Home And Garden

Mark and Cindy Evans make the rounds of Southern California flea markets early, before most shoppers have gotten out of bed. Their favorite stops: The Groves Antique Market Held the first Sunday of the month from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Irvine Valley College, 5500 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Admission and parking are free. Dogs allowed. (949) 786-5277. Pasadena City College Flea Market Also held on the first Sunday of every month, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Due to a scheduling change, the market happens to be open this Sunday.

Ian and I watched the planes come in and shared a wedge salad at Encounter, the Space Age-themed restaurant overlooking Los Angeles International Airport. I asked how it made him feel. "Fine," he shrugged. "It's not eating at airports that I'm afraid of. " We weren't there to catch a flight. We were completing homework from Ian's therapist, who was trying to desensitize him to the airport environment. The next month, I was returning to my home state of Michigan for a good friend's wedding.

Jeff Andrews had never seen "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" when Khloé Kardashian called and asked: Might he decorate her Mediterranean-style mansion? To prepare for that first meeting two years ago, Andrews turned on E! and, by the grace of the reality-TV gods, found a repeat episode recounting Khloé's wedding to Lakers forward Lamar Odom. Homework completed, Andrews landed the job as interior designer for the youngest Kardashian sister. And then for sister Kourtney. And then perhaps most significantly, for Kris Jenner, the matriarch-manager of the Kardashian empire, which, Twitter-follow it or not, remains an undeniable phenomenon.

In Los Angeles, red carpet treatment is not just for celebrities. Here, mere mortals can find specialists - medical concierges, cat whisperers, image consultants - for almost everything. And that includes experts who are hired to help families prepare for their newest members. Enter the baby planner. Before the advent of the current expert culture, it was a role that used to be filled by mothers, grandmothers and best friends, doling out advice, shopping lists and favors.

It's a rare quiet night, and I'm ecstatic that I've found a "Law & Order" marathon on TV. All I need is something to eat that's good enough and not bad enough (translation: tastes good but not high-calorie). Potato chips should do the trick. Freshly made, oil-free chips, cooked in the microwave. That's right. Thinly sliced potatoes (or other produce) can be laid out on a silicon tray and microwaved. The results taste fresher than bagged fat-free chips, and the produce can be seasoned any way you like.

Joanne Clarke, a legal secretary in her late 50s, leads the way down a pale green hallway in her modest Costa Mesa home, past a small guest room on the right and a blue tiled bathroom on the left. At the end of the hall, she opens a door, pushes aside a thick black curtain and ducks inside. "Isn't this wild?" she says, gesturing to the high-tech marijuana grow room she and her husband recently installed. "This used to be my daughter's bedroom. " Wild is one word for it. Bright is another.

It started with gray water, then escalated to chickens, composting toilets and rain barrels. I'm talking about the two years I've spent transforming my humble California bungalow into a test case for sustainable living ? an experience that's cost me hundreds of hours of my time and thousands of dollars, an endeavor that has tested the limits of not only my checkbook but also my sanity ? and my DIY capabilities. When I launched this column, the idea was to look at environmentally promising home improvement projects through the eyes of a budget-minded consumer.

"Let's Make a Deal" host Wayne Brady has listed his home in the Sherman Oaks at $2.2 million. The Mediterranean-style house has floor-to-ceiling living room windows, a home theater and a master suite with a built-in media center and a sitting area. The 5,468-square-home has five bedrooms and five bathrooms. The actor, singer and comedian, who started hosting the revival of "Let's Make a Deal" in 2009, is also known for his role on the comedy improv show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

She's an unlikely traffic stopper: hefty, over 50, her complexion a grassy green and yellow. But, David Aikens says, people driving past his Inglewood store often stop to ogle this voluptuously contoured gas stove, manufactured at the beginning of the baby boom era. According to Aikens, the stove's restorer, lust for these Midcentury beauties is found not only among cooks, who appreciate the heat-retaining properties of their cast-iron burners and...

After a two-year house hunt, "CSI: Miami" star Rex Linn has bought a Sherman Oaks home for $1,415,000. The actor had been renting an 800-square-foot John Lautner-designed house nearby for 20 years but decided he was ready to pull the trigger on a bigger place after he became engaged in June. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom rental was built in the 1940s. "It's the first house I lived in when I moved here from Oklahoma City," Linn said. "I was so lucky. It's a really sexy, cool house.

