This is the Don CeSar. Isn’t it pretty? It was opened in 1928, and was known as “The Pink Castle” to all of the rich jazz musicians and flapper girls who used to frequent it. You can just imagine them all, leaning out of the windows with their little bobs and their champagne glasses, can’t you?

We actually hadn’t intended to visit the Don CeSar – we were on a drive further down the coast – but, well, I have a bit of a thing about big hotels. I’m fascinated by them, and any time Terry and I go on holiday, we make a point of going into as many of them as possible, just to walk around being nosey, and imagining the ghosts of bygone eras flitting past. Also, the Don CeSar does really good ice cream, so there was no way we were just going to drive past, were we?

(My ice cream isn’t in this photo. It was in my belly. Because, yeah, like I’m going to leave ice cream just sitting around while someone takes a photo of it: AS IF. (Mmmm, ice cream…))

Today’s post, however, is not about the Don CeSar, or, indeed, about ice cream. No, today’s post is about this playsuit:

So, yes, this is a playsuit, not a dress. Everyone thinks it’s a dress, but nope: playsuit! And the thing is, I’d NEVER wear a dress this short. Uh-uh, no way. As this is a playsuit, though, (not a dress!) it somehow feels more acceptable: I mean, those are shorts you’re looking at, people. Shorts! And as far as shorts go, they’re actually pretty modest. “People wear shorts MUCH shorter than this!” I told myself when I bought it. “So, I’m not wearing a really short dress: I’m wearing really quite long shorts. Which is totally different!”

Because the bottom half of the thing consists of shorts, then (Are you all getting that these are shorts, by the way? Because I’m not sure I’ve mentioned that enough yet. Also, I’ve written the word “shorts” so often now that it’s started to look totally alien to me. Shorts, shorts, shorts.) I figured I’d be pretty safe in this. It’s not like the wind would blow the dress up, (Because it’s not a dress!) and expose my nether regions, say. Why, I could bend over as much as I wanted to, and still remain totally covered. By my shorts. Nothing bad could possibly happen!

And, actually, nothing did. Not THAT day, anyway. A week or so later, though, I wore the playsuit in Orlando, on a quick trip to an outdoor mall. It rained that day. The rain made my legs wet. And… you see that bag? That bag that’s slung over my shoulder in these photos, but which I often carry in the crook of my arm, brushing my hip/thigh area? That bag made contact with the fabric of the playsuit, and that fabric rode up my legs (which, lest we forget, were a bit wet, and therefore sticky), and folks, it stuck there. Somewhere in the region of my butt, let’s say. Oh, GOD.

I have no idea how long I walked around like that, with one butt cheek on full view. All I know is that eventually two sales assistants in J Crew took pity on me, and alerted me to the tragic situation. “Um, ma’am?” one of them said, looking as mortified as I was about to feel. “I, um, think your dress has ridden up a little…”

(And, you know, it WASN’T a dress! It was a …oh, never mind.)

Well, I hastily pulled the fabric back down, and then I did the only thing I could really do in the situation: I burst out laughing. Clearly relieved, the two sales assistants laughed, too. Together, we had a good old, hysterical laugh at me and my stupid playsuit. And then I slunk off into a corner and I DIED. I’m still dying now, actually, as I think about how long I might have been walking around like that before I realised. It can’t have been too long, I don’t think. I mean, it’s not like people were pointing and laughing at me, or anything, and… oh.

And after that, I never did wear that playsuit no more. Even although it was quite a lot of fun to spin around in.

Yeah, I’m easily amused…

(Dress, Stop Staring; shoes, Vivienne Westwood for Melissa Lady Dragon ‘Cherries’)

On our way back to the apartment after the trip to Tarpon Springs I wrote about in my last post, we stopped in at the little town of Dunedin*, purely so I could pay a visit to Kina Kouture, which is basically my idea of heaven, selling dresses by Stop Staring, Bettie Page, Trashy Diva – all my favourite brands, in other words.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at the store we discovered it was actually closed for refurbishment, but the lovely owner must have seen the look of anguish on my face, because he very kindly allowed me to come in anyway, and not only to look around, but also to try on this dress in the bathroom (which was like a boudoir, and totally awesome), seeing as the changing rooms were closed at the time. The dress in question is by Stop Staring, and I’d seen it in the window as we drove up, and immediately known it would be coming home with me. Sure enough, ten minutes later I was in possession of the Prechus, which I wore to dinner the very next night, thus continuing my “a-polka-dot-dress-a-day” streak. GOD.

