HELLO!!
Back to blogging and it feels so gooooood!
Hiiii! How have you been?
I have been busy busy busy and realised a few days ago that I haven't blogged about when David and I went to Los Angeles in november! Oh no!
When I looked through all my iPhone photos (I only used my Nikon D7000 for two days, I'll show you those photos some other day) I found at least 100 photos that I wanted to blog. Well, that's a little bit too much, so I made up a little list for myself with everything I wanted to include in a post from our trip.
Here it is:

BEST BREAKFAST:
I searched instagram and yelp for the best breakfast places both before we went and after we arrived in LA, and since the breakfast at our hotel wasn't very good and also not included we went to a lot of breakfast places during our two week trip. One of those restaurants I found was bld. We sat outside in the sun and I ordered the eggs benedict because that had looked really nice on the photos I found on internet taken by customers.

It was so very tasty!

MOST INCREDIBLE STORE:
I had a lot of time for myself during the days because David had meetings with Hollywood people, so just like with the breakfast places I had looked up interesting spots that I wanted to go to. One of those was The Last Bookstore where I could have easily spent an entire day if needed. It was just so amazing!
Fantastical, creative and filled with books, of course! I found myself in front of the Stage/Film/Scriptwriting shelves and was very impressed with myself when I left with only two new books.

BEST MOMENT:
One day I was walking along Melrose Avenue checking out the vintage shops there. I had just tried on a fabulous 50's pencil dress that looked absolutely fantastic on me if it wasn't for the fact that it was a tad too small. When I walked past a store that made new clothes in 50's style I went in there in the hope of finding something similar.
The girl in the store was super helpful and nice and we talked a lot while she helped me find the perfect dress. When I was going to pay for the dress she asked "So, why are you in LA? Work or play?". I told her that my husband and I made a short horror film that went viral and now we're in LA because of the attention the short has gotten in Hollywood.
Oh? What's the name of the horror short?
When I said Lights Out her eyes almost popped out of her skull.
OMG! OMG! OMG! I LOVE Lights Out! OMG OMG ITS YOU! OMG it's been everywhere, on Imgur on reddit- EVERYWHERE!- OMG you could have said "Brad Pitt is outside" and I would have been like- "Meh"- but this- THIS is something I care about and OMG you were so good in it! OMG OMG! She had apparently seen Lights Out a lot of times and talked about the best parts and I was so shocked I just giggled.
Her colleague walked in from a room behind and was wondering what the hell was going on. Ha! It was absolutely wonderful.
Right when I left she called after me Come back soon so we can talk more! and then I heard her tell her colleague about how she needed to see Lights Out because it was AWESOME!
Best moment ever.

BEST WALL ART:

BEST VINTAGE FIND:
This velvet dress that seems to be made after my body, the mint belt, a red sweater and a pair of shoes was all found in a thrift store that I happened upon while looking for a coffee shop and I bought it all for almost no money at all.

BEST WALK:
Apparently people don't walk in LA. Well, I'm not like most people. I walk everywhere.
One day I walked from downtown LA through poor neighbourhoods, through Korea town and all the way to Los Feliz. It took maybe three hours. When I told people about this afterwards they just gaped at me like goldfish before exploding in a You did WHAT? Everybody told me that I have probably seen more of LA than they have. Even the ones that had lived in LA for forever.
No big deal. Haha!
My heel says otherwise though. I'll spare you the photo of the ginormous blister I got...

I ended up outside this 7Eleven for an hour waiting for David to come pick me up during rush hour. I sat on that concrete divider thingy eating fresh fruit and watching the sun set.
A woman parked her car nex to me and when she came back with a cup of coffee she sat in her car with the door open and enjoyed the sunset with me for a while. It's nice, isn't it? she said.
I agreed.
Great weather; not too hot, not too cold.
-Just perfect I said.
She smiled towards me and said It was very nice to meet you before she drove off.
Sometimes it's the small things in life.

BEST RAMEN:
The Bold Ramen at Tatsu. Might not look very tasty but oh, it was!

BEST OUTFIT PHOTO:
Taken with self timer on our hotel balcony. My absolute favourite vintage dress got to come with me to LA. The "Flowerbed dress", as I call it. Perfectly matched with mint cardigan and tights and I was a colour explosion ready for the day.

BEST WEATHER:
The two tiny clouds over Santa Monica fighting an impossible battle.

