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Today is September 1st, and in my mind, that means it is time to start celebrating the fall!

Yesterday, my mom and I went into Michaels, and immediately I was sucked into all of the beautiful fall colors and decorations that were out. Living in an apartment, we can’t go too crazy decorating, because no one really sees it, but I did decide to buy some fake leaves and flowers and put together a fall wreath for our front door!

Isn’t it cute?

After Halloween passes, I can take off the spider web and Halloween garland and just leave it up with the flowers and scarecrow, until it is time to start decorating for Christmas!

Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

I have been told that RSS feeds don’t update when we post new videos of Muggles on our “Muggles in Motion” page. Therefore, please remember to check back there frequently! Muggles may just be able to put a smile on your face or brighten your day!

Yesterday, Timmy had a few things to do, so my mom and I ventured out by ourselves to check out some Hollywood sights. Let me start by saying that besides a couple of errands, I have never driven around Hollywood, or anywhere in California yet, myself. I was actually pretty nervous because the drivers here are crazy, but it was a success! I actually realized I was making a big deal of nothing in my mind, because truly it wasn’t bad at all!

First stop, the Hollywood sign!

We drove up into the Hollywood Hills to get the best possible view of the sign. It also overlooks the Los Angeles Reservoir, which on a clear day, is just gorgeous!

You can just make out downtown Los Angeles way back in the distance.

My mom thoroughly enjoyed it!

So did I, even though I’ve been there! I still get excited to see the sign and always find myself thinking,  “we actually did it, we live here!”

After the Hollywood sign, we made a pit stop at Starbucks, and then we headed over to Mulholland Drive! I didn’t take anymore pictures, because you can see them all here.

After that, we went and had some lunch at the delicious City Wok restaurant, near our apartment.

After lunch, we drove around for a bit and I showed my mom some celebrity homes. We then took a drive over to Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Forest Lawn Cemetery is one of the most famous cemeteries in Hollywood, where a lot of old time celebrities are buried. We didn’t see anyone specific, but we did walk around the grounds a little bit and took some pictures.

They have a replica of the Old North Church from Boston there, where Paul Revere is buried. It looks like the real thing!

They also have a monument dedicated to George Washington:

There are acres and acres of land to explore at the cemetery, but we didn’t stay too long.

After dinner, Timmy,  my mom, Kelley and Irving, took a walk over to Citywalk, up at Universal. That is always a good time, and my mom enjoyed that as well.

Today is her last full day before heading back to North Carolina, just in time for them to be hit by a hurricane! Just a little more incentive for her and my dad to make their way out west!

On Saturday, Timmy and I decided to take my mom up to Malibu, and then take the Pacific Coast Highway back down to Santa Monica. We had never been to Malibu either, so we decided this was the perfect excuse to take a ride. It was absolutely beautiful there!

Some of the landscape looked like we were in Italy, or some other exotic country!

Sometime in the very near future, Timmy and I are going to take another trip up to Malibu to go swimming. Our friend, Kelley has told us that they were actually able to swim with dolphins when they went up there one time! Now that would be cool!

After we drove through Malibu, we headed down the coast to Santa Monica. A trip to California isn’t complete without a glimpse of the Santa Monica pier!

Don’t mind our faces in the photo, I don’t think we were quite ready for the camera to snap a picture! Ha!

For lunch, we walked over to the brand-spankin’ new Santa Monica Place. It is basically a mall without a roof, filled with very high end stores. It’s absolutely beautiful and would be a lot of fun to window shop! This time though, we went up to the third deck, which was full of all kinds of neat restaurants. It actually reminded us of a cruise ship, because you were basically on the roof of the building, and it kind of looked similar to the deck of a cruise ship!

For lunch we went to this really great pizza place called Pizza Antica. It was delicious! I had the most amazing beverage there – Blackberry Basil Lemonade. I know, gross, right? But no way, it was the most flavorful, refreshing drink I’ve ever had! Just look at it!

It was like a mojito, without the alcohol, and with basil instead of mint. Fantastic invention of a beverage!

For dessert, we headed back to the car and drove the short drive to the UCLA campus. There is a great ice cream sandwich shop there called Diddy Riese’s. They have been open since 1983 and for two homemade cookies (your choice of flavor) sandwiched with your choice of Dreyers (Eddys) ice cream, it is only $1.50! Yumm!

I had already started munching away at it before I remembered to snap a picture!

After that we did a quick drive by of Venice Beach, just so my mom could catch a glance of the complete bizarreness of people there!

After we got home and unwound, Timmy and I picked up some In N’ Out for my mom and us. She had never had that either! Another staple California establishment you must try when you come out here!

Overall, a spectacular day!!

Last night was the forth of our four Hollywood Bowl shows this summer. This one, however, was the one I was most looking forward to – John Williams performing his greatest movie classics.

