Griffith Observatory on film
May 18, 2011 Comments Off
A few months ago, I got a toy film camera. I put some iso400 film in it and just got it developed this week. I love the color saturation of film. Here are some shots of our LA trip to the observatory. Check back soon for pics from portland.
1 year ago….
March 21, 2011 Comments Off
Happy 1 year, my love! You make me the happiest, luckiest woman in the world :)
Matt’s Birthday Dinner at Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen
February 17, 2011 Comments Off
Last night we celebrated Matt’s 29th Birthday with some friends at Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen in Old Town Orange. We had such a wonderful time :) We always have a good time hanging out with Matt and Kara, we should do it more often! The food as always, was amazing. If you haven’t tried their mole, you simply must. This is definitely one of Drew and I’s favorite restaurants. Happy Birthday, Matt! and thanks for picking such a great place for your birthday dinner!
Birthday Trip to LA
February 13, 2011 Comments Off
For my birthday this year, Drew decided to take me to the observatory. I love the stars. I don’t really know anything about astronomy but the stars have always had this magical quality for me. My favorite thing about going camping is that we’re far away from the city and the sky is so clear. I’ve been wanting to go to the Griffith Observatory in LA for a long time now, but we’ve just never gotten around to it, so I was very excited to finally be there. Since we don’t go to LA very often, we decided to make a whole day of it.
First stop: Bottega Louie for brunch. It’s a gorgeous space near downtown LA with high ceilings which give a feeling of airiness that you rarely feel in restaurants. The brunch food was ok, nothing really special (thus no pics :p) but the dessert! I love macarons, and I can make a pretty good one, but they had so many wonderful flavors. It took all my willpower to only pick 3 :p They also had cupcakes and cakes and tarts and eclairs. I think if I lived closer, I would be here all the time getting small treats :)
Once we were full, we headed up to the observatory. It was a beautiful clear day so you could see the whole city in front of you and a good view of the Hollywood sign. I had never seen the sign before! The observatory isn’t large, but it had good exhibits and we watched one of the shows in the planetarium, which I highly recommend doing. Our plan was to see the exhibits and the solar telescope during the day, then head out for dinner and come back at night to look through the telescope so once we looked through the exhibits, we headed out for dinner.
Dinner time! The observatory is obviously the highlight of the trip, but I think if you asked both Drew and I what we enjoyed the most, we would probably both say the food at Father’s Office. I had heard so many good things about this place (from Todd mostly) that it had become a must go for us. Although they do have other things on their menu, there’s really only one thing anyone gets, the burger. They only make it one way, no substitutions, no additions. It was the best burger either of us had ever had. Really, if you’re in LA, you have to go. It was tasty, beefy, sweet, salty, the onions, the cheese, everything was great! The sweet potato fries were also really good and they have a great selection of beers on draught as well as bottles. I think Drew’s face says it all :p
I suppose the only thing that didn’t go as planned was that it took us waaay longer than I anticipated to go from the observatory to dinner and back. The distance wasn’t long, but I vastly underestimated LA traffic on a Saturday night. By the time we got back to the observatory, the line for viewing the telescope was too long for us to get a chance to use it before closing. However, there were some amateur astronomers there who let us look through their still very powerful telescopes and we saw some star clusters and a nebula :) I would say, however, that I would probably not go back to look at stars, LA is just too bright to see very much. It was really pretty though to see the lights of LA twinkling below :)
Thanks, Drew Frank for a great birthday trip!
an afternoon at the camp in costa mesa
January 15, 2011 Comments Off
I’ve lived in orange county for more than 3 years, but only recently did I begin to really explore the area. One of the places I’ve come to really enjoy is The Camp in Costa Mesa. I first saw this place a couple of years ago when I was looking for a bike and found a bike shop here, but I didn’t really bother to look around. Later, I found out about Old Vine Cafe, which I still haven’t had dinner at but did enjoy brunch there once. Now, there’s several restaurants include Valhalla Table and a new Italian place called Ecco I want to try. Milk + Honey is one of my new favorite places, the lavender tea latte is delicious and the setting is just so cute! 
Note: While I was walking around the camp, I was stopped by a lady from Greenpeace. I have nothing against greenpeace, although I think some of their methods are over the top, but I dislike being pressured into signing up for something I’m not sure if I even support. She kept trying to convince me to sign up and donate even after I said I was not interested and proceeded to try to guilt me into it by saying if I don’t act then many more whales will die today and how if I research about them online and end up donating online, then that money doesn’t get to go to the local offices.
The thing is, I don’t donate to the salvation army people at the grocery stores, I don’t give any money to the guy outside trader joes raising money for the homeless, and I’m not going to give my information to some random woman working/volunteering for greenpeace. It doesn’t mean I don’t support these groups or what they are advocating for, but I do my research and I will send my check the organizations that I think are doing some great work and deserves my support. I don’t mind the people at the grocery stores because they don’t ever bother me. At most it’s a “hi, have a good day”. This lady from Greenpeace, however, seemed personally insulted when I declined to sign up and tried to make me feel guilty about the whales the Japanese are killing. She should get some training on how not to turn off people who could possibly be supporters.
