All Manner of Pressing Issues

I am intentionally trying to have more down time this week. I was definitely successful tonight. I have been sitting here in my comfy chair in front of our fireplace since about 4:00 this afternoon. All I have done is knit and work on my Bible study. It has been fabulous. Believe it or not, until Saturday, it had been a week since I had picked up my knitting needles! Tonight I finished a wool scarf and a purple shawl/scarf. I started working on a felted Christmas potholder. I know the potholder sounds lame, but I made some felted potholders earlier in my knitting career and I really enjoy them and use them often, so now I am making some to use for Christmas for fun!

Here are some more pictures from our California trip. I hope you enjoy them!

From Olvera Street we ventured over to Richard Nixon’s library. The setting of his was not quite as majestic as Reagan’s, but the Nixon library had more meat to it as far as the actual presidency goes. The white house above is Richard Nixon’s birthplace which we were able to tour. The helicopter Richard is in front of is the Marine One from the Nixon administration. I think Richard sort of looks like Nixon. My husband is one of the funniest people I know.

Unfortunately we had to rush through the
Nixon library (2 hours), but for good reason. My sweet, romantic husband planned to take me on a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway at sunset in a convertible. He planned this months in advance and it was very special! We drove from the Nixon library to San Diego. That’s all for now on our CA trip!

Hopefully later this week I will have
pictures of my knitting projects to share and I will definitely have more on our
trip.

After a good night’s rest after our long day in L.A./Hollywood we were ready for some more sightseeing. We left Simi Valley and went back to Hollywood one more time. On this day we went to The Hollywood Museum (top left). There we got to see all sorts
of costumes from movies including the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. From there we went on to the Walk of Fame and to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. We also stopped in at the Virgin Records store. Along the way we saw the Kodak Theater, acting schools, and lots of famous people (not really). I was amazed that almost every billboard was advertising a movie. Now that I think about it, that shouldn’t have been surprising. After all, I was in HOLLYWOOD.

Julie Andrews is my all time favorite actress. She won me over in her role in The Sound of Music. Richard’s favorite actor is Jimmy Stewart and I have to admit, Richard can talk just like him.

Last spring I read Split Ends(a great read!!!!) by Kristen Billerbeck. The main character in the book, Sarah, is obsessed with Cary Grant. My intentions were to see his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but that section of the walk was closed for maintenance.

From Hollywood we made our way to Olvera Street in LA. It’s really more of a marketplace than a street, but they didn’t
ask me. We didn’t buy anything, but enjoyed the experience. The pink flowers you see in the picture were everywhere in CA. They are so beautiful! The freshly squeezed fruit juice (pictured left) we got was de-lish! I got watermelon and Richard got mango. I secretly liked my watermelon better.

After Olvera Street on this day of our trip, there were more adventures, but I’ll save those for another time. I hope everyone is having a great weekend. Thank you for the Christmas movie suggestions!

After we spent the majority of the day at the Reagan Library, we went into L.A./Hollywood. We went to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It was most interesting. All of the graves were VERY close together and on almost every headstone there was a picture of the person etched into the stone. It seemed that the majority of the people buried there were Jewish. From the cemetery, the Hollywood sign can be seen.

From the cemetery we went to the Santa Monica Pier. The atmosphere there is very carnival-like, but we enjoyed the view of the water.

After enjoying our walk on the Santa Monica Pier, we had dinner at The Lobster. By this point in the day we were absolutely exhausted, but thoroughly enjoyed our dinner. The food was delicious and the view (pictured right) was beautiful.

Even though we were tired, we went to the Griffith Park Observatory. The view of Los Angeles was phenomenal. We got to look through some telescopes set up on the lawn. We could have waited in a line for an hour to look through “the” telescope at the observatory, but we were too sleepy to wait. From here we went back to our hotel in Simi Valley.

I’ll be back with more on our trip soon!