Of course, pin-up style polka dots call for cherry accessories of some kind, so I wore this with my Vivienne Westwood/Melissa Cherries shoes, which just might be my most favourite shoes ever. Shh, don’t tell the others!

(*Fun fact: the summer I graduated from university, I applied for, and was offered, an internship with the local newspaper in Dunedin. Because of the extreme level of stupidity I was operating under at the time, though – and still  am, actually – I’d completely failed to realise that an internship wasn’t, you know, paid, and that I’d be working for nothing, but would still have to support myself, the whole time I was there. (I think I’d imagined I’d just be hanging out at the beach all the time, maybe hitting up the Magic Kingdom on the weekends?) Well, I couldn’t even afford the airfare, let alone several months worth of food and accommodation in the US, so I had to turn it down. It was a shame, because I’d already concocted an elaborate fantasy around this job, in which I was such a success as an intern (you know, whatever that was) that after a couple of weeks I was promoted to editor: a job which came with a huge salary, a penthouse appartment, and a clothing allowance. Instead, I spent the summer working in a call centre in Scotland. Oh, the humanity…)

The whole time she was at the coast, my mum (who is a worrier, like me) remained in a constant state of RED ALERT, perpetually scanning the horizon for the sight of the shark fins which she was convinced would signal the imminent death of every last one of us. We should never have let her see Jaws that time, seriously.

Now, I wasn’t the least bit worried about shark attacks, but I can’t really fault my mum for her CONSTANT! VIGILANCE! because the only reason I didn’t worry about being eaten by a shark was because I knew there was a far more dangerous enemy at hand: CRABS.

See, beaches can be difficult for me, on account of my phobia of crustaceans. (Ya don’t say!) Clearwater wasn’t too bad, because it’s busy and it’s clean, and it gets raked every night, so it isn’t exactly the ideal habitat for my arch enemies. A couple of days into our holiday, though, we decided to take a trip to Tarpon Springs, which is a little Greek community* just along the coast from Clearwater. We’ve visited Tarpon a few times now, but go back when we can, not just because it’s one of the few places outside Greece itself where you can eat a proper souvlaki, but because last time we were there we did a dolphin-spotting trip, and the dolphins put on such an amazing show for us that we just had to do it all over again.

(*When I say “A Greek community”, I mean EVERYTHING there is Greek: shops, restaurants, people… This time around, Terry, being Greek himself, caused quite a stir in some of the stores, where the people just could. not. get. over. the fact that he was a Greek who’d been born and raised in Scotland. “OMG, a SCOTTISH GREEK!” they kept shrieking. “CAN YOU BELIEVE IT, THAT IS SOOOO CUUUUUTTTTTEE!”)

This year, unfortunately, the dolphins were being shy, so we only got a tiny glimpse of them. To make up for it, though, we were taken to a little ‘desert’ island just off the coast, and allowed to wander around for half an hour, collecting some of the millions of shells that were washed up there. Now, I didn’t know this would be happening, because the island stop hadn’t been part of the previous trip we’d taken there, so I was a little unprepared for it, and didn’t have my swimsuit or anything with me. It was probably just as well, though, because as soon as I stepped off the boat and clocked all of the shells, I knew instantly that I was in the presence of The Enemy. They were close. They were all around, in fact. And so I passed a slightly uncomfortable half an hour scanning the sand for any sign of them, while my family all tried valiantly to pretend that, why, no, those holes in the sand weren’t made by crabs, definitely not, no crabs here, and my mind shrieked at me to “RUN! NOW! ENEMY SIGHTED OMG!”

As it happened, the enemy was only briefly sighted, in the shape of a large, dead crab which a girl from our boat picked up by its tail, and, OMG THEY HAVE TAILS, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? I didn’t know they had tails. Next I’ll find out that some of them have, I don’t know, WINGS, or something, and then I’ll have to build me a crab shelter and live inside it forever more, and I’m not even joking.

