Hej, friends!
This has been a very quiet space lately and I have been thinking that maybe I should blog but, nah, not today, and then time did its thing and now here we are.
Anywhoooo. A while ago, almost two months or so, David and I went to the mountains to relax after shooting Annabelle 2. Plus, we celebrated 3 years as married around that time too so we thought it would be a perfect reason to just go away for a few days.
The drive there was supposed to take 2 hours but a huge fire started at the same time we left LA so we were stuck in traffic for a loooong time. It took us 6 hours to get there and we were very tired and hungry when we arrived at the cabin.

We were a bit scared though, because we could see the fire clearly from the balcony. What if we came here and had to evacuate in the middle of the night because the fire spread to us? We sat outside, wrapped in blankets, eating sandwiches, watching the flames, and checking all the news sites hoping we were safe.

In the morning the white smoke covered the mountains like cotton. It seemed like the fire weren't coming towards us but it was still going strong. We had breakfast infront of the view and decided to not do anything substantial all day. It was perfect.

I spent most hours of the day looking at the view. I shared a glass of wine with the evening sun.

And then when the sun was setting it became clear that the fire had not gone away.

This mirror was luring me all weekend. I have SO many photos of that mirror.

We went to the mountains last year too, after shooting Lights Out, and it feels like this is going to turn into a tradition. The fresh air and pine trees make us so happy. I think it's because it reminds us about Sweden a little bit.
Anyways, look at this view. Just look at it. And breathe.

So scary. Yet so beautiful.

New day. David called his family and friends and picked bark off of a tree as he was talking. The things you do when you talk on the phone, right? Some people doodle, some strip a tree from its clothing.

I was taking photos of this strip of road surrounded by trees. I took at least four photos a day of this exact view. With my Nikon, with my phone AND with our polaroid. It's just something with the smooth shape and the colors.

David had been extremely busy for more than a month, so he had a lot to talk about with people back home.

One day we went on a mini adventure. I had read about a heart shaped rock that was supposed to be worth seeing. We didn't really care about the rock but thought it would be nice to see at least one of the local sites, get some fresh air and a walk.

David climbed a tree.

I was in Spooky Root Heaven.

I mean. Look at this!

So cool.

Nice of nature to create a step for us humans wanting to hike without killing ourselves.

And there it was! A heart shaped rock!

A couple was climbing around there and I tried to take sneaky photo of them to show the size of the heart. I didn't do a very good job, but you can at least see the top of the heart in the bottom of the photo.

We also found a beautiful glade that looked like it came straight out of Jurassic Park or something.

Right outside our cabin we had this beauty. Love how the roots seem to hold onto the rock like their life depended on it.

To come "home" to this view was something special. The cabin was situated in the tree tops.

We found a bunch of board games one evening and played backgammon. This is David's thinking pose.

New day again! This was our last whole day in the mountains.

That mirror again.

We had one last thing we wanted to during our stay in the mountains, and that was to have a sort of Anniversary Picnic with a view. When we first came to LA last year we didn't have any money so our favorite thing to do was to drive somewhere with a nice view and eat sandwiches. We call it Dinner with a view and it is lovely.
So, this day we packed some sandwiches and drove to a spot we had seen from the car the day before. We hoped we would be able to get to the view without trespassing or something, and we were in luck! We found a cliff that we climbed and right on the edge, on the very top of the rock, we sat down to have our Dinner with a view.

The view was spectacular!

All around us, breathtaking nature.

We had to sit close to not fall down the very steep mountain wall infront of us.

Dangling my feet.

It was so wonderful. And a bit scary, because we were really high up.

Look at this handsome devil!

One more, because Look At Him!

When the sun had set and it was starting to get dark we climbed down from the rock on the mountain and drove back to our cabin in the trees.

And then it was a new day again and we headed back to LA. But first I had to take a photo of some spooky roots.

I know this was a while ago now, but better late than never right?
My computer died (because I happened to get an entire glass of iced coffee in it...) and then the admin page for my blog went bananas, but now! MAYBE! I can get back to blogging once in a while.

Tjingeling!
/Lotta

Hej!
Today I took my Nikon D7000 camera and went for a walk. I had no real plans, I just decided to walk upwards and see where I ended up.
I found Hiking Gold, that's what I did.

But let's back it up a little. The walk started in cute neighborhoods.

I mean, look: Cute.

Buildings in LA can be super boring, but up in the hills it's fun to look at every single house.

Some have medieval knights (?) on them...

And some hide behind dense vegetation...

And other ones want their place to be seen as much as possible.

And one looked like the entrance to an enchanted garden.

And then I reached Sunset Ranch, where you can rent horses and go for a guided ride up in the mountains. It was also okay to just walk through so that's what I did.

But before I show you the horses and the views, let's take a cactus pause:

Aah, cactus!

