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summer food

I went grocery shopping the other day while I was hungry. Bad idea usually. But I came home with a few extra things I didn't have on my list just because they looked good (watermelon, cucumber and basil) and then proceeded to make myself a snack to go with the sunny day and my good mood. I ended up with these little bite sized snacks, just a cucumber slice with watermelon, goat cheese (already had it in the fridge) and basil. They were ridiculously tasty and so refreshing.

The next day I made myself a salad with the same ingredients. It was also very very good. In conclusion I will simply say, I am not ready for summer to be over...

vintage dress heaven

One of the last stops we made in Southern California was to what is essentially my dream home, a giant warehouse full of beautiful vintage dresses. Shareen Vintage was next to impossible to find, we missed it a few times but persevered and it was totally worth the trouble. Inside this no boys allowed haven (no dressing rooms, just trying things on in the aisles willy nilly) was a meticulously organized array of vintage. Printed cotton frocks sorted by decade, so much beading and tulle and of course all of the crazy psychedelic prints it was total eye candy. I could have stayed there forever but had to settle for a few hours. The girls working there were sweet and knowledgeable and very helpful and in the end it was just a wonderful little dress up play date. And of course treasures were found. More on that later...

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We used airbnb to find a place to stay in Venice Beach and lucked into a wonderful studio walking distance from everything. I particularly loved this door.

Vacation.....mischellany

Just a bunch of the random snaps from my trip, including a very colorful pile of luggage all ready to go!

Vacation...the walls and signs

LA in general and Venice Beach (where we were staying) in particular, were very colorful. There were so many beautiful murals, cleverly painted shop facades and fun signs that I couldn't help but snap up a few of my favorites (especially this Chewbacca bus below!)

Vacation...the scenery

I have about a million pictures of blue sky and expanses of water so I tried to pick just a few of those. Of course it was all incredibly beautiful and colorful and the sunsets were so very colorful (apparently it's the smog or so I've been told).

Vacation.....the food

So I was on vacation there for a little bit, and now am trying to get back into the groove with work and business and the crazy back and forth weather up here (almost raining this morning, sunny at 12 now weirdly overcast but still warm even muggy???) and I've been slowly going through all the photos that I took. I only had my phone with me, and honestly, as I was wearing a muumuu or just a bathing suite most of the time, it was hard to stash my phone somewhere easily accessible sort of just having it in my hand all the time so there were lots of times when I just had to take a picture with my eyes, and hope I could remember whatever cool/delicious/pretty thing it was for later. As a memory.

However even with all these restrictions there were an awful lot of photos at the end. So I've tried to divide them up into fun categories a bit and will be spacing them out over the week so there is no photo overload fatigue. This first bunch is of food. Because what is a vacation without lots of super tasty things to eat and drink (and of course this is the tiniest of peeks into what we ate because usually we were almost finished before we would remember that we should have taken a picture...)