Movin' on up, to the east side

In case you haven't heard, ze boyfriend and I are moving to Downtown L.A.! It's been both our dreams to live in a loft in the city and now it's happening! WeHo's been nice and there's some cool stuff to do around here, but the building we live in just blows sometimes. Most of the people who live in this building are probably fresh out of school and seem to have no regard for other people's sleeping habits. Yes, sometimes people do like to sleep before 3AM on weekdays. They hang out on the balcony and gab loudly in their weird smoker's voices (which I have found many girls in this building tend to have), completely ignoring the people yelling to tell them to shut up. Oh, how I will miss you, annoying people.

But anyway, DOWNTOWN! YEAH! Most people think it's deadsville, but from what I've seen over the last few years, it's changed quite a bit! There's lots of restaurants, bars, boutiques and galleries opening up left and right. If you go there on a weekend morning, EVERYONE is out and about, most with dogs, and so many people seem to know each other. It's a great small community that we are so excited to become a part of.

Moving, whether it's to a cool place or not, kind of sucks though. Gotta pack up your life and then move it elsewhere, where you spend forever unpacking and figuring out where to put things in your new space. I've moved a lot and it hasn't really gotten easier, but it can get greener! I've been gathering boxes from work and from family, which has been great. We've gotten lots of copy paper boxes, which I love because they're smaller, easier to carry and better for grouping items. Tom got a few boxes from Home Depot. At first I was a little mad because I didn't want him BUYING boxes when there's so many being thrown away, but I read the label and it's made from 100% post-consumer paper so I felt a little less guilty. We've also been using a lot of this shrink wrap stuff (I'm not sure if it's technically shrink wrap), and it's biodegradable! Yayz. And, of course, I've been packing up my vintage suitcases to the brim. I love fun displays that serve a purpose! As you can see from the above picture, I'm down to my last one, which means my end table has gotten very short as well.

We've been making moving trips to the new place in Perry Prius, many times when we're headed down there anyway, to avoid having to get a moving truck. It'd be hard to do that anyway because parking, let alone parking for a big truck, is so scarce. And our building has an unloading dock for small cars so it works out great! Surprisingly once the backseats are down, there's a lot of space in there. We've already taken most of our stuff over in just four trips.

After we unpack, I'll probably be handing over the moving stuff to my little bro for when he goes off to college. *Tear* It'll be his first big move! All our other moves, my mom's packed all his stuff for him because he's the youngest and so spoiled. :P

Tip: I've seen people put up their moving boxes on Freecycle, so if you're on the prowl for some for whatever purpose, check there. Also, you can go to stores like Target and whatnot around when they open and many times they'll have big boxes from shipments to give away.


Photo from Arthur Girdwood

Wowwee Maui: Day One

Tom and I left our apartment before the buttcrack of dawn around 4 in the morning to go to the airport, having pulled an all-nighter. We were pretty excited to get through and finally get on the plane, as you can see. Tom had a little trouble with the shaka sign so we opted for the classic thumbs up. After a stopover in SF and then another five or so hours, we arrived at the Kahului Airport, which was oddly very much outdoors.

Trying to green our trip and save money, we decided to take the Maui Bus. $1.00 a ride? How can you resist? We transferred buses at the Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, where we got our first taste of a shopping center locals actually go to. It's not too different from any other mall, save for the fresh produce stands set up in the middle of it selling lots of exotic fruits. To make me feel even more at home, there was a Ramen Ya (love the spicy egg drop ramen at the restaurant of the same name in West LA, probably not affiliated)!
Unfortunately, we really wanted to get to Lahaina ASAP so we skipped that.

The bus was an interesting experience. You get to see locals randomly bumping into each other, overhear what young people talk about (not too dissimilar from kids on the bus here, I guess, just with slightly different slang), and take note of all the scenery outside. There was lots of blues and greens. In other words, plenty of nature and not much industrialization. Much of the view was of sugarcane when we were inland.


Eventually, we caught our first glimpse of the ocean and it was amazing to say the least.


The ride took about 1.5 hours total, not including the wait time at the mall. We were so hungry by this point, since we hadn't eaten anything since before our flight so we ate at the closest place to the bus stop, the Cool Cat Cafe at Wharf Cinema Center. It's a great place with an outdoor deck full of 50s memorabilia that serves awesome organic burgers and, best of all, they supplied us with our first delicious tropical drinks at 1 in the afternoon.


