HI HELLO HAPPY STINKING NEW YEAR.

If you follow me on instagram, you know that P and I went to LA for my birthday. When we go to California we typically try and stay for at least a week, but since it was so close to Christmas we only went for 3 days this time. If you have never been before, I strongly strongly strongly urge you to go for a longer period of time. We’ve been enough times to know where to go and what to not waste time doing, but it is a really spread out city so you need to be able to devote enough time to enjoy it!

Since it was my 21st birthday, we took our first trip to Palm Springs! It’s a retirement town so I’m not sure if either of us really knew what to expect, but it was so much fun!!! We’re planning on moving to the general LA area so we also checked out some apartments while we were there and like…idk if I’m more excited to move to be there or to be able to road trip to Palm Springs whenever I want! Although that may have more to do with where we stayed, which you can read all about here :-)

If you’ve been to LA, what are your favorite must-sees? If you haven’t, I hope this lil weekend guide made you want to plan a visit! :-)

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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18

My birthday! On Tuesday we flew out of Nashville around 7am and we were supposed to land around 11am PST. Somehow, we ended up landing an hour early at 10am — still not entirely sure how that happened, but it ended up taking us an hour to pick up our luggage and rental car from Enterprise, so it worked out perfectly.

We picked up some roadtrip snacks and necessities from CVS before heading to Lemonade in Venice for lunch. Lemonade and Urth are my fav LA cafes; they’re not super expensive buuut they have the most delicious healthy foods. I would happily pay twice the price to have this food in Nashville.

After lunch we drove past Mitch & Cam’s house from Modern Family. My family started this tradition a few years ago and it’s so tourist-y but so fun. Each trip we find a house from a favorite show to drive past; the shows obviously aren’t filmed at the houses, but we still get to see the house that the character’s life revolves around.

Around 1pm, we started the roadtrip to Palm Springs! Full disclaimer, the interstates near LA are TRASH. Not even talking about the traffic, literally just the paving has never not made me sick. The trip was about 3 hours and I didn’t feel well so I took a nap and woke up right before we arrived at Desert Hills Premium Outlets! This mall is literally the prettiest I have ever seen. Since you have to walk outside to get to each store, you get to see the most beautiful sunsets and feel the breeze. It was a premium outlet, so instead of your typical outlet stores they had Gucci, Burberry, YSL and more. I have literally never heard of those brands having OUTLETS. While everything is still pretty much luxury priced, I was able to snag Burberry wallets for my mom and P for less than $500 total so that was a nice score! (it was a Christmas present so P and I had to split up hahaha). After shopping, we snagged a couple slices of pizza and headed to La Serena Villas!

After arriving at the resort and relaxing a little bit with champagne and showers, we started to get ready for our night at Spa Resort Casino! Neither of us had ever been to a casino (at a legal age — funny enough, we both went when we were 8 years old and we both had to walk on the little carpet outlines of the room!), so we went to Ralph’s for some cash and gave ourselves a $20 limit. Once we got to the casino we walked around to scout out the most fun looking slots and took some pics (naturally). I found one that looked pretty simple; it required no gambling knowledge and all you had to do was get lucky with 3 matching pictures. I put $1 in, hit go and watched it spin. P and I tried to understand the options and equivalency values it was showing, but we couldn’t figure it out (lol). After a few rounds, it said I could cash out so I did — expecting a few quarters back. To my surprise, I won $34! We played a few more slots and I walked out with about $44…more than twice of what I walked in with.

We went back to La Serena and turned the fire on our patio on and snacked on a charcuterie board before calling it a night!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19

When I say we thrive in California, I mean we. thrive. in California. P woke me up around 6:15am for a sunrise bath on the back porch and a lazy/slow morning before driving back into the hustle and bustle of the city (full details/morning routine/everything about La Serena gets it’s own post). We headed to Studio City around 9:30am in order to see a live taping of Will & Grace. This is another completely tourist-y thing that I guarantee we will continue to do once we move there. If you know nothing else about LA, you know that your favorite show is most likely filmed there. Will & Grace is one of our all time favorite shows, so when we saw that they would be filming the season finale while we were in town we knew we had to go! On the way to the studio we stopped for brunch at & Waffles. Filming days are very long so we packed some snacks and water before getting to NBC a little early. It was so much fun getting to see Karen and Jack and Will and Grace! I also got a Will & Grace t-shirt for it being my birthday and P was harassed by the hype man. It was 10/10 time. After sitting in the studio for about 8 hours and munching on half a sandwich and candy, we decided to go for a drive. We drove up and down Mulholland Dr. and stopped at the top to just sit outside for a while. After taking in the prettiest views, we got In-N-Out and drove around a little bit more before going to our LA hotel! This was the longest day but the day we did the least amount due to the taping. Despite it literally being a full day activity, it really is the neatest thing to see your favorite shows live.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20

Our last day, cue the sobs. While this was a fun trip, the last day kind of turned it into a work trip (which I love). I recently started an internship with Life After Death Denim, an eco-friendly fashion brand. I met with my boss/the CEO of Life After Death at The Blue Butterfly, a super cute beachy coffee shop. We ate and chatted about the brand and my responsibilities and we just got to know each other a little bit better! She was sweet enough to gift me a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt so that I can truly speak good about the product (and now I cant’t say ENOUGH. literally the softest and best fitting jeans I’ve ever worn in my life). After breakfast, we took the pretty drive up to Saddlerock Ranch in Malibu. What happened next was truly beautiful…a wine safari. A safari with wine. We loaded up onto a safari truck and drove throughout the ranch. We sampled 6 different types (3 reds, 3 whites) and got to stop and feed the animals! It was so much fun and it was so pretty. The majority of the land is still burned from the fires in November, but it was still absolutely jaw-dropping. After getting to love on some zebras and spanish cows, we headed to the airport :( we returned the car and got to LAX with enough time to grab some Urth and stuff ourselves with pesto chicken and hazelnut chocolate cake :) This was such a special trip. We got to do everything we wanted to do, we were able to see the apartments we were interested in (aka we finally narrowed down our list of neighborhoods) and I got to celebrate my 21st birthday with my favorite person in my favorite place.