The island was very lovely. The water was warm, the sand was white. And every single night that week I woke up babbling about how there was a CRAB! IN THE BED! and then lay half-awake for the rest of the night, convinced they were coming to get me. Once we got to the Orlando area, it took another few nights for my mind to calm itself and accept that they (probably) wouldn’t be able to travel that far inland.* Then again, prior to that, I hadn’t realised that some of them have TAILS, so really, there’s no telling what They might be capable of…

(*It was totally plausible that they’d manage to get into our 9th floor apartment, though. Like, they’d crawl out of the ocean, walk up the beach, use the key fob (HOW? Oh yeah, with their TAILS, obviously…) to get into the complex, march through the lobby and into the elevator, use their TAILS to press the button for the 9th floor and then use their own secrit key to get into our apartment. From there, it would be just a short, sideways scuttle to where I lay asleep, little suspecting what horrors were creeping towards me in the dark night. Seriously, why more people aren’t afraid of crabs, I will NEVER know…)

(‘Alcohol Dogs’ is totally going to be the name of my band…)

Me scrutinising the ground for the slightest sign of crabs…

Baby, there’s a shark in the water
There’s something underneath my bed
Oh, please believe I said
baby, there’s a shark in the water
I caught them barking at the moon
Better be soon…

-VV Brown, Shark in the Water

(Dress: Bettie Page ‘Jazmin’ dots; shoes, Zara; sunburnt nose, Amber’s own)

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a warm Forever Amber welcome for this red belt! It’s a little crooked, it looks like it’s fastened in the wrong hole, and I think it was probably wishing it was somewhere else, but at least it’s THERE. Which is more than can be said for all my other accessories, which were at that moment sitting at home in the UK, going, “Say, you guys: weren’t we s’posed to be someplace else round ’bout now?” “I dunno, Bob, she never mentioned nothin’ to me. Fancy a game of Yahtzee?”

Anyway, enough about accessories, or the lack thereof.

One of the best things about being at the coast for us was being able to watch the sun set every night (and sometimes to rise in the morning, too: our bedroom had a huge window, so if we were awake early enough, we could watch the sun rise without even getting out of bed: score!). Where we live, we’re pretty much hemmed in by buildings and trees, and we’d have to go climb the nearest hill or something to be able to see a decent sunset, so we really enjoyed being able to just watch from our balcony every night, or go down to the beach. We saw some gorgeous skies over the course of the holiday, and it’s made me even more determined to live near the sea one day, if only for a little while.

This dress is by Bettie Page, and I got it from eBay last winter, just a few days before the great closet switchover of 2011. Because it was winter at the time, I packed it away with the rest of my summer stuff, and as I hadn’t had a chance to wear it, I forgot all about it, so when I unpacked it this Spring, I felt like I’d got a new (free!) dress. This was its first outing, and the photos were taken in a hurry, so we didn’t miss the sunset, but never fear, there will PLENTY more polka dots to make up for them…

Two weeks away feels like the whole world should have changed,
But I’m home now, and things still look the same.
I think I’ll leave it ’til tomorrow to unpack,
Try to forget for one night that I’m back in my flat.
On the road where the cars never stop going through the night,
To a life where I can’t watch the sun set.
I don’t have time.
I don’t have time.

I’ve still got sand in my shoes,
And I can’t shake the thought of you.

~ Dido, Sand in My Shoes

(Shorts, H&M; tank, New Look; wedges, River Island)

One of the things I love about Florida – and about holidays in general, actually – is the way an ordinary little café can suddenly feel like the Best! Place! Ever! just because it’s sunny, and just because it’s next to the water.

These photos were taken at one such place in Clearwater, where we stopped to have breakfast en route to Tampa one morning. In light of my last post, about the packing fail, you might be thinking this is one of the few non-stripey outfits I mentioned. It isn’t, though: those shorts have a little pinstripe on them, and, more importantly for the purposes of this story, the lining of the shoes is also stripey, with a blue and white pattern. It is a SECRIT STRIPE, basically. It’s how we stripe addicts identify each other on days when we’re not dressed as sailors.

Now, I didn’t think twice about that pattern and its implications for my feet when I put the shoes on that morning. Why would I, after all? I’ve worn the shoes plenty of times before, and nothing untoward has ever happened, so it came as a bit of a shock when I slipped them off in the changing room of a store, and instantly noticed that my feet were BRIGHT BLUE.

I have to admit, I freaked out ever so slightly. Either my circulation had been cut off to the extent that my feet had turned blue, and were probably about to drop off or something, or I’d somehow managed to severely bruise both of them, without remembering how I did it. Which would mean I was probably losing my memory, as well as my feet. Neither scenario was one I really wanted to deal with (especially the “feet dropping off” one), so I was actually quite relieved when I realised it was just the blue dye from the inside of the shoes. I looked like I had Smurf Feet, though, for a while there. There’s a first time for everything.