BEST SURPRISE FIND:
On the weekend we went to friends who live close to Santa Cruz. On our way there we had to stop because David had a conference call. We found a little road where we could park and I walked off with my camera and my iPhone to check out the surroundings. I found an abandoned trailer and took a gazillion self portraits. Here's a few of them.

BEST ROADTRIP:
The trip to Santa Cruz was great and our friends live at an absolutely amazing place in the Santa Cruz mountains. The sun sifted through the fog and redwood trees. It was magical! I brought my camera with me on this trip so I have a post planned with all those photos.

CRAPPIEST REALISATION:
One thing I felt very acutely during this trip was how USA has a long way to go in regards of gender equality. I have never been treated more like a child in my life. It was quite awful actually.
Every day I got called Mrs Sandberg even though my name is Lotta Losten and nothing else. In Sweden that doesn't happen. Never has anybody taken for granted that my name is anything before asking me. I may be married to David but I am not his property. It's really weird to realise that what I am used to back home, what I think is absolutely obvious and doesn't need explanations is apparently extremely new and controversal in a country that looks at itself as the Best Country in the World.
It's not very hard to see women as people. To see them as individual human beings and not jus a Mrs to a Man with a full name. Well, apparently it's not that easy for some people.
It makes me furious.
My name is Lotta Losten. I don't answer to anything else.

BEST VIEW:
From our hotel balcony one evening when the moon looked just perfect.

MOST BORING THING:
I got the worst cold of my life the last week in LA. I was completely out of it for a couple of days. Here I have gathered enough strength for a self portrait showing just how bored I was.

MOST WONDERFUL MOMENT:
I was standing in the Starbucks line waiting for my order. In front of me in the queue was a woman in the most beautiful Niqab I've ever seen, it was black with golden embroidery on. Her eyes are the only part of her face showing and they are gorgeous.
When she has her coffee and is about to pass me she sees me, put her hand on my arm and says You are absolutely beautiful. I can see in her eyes that she's smiling warmly and then she sweeps her hand up and down in the air infront of me, all the way from my blue and neon green tights covered legs to my Sgt Pepper Jacket to my long hair and repeats Just beautiful before she leaves the coffee place with the niqab flowing behind her.
I was left standing there smiling with heated red cheeks when the barista called out A Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte for Lottie!.

BEST RESTAURANT:
The Commissary at The Line Hotel. A restaurant situated in a beautiful greenhouse on top of a building in Korea Town with wonderfully weird menus and really good food.

As I mentioned really quickly earlier in this post we went to LA because of Lights Out. David has managers and agents there and they are working on making Lights Out into a feature film. It's exciting times, dear friends and readers! I hope to be able to tell you more in the not too distant future.
Bring on 2015, I say!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday if you celebrate that.
I had a couple of great days with my family, and after a few really hectic months I'm now ready for a new year with my head filled with lots of new ideas.
Talk to you soon again!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hi!
It's advent calendar time!
Those of you who have followed this blog for a few years probably know that I always make a silly advent calendar in december that forces me to be creative every day from the first of december up until christmas eve on the 24th.
Last year I made a GIF every day and the year before that I put my face in old Christmas postcards. Just to give you two examples.
This year I'm stepping up my game.

I'm doing a sitcom!

A silly, stupid 90's sitcom called A Whole Lotta Christmas (of course, because what else should it be called!?) and every day I will post a new (super short) episode.
As every year my advent calenders are not planned ahead, they are meant to be spontaneous and encourage me to come up with new ideas as I go, all the way up to christmas. So don't expect any masterpiece here, I make these for fun together with my ever so amazing husband David, and I hope you too will find it funny!

Let me introduce you to Perky and Grumpy: An odd couple of roommates that celebrate their first christmas of living together. Follow along as they get into Christmas Spirit, whatever that may mean for the two of them.
And just like you guys, I have no idea how this will end.

Enjoy!

/Lotta

Hi!
SO much has been going on lately. Let's take a peek, shall we?!

It was almost Halloween and that got me in the mood of taking spooky self portraits. Here's three of them:

Vintage Nurse Cape weather on the cemetery at dusk.
Scared a few people by walking around the graves looking shady (or trying to find a good tombstone to lay my phone on and take a picture with the self timer).

The Lights Out hallway is a constant source of creativity.

One lazy morning, wearing the dressing gown sewn by my mother out of beautiful vintage lace curtains.

David and I made our horror short Coffer in time for Halloween. Here's a behind the scenes photo showing how David got in character.

And if you want to see how David and I made the film David did a Behind the Scenes video on Coffer. You can find that here.

