Hej!
On Sunday when David had to go to his office on the Warner Bros studio lot for a couple of hours, I decided to come with him and do some exploring of my own.
I ignored the blistering heat and took a whole bunch of self portraits that I wanted to show you.

White dress and sun hat playing their parts perfectly here.

I actually dressed for the occasion, sort of. I knew the white dress would look amazing as a contrast to the dark places I had in my mind (you'll see soon) but it surprised me how well it worked in this environment too. It has a real southern feel to it, doesn't it?

Oh, I just love the look of a falling apart greenhouse! The light! The colors! Yeah, this is a favorite.

I moved on to the dark alleyways in-between houses. Tried out the light and dark with some twirling in my white dress.

Found a brick wall to dance in front.

And imagined myself in a World War 1 movie drama.

"Hmmm... I wonder who stole Ms Mullin's motorcycle...I'm going to find out!"

Walked into a dark room and saw my own reflection in this mirror with the strange double effect (Looks like a double exposure, kind of. Or a photo taken with long exposure). Needless to say, I jumped a little in fear. Then I took photos of it, 'cause that's how I roll! Photograph what scares you!

Running (away from the Warner Bros tour bus).
They drove by every third minute or something. I stuck out so much in my white dress so I obviously got a lot of curious stares.

Ps: Love the floaty almost liquid looking feel to my dress here.

Then I found an old barn. Let me tell you: it was HOT in there.

Did a little double exposure edit to this one.

I use the app Edit.Lab for that. It's not perfect, but the best double exposure app I've found so far because it doesn't crop the photo to a square, and you can position the photos easier than in other apps. But like I said, it's not perfect. It is a bit buggy and you are quite limited in the blending. But it's still the best of the one's I've tried (Photoblend, InstantBlend and Edit.Lab).
And as usual, I'm using the self timer app Timer Cam and a small tripod from LOHA.

Anyways, that was all I had today. Really love taking these self portraits. It triggers my imagination so much!

/Lotta

Hej!
Today I took my Nikon D7000 camera and went for a walk. I had no real plans, I just decided to walk upwards and see where I ended up.
I found Hiking Gold, that's what I did.

But let's back it up a little. The walk started in cute neighborhoods.

I mean, look: Cute.

Buildings in LA can be super boring, but up in the hills it's fun to look at every single house.

Some have medieval knights (?) on them...

And some hide behind dense vegetation...

And other ones want their place to be seen as much as possible.

And one looked like the entrance to an enchanted garden.

And then I reached Sunset Ranch, where you can rent horses and go for a guided ride up in the mountains. It was also okay to just walk through so that's what I did.

But before I show you the horses and the views, let's take a cactus pause:

Aah, cactus!

I found a small path up a hill and tried that one.

And it lead me to horses!

Hullo!

(Read in very strong British accent for most humorous effect)

After chatting with the horses for a while I went back down the hill, and found another path where other people were walking too, which is alway a good sign. I turned around and saw another sign (Hö Hö. Or He he in English, but Hö Hö is like a combination of He he and Ugh and is clearly much more fitting for stupid punny jokes).
Around here I began to realize this was a popular hiking spot and PROBABLY it would lead closer to the Hollywood Sign.

Look at this silly cactus/coat rack!

Anyways: The view was fairly spectacular.

See the horse ranch down there?
Also: HOW COOL IS THIS BLACK AND WHITE EDIT I DID?!?!

It's like Gotham City!!!

Where are all the moody broody super heroes?!?

And then I came really really close to the sign and it was cool!

SELFIE MOMENT!
This one and the rest of the photos were taken with my iPhone.

Because I had to take some self timer photos!

Jumping Pippi Longstocking style infront of the LA Skyline that was so pretty today.

And then I was SO HUNGRY and walked home.
That was one lovely 2 hours and 15 minute hike!

/Lotta

This post could also be called Tulips, plants and a dinner table in various states of tulips and plants.

