Solvang / Santa Barbara Vacation

Over Ryan's spring break week last week, we decided to take a long weekend trip over to Santa Barbara and Solvang. It was so much fun!!!

One highlite of our trip: Ostrich Land.

It's exactly what it sounds like - a land full of ostriches. You could even feed them (albeit carefully to avoid them biting you). I love the expression on Ryan's face here, it's like he's having a moment with the ostrich. Precious. 

It was fun to feed them! They also had ostrich eggs you could buy and they were huge!

We stopped in Santa Ynez one morning and had this magnificent view.

This was on our way to Kalyra Winery where Ryan got to do a fun tasting and we bought a bottle that we can both partake in once the babe is born!

On the patio of Kalyra Winery:

And we of course hit up Solvang everyday for fika! We had some great treats everyday, my favorite was this almond-raspberry tart from Olson's Bakery. It was sooooo good. 

And another major highlight of the trip was going to this grand place: Village Spinning & Weaving Shop in Solvang. 

Guess what you guys....I bought my very first spinning wheel!!! This is my trying it out in the shop. I bought an unfinished one, so I need to stain, seal, and assemble it at home. It will be a work in progress, but such a fun one! 

Goodbye Solvang, thanks for the fun trip!

Scandinavia Trip: Norway

The final leg of our trip was checking out Oslo and heading on the Norway in a Nutshell tour from Oslo to Bergen. 

While in Oslo, we took a boat over to Bygdøy peninsula and saw the Viking Ship Museum and the Nordic Folk Museum. Both were great! 

We also walked around Akershus Fortress which was pretty cool.

On our journey to Bergen we got to see some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen! We saw waterfall after waterfall and the fjords were breathtaking. Not to mention we had the perfect weather - bountiful sunshine.

We saw lots of this:

And tons of waterfalls:

It was just beautiful.

I just loved the little houses in the hills:

Oh look, another waterfall!

After a full day of traveling and drinking in the beautiful Norwegian fjords, we arrived in Bergen. I highly recommend seeing the fjords of Norway someday if you haven't already. 

The wharf in Bergen was pretty spectacular as well.

And here we all are in Bergen, Norway!

All in all, we had a fantastic trip and saw tons of Scandinavia! Now all I need to do is print out a few photos so I can frame a couple and constantly think about vacation! I love being on vacation.

Happy weekend!!

Back from the Motherland!

You guys! Scandinavia was amazing!!! 

We arrived in Stockholm and checked right into our hotel in Gamla Stan. And - oh. my. stars. Guess what our hotel had? A fika cabinet! That's right folks, an entire cabinet designated for fika! You opened the cabinet door just expecting a plain cabinet...then bam! Carafes of coffee and fika treats await! It was definitely a highlight of mine in Stockholm. Since we've been home, I've been trying to convince Ryan we need one for our apartment. 

We had a wonderful time in Stockholm and packed a ton into just the two days we were there! We then drove to Gränna and Jönköping and spent the night there. Then we drove to Växjö to see the glassworks (we saw Kosta Boda, Orrefors, and Pukeberg) and got to watch some serious glassblowing. Then off to Denmark we went! We spent 1 whirlwind of a day in Copenhagen before we flew to Oslo. We got see some sweet museums in Oslo and then took off on the Norway in a Nutshell tour to Bergen. It was one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen - it left me in awe. We then spent a day in Bergen and before we knew it we were flying back home. 

Overall, the trip was amazing and went by way too fast. I'm so thankful we got this great opportunity to celebrate with my in-laws (40 years of marriage - woo!) on this fun trip!

I'm still working on uploading all my pictures, but in the meantime here a a few pictures of our trip. Here are me, Ryan, and his mom at the Brahehus Ruins in Gränna, Sweden

Bryggen Wharf in Bergen, Norway

Dinner in Oslo, Norway

The Round Tower in Copenhagen, Denmark

Me and Ryan and Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm (we are so jet-legged in this picture - awake for 30 + hours at this point!)