(Oh, and this boring shorts-n-tank-top outfit also marks the point in the trip at which I realised I had only brought semi-fancy dresses and a bunch of bikinis with me. When I wasn’t wearing either of those, I was wearing something a lot like this. Or, you know, actually this. In fact, I wore this a lot. That tank top didn’t make it home, though: every time I go on holiday, there’s always at least one top which gets ruined with sunscreen, and this was that top. It’s weird that I still found it quite hard to throw it away, isn’t it? And that I feel a bit sad looking at it now, and realising that it is no more? On second thoughts, don’t answer that…)

You can all call me “Bluefoot” now. Bluefoot the Great. OK, Bluefoot the Terrible, then. I’ve always wanted a nickname…

(Most of these photos are by my mum; the two of me are by Terry: thanks, guys!)

(Zara dress; Christian Louboutin shoes; Gucci sunglasses)

Today is the 4th of July (Happy 4th, American friends!), and even although that fact has absolutely no relevance for me whatsoever, I figured I’d show you this little red, white and blue outfit, in honour of the occasion. And also because this is the next outfit I was planning on posting anyway, so that worked out pretty well, hey?

Now, before I say anything about this outfit, I need to first of all explain the massive packing fail I committed for this trip. See, I’m bad at packing: always have been, always will be. There’s a reason I always shop a lot on holiday, and it’s not JUST because I shop a lot ANYWAY. No, it’s mostly because I’m a terrible, terrible packer.

It’s not for the lack of trying, either. No, actually, wait, let’s be honest: it really IS for the lack of trying. I mean, I KNOW all the rules of capsule wardrobe-creation. I’ve read the same articles you have. I know about the colours-which-all-effortlessly-go-with-each-other, the mix-n-match separates, the two pairs of carefully-chosen shoes that will take you absolutely everywhere. I know. I’ve even done it once or twice. The thing is, though… I HATE the “capsule wardrobe”. HATE it. Because, OMG, BORING.

I like to take ALL the things with me when I travel. I have this horror, you see, of being somewhere and thinking, “Mmm, you know what would be the perfect outfit for this situation I suddenly find myself in? That dress I left hanging at home in the wardrobe.” And honestly, two pairs of shoes? What is this, Sophie’s Choice?

Also, and this is important: for me, a trip abroad is often the only opportunity I get to wear my summer clothes. I love summer clothes. I hate winter ones. I may have mentioned this once or twice. But summer in the UK lasts two weeks (if we’re REALLY lucky, I mean, and we never are), so vacation time is really the ONLY time I get to dress the way I want to dress, as opposed to the way I have to dress.

So I overpack. And yes, I do it deliberately.

With all of this over-packing, then, you’d think that at least I’d have endless outfit options, and would never find myself lacking for something appropriate to wear, wouldn’t you? You would be wrong, though. I pack lots of stuff, but I pack the WRONG stuff. Every. Single. Time. Once time, for instance, I packed only black clothes. For a beach holiday. Another time, I only took stripey clothes, so I looked like a sailor the whole time. Oh no, wait: that’s just my normal life, isn’t it? Let’s not even talk about the time I climbed a mountain in a pair of clogs. Or, indeed, the fact that I once owned clogs.

(I was a teenager, OK? They were fashionable at the time…)

On this particular trip, I committed no less than three packing offences. They were, in no particular order:

1. Packing with the assumption that I would, at all times, be either:

a) on the beach

or

b) at a fancy party in 1958

And, of course, we were only at the beach for  a week, and we didn’t visit 1958 AT ALL (It was closed, apparently), so… yeah. That didn’t really work out too well, did it? In fact, almost all of the 34 bikinis I packed (only slight exaggeration) remained unworn, because, honestly, I don’t even LIKE wearing bikinis.

2. Almost every single item in my case was either:

a) spotty

or

b) stripey

Seriously, I can think of maybe two outfits that didn’t have either a spotty or stripey element. At one point I managed an unbroken streak of, like, 12 days in a row in polka dots. Then I switched to stripes. GOD.

3. I didn’t pack any accessories. At all.

 OK, I did pack some belts. As you can see from these photos, though, I’m not wearing any of them. In fact, I’m not even wearing my wedding ring, or my watch. It’s a wonder I even managed to dress myself at all, isn’t it?

