts wants to know how I express myself in my garden. Hello....Flowers!

I'm a Flower Lover. Anything that will give me lush green leaves and gorgeous blooms has my heart. Also, the whole planting, pruning, watering stuff is part of our family's DNA. It's just an activity that we love to do together. Well, mostly Eric and Jonathan do the heavy lifting and I just shout out commands, but that's not important right now.

As you can see, the time and care we took last month and Scotts Miracle-Gro® has totally paid off. Be prepared to be amazed by my flowers...

My favorite Disneyland Roses are really putting on a show for the entire neighborhood. Seriously. Neighbors stop as they're walking by to ooh and aah and make comments and smell my roses. (Win!)

 

My hydrangeas, too. I always get a little scared that this might be the year they decide not to bloom because they want to stay dormant. Using the Scotts Miracle-Gro® has changed all that. I know I'm practically guaranteed some beautiful blooms. You can pick all these products up at Walmart, of course.

I really want you to get in on the fun of sprucing up your garden, so with a generous donation from my sponsor, Scotts, I'm excited to share today's giveaway. 

Scotts has given me one of these for myself (Yay!) and I'm happy to announce that I'll be sharing the love with two lucky MBFCF readers.

I'm giving away, not one, but two Veggie & Herb Garden Starter Packages from Scotts Miracle-Gro® for you to do some fun summer gardening yourself. 

Included in this Veggie & Herb Garden Starter Package

• 1 Scotts Yard Care Wet/Dry Grip Gardening Gloves
• 1 Scotts Miracle-Gro® Stainless Steel Floral Cutter
• 10 Miracle-Gro® Growables® Combination mulch, seed & fertilizer pods for assorted herbs and vegetables. (Come to me sweet basil!)

1) To enter this drawing for the Veggie & Herb Garden Starter Package from Scotts Miracle-Gro® 

Please leave a comment on this post and answer one or both of the following questions:

• Tell me your favorite garden flower. 
• What's growing in your garden?

Please leave your comment on this post and I'll choose two winners on Friday, May 29th, 2015 at 11am PST. 

Remember to always read and follow label directions for the referenced products.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Scotts . The opinions and text are all mine.

 

LEGO® Friends Heartlake City

I get so many wonderful invitations to do so many fun things, that I really have to pick and choose where I can best apportion my time.

So when I received an invitation from my friends at LEGOLAND^® California to visit their newest addition, LEGO^® Friends Heartlake City, I was super excited, because...LEGO!

But the opening was happening on May 21st, which just happened to be my 60th birthday (but that's not important right now).  I couldn't go because my family had made other (fabulous) plans for me. 

Enter my friend, Marie Day, who lives in Carlsbad and with whom I've had the "We love LEGO^®" conversation many times.

"Do you think you and the kids could cover this event for me?" I'm happy to report that the Day Family stepped up. Here's their story...

The Days at Heartlake City

The opening of LEGOLAND^® California's newest addition, LEGO^® Friends Heartlake City has been highly anticipated in my home. You see we first began visiting the theme park when my daughter was only 2 years old. Our first visits were on Thursdays with the Model Mom Club and that is when our love for all things LEGO^® began.  

I remember in our early days visiting the park, we were amazed to find a rainbow of colored bricks for sale in the LEGO^® Club House Shop. So when our niece's birthday rolled around, we scooped up a bag of pink and purple bricks and shipped them off to Texas for the birthday girl. Fast forward to 2015 and our daughter, who is almost 10 still can’t get enough of all things LEGO^®. 

Heartlake City is based on the popular LEGO^® toy line: LEGO^® Friends, which focuses on the adventures and lives of five super awesome (of course!) girls: Andrea, Emma, Mia, Olivia and Stephanie. Although Heartlake City is aimed toward young female visitors, there are also plenty of things for boys to enjoy.

Our adventure in Heartlake City began with a meet and great with Master Builder Robbie who told us that the pink and purple bricks actually debuted about 10 years ago.  10 years! It’s now been 2-3 years since Lego Friends came out with the more exclusive colors we see today.

Robbie told us that there had been a few past LEGO^® collections that also used similar colors but were not nearly as extensive as the LEGO^® Friends line is with the tv show, set line, and of course, now Heartlake City.

 Armed with these fun facts we headed straight for some building fun inside Heartlake Stables.  