In case you don’t know who John Williams is, I will tell you. I will first say that I always assumed that everyone knew who John Williams was. He used to be the conductor of the Boston Pops, so I grew up with him being a common household name. But, not only did he conduct the Boston Pops, he was also the writer of the scores of some of the best movies in history! He has written and composed the music for movies like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Jaws, E.T., Catch Me If You Can, Superman, Jurassic Park, amongst so many more. He is an icon, and he did not fail to disappoint!

As always, before the show, we had a picnic! My mom and I made an eggplant salad with chick peas and tomatoes, and an amazing bruschetta (my mom made that all on her own and it was delicious!). Timmy picked up some fried chicken, and Kelley and Irving brought some delicious Hawaiian Sweet rolls, cheese and crackers, coleslaw, and cookies! Look at all this amazing food!

I’m so glad my mom got to come!

We all had a blast!

After we ate, John Williams came out to start the show!

During the first half of the show, he performed some classics that he didn’t write, like Fiddler on the Roof and Psycho. After he intermission though, is when the real show started! I couldn’t wait!

He performed some of his classics like Jaws, Indiana Jones, Star Wars and more Star Wars. Once Star Wars started, everyone was cracking up, because suddenly, there were light sabers everywhere!

All those lights are light sabers! I love Star Wars, but it amazes me just how much people get into it! It made for a cool light show though!

After the show, John Williams came out for not one, but two encores! I will admit though, I was slightly very disappointed. He didn’t play Jurassic Park! Jurassic Park is one of my all time favorite movies, and I was so looking forward to hearing him play the score. Oh well, he played the rest of his best works, so I can’t complain too much. It was definitely the experience of a lifetime!

I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to see him perform. I hope he comes back again next summer so we can see him again! I’m sad that this was our last Hollywood Bowl show of the summer! We had such a great time at all four shows, and undoubtedly cannot wait until it we plan next summer’s events!

My Mom is visiting this week!

On Friday, we took the metro down into Hollywood and took a tour on a double decker bus with Starline Tours. It’s a great tour company that I took back in 2004 when I visited Kelley and then again in 2008 when Timmy and I came to visit L.A.

Before the tour, we walked around Hollywood for a little bit, since my mom has never been there!

Once we got on the bus, we made our way to the top! It was so neat to be able to sit in an open air bus and get a different perspective on all the sites from higher up!

On our tour, we saw lots of cool things, and I learned a lot of things I didn’t know!

Beverly Hills Municipal Court House:

La Brea Tar Pits:

We stopped to have lunch at The Grove/Farmers Market. We went to this really amazing place called The French Crepe Company for lunch. I got a Tuscani Panini which had smoked salmon, mozzarella cheese, capers, and tomato. It was amazing! Just look at it! Yum!

We drove by Paramount Studios:

Some of the pictures are a little askew because the bus was pretty bumpy!

It was a really fun tour, and a great way for my mom to see some of the sights!

Yesterday, I was offered a great job at an amazing company in a career that I have been wanting to get into pretty much forever! To celebrate, Kelley, Irving, Timmy and I walked over to Citywalk to go to Saddle Ranch for dinner!

To start off, we got some delicious nachos!

They were really good! For the main dish, I ordered an ahi tuna wrap, but I was so excited to eat it when it came that I completely forgot to take a picture!

We did get some pictures of each other though!

It was so much fun! I wish I took more pictures of the place, but I really just completely forgot!

It was fun to celebrate with great friends though!

Cheers to the future!

Here is a photo of the flowers all opened up! They’re still so pretty! I just love them…

While grocery shopping today, Timmy and I came across some really neat flowers for sale. Since we’re having a special visitor this week (Mom!), we decided to get some flowers to make the apartment pretty. I am hoping they last until Thursday! Even if they don’t though, at least we can enjoy them for a few days! I can’t wait for them all to open up!

I’m not sure what the blue/purple ones are. I think they are some type of orchids, but the colors are so pretty! The tall ones are gladiolus. They are white I believe, which will look gorgeous with the other colors.

In my mind, the vase we had was much taller than it really is, so when I brought them home, I realized there was no way they were going to fit without toppling the vase over. So, I had to use a big juice jar that we have. It looks a little cheesy, but I’m hoping the beauty of the flowers takes away from the cheesiness of the make-shift vase.

Once they all open, provided neither dies before the other, I will post another picture!

Lately, Timmy has been asking begging me to make his sister’s famous pumpkin cookies. Since it is only August, I have been hesitating because normally pumpkin goes along with September, October and November, and not really August. Regardless, eventually I caved in. Last weekend we went out and got all of the ingredients, minus the most important one – canned pumpkin.  We just couldn’t find it! Finally, this week we went to a different grocery store and thankfully they had some. I bought a couple of cans, that way if I want to make them again before “pumpkin season,” I can!

The recipe is on the recipe page of our blog, but viola! Don’t they look amazing?

Side note: they were!