And last, but not least, a glimpse of our fjord tour in Norway (I have soooo many fjord pictures!)

The trip was perfect (with the exception of the airline loosing my luggage for 5 days...) and I can't wait to go back someday!

New Camera and a trip

 As you probably already know, I have been wanting to get a big-girl camera for quite some time now. And now, it's finally happened! I've been saving up my profits from the craft fairs from last year, and when the camera I had my eye on went on sale at Best Buy last week, I decided to pull the trigger. I'm the proud new owner of the Canon Rebel T3i! 

Being as I'm no professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination, I thought it would be best to test out the new camera on a subject that is pretty hard to take a bad photo of. Thankfully, living in Southern California has its perks, one of which is beautiful beaches. So Ryan and I spent the afternoon in Malibu exploring some beaches and eating at the beach-side seafood restaurant where we had our first date. It was lots of fun and I'm getting the hang of the new camera. I still need to take a class or something, but I'm excited to learn! Feel free to offer any pointers you may have. :)

And then there's always this guy to make a picture look good.

This was his "a man and the sea" pose:

That's all for now. Hope you have a great week!

New Apartment!

After over 2 and a half years in our one-bedroom apartment, the time has come to move!!! In less than two weeks, we will be moving just a few blocks over into a 3 bedroom apartment - I am so excited! Not that I haven't loved our current little place, I do, but it will be so wonderful to have a little more space...and uh, craft room anyone?! Ok, ok...it's technically the office/craft room...but still, a space of my own for crafting! 

Needless to say, my Pinterest boards have been blowing up with apartment ideas. I'm sure many of my posts  this year will have to do with decorating and fun projects for our new space. I'm currently working on finding a large, cheap, area rug for our living room - any ideas?! I'm also going to refinish an older credenza-type piece for our dining room. Pictures to come!

In other, non-apartment news, Ryan and I spent the long weekend over in Phoenix, AZ. We had a grand little time over there. Saw a lot of cacti, went antiquing (no luck this time around), had some good microbrews, and enjoyed the scenic drive from LA. I love getting out of the city, even if it's just for a short while. And now it's already Tuesday!

Fika Friday

It's my favorite day - FRIDAY!!

 

I realize I've been a tad delinquent in posting these days. But I'm back! Life has been busy lately, but in a good way. My crafting buddy, Beth, and I just signed up to do the SWEA Christmas Fair again this December here in Los Angeles (Lucia festival!) and so begins the crafting! We're also thinking about doing another Christmas fair this year...2 in one season?! Are we crazy?! Yes. We definitely are a tad crazy, the good kind of crazy though.

 

 

 

 

This week, I made this homemade BBQ sauce and it turned out pretty fantastic. I did substitute the Worcestershire sauce for tamari but that was it. I also made these blueberry muffins for our to go breakfasts for the week. Also quite delicious. Other than the usual tom foolery, not too much has been happening here. Roller derby is still going great, and I finally picked out my name: Eleanor Throwsevelt, number 1933 (her first year as first lady). I'm loving skating so much!

 

 

So, for the Fika Friday. I didn't have an official fika this week [gasp!] so I decided to do a throwback fika from when Ryan and I were in Japan.

 

Fika Rundown:

 

Where: Tochigi, Japan

Who: Myself and Ryan

What: Japanese coffee and cake

Best part: Japanese cafes are the cutest. It's all in the details and this fika was no exception. Darling decor and delicious, cutesy treats!

 

That's all for now, folks! Happy Labor Day weekend!! :)



Back again!

I'm back!  I had a wonderful summer and early fall, I hope you did too!

Instead of trying to catch everyone up on what I've been doing since my last post (over 2 months ago!!), I'll just pickup from this past weekend.

