california christmas

We're definitely excited to be heading to the Midwest for a white Christmas in a few days, but we've also been enjoying a warm, sunny, palm tree-style holiday season.

These pictures are from the Grove, an outdoor mall in the Beverly Hills area adjacent to the original Los Angeles Farmers Market.

A gigantic Christmas tree made of shopping carts outside the coffee shop down the street.

The Pepperdine campus decorated for Christmas, looking across the ocean to the sunset.

Our living room.

unique los angeles art and design sale

Last weekend, Jesse and I went to Unique LA, a large art and design sale held in downtown Los Angeles in the Fashion District. We spent most of the day checking out all of the products, and I thought I would highlight a few of our favorites here. Several of the design blogs I follow have been posting holiday gift guides, so this is sort of my own personal version. :) Most of these pieces are for sale online, and I have included links. All photos are from the vendor websites.

The Weekend Store was one of the busiest booths at the fair. They sell jewelry made with old typewriter keys, watch parts, maps, and other vintage objects.

This is just one example of dozens of posters created by The Poster List.
All sort of pop-art style, there are so many great designs to choose from, and at a good price - $10.99 for one or five for $40.

Jesse and I loved these California-style digitally manipulated photos printed on wood by 33 Stewart Avenue. The artist, Sean Finocchio, also has a great series of New York food carts.

This peppermint lavender citrus goats' milk soap by Chivas smells SO good. It's made by a mother-daughter duo with fresh milk from goats that they raise on their farm. I can't wait to use it!

These Kauzbots are so eye-catching, and well-made on top of it. Each color of robot represents a specific cause, to which 10% of each sale ($24.99) is given.

I am the proud owner of this necklace, by metal artist Sasha Bell. She also has a lot of other more complex pieces, but at $30, this is a great piece of affordable, wearable art (my favorite kind!).

Felted pebbles by Delica. Not entirely sure how I would use them, but they're just so soft and charming. They also have great felted necklaces and bowls.

This letterpress clock by Dee & Lala is so finely printed, and a unique use of the craft. They also sell lovely cards.

One of the other great products that I didn't actually get to see (Jesse saw them while I was taking a book-making workshop) are flipbooks by Flip Clips that you can have made from short digital video footage. How fun!

our cozy (and by cozy, i mean small) apartment

Here are some pictures of our cozy Santa Monica apartment:

Entry way

View of the living room

Another view of the living room, with windows looking across to the park

The kitchen, with the door to the back deck open

(A note on the back deck: it is completely falling apart, and there are warning signs posted all over. Obviously, we can't really use it, except to go downstairs to do laundry. They say they will be fixing it.... On the other hand, we get a nice ocean breeze through the door and window, which is really nice in the summer.)

Jesse and I flew out here for a weekend to look at apartments less than two weeks before we moved out at the beginning of August. We spent one day in a different area of Santa Monica, and had no luck. One of the first places we saw had no toilet seat, a broken faucet in the bathtub, and carpet torn up at the corners. Of course it was the cheapest place we had seen listed, so I don't know what we expected. Our best option from that day was a totally retro 1950s style apartment in a large building. It appeared that nothing has been changed since the 50s: light fixtures, counters, swimming pool, etc. It was so old it was cool again.

The next day we tried the Ocean Park area of Santa Monica and felt much more at home. It's closer to Venice, and felt a little artsier and more laid back. We met a lot of very nice, helpful residents. But we were still having trouble finding apartments willing to accept a dog at all, let alone one over 25 pounds (way over, I might add). Our very favorite apartment had a large deck with an ocean view. We wanted it so badly. I called the management office repeatedly until they answered and then begged, but to no avail. We must love Yuki a lot to give up an ocean view for him.