Oh, Hi!
In January we moved in to our very own apartment. Well, we rent it, but it's our lease and it's not an airbnb like the other apartments we've lived in here in LA up until January.
We've obviously lived in apartments in Sweden but this time around it feels different because we don't have all of those things that you collect over the years just by living. You know, the pots and pans you get from your parents when you move out of your childhood home, the chest you got from your friend's parents because they were going to throw it away but thought of you, the cute chair you bought at a flea market in the tiny village where you studied theatre and then had to carry over your shoulder through the entire said village to your student room, the bed you bought from the family friend who moved to another country and you rented an apartment from. I really could have written "I" through all that block of text, right?
But you get what I mean, a home is built by so many weird and random things you put in it over a long time.
This home is built from scratch though. And that feels SO strange and new and INTERESTING.
Let's talk a little about that, and mix it up with a bunch of photos, okay?

We moved into this place with no furniture but two director's chairs with our names on them that we got from the Lights Out production. David was alone here for the first two weeks because I was in Sweden packing down all our things in our apartment there, so he bought a mattress and stuff for his home office. And stuff like pots and pans and plates and pillows and sheets- from IKEA.
We didn't have money for more than that for a while so for a couple of weeks we ate all our meals in the guest room/office on our director's chairs, or on the empty living room floor.

Love how the large living room window has two palm trees outside but all you can see are their waists...

After a couple of weeks we bought a dining table. We have a Pinterest board for our apartment where we pin things we want to buy/are inspired by, and we had searched high and low for the perfect dining room table. We wanted it to be large and rustic and not cost a million dollars. I'll let you know that it's harder than it sounds to find a table like that. But one day we found it at Nadeau, a place we had no idea existed that we stumbled upon when looking in a super weird furniture store across the street where they sold RIDICULOUSLY expensive and ugly furniture. We couldn't believe our luck when we found our dining table at this random place, and it was super affordable and exactly what we wanted.

The chairs arrived a week or two later. And the rug is our latest addition. Because we have been taking our time with the furniture we really love the stuff that we do buy. We have a clear idea of how we want the place to look and its so AWESOME to see it come to life. David has never thought himself interested in these things before, but now it's like he has understood the fun of it. I think it's because we have thought it through for a long time now, adding pins to our pinterest folder and trying to imagine what things we want, and for every piece of furniture we add it gets clearer and clearer that it's turning out exactly like we wanted it.

I want our home to be filled with plants and one thing that I did in Sweden was to plant seeds I either found outdoors or came from fruit I ate. I think that makes the whole indoor gardening thing more interesting! I had a Mango plant that I loved so the first thing I did in our new American home was to plant a mango seed. They grow insanely fast.

At first the leaves are a purple brown color.

But then they turn green and strong.

I love my mango plant!

This is a little lemon plant.

So far I use the ugly cardboard boxes as plant stands, but the idea is to get a long bench underneath that window. It's not easy to find though, most benches are too low and too short. I'm thinking of making one myself instead.

A window made for people watching.

If you follow my instagram you've seen my hashtag #LottasOverambitiousWaterDrinks where I share photos of what's really just pimped up water in pretty light. I go through quite a lot of citrus fruits...

The blood oranges really turn the kitchen counter into a murder scene (Also: Tiled kitchen counters, America? Are you stupid? It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep clean).

Pretty colors. Water, blood orange and fresh mint.

One day I bought a big fern because I've always wanted one and they remind me of when I was a kid and my parents had one that was huge.

The pretty secretary desk you can see a little of here is my office. I sit at the dining table and work and keep all my stuff in this desk. We found it at an antique store and I LOVE it. It's from the late 50s and it's Swedish, funnily enough.

The vintage tins are actually from my collection in Sweden. I brought them with me filled with jewelry making stuff and other things I didn't want to live without. I've collected old tins for years and these are some of my favorites.

I've gone cuckoo for tulips this spring. It's partly because of this dream of turning our home into a jungle but until I have all the plants I want I'll just fill it out with fresh tulips.

Kitchen window still life. Tulip in glass bottle, hair tie and a jacaranda seed pod on a jar lid.

And then the tulip died and I documented that too.

I probably should throw out these tulips now...

...but it's like confetti on our table!

Last sunday we bought the big plant to the left. I think it's some kind of Schefflera. It's bright and happy!