I found a small path up a hill and tried that one.

And it lead me to horses!

Hullo!

(Read in very strong British accent for most humorous effect)

After chatting with the horses for a while I went back down the hill, and found another path where other people were walking too, which is alway a good sign. I turned around and saw another sign (Hö Hö. Or He he in English, but Hö Hö is like a combination of He he and Ugh and is clearly much more fitting for stupid punny jokes).
Around here I began to realize this was a popular hiking spot and PROBABLY it would lead closer to the Hollywood Sign.

Look at this silly cactus/coat rack!

Anyways: The view was fairly spectacular.

See the horse ranch down there?
Also: HOW COOL IS THIS BLACK AND WHITE EDIT I DID?!?!

It's like Gotham City!!!

Where are all the moody broody super heroes?!?

And then I came really really close to the sign and it was cool!

SELFIE MOMENT!
This one and the rest of the photos were taken with my iPhone.

Because I had to take some self timer photos!

Jumping Pippi Longstocking style infront of the LA Skyline that was so pretty today.

And then I was SO HUNGRY and walked home.
That was one lovely 2 hours and 15 minute hike!

/Lotta

Hej!
Sometimes time just goes and I realize I've been doing things and my blog hasn't felt it. I'm not even talking about you guys reading this because I know you won't care. But I don't want to hurt my blog's feelings, you know? Okay, maybe you don't know, but anywhoooo.
I was looking through my photos and thought 67 pics are probably like... 37... pics too many? So I tried to find a theme and when I couldn't do that I decided to make up a completely dumb theme and just roll with it.
So here it is: three things or places or stuff that happened maybe a month ago. I know, I know: I'm SO up to date here. But humor me, okay?

You remember when David and I were in San Francisco, right? The long drive there featured a bunch of truck stops in the middle of nowhere, and on one of them I decided to look around a little and maybe snap some photos.

I struck gold with this car cemetery in the desert!

AND it was also the home of a whole bunch of feral kittens!

I mean. That is Truck Stop Gold right there.

I also convinced David that we needed to take some jumping photos, so you could say I was happy already- not even close to San Francisco!
I actually really like driving places with David. Well, I don't drive because I don't have a driver's license (I KNOW!) but so often when we're going somewhere by car and we're in the middle of nowhere and there's music and just roads and we are in frickin' USA and life is so wonderful and I'm just STRUCK by this magical feeling of happiness and I don't even KNOW because it's not like it was any different the morning before but it's like the open road gives me perspective or something and yeah, this was one long ass sentence so I'll put a period on this now.

And our hotel in SF was old and decorated in a wonderfully freaky way. I mean, this photo is proof enough, right?

We had a wonderful couple of days in SF and it felt awesome to be able to stroll around in a city where it's more people than just me and the homeless out walking. (Seriously LA! The sidewalks are meant to walk on! Try it for once!)

Pretty view and loveydovey us.

Around easter my sister, her kids and their friend Rebecka came to visit us. I was so excited! Here I'm sitting and waiting and listening for sounds of a jet lagged bunch of Swedish people tumbling up the stairs.

It was so great to have them all here! I took them to all the great spots.

My niece Hilda- Already a star in Hollywood.

We went to LA Zoo of course!

And I took a selfie with a giraffe.

And we went to Santa Monica pier where it was windy as all hell.

Alfred running on the beach!

I took my sister, Sara, to UCB for a musical improv show that I love- and she of course loved it too!

When they had went back to Sweden again I felt a little like this. So tired. And the apartment was so quiet. And strange. And happy that it went so well- now we know they can come back many times!

The last thing/place/whatever is a Sunday hike to where they shot the tv series M*A*S*H. It was quite the long walk there and when we reached the spot it turned out to be the least exciting part of the entire hike.
But that doesn't mean it was boring because OMG this was a beautiful place!
I found an abundance of spooky trees, for one thing!

I climbed a few of them. And balanced high up and hoped that I wouldn't fall before the self timer had gone off so I at least would get a nice photo before I'd break all the bones in my body.
I didn't fall though. Surprising everybody (well, David), but mostly myself.

The mountains and green fuzzy hills give me so many creative ideas, you have NO idea.

Just like road trips with this guy makes me indescribably happy, seeing wondrous nature like this together makes me smile from ear to ear. It just smacks me in the head: the beautiful surroundings, the adventure, the love. And that's how you know it's kissing selfie time!

That was all from me today.
And, can we just pretend the theme was solid and perfect and you bought it completely? Okay? Thanks.

/Lotta

Hej!
High time for a new blog post, right?

