Hej!
On sunday David and I went on a little adventure. We had been writing all weekend and needed a little energy boost so we drove to the old Paramount ranch that I had read about here .

They used to film a lot of things here, the largest production being Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, but now it's just an abandoned western town in the middle of nowhere. So cool.
We arrived in the afternoon just when the sun was turning golden. There was quite a lot of people there. Some were having a picnic, a few were newly engaged couples taking their engagement photos, and some were just like us; walking around and looking at everything for the first time.

I brought my Nikon with me for the first time in ages. I've been feeling a bit rusty with my real camera lately, so I thought it would be nice to get back in the habit of bringing it with me more.
Most of these photos are taken with my Nikon but the self portraits are my iPhone as usual.

I really liked that the buildings looked old and weathered. Since they were made for being in movies they've probably always looked like this. Maybe a little less dusty and broken. It must be so fun building a place like this, making it exactly how you want it. A little town that looks like it's been standing forever.

Some parts were obviously fairly newly added. Like the barn door to the right. It looked very nice and polished compared to the rest.

Ooops! We're in jail!

Loved the light in here. That's how you notice these building were made with movie making in mind. A tiny room with windows at the best spots for as much light as possible.

When we had seen all the houses we went on a hike up in the hills surrounding the little town. It was such a beautiful afternoon.

We took our own cutesy love photos. Because spooky trees are the most romantic things I know.

And David climbed a little.

We walked further up the hills. David is always ahead of me because I have to stop to take pictures all the time.

I caught up with David when he had stopped to photograph his long shadow legs.

The view was fairly spectacular.

"Can I have my sunglasses on? I look cooler with my sunglasses"
Okay, Mr Hollywood Director.

So Many Spooky Trees! *insert approximately a thousand heart eyes emojis*

And I found a new favorite.

It was love at first sight.

The sun was getting low in the sky so we headed back to car.

Stopped by the river first though. Such a moody spot. Spooky trees and moody rivers (what a great book title!) are on my "all time favorite things" list. Oh, and uprooted trees too!

Our spooky love.

Almost all the people were gone by now. The place looked just like a ghost town.

I made plans in my head to return soon. With a picnic basket. And maybe bring my sister and her kids. I think that would be wonderful!

Really loved the colors here!

And let's end this post with a jumping photo, because YAY for abandoned Western towns!

Hope you enjoyed tagging along on our little afternoon adventure.

See you soon!

/Lotta

Hej!
Since I've been a very bad blogger lately I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of what's been going on in my life these last few weeks- in selfies and self portraits only! Ready?

I missed my fall hats in Sweden and decided I just couldn't live without one.
So I went to a hat shop and the first hat I saw made me stop in my tracks. The. Perfect. Hat in The. Perfect. Color.
At around this time Los Angeles also decided it was fall so me and my hat went everywhere together.

(This is two different days by the way. I look exactly the same.)

Hanna came to visit us! (Hanna is the creepy girl in the photo in Pictured, if you recognize her, he he.)
It was absolutely wonderful to have her here! We took selfies at interesting places such as Paramount, Venice Canals and Santa Monica Pier.

I also made her participate in jumping- and Outfit photos.
We jumped at Paramount Studios, and we dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner.

The sun was as golden as my hat, and love was all around.

I sat at cafés with my laptop almost every day. I was working on my photo book Alone in LA (I'll talk more about that next week probably!) and took self portraits in café restrooms.

Large mirrors in the wild beckoned me.

I took outfit photos outdoors...

...and indoors.

The morning sun fell in slivers on my face.

David and I went to Sweden! We arrived a few days before christmas and it was lovely to meet family and friends again after almost 9 months in LA.
The photo in the bottom right was taken three hours before David and I realized we had caught the Winter Vomiting Disease. We realized this because we both threw up in the parking garage the moment we arrived in Gothenburg after celebrating christmas in our home town.
That was fun. No it wasn't. It was fucking awful.
All then things we had planned to do for the next three days had to be cancelled.
And then it was time for David to go back to LA to do the last work on the movie (it's completely done now!!!) and I cried at the airport because two weeks without each other is a long time!

Our tiny old elevator got some selfie action too, of course!

I stayed two extra weeks in Sweden to sort out our apartment. Since we're staying in LA we can't really pay rent for two places at the same time. It was so much work to do but I took breaks to meet up with friends for coffee and baked goods. I ate So Many baked goods those two weeks.

Black and white selfies for a more Noir feeling.
I took the train to visit my parents and my hair looked all Rita Hayworth-y Good lighting at my parents kitchen table.

