A Day at Apple Hill

We spent the day at Apple Hill up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains here in California.

This has been a yearly tradition since I was a kid. Used to live about 5 miles away.  Now it is a 45 minute drive.  But we still go every year.

Each year from late September through Christmas all the apple orchards are open to the public. Apples, crafts, and other Fall goodies are all for sale.  And when December rolls around the Christmas trees farms in the area are open.  It is so much fun after a snow to drive up there and hike out into the tree farm to cut just the right tree for Christmas.

Apples of all varieties are available.  Each orchard has a wonderful selection to choose from.

Today was a perfect day, temperatures where in the upper 70's with lots of beautiful sunshine and tons of apples and other fresh produce that has just been picked. I came home with some gorgeous, huge fresh tomatoes, too.

A few friendly face here and there

This was a huge bin of apple peels left over from the making all those fresh pies and caramel apples.

Here is the apple peeling machine.  Apples peeled in a couple of seconds, amazing to watch.

I always love the fresh caramel apples.  Each year I usually by one.  Oh so good.  You know it is Fall for sure when the caramel apples show up.

Craft Vendors among the pine forest.

Apple orchard across from vendors

This was such a cute swing made to look like a wagon seat between two wagon wheels and lanterns on each side.  I want one in my yard.

Everyone stops at the pie house to get a slice of apple pie and order pies for the Holidays.

Loved these boxes of gourds.  I was thinking of all the stuff I could make out of them.

Happy Halloween Everyone.

 Stay safe and enjoy the day.

Altered Mini Composition Book

This was such a cute idea.

 I saw it on "scrapdaworld" on YouTube and just had to try to make it for notes on my desk.

I went to the Dollar Store and bought a pack of 3 little books.

First thing you do is fold all the pages in half.

After that I cut about 3/4" off sides of the the book cover.

Next I placed the book with the folded pages fanned out on it's side and traced around the cover and pages.  Making the edge along cover into a gentle curve.

Cut 2 from double sided paper

  I covered both the inside and outside cover with paper from K&Company paper book I had in my stash.  

It took 1 piece of 8" x 8" paper for the whole project.

Paper collection I used

I used Tim Holtz Victorian Velvet Distress Ink on the edges of all the paper cuts and on the edge of the folded pages.

This is a picture of the bottom and side with a handmade flowers hot glued onto each side.

Next, I hot glued string pearls to  all around the edges and glued three Mulberry flowers in the opposite two corners of the base and a couple of flat back pearls to remaining two corners.

Cute on your desk for photos, to-do notes or phone numbers, etc.

It reminds me of an old time rolodex.

This item would be nice for teachers gifts or school fundraisers.  You could make a masculine version for male teachers and using a more masculine print paper and jute or twine along the edges.  Then glue tiny footballs, baseballs. fishing lures or keys, etc. to the base.

Happy Crafting.

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And Then the Week was Over

The week flew by, we arrived in San Diego to beautiful weather.  Only one more port, Ensenada. 

 We took a trolley ride around the San Diego and over to Coronado Island.  Including the gorgeous Balboa Park.

Riding the trolley through Balboa Park

Beautiful museums, park and zoo.

And here is our home away from home, the lovely Grand Princess.

Arriving back at San Fransisco.

arriving at the dock in San Francisco at 6:00 in the morning

Oh no, time to leave the ship in a couple of hours and back to our regular life.

And finally, an interesting image.  Drug sniffing dogs checking all the passengers disembarking into Ensenada, Mexico.  Really, we might be smuggling drugs into Mexico?  This is a new one.  Hasn't been like that in the past.

drug sniffing dogs

A visitor one day on our balcony

Iconic Buildings of Los Angeles

A few more shots of iconic buildings on our tour.

City Hall

Capital Records with the stylus on top to resemble a record player

Century Plaza through the bus window

The Hollywood sign

Building used in Die Hard movie,  Nakatomi Building

Union Station

Love the way they are preserving the old architecture and reviving downtown

Hot dog stand where the rich and famous hang out, the line in the middle of the day was half way down the block

Great art instillation using vintage lamp posts, want to see it at night lit up

Coffee shop used in the Seinfeld TV series

Port of Long Beach

Our next port was Long Beach where we tied up alongside the Queen Mary.  Oh my, next to the Grand Princess the Queen Mary was so tiny.  In it's day it was a huge ship.

In this port we took a shore excursion.

Our Excursion took us to Mann's Chinese Theater with all the stars on the street and hand prints in front of the theater.  This was my first visit even though I had been born in L.A.

Here are a few of the stars on the sidewalk.

And a few of the hand prints.

Next time maybe we will be able to find Marilyn Monroe's prints.  It was so crowded it was really hard to get a clear shot of any of these.

Here is our wonderful tour guide giving us so much trivia and information, it was a great tour.  We started out on a 3 hour tour and by the time he finished it lasted almost 5 hours.  And not a dull moment.