Walking on Sunshine

Weather here in So Cal has been so disgusting so far this summer and this upsets me. I have been waiting to wear my summer clothes ALL year but i find myself in jeans and a sweater everyday because of this weird, gloomy chill. So, today i am going to pretend it's a day full of sunshine and happiness (just like these gerber daisies).

So, here's to ignoring the weatherman! Who's with me?

Oh, Honey!

Ok, I love writing on this blog, but there are some posts that I get extra excited about. Today is one of those days. This post is all about Kaitlin and her love for the bees. And, people... she loves the bees. My sister is not only smart, funny and beautiful, but she's got some crazy hobbies too.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the first annual World Wide Honey Consortium, the brain child of my dear sister, at our home with a group of close friends also with an interest in the nectar of the bees. We sampled honey from around the world and then evaluated their similarities and differences on handmade scorecards ultimately reading them aloud and comparing notes. The night was truly an epic success that left me wanting more. This morning I woke up with so many questions about bees and the underground world of the honey collector. So, Kaitlin and I sat down to talk a bit more and I was amazed at her extensive knowledge. We put together this video to share with you, my lovely readers. It's a little long, but bear with us-- every minute is extremely valuable! ...and you better like it because it literally took me 3 hours to upload online.

Honey, Honey. from julia patton on Vimeo.

I had a blast filming it with the help of two lovely ladies, Megan Meade and Leanne Parsons, and I hope you enjoy and learn. Please comment with your thoughts. They make my day.

Good, Clean Fun.

The 4th ended up being perfect, as expected. My favorites of all time, The Page Family, came over to spend the afternoon at our house after some of them came back from a hike in the Trabuco Canyon area.

I grilled my own burger for the first time in my whole entire life! Momma P provided every topping imaginable and even had the bright idea to put extra stuff in the meat itself which turned out to be very tasty. I added garlic, blue cheese, and A1 sauce to my patty and then topped it off with some fresh ground pepper. Flaw. Less.

After dinner, we walked over to the Castaways for a great view of the Back Bay and a dazzling display of four firework shows.

Poor Tucker. He definitely gets the short end of the stick having to put up with our loud, obnoxious, girliness being the youngest and the only boy of our two families. Yesterday was no exception. I got ahold of his cell phone number and texted him for about 30 minutes pretending to be a new girl at church named Ali Cadabra. It took him a while to catch on. I thought it was funny. Am I being too mean?

I forget every year how much I absolutely LOVE fireworks. I could've watched them for 9 more hours. Something about expecting the unexpected makes me very giddy. So cool.

Chalk this 4th up to one more year of Casey and I celebrating a typically drunk holiday (for most teenagers) together and completely sober with our families. Classic Julia and Casey.

All in all, the 4 B's were avoided and we still managed to have a great time! Imagine that.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!

I love the 4th of July. Actually, I just lied. I hate the 4th of July. I love what the 4th of July means and the significance to our beloved country and its freedom, but I'm just not a very 4th of July-ish kinda gal. Living in Newport, the 4th stands for the 4 B's: BBQ, Beer, Bathing suits, and Beach. Which, coincidentally are 4 of my least favorite things. So in order to turn this day's frown upside down, I tend to just get more excited about all the great summer clothes and my love of the color combination of red, white and blue. Take Theory's Spring collection, for example. Any of these looks would be perfect for making grilling various foods or watching fireworks just so much more enjoyable, right!? Yes.

Whether you are beaching it up, brushing up on your American history or eating apple pie, I hope you have a great day.

Number 6: Family.

I love my family so much. We are loud. We are sarcastic. We are honest. We can be challenging. But we love each other so very much. I feel like I've wrote so much this week and I'm kind of burnt out on thinking (it's summer, people. Thinking not allowed). So, I think I'm just going to do quick descriptions of each pic. Because I am a full on lazy bum.

This is the first night the whole family was together before the cruise. We went to this great dinner in Amsterdam. It was not only the kick off of the World Cup, which seemed to be a major theme of the whole trip, but also the start of me eating way too much bread. They don't call me the Carb Queen for nothing.

Here's just a good pic of the fam at Bagels and Beans (still can't get over how great that name is). All looking great despite the incredible jet lag taking place.

