Hello!
Here is the much overhyped blog post about my walk over the hills!
There was a point when I thought I would just give up on ever showing you this, but NO I'm not a quitter! That's not who I am!
So, even if these photos might be more interesting for me, I really love them and I want them to be on this blog as a part of this whole LA adventure I'm on right now.
OKAY! Stop talking!
PHOTOS!

I had heard about a cute outdoor café in Griffith Park that was a 40 min walk away from where we live right now. There was a boring route and a swirly twirly one over the hills so I obviously chose the last one. GOOD CHOICE, LOTTA!
These flowers grow on a huge tree on our street. Its like a massive pink cloud greeting me every day. So pretty!

I really like to use google maps when I'm out walking because it makes me more brave, and I get to see places I wouldn't find otherwise. And this day google took me past houses with cactuses standing in line...

...and the perfect house hiding up on a hill behind a plank.

Cactus and Agave. I love desert plants in gardens soon much!

So cute! I found like a million streets and houses that made me exclaim I WANT TO LIVE HERE! out loud.

Google brought me to a dead end street where I just stood and stared for the longest time. Where do I go from here?! Then, I found a secret staircase hiding behind two houses. It felt like I was walking straight into someones garden.

Cactus cluster.

Walked the wrong way for a little while but that was okay because all of a sudden the Hollywood sign peeked out behind the houses.

Hiiii!

So green and lush! (Probably due to a loooot of watering despite the drought).
I was the only person out walking in these neighborhoods and it was so quiet. Made me feel like I was snooping around.

Pretty details everywhere!

It was super warm (around 35 celsius degrees) and the hills are really steep so I was so sweaty and tired when I finally saw the sign for the café.

Cute ladies infront of me in line.

When I saw they had granola with fruit and yoghurt it felt like that was The Exact Thing that I craved in that moment. I love when that happens. When you don't yet know what you want but then you see it and it feels like an angel choir is singing in your head.
It was perfect! Shade under the trees, great lemonade. I sat there for quite a while.

Then I took the easier route back. It started off really fairytale pretty.

Fluffy, fluffy flower that I still kinda think is an animal.

Old man stretching.

And then I got out of Griffith Park and walked home.
When I got home I was shaking from exhaustion. I'm not used to walking this long in such heat and in steep hills, so I don't know how my body will react. I can walk quite fast and long but when I stop it's like I realize then and there how hard I've pushed my body.

Since this day I've walked here three more times, I just love it so much.

Hope you liked to tag along on my walk over the hills.
Have a lovely weekend dear friends and readers!

/Lotta

It's been one of those days when everything is strange in a dream like way. Not a very good dream though. Just strange.

It started at 7.15 when we woke up by a beeping sound. Not the alarm clock. No, it was a fire alarm running out of battery. There's one right over the bed so we took that apart. But it kept beeping. Oh, there's another fire alarm in the hallway. That's the one!
Okay, problem solved. And we started off the day feeling a little bit like Phoebe in Friends when she's failing to get the fire alarm to stop beeping.
One of my plans for the day was to finally blog the photos from the walk over the hills. The other day I told you about my problems with making the photos smaller and YOU KNOW WHAT!? I still have that stupid problem.
But after asking for help on Facebook, and getting so many great and helpful tips the problem remained. Someone mentioned it might be my new fancy retina screen that makes the photos look blurry. Okay, so everybody with retina screens will see my photos blurry but everyone with regular screens will see them perfectly unblurry? That is just weird.
I feel tired and angry with it all right now. Bluörgh.
So, I decided to go for a walk to clear my head a little bit. On my way down the stairs I managed to throw my right knee into a sharp edge of a chair. (Last week I hit my left knee on a sharp corner in the staircase. My knees obviously hate me.) It hurt SO MUCH I had to lie down for a while.
Later, when I was doing the dishes after my lunch, our landlady came by with a security dude. "Did something happen with your fire alarms this morning?"
Huh? Yes?
Apparently, when we touched the first fire alarm the security system went off. When they couldn't get a hold of our landlady they called Every Single Person on her emergency contact list telling them something was wrong.
...
HUH?!?!
That Phoebe moment really went a little bit overboard.

So now my plan is to go for a walk again. We'll see if that happens.

(Oh, and the very over hyped blog post about the walk over the hills? I don't really feel like posting it today. I'm mad at those photos. We are not friends right now. Maybe some other day. )

Talk to you soon!

Hey!
This past week I've been trying to blog every day but something has gone wrong Every Single Day. Sometimes it was the internet connection messing with me, but mostly it's been all about the photos, and getting them to a smaller size without making them blurry.
On friday I walked to a cafe with my mind set on finally getting the blog post done, since I thought I had the photo size problem under control.
Well. No, of course not.
I've tried the program built into the computer and an app but nooo, the pictures got all blurry. I was so angry I could cry.
Because I hate being angry with technology. I hate being a person that gets frustrated when I don't understand how to fix things.
I ended up writing a long text about wanting to cry because of a computer. Just to have done something on my trip to the cafe.
Well, I have now solved the problem and have a program that makes the photos smaller without screwing them up and making me want to scream. So YAY!
The post I was going to blog is about when I walked over the hills and brought my camera along with me. I am still a little bit angry with the whole damn thing so I thought I'd post something else entirely just to get blogging again.
Looong story about me being bad at technology (and programs being bad at the ONE thing they're supposed to do), so lets talk about these photos instead, shall we?

