MACINTOSH MONDAY

Last week I decided to take Macintosh for a walk. We had some storms earlier in the week and there had been some flash flooding in the desert area. After a few days of heat I had assumed that most of the puddles would have dried up and that the desert would be back to normal. With that in mind I put on my flip flops and Mac and I set out. 

The first part of the desert was fine but after a while we began to encounter some leftover puddles. The sand around the puddles had turned into a muddy substance and was actually quite slippery. I had been told by Andrew to watch out for it, so I did. Macintosh avoided the puddles and so I thought I was completely safe, until right at the end of our walk....

We were one puddle away from the safety of dry sand. I was distracted for half a second and in that half a second my wonderful beagle decided it was now time to go into the middle of the puddle. He made a small dash for it which pulled hard at the lead and caused me to stumble forward. In doing so I ended up on the slippery sand/mud and did what can only be described as a cartoon style slip. My legs were running on the spot and I was failing about in an attempt to stay upright. However my attempt was futile. I landed straight on my bottom in the middle of the puddle. This caused Macintosh to jump and sent him running around me in circles at high speeds flicking mud everywhere. Trying to stand up covered me in more mud and ended with a scraped knee, but eventually I got out of the puddle.

I now had mud all over my bottom, up my legs, my flip flops were caked in mud and my dog was filthy too. On top of that I was still quite a way from home. I attempted to clean my flip flops in the muddy water. I only succeeded in removing the lumps and covering myself in more muddy water. I pulled the back of my top as low as it could go and decided to just walk home.

It was a humiliating walk. I didn't see too many people but whenever I did I ducked behind a car or bent down by Macintosh to fuss him in the attempt to disguise my rather messy self. After an agonising two blocks I made it onto our compound and rushed as fast as I could (on slippery muddy flip flops) into the house. Obligatory photographs were taken before Macintosh and I were both thrown into the shower and cleaned as quickly as possible. Once clean I sent the photos and details of the story to Andrew only to have the response, "LOL" followed by descriptions of how the lads at work found it funny. Now a few days later I see the humour in it but at the time I was mortified. 

And just to round off this humiliating post I'll show you the two photos I took. The first is of my legs and Macintosh which doesn't portray the mud as too severe but the look of my shorts will give you an idea I'm sure!

Fun and games!
H

ALASKA MOVIE

I have finally got round to editing the time-lapse videos I shot on the Alaskan Cruise. The odd music is actually straight from my Alaska Cruise playlist that I made before going, yup, there are some very weird songs there I'm afraid. They make me laugh though. 

There's Mr Scruff, an artist who produces some funny tracks like "ahoy there" and some chilled tracks like "Get a move on" and then The Avalanches album, probably my favourite album of all time. I will apologise for my terrible editing of the music tho, to do them justice hear them in full on Youtube or Spotify.

Enjoy!

A

MACINTOSH MONDAY

This week has been a tough week for me to find anything to share about Macintosh and not because he hasn't done things. Rather he's done a lot of things, but none of them are fit to be shared on the internet. Let's just say that the worst incident involved him making a rather disgusting mess on my bed twice in one day! It wasn't poop involved either! 

So in light of the fact that I'm struggling to look on the bright side of having a dog at the moment I thought I would share two rather adorable pictures of him so that maybe, just maybe, I'll find it in my heart to forgive him and not want to scream every time I see him!

These were taken whilst Andrew was competing in his 60 mile cycle ride. Macintosh and I were his support car. Obviously I got bored waiting to see them so took pictures of my photogenic dog instead!

Look at him. How could I be mad with that face?! Oh wait, my bed sheets, I remember now...

H

LATELY...

Wow, I've seriously missed out on doing these. I'm not sure how many people actually read them but I like to narrow down what I've been busy looking at on Pinterest or what design type ideas have been mulling around in my head.

So this month I'll do a summer theme as it is now officially summer (even though its felt like summer in California for a while!)

First off Andrew and I have been obsessively look at houses that we could buy. We are in no position to buy a house but still that doesn't stop us. Obviously I have been looking at many houses that are beyond our budget or price range, but would be what I would buy if the money just fell into my lap! This house caught my eye on Pinterest. I just love the clean white lines. 

I have also become rather obsessed with flowers recently. They seem to be super expensive in America, compared to home, but I'm still spending a lot of time pining after them and pinning them on Pinterest.

With the Californian summer upon us I am now living in just flip flops and sandals. My feet won't see the inside of a shoe until the weather calms down! I found these sandals and I just live the scalloped edges. They come in a variety of leather finishes. Just a bit out of my price range!

This summer I also made a rather bold decision to chop off all my hair. Its been long for pretty much my whole life and I was attempting to grow it even longer, but the summer it HOT here and long hair makes my neck sweaty. Plus the long bob has been buzzing around my brain for a while. In an impulsive moment I decided about an hour before my hair appointment to just chop it all off! It was a great decision but has led to me needing to relearn how to style my hair. I'm really enjoying the messy wave look but its needing a lot of perfecting.

And finally I have to end with a bear picture after all the time I spent in Alaska at the Fortress of the Bear. This little guy is amazing. I would adopt him, no questions asked! His little face kills me. Don't even get me started on his ears....
H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

Macintosh already has a girlfriend in Penny and now he has a best friend. His name is Zeus and he's an eighteen month old German Shepherd that lives just down the road. The two of them always got on well whenever we bumped into each other as they would play for ages. So the other week Zeus' owner asked what time we typically walked Mac so we could start a regular play time. Now everyday at 7pm we head out to our patch of grass and the two dogs go mad for an hour or so. It completely wipes them out and we have a peaceful evening as they both crash out.