These past couple of weeks have been a constant stream of reminders of how crazy our lives have become. Since Lights Out went viral we haven't been able to stop and think and I believe that it'll be years before we know for sure what all this meant for us.
When I was a kid I used to hope and dream for something like this. I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be recognized for my work. And sometimes I dreamed of being famous. You know in that childish way of thinking; that being a celebrity must be the best thing ever. Being adored by fans, going on talkshows and having you're name in all the big magazines. I don't want to be famous in that way anymore, not really. It scares me to think of the lives huge celebrities have. Never being free to just go outside without paparazzi chasing you, always having to be a perfect version of yourself- a version that probably isn't even real, always being judged on your appearance, and so on.
I just want to act and make movies.
But I can't lie and say that these two couple of weeks haven't been awesome. Because they have made that child in me scream "DREAM COME TRUE!!!". It's been lovely, no scary side effects- just crazy fun!
So let me tell you about it, okay?

A couple of weeks ago we went to CinemaCon in Las Vegas to promote Lights Out. We flew in a private plane filled with celebrities. Samuel L Jackson, Alexander Skarsgård (yay, fellow swede!), Christoph Waltz, Vera Farmiga, Eddie Redmayne and like twenty other famous actors were on the same flight as us. My mouth was turned into a huge smile the entire trip. And then we arrived in Vegas and realized almost all of Hollywood was there, and we were the only people invited that no one recognized. It was a crazy day.
I was introduced to Jared Leto and I can't remember a single thing we talked about. We did a press line- that's when journalists stand in a line and the actors and directors walk from interview to interview and answer the same question a million times over. David and I sometimes had to wait a little after we had done one interview before going on to the next, because we're not nearly as interesting as Amy Adams or Will Smith...

And then we took press photos on a red carpet thing. Almost like the press line when we talked to journalists, but here it was the photographers that stood in line taking our picture. We look so calm and collected here, but let me tell you- it was nerve wracking!

It was so cool to see the Lights Out teaser poster at Caesar's Palace!

This picture is here to demonstrate how tired we were after that day in Vegas.

Last saturday we were tagged in a photo on instagram from the event Monsterpalooza in Pasadena just outside of Los Angeles. It was a photo of one of the displays there, one that was a tribute to our short Lights Out. We found out it was going to be there the next day too so on sunday we drove to Pasadena. Happy and excited, as you can tell.

Look at this thing! It's a sculpture made by The Scary Closet and it's so incredibly detailed it's crazy! The guy who made this, Mark, was super nice and we were so happy to be able to see him and his work in person.

You do know that I am both the woman and the monster in the short Lights Out, right? Yep, it's true! That's me!
If you don't believe me you can see this little clip on how David altered my face to look like the monster.

We got to sign the doll in the back of the head, and then some fans came up and wanted to take pictures with us, which felt really cool.

Then on tuesday David and I were guests on the podcast Modern Horror. It's actually been a real dream come true for me to be on a podcast. As the daughter of a radio journalist I think it's now in my genes to love being on the radio. Every time I've had the opportunity to be on Swedish radio (three or four times, because of Lights Out when it went viral) I've loved it so much and podcast has a more relaxed and casual tone to it that I really like.
Anyways, the guys over at Modern Horror were awesome, and if you want to listen to the podcast you can do that here. We're on at 32 minutes into the program if you want to go right to our part of the show. We talk about the entire journey of turning a short into a feature and the crazy adventure we're on right now.

On Wednesday David and I were invited to our first Hollywood Movie Premiere. It was for the Key and Peele movie Keanu. We really looked forward to seeing what happens at an event like this, since we have our own to attend in July when Lights Out premieres. We saw it as studying for the finals, sort of. So obviously I wanted to look like I fit in.

I love how David sneaks into my super glam selfie!

And then last Thursday David and I went to California State University Fullerton. The film students there (CSUF FMAA) had organized a screening of all of our shortfilms and behind the scenes videos and then we did a Q and A. It was absolutely wonderful!
We felt so welcome and like our story could actually inspire them in their future work. That is the best feeling for us. After the Q and A we took pictures and selfies with almost everyone and we even signed a few autographs. I've never felt more like a celebrity!
When we drove home afterwards it was with warm cheeks and hearts, and I can definitely say that THAT night was the best Dream Come True moment of them all. It was real and honest and just perfect.

Every day we are struck by this feeling of WOW! But every day we are also just living our lives. And I think that the thing that has hit me the most in this adventure is how we experience all of it the same way we would everything else in our lives. We are (obviously) the same people we were before we made a short that went viral, and every day that goes by I realize that I'm never going to turn into someone else. So if I someday end up on a talkshow I will probably, most certainly, be a total wreck before and during the interview, and I will have red cheeks and I'll talk a little too fast, and snort when I laugh, and I will for sure tell a story that is a little bit embarrassing for myself, but you know what? That's how I want it to go, because that cool and collected person from my childhood dreams just isn't me. And the Dream Come True moments wouldn't feel as huge if I wasn't acting like myself. Horse giggle and all.