Saturday 15th June.
- Saturday morning we drove back to Santa Monica for some early morning retail therapy on the Promenade ... Urban Outfitters, Forever21, anthropology etc. Morgan may have had to come in and 'rescue' me (or the credit card) after quite awhile!
- Then we walked down to the pier to ride ferris wheel. The view from the top was so pretty and the sand and water really reminded me of the beaches at home.
- Then we decided to drive towards Hollywood and explore along the way and I must say that M handled the busy traffic on the highway like a pro!
- During our exploring we accidentally stumbled on Rodeo Drive and took a drive down it. We felt like we fitted right in in our hired Mercedes, even though we were too scared to get out and shop! Such a pretty street though!
- Then we drove around Beverly Hills looking at all the crazy houses and mansions. It was so pretty but I couldn't help but feel sad for the stark contrast between these properties and the homelessness we had seen around the LA area. The amount of homeless was a little bit of a shock to our system as you don't see as much of it here in Australia, it made us really sad!
- We had our first Starbucks of the trip. Oh man I miss my Starbucks - especially those Vanilla Frappacinos they sell in the little glass bottles. I used to buy one everymorning at the grocery on the corner of our street in New York.
- Then we headed back into Hollywood walked around, checking out the pavement stars and sights. We also signed up for one of those real cheesy tours on the topless tour buses. Which actually turned out to be really fun (and cold). Our tour guide pointed out all the houses of famous people (or so he said) - Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, Steve Carrell, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, David and Victoria Beckham, Lucielle Ball, Steven Spielberg's house on the top of the hill where they filmed the scene in Charlie's Angels where Drew Barrymore gets shot out of the window etc My favourite houses were the witches house from
Hocas Pocus and Dr Seuss' house (both shown below), which was designed for him inspired by the drawings in his books. The whole house has no corners and is all curved!
a car just like my brother's! which you might remember as our wedding getaway car!
Sunday 16th June.
- We left Venice on Sunday morning and continued along the PCH towards San Simeon, our halfway pit stop on our drive to San Fransisco.
- This was my first drive of the trip and oh wow it felt so weird to be driving on the wrong side of the road! It took a little while to feel comfortable behind the wheel!
- I really love road trips with my love though. Just driving and chatting and singing along to fun car songs while munching on yummy travel snacks. It's the best kind of 'together!' We also enjoyed some beautiful scenery along the coast up through Malibu and other coastal towns.
- We stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch on the wharf and enjoyed taking pictures of our fun surroundings and looking in the little shops along the pier. I also loved the slight Spanish touches on the houses and street signs and the street trolleys. Seriously, what a charming place. I'd love to explore more someday!
- We found scary lollies filled with insects - WHAT THE!!! We didn't buy any...
- The crosses lined on the beach and people petitioning against the war on Afghanistan really hit home to me that this war is real. Although our own soliders are actively serving along our US allies we don't see any war propergander at home and it's so easy to even forget it's happening! It made me really think about the families who are affected by it both American (and their allies) and Afghans!
- We filled up car for first time and M couldnt work out how to do it (we don't pre-pay here at home!)
- After we checked in to our hotel in San Simeon we went down to Cambria where we bought a picnic dinner (which ended up being quite a comical meal of two minute noodles, stale bread, mooshy tomatoes and too hard avocados!) We sat in car by beach watching the sunset over west coat and then topped of the night with a few episodes of Duck Dynasty and Trader Joes Kettle Corn!
Another
of my favourite details of this years card was the button and string
closure on the back of each envelope, which we also did on our wedding
invites. It looks tricky to put together but it actually so easy and a
cute way of adding a little something to a plain envelope. Basically all
you need is a circle hole punch (mine was 2cmD), a small hole punch, an
eyelet tool, eyelets, string and coloured cardboard. First cut two
circles with the circle hole punch out of your coloured cardstock and
then with the smaller hole punch punch a hole in the centre for your
eyelets to go through (I find it easier to mark the center with a dot
before I punch the holes out). Next place the coloured circles onto the
back of the envelope where you want them to sit and mark the center of
the circles with a pen. Then punch small holes through your envelope. To
put it together I place the small piece of string through the top hole,
letting the majority hang towards the bottom right of the hole. Place
the red cut circle on top of that and then place the eyelet through the
center of all layers and press. Repeat these steps (minus the string) on
the bottom circle and tada you have the cutest little button string
closure to finish off any envelope! Hopefully that all makes sense as I
was going to do a tutorial, but I couldn't quite manage to hold the
envelope, eyelet tool and camera all at once ;)