It was at dusk a while ago and the light was so lovely I went to get my camera to capture the colors.
This huge Agave is so fascinating to me. We don't have anything remotely similar in Sweden, and I think it looks almost like an alien. The blue green color, the thorns, the texture. Beautiful.

And together with this sneaky, vibrant, green and wispy plant it looks dreamy.

Yes! Alien tentacles!

Lovely, isn't it?

Soooo, hopefully I will stop being mad at the photos from the walk over the hills so you'll get to see them.
But anyways: talk to you soon!

/Lotta

Hello, hello, hello!
I didn't mean to be away from this blog for this long, I promise!
But we moved, and I got a new computer, and it took forever for me to get all the photos and programs that I needed, and yeeeeeaaaah, time- TIME HAPPENED!
So I thought before we (hopefully) get back to normal, I might update you on what's been going on since I last talked to you. Okay?

The last week we lived in Burbank we took a lot of evening walks, as if to really see the neighborhood so we could remember it better.
And what better way to remember than by taking creepy photos at the back of CVS pharmacy...?

I ordered this awesome t-shirt from Stay Home Club. I have been drooling after it for a couple of years, and now (when I've sort of become an expert on being bored) I thought it would be perfect for me to finally have it!
I knew I wanted to take some cool photos of me in it, so when it came I went out in search of the best spot. I took a million pics that day and probably found every single back alley in the neighborhood. Here's two of my favorites:

I like how badass I look infront of this huge Agave plant. BORING is BEST!

I found that if I stood in the doorway to our tiny house there was great light for selfies!
One day I took some photos that made me look very Film Noir. It really made me want to be in a movie like that.

I walked the back alleys of Burbank a lot and sometimes I photographed my outfits.

And then we moved!
To a super cute little apartment in a house in Hollywood Hills. After two weeks here I still have new things to discover in the neighborhood. It's so beautiful!

Evening light from our deck. (I want that old and abandoned building that looks a little bit like a factory...)

One day I found a hidden staircase that took me to this lovely view.
That's one of the fun things with living here, it's like one of those super detailed paintings where you keep finding new things that you've missed before. If you look quickly you might miss them. Or like in Sonic the hedgehog where there's secret pathways in the hills that you only discover by walking right into it. I really look forward to finding all the hidden spots!

I have been trying to find the good selfie spots. So far this Front gate/Agave area seems to be in the lead.

As I mentioned in this post I love to revel in the feeling of not knowing how things are going to be before they happen. Like when we were to move here and I imagined how my everyday routines would look like when we've lived here for a while. I thought I would hang out in the kitchen a lot because the light is really nice there. But the first two weeks here have been really really hot and the kitchen has been way too warm.
Plus, the wifi doesn't work in there.
But out on the stairs it works fine, and when the shadow covers the area it's the perfect place to sit and drink coffee, look at hummingbirds and work on my computer.
We have a deck, as you can see above me in the photo, and we sit there and eat a lot but during the day it's usually too hot up there.
Maybe when it cools off a little my routines will change, but I really love sitting in the stairs. It feels relaxed and gives me a lot of great creative ideas.

When it was 38 Celsius degrees outside and the only good thing about the heat was that my newly washed bras dried in record time.
I burned my right ass cheek on the hot stairs while taking this photo.
The things you do for art, right?

Some beautiful roots close to where we live. Love me some good and weird roots!

I have been starting to take lessons with a speech coach to reduce my Swedish accent (this photo was taken right after my first lesson). It's been so great!
I hope to feel more relaxed in my English because I've realized it's super hard to act in another language than your own. It feels a little bit like I'm starting all over again. The words aren't feeling like they're mine yet, so I'm working on that.
I'm also starting improv classes today and OMG I'm so excited! It's going to be so wonderful to act like that again. I have been missing it so much.

I made a really great lunch with catfish, fresh ginger, garlic and cilantro among other things. I love creating recipes like this. Especially when they turn out awesome!

The phone reception is beyond crappy where we live now. My phone says No Service most of the time, so when I want to call home to Sweden I have to walk for about fifteen minutes to find some steady reception.
Last week I sat for almost two hours outside a café with a view over the Scientology Celebrity Center and talked to a great friend in Sweden while sipping on an iced chai.
That house is a fancy castle for crazy people.

On friday I met up with three Swedes visiting LA. I took them for a long walk over the steep hills to Griffith Park and the observatory there. It was such a great day and it felt so good to spend a day with Swedish friends!
I "forced" them to be a part of my self timer photos and we pretended to be in a band. I think we look very cool.

Yes, that was all for this time. I have a couple of posts coming up this week and hopefully I will get into a good blogging rhythm again. I've missed it.

Hope you enjoyed this little peek, and talk to you soon!

/Lotta