My son really loved the "shaking table." How it works is that you build your LEGO^® horse, set it down, push a button and it appears that the Lego horse you built is now walking around. Genius.

Next we got to explore Mia’s Riding Camp.  

We rode the beautiful 60-horse carousel 4 times, much to the delight of my children. 

 Yes. 4 times.

At the Friends Forever Stage, we sang and danced and got our photo-op with the LEGO^® Friends.

And finally, we satisfied our sweet tooth at the new City Park Creperie with our favorite Nutella treat!

It was so delicious and we were so happy that we can now have freshly made crepes in the park. I predict this is going to be a regular stop for us on our visits to LEGOLAND^®.

The day of our visit was a little cool and cloudy but that didn’t stop a few brave guests from splashing about in the Heartlake Fountain. We know that’s going to be a big hit this summer and it’s a great upgrade from the smaller splash pad that previously occupied that spot in the park.

We ended our day by looking for an employee to trade a mini figure with.

In case you don’t already know this insider tip: You can ask anyone who works in the park who has a mini figure on their name badge to trade with you. Plus some of the restaurants have a box of mini figures at the cash register that you can trade. One of the many reasons we love LEGOLAND^®.

And, of course, we shopped.

Thanks for the invitation, LEGOLAND^® California. The opinions all belong to my friend, Marie.

It's very obvious that everything was awesome.

There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

Humor me for a few minutes as I time travel a bit.

I'm old enough now to remember the days when Walt Disney was the visionary of our time. I remember the days when the Tomorrowland located in Disneyland Park really conceived a distant world of the future. 

Back then, the iconic Carousel of Progress was really a vision into a future that was possible, but still "out there." 

The latest offering from Disney Pictures, Tomorrowland, starts us out at the New York World's Fair in 1964. I practically came out of my seat when they began with the Sherman Brother's song, "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" that they used to play in the Carousel of Progress.  

Perfect, Disney. You've totally got my attention. 

I got to see the film in the beautiful Grauman's (now TCL) Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. In IMAX. (Side note: Go see this film in IMAX. It's sooo worth it, but that's not important right now.)

You know the one I mean. It has every Hollywood legend's footprints and autographs captured forever in cement.

I immediately found who I was looking for.

And the inside of the Chinese Theatre was so over-the-top-crazy-beautiful. Before the picture started I was already in Hollywood Movie Heaven.

The film, Tomorrowland was introduced to us by none other than the director, Brad Bird himself. He tried to explain what type of movie we were going to see.

Science fiction? Yes.

Action Adventure? Yes.

Mystery? Yes.

Suspense? Yes.

Comedy? Yes.

Family? Most definitely yes.

Tomorrowland was created by Walt Disney as a section of Disneyland in 1955 - also the year I was born. (Coincidence? I think not.)

It was a time when Americans imagined an optimistic future. Over the years since, the public’s view of the future grew dark.

Director, Brad Bird: “Any time that there is an empty canvas, there are two ways to look at it: One is emptiness and the other one is wide open to possibility. And that’s how I like to look at the future—wide open to possibility. It is a view that has fallen out of favor in terms of looking at the future.”

This shift in thinking also intrigued writer-producer Damon Lindelof, so when he began to synthesize the story for Tomorrowland, he looked for what Tomorrowland meant and how it could be represented in a story line. “I really wanted to recapture that earlier optimism.” 

The story of Tomorrowland started with a box labeled “1952,” supposedly discovered by accident in the Disney Studios archive. The mystery box contained all sorts of fascinating models and blueprints, photographs and letters related to the inception of Tomorrowland and the 1964 World’s Fair.

Lindelof was excited by the find and recalls, “I began to imagine that the contents of the box were a guide to a secret story that nobody knew. But if so, what would that story be? And the most obvious answer to me was that there really was a place called Tomorrowland that was not a theme park but existed somewhere in the real world.” 

So that's where the concept of the film began. With a mystery box. How delicious is that? 

The film itself is beautiful and the acting top notch. As the audience we are taken on a wild ride from the 1964 New York World's Fair and 'It's a Small World' ride to Cape Canaveral to Texas to Paris and on through time and space.