The third day we were headed to the airport in the morning and stopped at one last place that we had seen advertised on Craig's List with the title, "Right by the beach, mon." We had a good feel from it right from the beginning (once we got past the Craig's List ad). On the way to the airport, we called and told the landlord that we wanted it. Once again, there were questions about Yuki. I begged again. I lied and told them Yuki has never barked in his whole life (actually I think he said he was "not a barker," which is sort of true?). It was a long four-hour flight not knowing if we would get it or not...and not knowing what we would do if they didn't accept us. At that point, NO apartments that we had seen were into having an 80-pound dog. After filling out and faxing in a multi-page application the next day, and waiting several more days, they finally told us it was ours. A week before we moved.

And we love it! It's small, but it's historic. It's in a small building, has beautiful woodwork, is across from the park, two blocks from Main Street, and four blocks from the beach. The only two things we wish it had are wood floors and a second bedroom. But less to clean, right?

happy thanksgiving!

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving! We had a great time - made a turkey and all the fixin's in our lil' kitchen, ate in our lil' living room, and hung out with my brother and sister-in-law for a couple of days.

We got up early to get our first Thanksgiving turkey in the oven.

Success!

Post-Thanksgiving walk to the beach for sunset.

hotchkiss park, i love you

Jesse and I are so grateful to live across the street from a beautiful park. We have a great view from the living room windows, Yuki gets to sit and stare at dogs all day, and we are continually entertained by lots of crazies. Some of them are genuine crazies, like the ones that scream at no one for no reason. Some of them are only a little crazy, like the ones who think they are providing "live music" but really are only irritating all of us within ear shot. And others are just crazy on purpose. Why not. These are my absolute favorite kind of crazies. Here are three examples:

1) Hotchkiss Park (like everywhere else in this city) seems to attract a lot of filmmakers...mostly amateur, it would appear. One day, Jesse said there was a crew filming all day. The scene? A variety of people took turns sitting on a park bench. When the director yelled, "action," they jumped to their feet and screamed at the top of their lungs. I caught the tail end of this when I got home from work, and thought it was hilarious. Apparently Jesse had to listen to it all day, and it lost its humor after a while.

2) One weekend afternoon, two guys wearing clownish wigs sat in the back of a pickup truck beating drums. The passenger in the cab played a horn. They drove around the block for several hours. A couple of weeks later - repeat.

3) This one is my favorite, but unfortunately I missed seeing it in person. Jesse is so lucky he gets to work at home and watch all of this. While working of course. A guy in a cat suit was sitting in a tree. He was supposed to jump out of the tree on to an air mattress on the ground. Actually two air mattresses, including one really thick one. There were three or four other people there filming. Please note, the tree branch is NOT that far from the ground. According to Jesse, the guy sat in the tree for half an hour refusing to jump. I assumed it was the whole - can't get the cat of the tree thing. Nope. He really was too scared to jump, and apparently the film crew was getting really annoyed and was ready to pack up and leave him there, when he finally went for it. My wonderful husband captured this on video. It's hilarious.

traffic

I've been pretty smug about traffic since we moved to Los Angeles. Traffic is one of the first reasons people cite for not liking LA, and I've been claiming it's not as bad as everyone says. Sure, we get slowed down from time to time when we are heading downtown on a weekend. But on a daily basis, I generally avoid any traffic as I don't have to take any freeways to get to work. Instead, I cruise up the beautiful Pacific Coast Highway at a pretty consistent 45-50mph.

However, the week before last, I made mistakes while driving twice, and they cost me an hour each. In both cases, I was crawling in the wrong direction, and knew it, but couldn't turn around. It was far more frustrating than I expected, and a little humbling. :) I am apparently not immune to LA traffic.

Yet, the next day, I walked out of my apartment mid-afternoon, and within ten minutes I was sitting on the beach. I think I am willing to put up with a little traffic for this...

