a tuesday music mix

I've been kind of obsessed with 8tracks lately. You can search for literally thousands of user-uploaded playlists using different tag words or genres. It's been my go-to for discovering some new music. Well, after browsing and playing numerous playlists for the past few months, I decided to make a quickie mix of my own. I've been on a real ambient/down-tempo/electronic music mood lately, so....yeah.

1. Manual // Keeps Coming Back

2. Atlantic Drop // Flight Over The Atlantic

3. Krishan Vadivelu // Forte

4. Broke For Free // The Gold Lining

5. Washed Out // Before

6. Arms and Sleepers // Kepesh

7. Brian Eno // Deep Blue Day

8. Maxence Cyrin // Where Is My Mind

9. This Will Destroy You // They Move On Tracks of Never-Ending Light

Feel free to follow me on 8tracks for future mixes :)

this movie and this song

I watched the movie Starlet recently, and this great little indie flick gave me all the feels. I was blown away by the performances of the two lead characters. Poignant, and touching, and melancholy.

 

Not only did I love the story, but the score by Manual was such a perfect, ethereal addition to the film. This track has pretty much been stuck in my head and playing on a loop.

 

left coast roadtrip part three // san francisco

Day 2 & 3. I'm not gonna lie, the visit to San Francisco was a bit short and more hurried than I would've liked. But we did manage to get our tintype photos taken, reminisce about Spain over tapas and sangria, and play tourists for a few hours at the Golden Gate Bridge and in Chinatown. 

We had about an hour to kill before our tintype portrait appointment, so we parked the car and just wandered around Valencia Street. Lo and behold, we came across a few Spanish tapas restaurants, so we picked one at random and enjoyed a light meal with some killer sangria. It was perfect, and I kept joking that our Spain radar was on point.

And then off to Photobooth to get our tintype portraits taken! The mister especially enjoyed the free PBR they offered.

Here's an instagram I took while he was having his portrait taken. The folks at Photobooth are super great; they even let us into the darkroom so we could watch our prints being developed.

We've officially been tintyped.

How could I visit SF for the first time and NOT photograph the Golden Gate Bridge at least once, right? You kinda just have to. Even though I usually don't go crazy for architectural landmarks,  it was pretty neat to see it in person. Much prettier than I expected. Meanwhile, all the SF locals are all, "What's the big deal, it's just a boring bridge."

Then we got super touristy, and headed to Chinatown for some lunch. And I have to admit, my first impression was not that great, due to some extremely rude shopkeepers who refused to exchange bills for quarters for our parking meter. I'm sure they could smell "out-of-towner" on us. So we had to make it a quickie lunch at some place I forget the name of, and the food was okay. The mister claimed (as he always does) that Wo Hop in New York City is infinitely better, but I was just ready to get out of Rudetown and hit the road for Big Sur. The icing on the cake? We got an $80 parking ticket for parking in a commercial loading zone. Lovely!

I definitely want to visit San Francisco again, and for longer. We barely scratched the surface this time around. 'Til next time.

left coast roadtrip part two // hearst castle

On day two of our roadtrip, we drove towards San Simeon, where we visited the epic Hearst Castle, brought to life by William Randolph Hearst himself (and technically, his architect, Julia Morgan). Some friends had told me Hearst Castle was one of those places you don't dare pass up if you're driving through, so like good little tourists, we made a stop to see what this castle was all about.

Just to get to the castle itself involves a five mile ride in a bus from the visitor center to the very top of the hill, which is pretty neat in itself. You know you're pretty dang important if your friends have to drive five miles of twisty roads up a mountain just to get to your house.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not a fan of 'ole Willy's interior decor. Waaayy too stuffy for me. But hey, nice tapestries.

This room is called the Refectory, which sounds like a place you'd get quarantined for bubonic plague or something. But nope, just a place for fancy dinner parties with 'ole Hearst.

THIS POOL. Someone needs to throw a Gatsby-style pool party, and invite me immediately.

Walking around the gardens and terraces was so lovely. It was easy to tell that Hearst was a big fan of Spanish architecture. And having lived in Spain, I almost felt like I was visiting the Alhambra in Granada again. It was gorgeous.

So I guess if you're Mr. Hearst, having one gigantic pool isn't enough. The Neptune Pool is a fantastically gorgeous indoor pool that I would've happily paid money to swim in. I mean, look at it! The crazy reflections, the tile work...it's insane. Beautifully insane.

You can just make out the ocean if you look through the clouds. What a view. Fancy people live in fancy houses on top of fancy hills. That's pretty much the lesson of the day folks.

Next up on the road trip....San Francisco :)

left coast roadtrip part one // quirky tavern, quirky inn

It's wanderlust-travel-photo time! The mister and I took our little trip up the coast only last month, but it already feels like ages ago. So much happened as soon as we got back from that trip: our landlords told us we had to move, the mister departed on his wooden ship for another long deployment, and I had to look for a new home all by my lonesome.

So these photos are way overdue, and since we stopped at various places along the way, I shall break them up into separate blog posts. So consider this part one :)

Our first stop was Santa Barbara, and it was just a quickie stop since we needed to head to San Luis Obispo to spend the night. I remembered reading about this neat place called the Cold Spring Tavern, a former stagecoach rest stop from the late 1800s.

