Overdue Update

Howdy! :)

Sorry about the gap in posting, but I've spoken to you between the gap so you all know what's going on. As of now, I've decided to rent a car and drive home in October, and then fly back at the end of the two weeks. I can't begin to say how excited I am about that!

Last weekend was pretty laid-back. Saturday, we went over to my friend Bill's house and  had breakfast - Bill made homemade Chilaquiles. (Tortilla chips cooked in a red pepper sauce served with egg on top - the perfect breakfast! In the evening, (as you know) we went to the New Folk festival in LA. We had an AMAZING time.
 It was at a place called Zorthian Ranch, an out of the way place used for filming locations and photography sets. There was about a 10 min walk/hike to the ranch after you park, up this road:

 There were 4 small stages like this one:

 (but it looked a lot more fun full of people and music!)

This is the view we got to see around the ranch. The ranch had chickens, horses, goats, beehives, and who knows what else. The vibe was more hippy than country but it was still a really nice escape (and made me home sick!)
Here are two songs from a singer we liked a lot there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87OJBtxkV84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRsiUeoCNm4

The week flew by and before I knew it, it was the weekend again and time to do another post. Here's a new rug we got for our entryway:

 Oh and i wanted to share the dinner Nelson cooked for me on Friday night, its a jumble of things, one's a chicken dish and the red stuff is chilaquiles that he made from scratch as well (trying to make it better than bill).

And also, as you know, we went to Disneyland! We had a blast. It was soooooo-ooooo hot, but being able to use my silver pass to get in and out is a real treat.

Here's a few pictures we took of each other.

Now for Sunday we are gonna get a few errands taken care of and I'm going to work a little bit on my freelance. 
I love you guys and hopefully talk to you soon!
Elle

Hi there!
Yesterday Nelson and I went around getting things for our apartment. We also ended up at an antique store in Pasadena and found some potentially neat things for our apartment:

Although neat, probably nothing we'll be buying soon.

These are some craigslists finds! A cute lamp and a side table for the corner of our entryway.

Some neat pillows made from antique Turkish rugs:

And we finally got some curtains for our living room. We got these from World Market. I LOVE them, it makes our place feel very cozy.

 

We did some online shopping too - and once we get everything delivered I will take the final pictures and put them up on the blog for you to see!

 This morning we made breakfast and ate outside.

 Nelson made scrambled eggs-stuffed Bell Peppers with pan roasted tomatoes and potatoes on the side.

 They were sooooo-

 -oooooooooooooo good.

 My contribution was a fig and apricot galette. (Lazy Pie).  We had some leftover figs that would be going bad soon so I decided to do something with them. We didnt have enough to make a whole pie so I picked up some apricots from the store to use as well. That's apricot preserves and cream cheese spread out first on the crust.

Then the fruit! There are figs in there, I promise :)

 The final thing, baked to perfection!

 For the rest of today I am going to be working on freelance, so nothing more to blog about there.
I miss you all and I can't wait to see you soon!

Love,
Elle

First Post!

Hey there Mom and Dad! (and jackie and jonathan and sam)

So Jackie and I decided it would be good to start posting up stuff thats going on in our lives, to help our little family stay better connected.
So I'll just put up a few things every weekend to show you what all we've been up to over here in LA.

This first thing you've probably all seen - but it was our first big project we did in our yard!

Before:

After!

Still not fully finished but its on its way :)

This is what our yard's ground looked like when we first got here:

Hard packed, dusty, dry and not very nice to look at.
So we decided to do something about it. We opted for planting seed instead of sod (based on your advice!). So in order to plant grass seed, we'd need to dig up that hard-packed soil and mix in some good bagged soil with it. We decided we'd dig about 6 inches down into the soil.

Me wielding my weapon of choice:

 During excavation:

 

We were too gung-ho and ended up digging a foot  instead of 6 inches!

  Piles of dirt. (Some of it got into the house...)

After we were done digging, we filled the giant pit we had created up with dirt and mixed it in with good soil. It was such a rewarding experience!

Ahhh... smooth lawn.

After that we added in (temporarily) the pavers for the patio area. Now to wait for the seeds to start sprouting!

So about 2 weeks later the grass looked about like this:

We also put in the pavers properly, with 10 bags of leveling sand. When we had those down, the easiest part was filling all the remaining spaces with mulch. The mulch is rubber, so when you step on it, its really fun and squishy, and there's no danger of getting splinters in your toes!

Here we are testing out the patio area with the neighbor's patio furniture :P 

Too perfect! 

Friday night, Nelson bought a fun strategy board game called Pandemic. We played it outside on the patio and hung up some lights, with a glass of wine, of course. :) 

Sorry for the bad quality of these - we had to take a video and use stills from it in order to take a photo together.

And here's the grass as of this morning. Still patchy in a few places but looking beeeeeeutiful!

Alright, stay tuned for another post! 

Love,

Elle