Photo courtesy of Flickr user DRB62, some rights reserved

silverlake art crawl

Jesse and I went to the Silverlake Art Crawl last weekend. We visited a bunch of nice design stores and art galleries. One in particular, Sumi's, we liked a lot. It had a nice mix of paintings, pottery, and other accessible art pieces. But, despite all of the interesting galleries, I only took pictures of food. :) The place on the left is Dusty's Bistro, where we ate lunch. Below, are some pictures of Lamill Coffee. It had a great atmosphere, and even though I am not a coffee-drinker, I was pretty fascinated by the variety of ways they brew coffee. I'm definitely enjoying all of the fun new restaurants and cafes that LA has to offer, and it was fun to explore a different neighborhood.

our first movie premiere

When my family was in town last week, we took them to see the celebrity footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Unfortunately, there was a movie premiere scheduled that night as a part of the AFI film festival, and all of the footprints were covered over with red carpet. While that was disappointing, Jesse did a little research into the film festival and found out that for the first time they were offering free tickets to the general public. So we headed back on Thursday night and, after standing in a very long line, got in to the theatre. The movie was A Single Man, with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. I was surprised at how different it felt to watch a movie in such a large, historic, beautiful theatre. I'd love to watch every movie this way. The only bummer is that I would have loved to see Colin Firth on the red carpet, but we were around the corner in line for that part.

Yes, I live in Southern California and am wearing a winter scarf...it's been cold at night!!

Afterwards, we got a late dinner at Mel's Drive-In, which I thought I had read was a historic diner. Apparently not.

trip to san diego

A good friend of mine from college was headed to San Diego for a wedding a couple of weeks ago, but first flew to LA and hung out with us in Santa Monica for a couple of days. I drove with her to San Diego, and while she was at the wedding, I wandered around Little Italy (where we stayed) and the Gaslight Quarter. It was great and I can't wait to go back. The drive is only about 2-3 hours, and much of it is really nice. Here are a few photos:

The wedding was near a harbor, and the fog was absolutely beautiful when I dropped Sarah off. I watched boats coming in, but could barely see them even though they were so close to the shore. Don't worry, I heard that the fog cleared before the wedding ceremony. :)

This was in the Gaslight Quarter. I had heard it was a great area, but when I exited the parking garage, I couldn't "find" it, and wondered what all the hype was about...looked like a bunch of boring old office buildings to me. After a few blocks, I finally came across this hopping scene: restaurants, clubs, galleries, shops. It lived up to the hype after all. Then I couldn't find the parking garage.

This is in front of the hotel where we stayed in Little Italy. It was a nice street lined with little Italian restaurants.

And I was quite content to find one of the little Italian restaurants and settle in for a while. My food was so good.

three l.a. events

After repeatedly seeing advertisements on TV for the LA soapbox races about a month ago, Jesse and I decided it would be a good opportunity to walk around downtown and to check out a local event. I've been to a lot of "local events" in the past two years while living in Central Illinois (sweet corn festival, corn broom festival, chili and beer fest...), and somehow it did not occur to me that an LA event might be a bit different. As in CROWDED. It was ridiculous. There were 110,000 people there, and the track was a mere two blocks long, so it was nearly impossible to see anything.

The only reason the track can even be seen in this picture is because I held the camera over my head.

There were people perched in every tree and on every sign.

We finally got a view of the racers by getting up high on a building's patio. Of course this car wasn't as creative as some of the others, which included a speedboat, a grand piano, and a giant nose. There were 40 entries - all human-powered race cars which cannot weigh more than 176 pounds, and which can seat up to two drivers. Despite the crowds (and the heat) it was pretty entertaining.

The next day, we checked out the Abbot Kinney festival in Venice, which is right next to Santa Monica. 150,000 people were expected, and I am pretty sure that they all showed up. There was live music, art for sale, and good food.

By contrast, a couple weeks later we went to a screening of the Flight of the Navigator with a director discussion (as the first movie my family recorded on a VCR, it has a special place in my memory), and (maybe not such a surprise?) the theatre was practically empty. But we got to see the actual model that was used for the spaceship during production!

Notice all the empty chairs? No appreciation!

sunset in santa monica

Jesse and I took a stroll to the beach after work the other day. Here are a few pictures: