Recommendations

Wood Canyon Trail Hike on Dec. 31, 2020

Published: Sun, Jan 03, 2021
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Hiking, Recommendations, USA
Tags: Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Area, American Robin, coyote, deer, hiking, Wood Canyon Train, Wood Creek Trail

Hello again! I know, it’s been a very long time since I wrote in my blog. In the spring, during the lock downs, I thought I might return to posting, but I chose to create a wonderful garden instead. It took up most of my time and was a very rewarding experience. We just ate the last (frozen) tomato soup and also finished the pickles I made from the abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers.
Anyway, in addition to the gardening I also walked and hiked a lot during 2020; sometimes by myself, sometimes with a friend or my husband, and I also hiked a lot with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy as a volunteer (and later as a docent) while we could still do it. At this moment Orange County is in a partial lock down, and we can only use public trails, not the IRC ones.

On the last day of 2020, my friend and I visited one of the Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park Trails (map).

We took a 5.5 mile hike on Wood Canyon Trail and Wood Creek Trail. We started the hike at Canyon Vistas Road. I was excited about this walk, because my friend saw a bobcat and a coyote on her walk here a few days back, and I hoped to see them as well.

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A Low-Carb Salad Recommendation

Published: Thu, May 02, 2019
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Food photography, Photography, Recommendations
Tags: food photography, Low-carb, low-carb diet

Since April is over, I am not going to post every day – it was a great challenge for me though. But I felt that I had to write this post soon after my yesterday’s one to show how I am using the vegetables I mentioned in the Lensbaby Blog Circle post.

While visiting grandparents in Colorado a month ago, my father-in-law introduced us to a great salad mix he constantly makes. We learned the recipe, and have been creating this salad base since then. I call it a salad base, because we love adding additional items to it after it’s plated. But the base itself only contains vegetables that are “dry”, therefore the mix keeps for days in the fridge in a Ziploc bag.

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A Visit to Whitney Plantation, Wallace, LA – Lensbaby Blog Circle

Published: Thu, Jan 31, 2019
Written by GizellaN
12 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Blog Circle, Photography, Photowalk, Recommendations, USA
Tags: Burnside 35, Lensbaby, Louisiana, museum, slavery, Whitney Plantation

In January of 2019 my family took a 4 day trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. You can read about the whole trip in my previous blog post. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting a plantation, which is the only one focused on the slaves of Louisiana. I had planned to write about this visit in my Lensbaby Blog Circle post prior to going there, and I decided on using my Burnside 35 lens. This is the Lensbaby lens that I grab for times when I am not by myself, but rather with my family. Since we were part of a large group, and there were areas where I could not have been able to stop and focus with my manual lens, I sometimes grabbed my phone to take additional pictures. I will be showing you images taken both with my Burnside lens and my phone (always noted) in this blog post.

The first owner of the plantation was Ambroise Heidel (at around 1752), whose family immigrated from Germany. They, among many other German immigrants, settled in the first German Coast (St. Charles Parish). The German Coast became a main food supplier to New Orleans. The Hayden Plantation turned into one of the most important sugar plantations in the State, and the owners one of the wealthiest people of the area. None of this could have happened without the extremely hard work of the enslaved African people they “owned” on their plantation.

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Family Trip to New Orleans, Louisiana

Published: Thu, Jan 24, 2019
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Architecture, Blog, Family Trips, Recommendations, USA
Tags: family trip, French Quarter, Hop On Hop Off, Louisiana, Mardi Gras World, New Orleans, New Orleans School of Cooking, St. Louis Cemetery #1, Ultimate Swamp Tour, Whitney Plantation

Need a destination for a quick family getaway? Try New Orleans, Louisiana.

In January of 2019 my daughter got 2 extra days off of school around MLK Jr. Day, and we decided to take a family trip during the 5-day long weekend. Although we considered going to New York, NY first, luckily we decided to go to New Orleans, LA instead. (The weather in NY was far from pleasant during the weekend.)

In this post I just wanted to share what places we visited (with a 14 year old), in case someone else is looking for great stuff to do there. In future posts I will write about a few of these places in detail.

First of all, after a whole day of searching for places to go to and things to do I decided, that the New Orleans City Pass was not going to work for us. Since this was a family trip and we wanted to enjoy our time in the Crescent City, we did not want to rush from one attraction to the next one all day long. I planned two major things to do every day, and we filled the rest of the time with small walks, etc. I did find many great deals on www.livingsocial.com, and I was able to get discounted tickets for 3 out of 6 places there. If you are interested in the various city passes, this article compares them very well.

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The Power of Body Language – Book Recommendation

Published: Mon, Oct 15, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Recommendations
Tags: Body Language. Audio book, Book recommendation

I’ve just finished listening to Joe Navarro’s book/lecture: The Power of Body Language. It was a very interesting read, and it has information in it that anyone could utilize in their personal or professional life.

Joe Navarro discusses the meaning of body positions and movements from bottom to top. He starts with the legs and slowly moves up to what most people are familiar with: the face. There were many interesting AHA moments for me in the book. Just to mention one, I didn’t know how important the feet were in the non-verbal communication. Are you having a conversation with someone who has one or both feet turned away from you? It is a clear sign that the person does not want to have the conversation with you.

I’d known about some body language that was culturally rooted, but I learned an important one from the book: people in and from India shake their head sideways as an affirmative, opposite of many cultures where this movement means no. Now I understand why so many of my Indian acquaintances were shaking their heads when I was talking to them.

You can find this audio book at Audible.com.