George Clooney is fun to watch as curmudgeonly Frank Walker. His two young female co-stars, Britt Robertson (Casey Newton) and Raffey Cassidy (Athena) hold their own and kick some serious butt along the way. Tim McGraw (Eddie Newton) is a wonderfully believable dad. And Hugh Laurie (Nix) is the guy you love to hate as the overseer of the world of the future. 

Great cast and amazing special and technical effects make this a wonderful movie for all family members. Rated PG, it's sure to engage everyone's imagination. Also, it ends with great optimism, making it a very satisfying picture.

"Imagine a place where nothing is impossible."

Disney Pictures happily takes us there.

Tomorrowland opens in theaters everywhere on May 22nd, 2015. 

George Clooney - Boy Genius. Talking about Tomorrowland

"Imagine a place where nothing is impossible." 

Of all the things that I thought that I might be writing about, never did I ever imagine that "interviewing George Clooney" would be one of those topics. 

But that happened and here we are. 

The context is that Disney Pictures has made a wonderful, oh-so-Disneyesque film called, "Tomorrowland." 

And George happens to play the lead character, Frank Walker. 

And I was invited as part of the press junket for the film, Tomorrowland held at the beautiful Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills. 

The rest of the cast, Britt Robertson (“Casey Newton”), Tim McGraw (“Ed Newton”), Raffey Cassidy (“Athena”), Brad Bird (Director / Producer / Writer), Damon Lindelof (Producer / Writer), and Jeff Jensen (Story By) were also present and were all very articulate and lovely.

But, as you can imagine, I only had eyes for George. (Can you blame me?)

Clooney describes his character Frank as “a disenchanted grump who was a bit of a dreamer as a young boy, a smart little scientist kid. Young Frank goes to a place that he thinks is the greatest in the universe, and he believes the world is going to be much better off because of it.

He finds out that those things were untrue and becomes probably the most cynical person one could be. He isolates himself on his family farm and plans to spend the rest of his life there but is forced to deal with his past because of situations that happen in the film.” 

QUESTION - George, at the heart of this movie is a really big idea, which I think is powerful. You’ve made a lot of bold films in your career, particularly the more political ones. But I think this one is right up there, as far as being quite bold. Do you see it that way? 

GEORGE CLOONEY - "Putting me in a summer movie is a very bold thought." [Laughter]

"You know, listen. First and foremost, I think it is a really bold thing for Disney to be willing to do a film that isn’t a sequel and isn’t a comic book, to really invest in a summer film of this sort of ilk.

"The fun part of it, to me, was when you read the screenplay, although I have to say, just so we’re clear, when Damon and Brad showed up at my house, they said,

“We’ve got a part that we’ve written for you.” And then I opened up the description of the character and it’s a 55-year-old has-been, and I’m kind of going, 'Hang on a minute, which part am I reading for?'"

JEFF JENSEN - "It said genius, by the way. It said genius." 

GEORGE CLOONEY -  "It said former genius, boy genius, who has gotten bitter in his old age."

"I just loved the idea of, you know, we live in a world right now where you turn on your television set and it’s rough out there. And it’s not fun. And it can really wear on you after a period of time. And we see generations now feeling as if it’s sort of hopeless, in a way, and what I love about it is it sort of speaks to the idea that your future is not preordained and predestined, and that if you’re involved, a single voice can make a difference and I believe in that.

I happen to believe in it, and so I loved the theme or the idea that, you know, there’s still so much that we can all do to make things better. And I liked it. I thought it was great."

BRAD BIRD (On growing up with great optimism for the future.) - "I grew up and remember the moon landing. I remember how that felt. I was actually in the air when they were about to get out on the surface. We were flying in from Denver, and I was like, “I’m going to miss it!” Fortunately, there were some kinds of technical errors and we landed in the airport. We ran to the nearest TV monitor and there were, like, 400 people just packed in, watching when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. And everybody just went, “Whoo!” That feeling has never left me." 

Having seen the film, I can tell you that that same feeling has never left me, either. I'll do a review on it in a few days. But for now, I'm glad to report that Disney has a vision for the future and this vision includes George Clooney. Boy Genius. 

"Imagine a place where nothing is impossible."

Like Marta interviewing George Clooney? I know. Shut up.

Tomorrowland opens in theaters on Friday, May 22nd, 2015.

The Dodgers and The Cubanity

Disclaimer: This post contains an inordinate amount of selfie-type photos of me. Forgive me. I was so over-the-top excited about this night and being where I was and meeting who I met. It's a Cuban thing.