We've been having this playdate for the past couple of weeks so Macintosh has got himself into a little routine and at around 7pm every day he starts to get twitchy and excited. He'll pace around or scratch at the door as if to say 'come on its Zeus time!' Once he's on the lead to go out he'll start to pull like mad as he's just so excited to see him. In fact the other day I let him off the lead early and watched him effectively run on the spot as he was trying to go so fast towards Zeus. It was like a doggy wheelspin!

So there they are, hard at play. I have no idea what Macintosh is doing in the above photo, but they are so funny together! 

Zeus loves to play fetch so his owner will throw a tennis ball and he'll bound after it with Macintosh in tow, who is just running so he can chase Zeus. Mac will never try to get the tennis ball as Zeus is very protective of it but he loves to just chase him up and down the grass. 

I really wanted to get a video of them running but in the above picture I hadn't changed my phone camera over and shortly after I snapped this photo Zeus ran right into me and knocked me over! Obviously he then began to lick me to check I was ok whilst Mac darted around slightly worried. I was in hysterics, as was Zeus' owner. So I'll have to try again, with my camera set right, to see if I can snap a video of them playing. They really are too funny! I'm sure you'll see much more of Zeus as he is literally Mac's best friend, just look at his happy face! 
H

SUMMER DECOR

A little while ago I gave out a sneak peak of the decor on Instagram...

It had taken me a while to land on a design idea for the summer decor as every time I looked on Pinterest it appeared to be 4th July inspired decor. Now I'm not bitter about the independence of America. Doesn't bother me one bit, I'm happy to barbecue and have a party, but I draw the line at celebrating it by decorating my house in the stars and stripes! So once I'd settled on an idea the ball got rolling a bit quicker.

Andrew helped contribute towards this decor quite a bit. He helped come up with the overall look that we were going for. We then worked on the decor during the week of his night shifts. Each of us would do a little work on it and tweak it whilst the other was asleep/working. Overall I think it came out pretty well. 

I have to say these flowers are my favourites. They are fake because I can't seem to make flowers last too long in the heat out here and it'd get expensive having a vase filled all summer. I enjoyed picking them out though and playing around with combinations. I've decided I definitely need to go to the LA flower market and bring home a serious stash of flowers!

We have a few little touches spread around the room too. There's a couple of bits set out on the side tables and then we added some bunting to our bookcase. I didn't want to go overboard this time. I wanted a less cluttered look. I prefer everything light and airy in the summer. Come autumn or winter I'll want the whole house covered in decorations because I love it! 

Here's a few little up close photos to show you some of the detailing on there. The bear came from Alaska, the parcel we wrapped ourselves and Andrew made the London skyline and the fake postage stamps. 

And as a last minute point, you might want to know that the bunting has the Queen's head on it and says 'Rule Britannia'. See not bitter about Independence day at all! ;)
H

ALASKA - DAY 7&8

So this is the last in depth post about our Alaskan cruise. The last full day of the cruise was spent mostly on the ship. They had a lot of sea to cover to get us from the Inside Passage back down towards Seattle. Andrew and I spent the day lounging around the ship and just enjoying! 

Then towards the last afternoon Canada came into view as we prepared to dock for the evening at Victoria. We hopped up to the sea view swimming pool area so that we could have a good view of where we were coming it. The weather had begun to warm up so it was lovely out there.

We docked in Victoria in the evening but it took a little while longer to get us off the ship as we had to clear customs. I had totally not thought about the fact we were entering another country until that point. Andrew has already been to Canada so he was simply re-visiting but I had never been and therefore was rather excited. (He was really excited too, as he'd never been to Victoria)

Victoria was a really lovely place. We didn't get to explore much as we only had a few hours there but it was stunning. There were a lot of European influences in the architecture which was a cool thing to see. We mostly wandered around the central downtown area. We sure the impressive Empress hotel and the Legislature building. We did a little bit of touristy shopping and bought some maple syrup....obviously! Then we found an amazing Irish pub where we had a crazily large amount of food and enjoyed drinking familiar beers! 

Then all too soon it was time to head back to the ship to make the last leg of the journey. On the way back though we did get to see the Legislature building all lit up. It was stunning, but incredibly hard to photograph. Below was the best we could do. 

By the time we woke up the next morning we were already in the state of Washington and so close to Seattle. At around 7am we docked in the Seattle piers and by 8:30am we were off the ship. Our adventure had come to an end! 

We did spend some of the rest of the day in Seattle as our flight wasn't until the afternoon. We managed to go on a duck tour round Seattle. Its an amphibious vehicle that originated in the second world war. It took us around the familiar sights of Seattle, sometimes on land and sometimes in the water. It was pretty cool!

All too soon it was time to fly back to Los Angeles and make the trip home. It was an incredible week and one I'm not sure either of us will ever be able to forget. The scenery in Alaska is just mind blowing and getting to experience as much as we did was insane. I never thought we'd get to go to Alaska. It was a bucket list place that you say you want to visit but never dream you get to actually visit. Sometimes its really hard to comprehend the fact that we are over here and that we get to experience as much as we do. We are incredibly grateful for the time over here. It certainly is amazing. 
H