Awww. Aren't we great?
I love all these women. I think this was the first trip that I realized how old we all are. I mean, it used to feel like such an age range between all of the cousins and now we are becoming more and more similar in so many ways. Such a talented and beautiful group.

Watching the World Cup is way better in German.

That right there is what really made the whole first week for me. Family.

How do I say this in a way that doesn't sound so incredibly ungrateful, immature, or entitled? ....Europe is amazing. And the fact that I have gotten to go on so many such amazing trips before I'm even twenty is really incredible and I am so, so lucky. But all the museums, churches and castles mean are nothing compared to the amazing time I got to spend just watching dumb movies and laughing with my cousins, the great talks and times of growth with my family, and memories that I'll always cherish with my grandparents.

Number 5: Cheese.

These last two weeks we ate a lot of cheese. Before dinner. After dinner. For lunch. In a restaurant. On the go. Hot. Cold. White. Yellow. Good. Bad. On a Boat. In a Car. In the Woods. Ok. I'll stop now before I completely turn into Dr. Seuss. But not only did we eat a lot of cheese, but in some way I just felt closer to cheese because of how organic everything in Germany and Switzerland generally are. Something I've been looking forward to since my mom mentioned it while looking through tour books in the last couple of months was visiting the Ementaler Cheese Factory (think Tillamook). In my opinion, if there is ever an opportunity to visit a factory on vacation, take it because factory=free stuff. I knew that I would not be leaving Ementaler without about 37 toothpick samples of cheese in my stomach and a smile of satisfaction on my face. So, I got to witness the whole cheese making process from this little guy right here donating his love juice...

to then here where they do all the science-y stuff......

(they gave us a tour to explain it all but I didn't hear a word of it because I was too excited for the samples)
then down to this cheese cellar where it ages.....

(ages is just a fancy word for "waits for my belly")
to here. Sample time! ....

(I pretty much cleaned them out)
And then ultimately, here where the family Patton enjoys slices of cheese with bread, apples and meats....
Like I think I mentioned in my food post, we also got to try local specialties like raclette (basically a skillet full of melted cheese and spices that you eat with potatoes, onions, and pickles...very good) and fondue (which, I love at home but was even more delicious in Switzerland). Thank, Cheese for showing me a good time and filling my tummy with yummy!

Number 4: Hike.

After we finished the cruise with the whole family, the fierce-some four-some Patton clan got to spend another week exploring Switzerland. The whole week was so great, but it's easy to choose my favorite moment. Like I've mentioned earlier, we got to stay in this awesome village called Murren in Switzerland. It took Mapquest repeatedly leading us to a tram station for us to realize that Murren was a carless village that could only be reached by a 15 minute tram ride and then a 15 minute walk from the station to our hotel. We debated changing our plans and staying somewhere a little more accessible but because it was late in the day when we reached our destination and starting to rain, we decided the best idea was to stay for one night and then figure out our next move in the morning. Well, when morning rolled around, the storm had cleared a little bit, and we all knew it would be a major mistake to leave such an amazing place. Still partly hiding behind clouds, out of our windows we saw glimpses of breathtaking Alps completely surrounding the small city. We heard the weather was going to get progressively better throughout the week, so we went down the mountain for two days and did other mini driving trips throughout the country and by Thursday, the weather could really have only been described as perfect. The sky was a piercing blue and the air was crisp and fresh. We took a cog train even farther up the mountain to where a lot of major hiking trails began. I took one step off the train and suddenly I'm in the Sound of Music. Seriously, people. I have never seen anything more beautiful.

We spent about 4 or 5 hours just hiking through this trail that took us back down to Murren and with every twist and turn of the mountain, the scenery became more and more picturesque. After a while, we stopped and ate a tasty lunch of cheese, apples, sandwich meats, and bread while overlooking a valley. In this particular area, there were cows covering the hillside. Don't think a moment could get much more Swiss than that.


Between meeting a creepy old man from England, Kaitlin's love affair with the cows, Dad getting zapped by an electric fence (it may or may not have been mostly my fault...), and me dominating the scariest mountain of my life without passing out, the time spent together that day will not soon be forgotten.
And it made me realize how much I really love hiking. Probably 3 of the top 10 days of my life have been spent hiking. I've already gone once since I've been back at El Moro Canyon. So that's it for hiking-- look forward to another post tomorrow on something I've gained a whole new appreciation for.