Because I didn’t pack accessories (and also because it took me two days to remember where I’d hidden the belts), this outfit is a lot simpler than even I would normally wear it.   And, I mean, I’m not really big on accessories at the best of times. And yes, it’s because I’m lazy. But even I would normally have added a little something to this outfit, but I didn’t. So there you have it.

About the dress, by the way: it’s one of THOSE dresses. Yes, one of the ones with a story.  And its story is almost identical to the story of the mint green Zara dress: it’s  a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury of me finding a dress, loving a dress, not buying a dress, the dress selling out, me searching eBay for months and finally hunting it down. And actually, this one was even WORSE than the whole “mint dress” saga, because I had multiple opportunities to buy this dress. It was in store last summer, when I was in California, and every single Zara I visited (And I visited a LOT of Zaras, let me tell you…) had the dress. In my size. Sometimes ONLY in my size, actually. Sometimes there would be just one solitary dress hanging there, all lonely. And it would be my size. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.

But I didn’t buy it. No, it was… too easy. I like a challenge with my shopping, you see. OK, I don’t: I didn’t buy it because I stupidly convinced myself I’d never wear it. Then the second I got home, I realised my life would be empty and meaningless without a stripey dress with a pouffy tulip skirt. It took about six month’s worth of eBay alerts before it came down in price enough for me to buy it for less than retail (I have a “rule” when shopping on eBay: I refuse to pay more than the retail price of something, no matter how much I want it…). And I DID wear it. Which just goes to show how stupid I was LAST summer, eh? (I did an even worse job of packing for that trip, I mean, seriously.)

My point? You’re going to be seeing an awful lot of spots and stripes over the next few posts. (Even more than usual, I mean. ) And not a lot of accessories…

(This is what I was looking at while these were being taken. Purty, no?)

Well, folks, we’re back, as you can probably tell from the fact that my Instagram photos have abruptly switched from photos of sunsets (and, er, rubber ducks…) back to their usual programming of photos of Rubin. And rain.

(OK, I haven’t actually taken photos of rain yet. I will, though.)

It’s been an… interesting… couple of days, starting the day before we left Florida, with the realisation that someone had cloned my debit card and cleaned out my bank account (and the subsequent 1.5 hour argument with my bank to convince them that it wasn’t ME who’d been paying for taxi rides in London while lounging by the pool in Florida. It’s a long story…), to the fact that it took us over 24 hours to make it back home, thanks to an already long layover at Gatwick, which got even longer thanks to a delay on our flight. (It was so cold in the airport, and I was already so tired, that I spent part of this delay lying with my head on Terry’s knee, with clothes borrowed from my dad and Terry draped over me in a bid to stay warm. My mum later told me I’d looked like “a heap of old rags”. Excellent!)

Anyway, since we’ve been back, I have, of course, plunged right into the usual pit of gloom, with a severe case of the Post-Holiday Blues. Rather than dwell on that, though (And hey, I’m sure you can just refer to any of my previous “OMG, I HATE BEING HOME!” posts if you really want to…), I’m just going to show you some photos from the apartment at Clearwater Beach where we spent the first week of our trip, almost half a lifetime ago – or it feels like it, a least.

We stayed on the 9th floor of a gorgeous apartment building, right on the beach. Our view to the front was the one you can see above, and to the back was a view of the Intracoastal Waterway:

(There was also a little black poodle pup living in the building. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but still: POODLE PUP!)

It. Was. Amazing. In fact, we spent a LOT of time on those balconies, just staring at the view, and sometimes watching the lightning from far-off thunderstorms, which will be familiar to anyone who’s visited Florida, particularly at this time of year. In fact, one night we’d planned to go out, but just as we were about to leave, the most amazing lightning show started up, so we sat down to watch it on the balcony, and then, when I got up to go into the kitchen for a drink, I walked SMACK into the closed patio door behind me. Actually, I’ll be honest: “walked” is the wrong word. I actually SPLATTED against that door like a bug on a windscreen. I bruised both my forehead and elbow (which I think I must have raised at the last second, in a bid to protect my face), and spent the rest of the holiday waving my hands in front of me to make sure I was walking through air rather than glass, every time I stepped outside. (I’d like to say this stopped me doing the same thing twice. You all know it didn’t, though, don’t you?)