A november rose at the cemetery.

Opening night for the play "Perfect Life AB" was getting closer and I had lines to learn!

When we emptied the chest before filming Coffer I found some long forgotten treasures in a bag.

My beloved Vintage nurse cape and, if I may say so myself, some Rita Hayworth-y hair!

And this has become a favourite outfit for me.
The red vintage hat is really lovely, but since I don't own any black coats it hasn't been used that much. It doesn't really go with any of the colourful coats I own so it has been hanging on the wall, forever waiting.
Until I realised I could pair it with my over sized thrifted cardigan and a big scarf!
I'm calling it my "Annie Lennox Look".
It's getting too cold now though so I might need to find a black coat soon...

One day I got a new phone AND sushi. It was a good day. As you can see.

Hair hair everywhere.

(see! The "Annie Lennox Look" again!)
Waiting for the rest of Teater Esther sitting on the pink plastic chair that very much resembles a toilet throne.

Teater Esther (well, some of us: Lisa, Frida and I) hard at work making scenography for our play.

We spent a day and evening making the scene look all pink and beautiful. David was helping with lights and stuff and here he takes a break on stage.

A little later in the evening. Time for Hanna to take a little break in the middle of the stage.

Me peeking though the curtains looking like a very happy and excited red apple.

Testing the cookies I baked in the middle of the night to sell during the play's intermission. The recipes is from my grandmother and it makes the best cookies ever.

Perky and Grumpy in the elevator. Part 2.
(To see part 1, click here.)

It was my birthday on november 7.
It might be one of my best birthdays this far. Coconut frozen yoghurt, great presents, sushi lunch, opening night of our play (It went AWESOME!) and after that Teater Esther and our friends went to a restaurant to celebrate. Such a lovely lovely day!
And don't be fooled by the number of lights in the frozen yoghurt and the childlike happiness in my face; I am now 33 years old.

A pre show selfie in the dressing room.

The colourful life of our neighbours.

My mother and father came to Gothenburg on saturday to see the play. I took the opportunity to trick them into a family selfie in the elevator!

Yesterday there was a rooftop meeting on the house next to ours.

And you know what!? David and I are going to LA for some still very secret, but oh so exciting, stuff! Sorry (not sorry) for the teasing but it just makes me so happy I might burst!
Sun and warmth and adventures, here we come!

Talk to you soon again!

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Oh! And it has come to my attention that the link to the little video I made on how to pronounce my name in my last post didn't work.
It has now been fixed! You can see the video here if you want too.

Hej! Happy Halloween!

So, last week we got this tweet from Raindance Film Festival asking us to be a part of their 14 second horror film competition.

Earlier people had sent links to us about a 6 seconds horror film competition but we thought that was just way too short to build up some tension. But 14 seconds, hey, that's more than double the time and maybe it would be cool to make something super quick and fun.
So we did!

Such a sad story! The tears are actually real tears of sadness, and the onion I had thought of using to get the tears flowing lay untouched in the kitchen. The rest of the evening I felt all drained. Like I had been crying for real reasons.

David has been on a roll lately creating awesome behind the scenes videos and he even did one for this super short film. You can see it here.

Earlier in the week David made a video about how he creates the sounds for our films, and I think it is so fun and interesting!
One thing we realised when talking about the sounds he has recorded was that I have taken photos of him on many, many of those occasions. You can see a bunch of them in the video. After it was uploaded I even found a few more. Like this one:

My favourite photos of David recording sounds are the one with the sheep in the video thumbnail and the one where he chases a hen with the microphone. It's just so funny! Sadly I couldn't find the photo where he's interviewing some cows in a meadow so you'll just have to imagine that for yourself.

And a couple of days ago I decided to make a little video on how to pronounce my name (and how NOT to) since that has turned out to be a real struggle for people outside of Scandinavia.
It is quite hard to blend it into english, so I definitely understand. It just doesn't sound the way it does when speaking in Swedish. David is getting real good at it in his Behind the scenes videos though so I'm thinking it's all about practice.
So let's start practicing, okay! :-)

Oh! And today we found out that Lights Out won the Audience Award in the RoughCuts short film event. Yay!

That's a good way to start the weekend.

Hope you are having a great Halloween! I am spending the entire weekend with Teater Esther since it's only one week left until opening night! So exciting!
If you're in the Gothenburg area and plan to come see Perfect Life AB it is high time to get your tickets. Opening night is almost sold out!
Read more about the shows on the facebook event.

Talk to you soon!

/Lotta