What Did You Do This Summer?

The summer is now officially over and Autumn has arrived.  Although with the heatwave this week it doesn't really feel like it.  We've been pretty busy this summer and have done a lot of work on the house.  

We finally got a new front door.  Our old door gave us a lot of problems.  The lock had been changed so many times it didn't fit very well, so you had to push the door in to lock and unlock it.  If it was unlocked it wouldn't stay shut and would blow open with the slightest wind and no one could figure out how to unlock it to get out.  The lock would occasionally fall off and we had to use pliers to unlock and lock the door until Jamie could super glue it back on.  I also broke two keys trying to unlock the door.  It was pretty bad.   

But now we have a beautiful front door, that stays closed, locks easily, and to our surprise keeps the house so much cooler.  We spent a few weekends painting it but it looks amazing!

We also needed to replace the wood on the back/side gate.  We would have loved to have completely replaced the gate but  it's a big gate and it would have cost a lot of money.  So we did the next best thing, replaced the wood and spray painted the metal.  It looks a hundred times better and I'm sure our neighbors are happy they don't have to look at the old, weather beaten wood.

The garden has looked great all summer.  The avocado is looking really healthy and has a lot of new leaves and branches on it.  We also got a raspberry bush (to the left of it) that we have been enjoying all summer.

The citrus plants have been growing like crazy and are now loaded with fruit.  They should be ready to pick around Christmas time.  It's been another amazing summer and we are so happy with all that we got done.  There is always something to do on the house but I think we have earned a few lazy weekends :)

The Full Monty

We had our annual concert in the park last month featuring the band, The Answer. As usual it was a lot of fun and a great evening. Along with the concert, there was also raffle prizes that they gave out throughout the night. As it turns out, my Dad won one of the raffle prizes, tickets to a theater in San Diego for The Full Monty (My Dad wasn't completely thrilled as the Home Depot gift card would have made his day). Unfortunately, (although my Dad may say luckily) he had his yearly conference to go to the same weekend the tickets were for. As my Mom always goes with my Dad for this conference (which happens to be in San Antonio, TX and where they are at right now) Jamie and I took the tickets.

The theater was about 30 miles south of Temecula so we made the day out of it and stopped in Temecula for lunch and did some Olive Oil tasting as well. Wine would have been nice but we did want to stay awake for the show and drive home safely...so maybe next time. The show was really good, it was a small theater but it meant we had great seats. It was somewhat "Americanized" taking place in Buffalo, NY but the core themes were still there. And yes they did go the full monty accompanied by a blast of bright lights and complete darkness. It was a really nice day out and it was great to spend the afternoon at the theater :)

Rancho Palos Verdes

This weekend was Labor Day weekend :) A full 3 day weekend but the unofficial end of summer :( We spent two days working on the house, we put in a new motion security light at the front and started painting our new front door. As we didn't want to spend the whole weekend at the house, Sunday we did a day trip to Rancho Palos Verdes.

Rancho Palos Verdes is north of Long Beach, on a Peninsula. It has some beautiful coastline and lots of hikes along the water. It was overcast for most of the morning, which was really nice. There were a lot of people whale watching as well. I guess with the unseasonably cool water this summer many whales were coming much further south than usual.

There is a beautiful working lighthouse on the bluffs. It's only open once a month and unfortunately it wasn't open for our visit.

There were some amazing views .

And also some pretty cool tide pools.

We also stopped to look at the Wayfarers Chapel which is perched on a hill overlooking the ocean. It was designed by Lloyd Wright and is referred to as the glass chapel. On either side are California Redwoods which gives it a nice nestled feel to it. It was a nice, relaxing day with a bit of hiking and plenty of beautiful scenery.