Imagine a stadium full of Cubans, all noisy and celebrating and munching on Dodger dogs. 

Picture them stopping to do the mandatory Cuban kiss thing.  "Oye! Hace tiempo!" Picture them talking loudly and laughing and sharing pastelitos de guayaba right there in the stands. 

Picture them dancing wildly when the Dodgers score.

Well, technically, they were already dancing, because Cubans, but that's not important right now.

Those were the sights and sounds of Cuba Night at Dodger Stadium on Monday, May 11th. 

As part of the Cuban Heritage Committee it was my great honor to help organize this fun event and work hand in hand with the Dodgers.

We were asked to "Please arrive at least an hour before the 7:10 game time."

Cuban Heritage Committee members -Frank Navarro, Rose Marin, Alina Bacallao, Betty Porto, Maylen Calienes, Marta Darby, Marislay Cedeño, Lucy Vega, Roland Vega

 These instructions seem simple enough, but I live over an hour south of LA, two if there's traffic, which means we had to leave a few hours before. Which meant that if I hoped to arrive at 6pm, we had to leave at 4pm.

Miraculously we did not encounter much traffic at all and flew up to Dodger Stadium in record time. and arrived before they were even letting people in. (Win!)

Amy and Jonathan drove with me while Lucy and boyfriend, Marc took the train. My sister, Alina would just meet us all there.

Things that are cool about entering Dodger Stadium via the Club Entrance:

1) That's where all the retired jerseys live. Of course, you recognize #42, the incomparable Jackie Robinson. How cool is that?

2) That's where real-life-Dodger-legends enter the stadium. Like legendary Dodger manager, Tommy Lasorda. I went full Fangirl on poor unsuspecting Tommy. Because...hello! Tommy Lasorda!

3) The First Pitch Thrower Outers also come in the Club Entrance. And because it was Cuban night, the first pitch for the event was thrown out by our own local Cuban legend, Mr. Andy Garcia. You will obviously understand the crazed Look-How-Close-I-Am-to-Andy-Garcia look on my face. 

The game hadn't even started and I was already crazy-happy. But then, the Dodgers were going to introduce some of us on the Cuban Heritage Committee, which meant we got to ACTUALLY BE DOWN ON THE FIELD. Somebody pinch me.

So, I'm all nutty and excited while our "handler" and Dodger PR liaison, Sammy is trying to get us all in formation for a very public introduction. And we're all "Guys! Oye! We're on the field! How accidentally cool is this?" and we're all taking selfies and being all distracted and being Cuban and waving at everyone. 

And poor Sammy was mildly frustrated with us in a "this is like herding cats" way. But, no. It was like very much "herding Cubans" which comes with its own set of frustrations, but that's not important right now, either.

We finally get introduced while standing on the field in complete awe of the moment. Here's the video to prove that it happened.

My kids took a photo of me on the Jumbotron. And I thought, "It just doesn't get any better than this!"

But it did!

The game itself was a little slow in the beginning, but trust me, it sooo got better.

By the 7th inning stretch the Dodgers were losing, but of course we were in full This-is-just-a-big-Cuban-party mode. Our friends at Cuban Heritage Day at Dodger Stadium captured all the awesome Cubanity as we stretched and sang along with Roly and Lucy Vega from Habana Brand Clothing. 

And then it was time for the Dance Cam Salsa. Of course we all got up and danced. Hello! Cubans!

Suddenly Lucy and Marc and Jon were up there dancing on the Jumbotron. 

 

 

Happiest. Night. Ever.

 

I know this has been all about us, but what about the Dodgers? Well, in the bottom of the 9th, Dodger Scott Van Slyke hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-3 victory over the Miami Marlins. 

 

Pandemonium ensued. 

 

 

Crazy-happy-super-noisy-Cuban-WE-WON-in-the-last-play-of-the-game pandemonium. On Cuba Night. 

 

Oh, the Cubanity! 

 

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Our next event will be Cuban Heritage Day at Dodger Stadium on Sunday, July 12th, 2015. Please follow Cuban Heritage Day on Facebook for news and updates.

 

It's not too soon to order your beautiful Dodger Blue Cuban shirts. from Habana Brand Clothing. Tickets will go one sale soon, so watch for those. Go Blue!