The One with Venice, California

I feel like we're finally making a teeny tiny dent in the "to see and do while living in LA" list. We've been venturing out almost every weekend to explore this unique area of the world. Yesterday was no exception!

Early in the morning some peeps (David, Richard, Clairice, and Ann-Marie) from American Crafts flew into LAX and drove right over to my 'hood. I treated them to brunch complete with doughnuts, triple chocolate brownies, apples with caramel dip, and mini muffins. Healthy right? So I threw in some bananas and English muffins and cinnamon raisin bagels to hopefully balance the sweets and sugar... After they left I got some work done and then we met up with them early in the evening in my new favorite city: Venice. I could have taken thousands of pictures - there were so many things to look at and so many great photo ops!

Here's Mr. Fox in the car on the way to Venice. We were stuck in traffic, of course, so I had to keep myself occupied by taking pictures of him.

We arrived at our destination, parked the car, and made our way to meet up with the group. Not without stopping to take a jumping pic in front of this awesome mural!

FAIL!

The street we were on was Abbot Kinney. It's sort of like Mission Street here in South Pasadena, but with lots more stores and hippier and more.... colorful.... if you will.

We found our friends at Firefly.

Hi David and Amy!

Our plan of action: walk to the beach, see the sun set, peruse a few shops, then eat dinner at Lemonade. Here is a visual trip of our journey:

Sooooo many cute and quaint stores.

I see about a million and one things in these storefront windows that I want.

"Shooooooooes!"

(That was my very first word. No wonder I like shoes so much...)

Cool cork chair.

Every store had a unique facade and ambiance.

Love the stucco design on this building.

Don't cry over spilt milk, I mean, paint.

Everywhere you look there are paintings!

Here's our fun group just about to reach the beach (that's fun to say!).

Loverly.

This street and area looked sorta familiar from the last cycle (15) of America's Next Top Model - they lived in a house right on this road (I think?).

Amy took some beautiful pics of our little family as the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean. Priceless.

Ann-Marie. She's uber duber super talented.

Amy taking jumping pics of Richard.

Let's pretend that this couple with the stroller in the sunset is me and Chris and Fox.

This was Fox's THIRD time to the beach in two weeks! He loved it. And I love his Mr. Fox shirt - care of Amy Tangerine!

After the beautiful sunset we walked to dinner at Lemonade.

Amy and JC recommended the mac and cheese pot roast sandwich. Say what? Mac and cheese inside a sandwich? Hook us up with some of that!

We decided to split one.

It was soooooo good and we were still hungry so we got another one :) Deja vu!

Thanks for showing us around your 'hood Amy!

We're DEFINITELY going back to explore more and to eat another one of them mac and cheese pot roast sandwiches cuz it was indescribably good.