Self portrait at my parent's place to show off my favorite outfit in a long time. The skirt is vintage and has buttons from floor to waist. The crocheted sweater thingy is also vintage and I bought it in LA and immediately thought of this skirt that was left in Sweden. I thought they'd go together nicely, and they did not disappoint!

The cold (and the snow) came to Sweden and I didn't have anything to wear on my head (except for like a zillion hats but that won't do in those temperatures), so I bought myself a turban that must be my most unexpected purchase ever. I had no clue turbans were so flattering! Its something about that V shape that just does it for me. Love it so much! And that emerald green color! *insert heart eye emoji*

David and I talked on FaceTime every day. Here he is driving: something you do more often than not when in LA.
Technology really is amazing for this kind of thing. The distance doesn't feel half as bad when you can see each other like this every day. Thank you, technology.

One thing I really wanted to do before I went back to LA was to take photos with my cape on the cemetery. My vintage nurse cape just works so well in that environment, so I took a break from packing to make a little photo series.

This cemetery is one of those things I really miss when I'm in LA. It's so moody and beautiful and I haven't find anything close to it over here.

Yes, packing. There was so much packing going on.
Here you see me in our old work room. Yes, I'm there in the middle of all rubbish.
The last night in the apartment was so strange. Empty and dusty. It felt like the end of a chapter, sort of. This apartment is where everything started for this Hollywood adventure we're on. That's where we made Lights Out without any clues of how it would change our lives.
The Lights Out hallway will always have a fond place in my heart.

On the last day I had help from a wonderful friend. She drove me to the recycling station with all the trash that had accumulated over the week, and together we moved furniture and boxes all night long. I wouldn't have made it without her and I'm beyond thankful that I have her in my life. Friendship is a magical thing.
She even waited for me when I said I needed to take a self portrait with the discarded refrigerators at the recycling station... That is true friendship.

When I came back to LA it was to a new apartment. We found a place the same week we left for Sweden and it felt so exciting to know we had that to return to.
We don't have a lot of furniture yet but this place already feels like home. It's strange how that works. Some places just fits.
The light is wonderful and we even have a long narrow hallway perfect for horror movie making! This one is even longer and more narrow than the Lights Out hallway. Let's see what waits for us in this home.

Soon I'm off to meet up with David for a Friday afternoon Dining Table hunt. Cross your fingers (or Hold your thumbs, as we say in Sweden!) we find the One today!

Talk to you soon! (Yes. I'm trying this blogging thing for real again. Hold your thumbs for me that I can stick with it this time)

/Lotta

2015 was a year for the books.
Strangely (stupidly?) enough I didn’t blog a lot, so let’s hope I’ll remember it all without evidence in dated blog posts.
I have been thinking about how to do the yearly recap this time, it’s not as easy as usual because I don’t have a lot of entries to back up the rambling. So I’m gonna ramble, mkay?

At new years 2014 I decided that 2014 was going to be The year to be brave. And I think that turned out to be true, in many ways. At the start of 2015 I knew that big things were about to happen with Lights Out so I didn’t really decide on a plan of action. If anything, I decided to follow along on whatever were to happen.
And that has sort of been the theme for this entire year.
Just follow along, and see what happens.
A lot of things have happened.

2015 started with a whole lot of waiting. David were in talks with Hollywood about turning Lights Out into a feature film, and the plans were so far along that we knew we would have to relocate to Los Angeles for a while. We didn’t know when though, and we didn’t know for sure. Hard to plan your life when you don’t know for sure.
I blogged a bit:

We kept busy making things. We had an idea for a new horror short and went location scouting in the woods. Sweden decided to turn into the most beautiful winter wonderland and we tried to work with it but it was just too cold and snowy for us, so we went home and made Attic Panic instead.

And then one day Hollywood called and said ”Can you come on Friday?”.
On the last day of March we took a plane to Los Angeles. We had a hotel to stay in for the first couple of weeks before we could find something a little more permanent.

In the first couple of weeks David didn’t have too much work to do, so we went to the zoo, had sandwiches with a view from Mulholland drive and ate a lot of frozen yoghurt.

I went into this entire adventure knowing that I would be alone a lot. And that I wouldn't have anything to do during the days. So I was kinda prepared, but it was still strange. To be in a country where I’m not allowed to work, where I don’t know anybody and where I don't have any of my things for jewelry making.

