They open up Blind Barber in Culver City a few months ago. It’s a barber shop during the day, and a secret bar at night! I’ve been wanting to go for the longest time and finally went tonight, it’s a really cool place!
friends
Christmas Day
I woke up in cracker dawn to take the first flight out of Denver to make it in time for Christmas lunch in Hacienda Heights.
Spending Christmas with my LA family is the next best thing to spending Christmas with my Swedish family!
We started off with a Gingerbread House Decoration Contest. We teamed up two and two and my team made an awesome 4 story house! Unfortunately, the rest of the teams took too long to put their houses together and the icing provided to glue the houses together was not that great, so our house fell apart.
My teammate Annie is a quick thinker though so we named our project Sandy after the recent west coast storm, so we managed to win the contest!
After all the fun and games it was time to get serious with the White Elephant Gift Exchange.
I scored a bottle of wine!
Christmas Day
I woke up in cracker dawn to take the first flight out of Denver to make it in time for Christmas lunch in Hacienda Heights.
Spending Christmas with my LA family is the next best thing to spending Christmas with my Swedish family!
We started off with a Gingerbread House Decoration Contest. We teamed up two and two and my team made an awesome 4 story house! Unfortunately, the rest of the teams took too long to put their houses together and the icing provided to glue the houses together was not that great, so our house fell apart.
My teammate Annie is a quick thinker though so we named our project Sandy after the recent west coast storm, so we managed to win the contest!
After all the fun and games it was time to get serious with the White Elephant Gift Exchange.
I scored a bottle of wine!
Martin Hsu Pop Up Shop
Martin open up a pop up shop at JapanLA on Melrose today, we swung by to check it out and give our support!
Swedish Christmas Fair
I get as excited every year for the SWEA Christmas Fair at the Shrine in Downtown LA. It brings a little bit of the Scandinavian Christmas traditions to Los Angeles, and it seems like more and more people attend each year!
I honestly don’t care to much about the dancing, but I like their cloths, and it’s always nice to show my non Swedish friends what the traditional Swedish dance is all about.
I kind of forced my friends to get up there so I could take photos and laugh at them – it seemed like they had a good time though!
Aaah yes! The open face shrimp sandwich!
I love the Lucia! And now it was my friends turn to laugh at me as I was singing along to the tunes… They thought it was a little weird at first that I knew all the lyrics, but then I explained to them that Swedish kids don’t really have a choice but to learn these songs, and every little village in the country have their own Lucia on December 13th of each year.
Rock n Roll Camp for Girls Fundraising Event
My friend works with the organisation Rock n Roll Camp for Girls and I was invited to a fundraiser at a huge party house in Santa Monica, the house was amazing!
The two-girl band Two Piece Extra Spicy played a few songs, they were totally rocking it!
Nik West apparently just came back from touring with Prince and was playing base and sang a couple of songs for us.
Since it was a fundraiser, I spend $20 on the lottery and won a Fender Stratocaster!
I’m gonna have to learn how to play it now!
6th Annual Beer Calendar
Tonight was the night to exchange the beers for the Advent Beer Calendar.
Here’s how the beer calendar works; (works best if you are 6 or more people who are in on it)
Everyone buy 4 six packs or beer each, plus an optional Christmas Day beer for yourself. Holiday Editions, rare beers, beers from a country you’ve never heard of, beers you’ve never seen before, beers you have seen many times but have never had a chance to try, beers you think are the best beer you’ve ever tasted and are pretty certain not a lot of people know about etc are encouraged to buy.
Once everyone bought their 4 six pack of beers (24 beers) plus your optional bonus beer, you wrap them all in tin foil. Try not to mix your beers, keep the six packs separated. Set a date and time that works for everyone when you can exchange the beers.
We use a deck of cards to determine who got to pick their beer first. Everyone got to pick a card and the lowest card get to pick their beer first. Once everyone have their first beer, we draw a new card from the deck.
When we have collected all 24 beers for our calendar we wait patiently until December 1st when we get to open the first beer, and then one beer a day everyday until Christmas Day! Fun!
Pacific Coast Highway
We headed back to Los Angeles today, but stopped by Martin’s studio first to see where all the magic happens.
We took PCH down and the scenery was amazing! I didn’t really know it was gonna take us 12 hours to drive though… I think PCH is totally worth the ride, but I would do it over two or three days if I were to do it again, everything in one stretch is a little to much.
Thanksgiving in San Francisco
I woke up my parents at 4am this morning so we could drive up to San Francisco and don’t hit the holiday traffic. They didn’t come to America to sleep anyway, right?
We made it up to San Francisco before 11am and the first stop was the Golden Gate Bridge.
A view over Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge and San Francisco.
After our sightseeing we headed over to friends to celebrate thanksgiving. They wanted to see my parents new house, so mom had a tour on the phone.
Thanksgiving – not a big deal for me as I did not grow up with it, but for some it is, having excel sheet of who is doing what and recipes are important! All color coded off course.
Turkey is baked and ready to be carved!
The mash is always by favorite at a Thanksgiving dinner, I am a sucker for potatoes.
Coffee after dinner. Wait, someone put an octopus in my cup!
After the Wedding
I swung by the wedding venue to see if they needed help with cleaning up, the bride was not feeling so hot…