If you want a relationship, the advice goes, do what you like and you'll eventually bump into the love of your life. None of that was on my mind when I opened up the newspaper and read about a film series at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Goldwyn Theater on Wilshire Boulevard. The academy would be screening, every Monday night for 75 weeks, all of the best picture winners from "Wings" (1927) to "Chicago" (2002) for just $75. I sprinted to buy my series pass.

 My Monday night ritual: Get to the theater early.

"The Avengers," as you may have heard, is the biggest thing to happen to America since World War II but, you know, louder and more troubling. At the end of the matinee I witnessed, audience members actually cheered, believing what they'd just seen was some sort of documentary. Manhattan had been saved, which is almost always a cause for celebration, though I met this one New Yorker the other day at the rent-a-car place: swaggery young Italian guy, you know the type. The New Yorker said he didn't like L.A. because "ders nuttin' to do hair," which translates roughly into "there is nothing to do here.

We met at the Santa Monica outpost of the Bodega wine bar. Though it was fairly dark inside, I recognized his face at the bar. I waved and walked toward him. As he stood up, his body did not match his face, or any of his online pictures. He was not the same guy surfing in the wetsuit, or wearing the tux, or looking all skinny with his bushy brown hair. He must have gained 50 pounds, maybe more. Beneath his beige button-down shirt I could see man boobs. "Shall we get a table?" he asked.

With a caffeine headache and 60 bucks in my britches, I head out to the pony rides on a Friday night - to glittery, improbable Hollywood Park, now officially Betfair Hollywood Park. The Inglewood track's spring-summer semester has just started, and on Friday evenings it has what amounts to a horse-racing revival: a little wagering, a few food trucks, followed by a live concert reasonably priced. It's easy to see why these Friday night festivities are such a hit with young people like us. "I love ponies," the little guy says.

The first thing people often said when I told them that I, single and 30, was moving to Los Angeles: "Aren't you worried about dating? They're even worse out there than they are here. " Implicit in this statement was a reminder that I was already too fat to captivate quality New York men. Did I really want to punish myself further by trying to find a husband in L.A.? When I hit 35, I decided it was time to venture online. On dating sites, where one can control one's image with the precision of a world-class branding firm, I could lead with "I'm not skinny.

Early in the summer of 2009, I was finally done. For real, this time. He didn't know it yet, but I did. And that was enough. Years ago, I had promised myself that I would start having children no later than age 38. I was 36 that summer. It just wasn't going to happen with Mike. In truth, Mike and I had been simulating a relationship for months. I fooled myself into thinking we would transition into something greater. He fooled himself into thinking I had given up that notion.

Mixed martial arts champion Anderson da Silva, known as the Spider, has bought a home in Palos Verdes Estates for close to its $1.76-million asking price. The ocean-view house of 3,000 square feet has four bedrooms and 31/2 bathrooms. The lot is more than half an acre and includes a swimming pool. The 36-year-old Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight champ, who was renting in Redondo Beach, purchased the home to be closer to where he trains. He also owns homes in Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, Brazil.

Amy and David Messinger's home in the Hollywood Hills posed vexing problems common to many properties in Los Angeles. The steep front and rear slopes were difficult to navigate, much less landscape. One side yard opened to the top of yet another embankment. The other side yard was flat lawn reduced to a muddy mess by sprinklers and poor drainage. For help, the Messingers hired landscape designer Joan Grabel of Park Slope Design in Studio City. Grabel, an artist-turned-gardenmaker, is known for creating functional, sustainable outdoor rooms with painterly flair.

I'm behind a Honda Element with three bullet holes across the back. You guessed it - West L.A., specifically that gritty stretch near the Overland exit. No, I don't know for sure that they are real bullet holes. But in this end of town, I just assume everything I see is authentic. I am on my way to Hunger Games Training, a Saturday class in the Cheviot Hills Recreation Center, near Fox Studios. Archery. Self-defense. Primping. Sarcasm. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse. If you were looking at how to behave during some sort of cataclysmic meltdown, where better to learn?

I'm on my way down to lower Orange County in our old minivan, the Honey Fitz. It's bleeding power steering fluid, but other than that the Honey Fitz is charging out of the barn, three of the four cylinders firing in sequence, the other a virtual wooden leg. I'd planned to bring my wife, Posh, but when I left the house, she was all tied up with some project. Actually, she was lying on the bedroom floor, ensnared in the strings of a Pinocchio toy she was trying to put away a little too quickly.