We moved to a tiny house in Burbank and I started to investigate our neighborhood.
During all this time it was still a secret to the world what David and I were even doing in LA.
For almost a year we carried around this huge secret about the most exciting thing in our lives, it makes for quite a lonely life not to be able to talk about such a huge thing.
Our families and closest friends knew of course and talking on the phone with them was always great.
I thought I was going to blog every day, but when I couldn’t tell all of you about the reasons behind our adventure in the first place, I just didn’t know how to blog anymore. And that feeling has been hard to shake (I hope I’ll want to blog more in 2016 but for the everyday life there’s always instagram. Go follow!).

But then, in June, we could start telling the world.

During this time we started to work on getting me into the movie as well. It was a nerve wracking time for me, because what if I came all the way from Sweden, for a shortfilm I was part of making, and didn’t get anything. That would have sucked so hard.
I was scared, and nervous and felt very powerless. I’m not used to not being able to make things happen for myself. And Hollywood is a scary place.
Especially if you are a woman. And you maybe don’t fit into the very narrow Hollywood ideals.

In July the part was mine. But I needed a visa to be able to work, so after applying for that a whole new game of waiting started before the All Clear came.
July was also the month when David started shooting Lights Out.
I went to the film set every other day. It was amazing to see how everything worked, but most of all it was wonderful to see David direct.

Being a Director’s wife on set is not the same as being an Actor on set. Even though it was nice to be able to come and go as I wanted, it was AMAZING to be there as a part of the crew. A meaningful person for the making of the movie.
I had a trailer. And hair and makeup people that came in between scenes and made sure every hair lay right and that my makeup didn’t move in the heat.
Being in all that hustle and bustle was fantastic!

After shooting was over David had a few days off and we went to a cabin in the woods to relax. It was heaven.

We moved from Burbank to Hollywood hills and it was like something switched in me. The neighborhood was beautiful and I could walk places every day. I started taking lessons from an Accent reduction coach, not to totally rid my accent but to feel more secure in talking English. It’s hard to act in another language than your own- All those little nuances that you know without even thinking about them aren't there anymore. I felt like I was starting from scratch with my acting, and that is not a great feeling when you’ve been acting since you were eleven.
I needed to build confidence in my work all over again.
The accent classes were exactly what I needed!
I also went to improv classes and that was great for me, as I’m used to being completely in control on stage or when making the horror shorts with David. In Improv I had to just let go.
It was so hard. Fun but hard. I’m going to keep taking improv classes during 2016. And acting classes too.

During all this I've been working on a project by myself. I decided over a year ago to really take advantage of the fact that I would be alone a lot in LA, and make a book of self portraits. I bought a tripod for my iphone and set out to capture scenes everywhere I went. Sort of like learning Los Angeles through self portraits. That book is finished now and I'll show it to you soon. It's called Alone in LA and I'm extremely proud of it.
The highlight was when I had the opportunity to roam around an abandoned hospital two days in a row. I took so many self portraits in those scary hallways.

Anyways. The last couple of months of 2015 was all about finding routines, sort of. We were still living in tiny furnished apartments and had realized we needed to find something more permanent. Because we’re staying in LA for a good while. I spent my days walking, drinking tea at cafes and making the photo book Alone in LA.

Going home to Sweden over christmas was wonderful, but you know what? I missed LA.
We had a new apartment waiting for us when we got back, and I can't wait to start turning that place into a home.
That’s what’s been missing. A sense of home.
When we now got back to LA it’s with so much more confidence than when we got here on the last day of march and I can't wait to see what 2016 brings.
If I dare to hope (and dream and plan) it’s for a daily life that feels fulfilling, new projects- together as well as by myself- and a true feeling of belonging.

Oh, and did I tell you? Lights Out is coming to theaters July 22! ISN’T IT FRICKING AWESOME?!?!?!

Oh, and if you're interested in reading some more, here's a few text posts from 2015 that I'm particularly proud of:
Catching up on yourself
Budget wardrobe tips and tricks
To stand out
The feeling of not yet knowing
Men writing women

It’s the last day of November and it’s eight months since we came to LA believing we would be here for four.
Tomorrow is the first day of December and my outfit says it’s October.
I dream about showing LA to my family, about being chased through abandoned hospitals and hugging our Gothenburg neighbors greeting us back home as if we were close friends. They said they had missed us.
The creepy girl with the shorts and braces catches up with me at the end of the hallway and when I realize the double doors go both ways and I can't keep them closed I prepare to freak out, but is saved by David who wakes me up.
And we’re in LA. And it’s the last day of November.
And the sun is shining like it’s July in Sweden.