And then this morning. Too much stuff on the table, a sweater hung to dry on a chair, and now we really do have a jungle on the table. I have bought so many plants online. Mostly on Amazon. It's actually really good plants! I have two Monstera's, one Rubber plant, two Schefflera's, one Prayer plant, one heart fern, one Fiddle Leaf Fig and some other plants I don't know the name of that we bought on a flea market.

I really enjoy documenting the journey this apartment is on. All these photos were taken with my Nikon D7000 over the course of four months. We've lived here for quite a while now without a lot of furniture and it makes the changes we do to the space feel bigger. Think of this as The Slowest Interior Design Program EVER.
I'll probably be back in a few month with an update, so I hope you enjoyed this little peek into our home.

/Lotta

Hej!
Sometimes time just goes and I realize I've been doing things and my blog hasn't felt it. I'm not even talking about you guys reading this because I know you won't care. But I don't want to hurt my blog's feelings, you know? Okay, maybe you don't know, but anywhoooo.
I was looking through my photos and thought 67 pics are probably like... 37... pics too many? So I tried to find a theme and when I couldn't do that I decided to make up a completely dumb theme and just roll with it.
So here it is: three things or places or stuff that happened maybe a month ago. I know, I know: I'm SO up to date here. But humor me, okay?

You remember when David and I were in San Francisco, right? The long drive there featured a bunch of truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and on one of them I decided to look around a little and maybe snap some photos.

I struck gold with this car cemetery in the desert!

AND it was also the home of a whole bunch of feral kittens!

I mean. That is Truck Stop Gold right there.

I also convinced David that we needed to take some jumping photos, so you could say I was happy already- not even close to San Francisco!
I actually really like driving places with David. Well, I don't drive because I don't have a driver's license (I KNOW!) but so often when we're going somewhere by car and we're in the middle of nowhere and there's music and just roads and we are in frickin' USA and life is so wonderful and I'm just STRUCK by this magical feeling of happiness and I don't even KNOW because it's not like it was any different the morning before but it's like the open road gives me perspective or something and yeah, this was one long ass sentence so I'll put a period on this now.

And our hotel in SF was old and decorated in a wonderfully freaky way. I mean, this photo is proof enough, right?

We had a wonderful couple of days in SF and it felt awesome to be able to stroll around in a city where it's more people than just me and the homeless out walking. (Seriously LA! The sidewalks are meant to walk on! Try it for once!)

Pretty view and loveydovey us.

Around easter my sister, her kids and their friend Rebecka came to visit us. I was so excited! Here I'm sitting and waiting and listening for sounds of a jet lagged bunch of Swedish people tumbling up the stairs.

It was so great to have them all here! I took them to all the great spots.

My niece Hilda- Already a star in Hollywood.

We went to LA Zoo of course!

And I took a selfie with a giraffe.

And we went to Santa Monica pier where it was windy as all hell.

Alfred running on the beach!

I took my sister, Sara, to UCB for a musical improv show that I love- and she of course loved it too!

When they had went back to Sweden again I felt a little like this. So tired. And the apartment was so quiet. And strange. And happy that it went so well- now we know they can come back many times!

The last thing/place/whatever is a Sunday hike to where they shot the tv series M*A*S*H. It was quite the long walk there and when we reached the spot it turned out to be the least exciting part of the entire hike.
But that doesn't mean it was boring because OMG this was a beautiful place!
I found an abundance of spooky trees, for one thing!

I climbed a few of them. And balanced high up and hoped that I wouldn't fall before the self timer had gone off so I at least would get a nice photo before I'd break all the bones in my body.
I didn't fall though. Surprising everybody (well, David), but mostly myself.

The mountains and green fuzzy hills give me so many creative ideas, you have NO idea.

Just like road trips with this guy makes me indescribably happy, seeing wondrous nature like this together makes me smile from ear to ear. It just smacks me in the head: the beautiful surroundings, the adventure, the love. And that's how you know it's kissing selfie time!

That was all from me today.
And, can we just pretend the theme was solid and perfect and you bought it completely? Okay? Thanks.

/Lotta