We also spent a lot of time on the beach, where we apparently only took “walking into the sunset” type photos, even when it was 7am in the morning. These ones are from our first day, when we all woke up early due to the jetlag, and walked for miles along the beach:

It’s mostly empty because it was still early, but the beaches on the gulf coast are so long that it’s not hard to find yourself a reasonably empty stretch, which is good because, well, The Others. You’ll just have to imagine it, though, because after this, we didn’t take many more beach shots, for fear of destroying the camera with sand or saltwater.

Speaking of photos. though: as you’ll already know if you follow me on Facebook, we took 1,518 of them during this trip. And there are another 666 (OMG! THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST!) on my mum’s camera, which is where most of these come from – thanks, mum! I’m going to be kind, though, and stop here. For now. Like the Terminator, though, I’ll be back…

(Blazer and shorts, H&M; top, Madewell; shoes, Zara)

Hey, folks, remember me?

I’m still in Florida, but we’ve been having a spell of rainy weather, so I’m taking advantage of the downtime (while my dad barbecues in the rain, wearing a poncho…) to check in with the blog. And, well, to post photos of myself jumping, just to annoy my friend Ewen, who I know loves them really…

Rain aside, we’ve been having a fabulous time. I’ve spoken before about how coming to Florida always feels like coming home to me, and with a week left to go, I’ve already started to dread the actual “coming home”: I mean, at least Florida rain is WARM, you know?

We spent our first week here at the coast, staying in a gorgeous condo, right on Clearwater beach. I might have cried a bit when we had to leave. We spent Terry’s birthday at Universal Studios, and mostly at the new Harry Potter section of the Islands of Adventure park, but other than that, this trip has mostly been about relaxing. And eating. And God, it’s been good, rain or not. And naturally, we’ve taken approximately 32,491 photos, all of which I’ll bore you with at length when I get home.

For now, though, I’m off to do some more eating and relaxing: see you all soon!

(P.S. It may have rained a lot these past few days, but that blazer wasn’t strictly necessary, because the temperature is still in the 90s: I just take it with me to wear indoors, where the air con is always set to “freeze Amber’s ass off”…)

[Clearwater Beach, Gulf of Mexico, Florida]

This is where I’ll be this time next month.

This is also why I’ve been a bit quiet recently: as regular readers know, the approach of a holiday sees me pretty much chained to my desk, frantically queuing up blog posts for The Fashion Police and Shoeperwoman so I don’t go out of business while I’m lying on that there beach. My muscles ache from the tension, I’ve developed RSI in my right hand thanks to all of the typing/scrolling I’ve been doing (I have a wrist brace from the last time this happened, and I’m trying to take as many breaks as I can, but other than that, my only hope is that Rubin suddenly develops a passion for women’s shoes. And learns how to write, obviously, so he can take over blogging duties.*) and yesterday I woke up  with a migraine. But it will all be worth it. Yes it will. Because… the sun. And the beach. And the Neiman Marcus shoe department. And that feeling of being “home” I always get when I step off the plane and get that first whiff of the Florida air. (And never get when I actually am “home”, funnily enough…). Oh yes, it will be worth it.

As luck would have it, the week before we leave is the week of the Diamond Jubilee, which means I don’t have to write content for the public holidays on the Monday and Tuesday of that week. On the Wednesday, our friends are getting married, so I have the day off for that and, well, the day after to recover. Friday will be spent packing, cleaning the house and all of that other fun stuff you have to do before a trip, so basically I have just under three weeks to work, then I’m off for a month. And I could not be more excited about it.

It also makes for a good excuse to shop.

*Rubin can totally write, by the way. You all know this.

Yes, folks, it’s the moment absolutely none of you have been waiting for: part two of the video of our California trip. Because, yes, our holiday videos come in different parts. Think of it as like the Halloween movies, only a little less scary. Only a little bit, though.

(Part 1 of this series, a.k.a. “San Francisco” is here, for those of you who are interested. Yes, mum and dad, I AM talking just to you now.)

Enjoy! And tell Terry he is AWESUM for putting this together!

And now I’m going to go and lock myself in my bedroom so I can cry over the fact that we are not there anymore…

The boulevards, the neon lights
I’ve been in love since the first sight
I wouldn’t change it if I could
Welcome to Hollywood

~ Mitchell Musso, Welcome to Hollywood

P.S. On the subject of holidays, Lape posted an interview with me on her travel blog today – you can see it here! Thanks, Lape!