This place was awfully charming, and the food was so good! Everything tasted like a home-cooked meal, and the woody, smokey smells of things cooking outside reminded us of his home in Pennsylvania. Husband-approved.

If we ever go back, that "live music & dancing" thing sounds pretty rad. I bet it's a totally different atmosphere at night.

And then we were off to San Luis Obispo, or more specifically, the Madonna Inn! This was probably the first time the mister and I stayed at a hotel strictly for the purpose of just hanging out at a hotel. Because this is no ordinary hotel. I had heard about this magical place and its themed rooms, and the pink steakhouse inside, and the pink bar, and thought to myself, "Well naturally we need to spend a night here, and experience the glorious-ness firsthand."

Our first couple hours were spent enjoying their pool with adult beverages by our side, and it was fantastic. Lots of families there with their kids, lots of pregnant women for some reason, and several busty blonde types celebrating someone's bachelorette party I think. Lots of good people-watching. This was the part where I put my digital camera away and shot a bunch of stuff on my film camera. So no pretty pool pictures here, sorry.

 

We need to talk about this dining room for a second. What a glorious place that is. Just unabashedly, shamelessly pink. Grown men eat giant hunks of steak here, and they love it. And they feel like men as they order another scotch and stretch their arms out on all that pink vinyl.

We decided to keep it casual and have dinner at their Silver Bar instead. The full menu from the steakhouse was available, and my husband later said the steak he ordered was one of the best he's ever had. And you can't really see it in the photo above, but off to the right is a dance floor, and when a live band started playing oldies, we people-watched some more, and ended up dancing to a song or two.

And the room. When I was booking this place online, there were only like five or six themed rooms to choose from (booo), but out of those five or six, the Captain's Bridge room had (to me) the most pleasing color palette and decor. Why hello, sweet chesterfield couch, I am going to sit on you with my husband and take silly photos of ourselves, because that's what I like to do when I'm in a great-looking hotel room. (See here, here, here, and here.)

This is one of those places I would happily return to again and again, and just make it a vacation tradition. Especially with my future kiddos. We'd all have a blast staying in a different room each time, so the kids wouldn't get all bored like "Ugh, not this hotel again." And the mister and I would win the "Cool Parents" award for life. But okay, back to the present. This place was the perfect way to end our first day. Stay tuned for day two at the Hearst Castle :)

goodbye, sweet home...

It's amazing what can happen in two weeks. A mere two weeks ago, I was pretty damn carefree, still on a high from my trip up the coast with the mister (photos to come soon!), but also preparing for the mister's departure for another long deployment. And then bam. Our landlords notified us without any warning that they were selling the house pretty much immediately, so could we please find somewhere else to live? Holy crap.

Long story short, I found another place, and I'm moving there in a few days, but before I do, I wanted to pay a little homage to this cute little place I've called home for the past year and eight months.

Note: I took these photos as a paid gig for the realtor who was selling the house. Weird, but not so weird? I think maybe she could tell I was a photographer when she first walked through the house, from the random cameras and camera gear lying around? Or maybe the landlord told her? Who knows.

Goodbye, sweet living room. You were small, but I felt I cozied you up a bit. And so many windows! You got the best light. Perfect for plants in that corner (okay, so I killed a bunch of plants in that corner along the way, but still). And that wood and pipe shelving unit was perfectly measured for that wall! I am praying it will still work in the new place. But I love this room, and I will miss it.

I mean, c'mon, we had just put up those shelves like a month ago. Can't a girl just enjoy some shelves for more than a month? Alas, no, she cannot. Goodbye, sweet office. I will miss your little porthole window. This is where the magic happened. The photo editing, the blogging. The wondering why my husband needed to play four hours of Starcraft. And dang, I'm gonna miss that view of the front yard.

Goodbye, sweet kitchen. Sure, you didn't have fancy stainless steel appliances or some uber-granite countertops, but you were roomy, and bright, and had the perfect space for a breakfast nook. And again, more amazing light from all the windows. I'm such a sucker for good light. Also, I took this, this, and this in front of that chalkboard wall.

Goodbye, sweet bedroom. More windows everywhere. A wall heater that didn't work, which led to super amounts of freezing my arse in the mornings in the winter months ( I know, San Diego's "winter" is probably laughable to most, but hey, we acclimated). The Jesus painting that we found in the garage and couldn't not hang up. The creaky and slightly tilted floors.

Dammit, I have a feeling I'll never have a closet this size ever again. Sniff. And yes, this room was horribly insulated, so it went from raging hot in summer to cold as balls in winter, but who cares when it holds all your crap? I will even miss that wonky door and having to shift the locks every four months due to old-house-warping-and-shifting. Can I just take this closet to the new house? Can we make that happen?

And this. It was all about this. The place where we had friends over to eat, drink, play bocci ball, or just sit around the fire pit on chilly nights. And the fruit trees! Last summer, there were so many figs and lemons, I couldn't keep up. And no more free avocados. Sigh. I will miss the free fruit. Free fruit is a wonderful thing.

I took this photo back in February, with the welcome home banner behind us to celebrate the mister's homecoming from overseas, and I'm really glad I documented this. Not just for him coming home, but that it represents our short but memory-filled time at this little house. A house that we made into a home. I will miss its charm and quirks, but I look forward to the next place. A place we will make into a home as well :)