Ryan and I spend a fantastic weekend in Paso Robles and San Luis Obisbo.  There was a lot of wine tasting involved.  It is harvest season in wine country so we were pretty lucky and got to see how the process starts.  We took a tour of Eberle's wine caves which was pretty sweet.  They offer free tastings and tours so if you're in the area I highly recommend them, they make a pretty mean glass of viognier. 

Here we are happy to be starting our winery tour!

At the next winery, we enjoyed our picnic snacks and some local honey we bought from Pipestone Vineyards.  Pipestone was a really cool vineyard - they are completely solar powered, organic, and practice sustainable farming.  They had their very own beehives and the honey from said bees was delicious!

Our second day we spent in San Luis Obisbo and San Simeon.  Here we took a tour of Hearst Castle which was pretty darn incredible.  

And last, but certainly not least, we checked out the little town of Cambria on our way back home.  And lucky for us, it was the weekend of their Scarecrow Festival!!!  There were hilarious scarecrows placed all throughout the city.  The town itself was pretty quaint, a few restaurants and little stores.  We hit up a couple of the antique shops while we were there. 

A very successful weekend!

 In other news, my niece Hannah is 2 months old already! My how time flies. She is so precious and getting some serious rolls already. Yes, major cuteness!  

Also, I don't know if you heard or not, but California just passed the Cottage Food Law which will allow people to sell baked (non-perishable) goods from their own home.  Prior to this, one would have to rent out a commercial kitchen if you wanted to sell any homemade goods.  So starting Jan. 1, 2013, Ryan and I will be going into the home-bakery business! Wooo!  We are still working out the kinks and deciding on a name, but we are so stoked!

And that about wraps everything up!  I am going to start blogging regularly again and hope to share some craft projects and recipes soon.  I also am getting ready for the Scandinavian Christmas series 2013, so if you or anyone one you know would like to participate, please e-mail me (kathryn dot pickledherring at gmail dot com).

Happy Wednesday! :)

1st Anniversary

Hello blogging world!  I hope you had a great weekend and a fantastic start to your week, it's already almost Wednesday - woo!

Ryan and I celebrated an entire year of marriage yesterday, wow!  This year has flown by.  It's quite hard to believe we've already been married for a year, but at the same time, it feels like we've been married for waaaaay longer.  I'm such a lucky gal to be married to such a wonderful fellow.

We celebrated by venturing over to the beautiful city of Palm Springs, California.  It was an epic weekend!  We did a little self-guided architectural tour, a sweet tram ride up a mountain, laying by the pool, brunch-eating, and had an all-out incredible time.

And since Monday was our actual anniversary day, we celebrated after work with some anniversary pie.  It was delicious.  We went to a little place close to where we lived (we walked) called Republic of Pie.  It's awesome and if you live in the LA area you should definitely check it out!

Not to end on a total bummer or anything, but as I'm sure you've noticed, I've been in quite the blogging slump these days.  I've decided to take a short summer hiatus from the blogging world.  I'll still check in frequently with a random photo or useless piece of information, but until August I will be living up summer here in SoCal!

Happy summer vacation!!!

Nut-butter trio

I have to admit, ever since I made that jazzy almond butter, I can't stop making nut-butters...I'm just so addicted!  I figure there are worse things to be addicted to so I'm going to go ahead and keep cranking out the jars of delicious PB, almond and sunflower butters until I am OD'd on nut-butters.

And to be honest, the sunflower butter isn't my favorite, but it's pretty good with a drizzle of honey on toast.  The spiced almond butter is definitely my favorite.  And the PB was more a novelty to make myself.  Definitely less sweet than your store-bought counterpart, naturally.  

I think I will continue to make the PB and spiced almond butter but perhaps forego another batch of sunbutter.  Even the color looks kinda gross in the photos. Haha.

Unrelated but just as fun, Ryan and I had a blast over at my sister and bro-in-laws' place over this past Easter weekend grilling, eating, gaming, and hanging out with the cutest nephew ever.

He just cracks me up, he's one funny kiddo.

Happy Monday?