After eating and drinking, it was off to our hotel! It was actually a lot closer than I thought, which was great, because it was so humid that if it were any further I'd probably pass out. We stayed at the Lahaina Inn, which was alright but we probably wouldn't do it again. More on that in a later post. When we got there, we actually did end up passing out. What was supposed to be a "quick nap" turned into a three-hour one. Too late to really do anything else, we just decided to find a beach to watch the sunset at...where we met this guy.

We were innocently sitting and enjoying the beach when all of a sudden sand was flung in Tom's direction. We looked over and there was an angry little crab guy. I guess we were intruding. Eventually he ran back into his little hole but we were paranoid now that he would come back and pinch. In reality, he was probably more scared of us than we were of him.




When the sun set, it was just so gorgeous. Over time, we came to realize it was sort of a ritual to watch it for a lot of people who lived around there. There was a house that we sat in front of that had Hawaiian music playing as its inhabitants sat on the balcony, talked and watched the sun go down. Sitting a few yards away from us, there was a man with a guitar singing songs about the sun. I like to think that he was the guy singing it to rest. It was just kind of surreal, so much so that we started taking pictures like this:


We really enjoyed making it look fake, maybe a little too much.

Tom and I did not really have much planned so I cracked open the Lonely Planet guide for Maui that I got from my local library. It's a very awesome guide, might I add. I highly recommend it. I tried using the Unofficial Guide to Maui but I just did not like the format at all and it was a little annoying to navigate through. The Lonely Planet Guide was organized by region and included itineraries! It even has a section about keeping your trip green! AH! Anyway, so I looked in the book to see what was around to eat. We headed in the opposite direction of where we came from and after a short trip to the Lahaina Cannery Mall, which used to be an actual cannery for fish, we got our eats on at Aloha Mixed Plate.

Despite the look on my face, this restaurant is actually very good and attracts local people. They specialize in plate lunches, which originated from farm laborers of different cultural backgrounds bringing food and sharing with each other during lunch time. My favorite thing there was the teriyaki beef, but the lau lau is really good too. we had our first taste of poi that night and did not know what to do with it. I tasted it and was pretty grossed out because of the texture and it had a weird tartness to it, but later in the trip we realized you're supposed to put it on the kalua pork, and you don't notice that tangy taste anymore. But that particular night, after tasting it, we put the cap back on and did not touch it again. We, of course, had more tropical drinks. That was the place I first discovered the Lava Flow. Yummmm. I really liked Aloha Mixed Plate, especially with it's fun patio decked out in blue Christmas lights and umbrellers. They also have a really good happy hour from 2 to 6!

We were sooo stuffed after that and definitely needed the stroll home to work off the meal a bit. It was nice that we were able to start recognizing things and we managed to get back to our hotel with no problem. Tom was so exhausted at that point that he fell asleep in his rocking chair on the lanai of our hotel room!


Check out the rest of the pics here!

Can't wait!

Lots of stuff coming up these days! We've been apartment hunting. As fun as looking at different places is, it's tough to make a decision on where we went to spend at least the next year. I'm also hoping to launch my Etsy sometime this year at least. I was working pretty hard on my stuff but I had to take a break from it because I got caught up in a bunch of other stuff. I don't want to say what it is yet, but hopefully you'll all like it! But next month is going to be funtabulous! :]

First up is Labor Day Weekend aka Roomie Weekend. I don't know what that'll be comprised of (possibly a cruise perhaps?), but we always have fun together.

Then there's BLOGGER PROM on September 22! I'm so excited for that. I've already been trying to brainstorm ideas in terms of costume and definitely HAIR. The theme is Hollywood Confidential, which I love love love, but I don't really know what to do yet. I can't wait to see what the BP Committee has in store for bloggers relative to the theme! Such a fun era to dress up for.

Last year at the Andaz Hotel was awesome. Tom and I didn't exactly prepare ahead of time, as we had barely come back from my first trip to his hometown in Philadelphia. We put together our 80s costumes that day, but I think we did a pretty good job. We decided to stick to our characters as the badass, douchey 80s couple.


Tom did my hair and I tried to help him with his but kind of messed up. There are better pictures of his 'do floating around on the intrawebz.

We were also there with my sister, who was quite...excited when she won this crazy Coffee Bean basket in the raffle.

And right after Blogger Prom is our anniversary! :]


Yayz.