Taylor Guitar Factory Tour

One of the great things about our travels is that we can go on factory tours. While in San Diego we toured the Taylor Guitar Factory which was a great free tour. It looked like a great place to work for those with jobs there. Also, the tour was the most relaxed tour I've experienced because the guide let us take photos and ask questions the whole tour. The whole thing was casual and very informative. Here are the photos from our tour!

The tour is free and happens Mon- Fri at 1 pm

Trying out a guitar. I'm wearing safety glasses for the tour.

Look at that craftmanship

The tour getting started

Here is the wood that they make the guitars out of. They store it outside under a tent.

Beautiful woods from all over the world ready to be made into a guitar.

One of the workers doing his thing.

Guitar necks waiting for the guitar body.

Adding the strings.

The finished product. These guitars are handmade! and aren't they pretty?

Matt's favorite guitar. You can try out every type of guitar Taylor makes so this is a guitar lovers paradise!

Surf's Up San Diego

I got to full-fill one of my goals in life while we were in San Diego, I went surfing!

I've always loved the water and playing in the ocean and I thought I would love surfing. I imagined myself tearing up some 6 foot waves for hours with no problem.

The truth is, surfing is a major workout and 3 foot tall waves look huge when you get out in the ocean with them. So, I didn't tear up any 6 foot waves and my arms were exhausted about about an hour of paddling!

Look at the size of that wave!

I'm pumped that I stood up on my board and I had a great time surfing. I would absolutely do it again!

The hardest part of surfing was getting out there. The water is rough and cold so once I got over that shock, it was really fun.

I surfed for one afternoon and one morning. Can you believe there's a place in the USA that you can surf in February (that's not Hawaii)? How great is that!?

Tahoe Tuesday

Hi Everybody! I've been having a great week this week. I'm in Palm Springs and my favorite part of the day is when I get to go outside to get my hair brushed.

When I'm outside I get to meet people and dogs. Dogs are so weird. They like to bark at me while I sit on the table and I just stare back at them because I don't get why I'm being barked at.

I love the view here, it's very pretty. The weather is also perfect!

So I hope you have a good week, until next time I'll be waiting for my next hair brushing sesh.

Studio City

The amazing thing about LA is the crazy amount of celebrities that live here! Another crazy thing is, you can google where they live! You can't usually find their address but you can find the coordinates for their house.

My favorite celebrity is Ellen Degeneres so we drove over to where her house is located. You can't really get very close because she lives up on a hill with a private driveway. I considered waiting at the base of her driveway until she drove by but, I'm not a stalker so I didn't do that.

One of Matt's favorite celebs is Ed Begley Jr. He has a great show called Living With Ed you should check out if you have any interest in green living.

Ed's house is easy to see! We parked on his street and walked around his block.

Matt in front of Ed's house

We also saw his dog in the front yard!

Ed with his dog! Source

Our photo of Ed's dog, it looks like it's gotten a haircut!

After a morning of celebrity house hunting we went to Universal City Walk. We enjoyed the excitement of City Walk and even went to a movie there (we saw The Monuments Men- great movie!!).

LA was good to us and I'd come back again someday!

Being Part of a Live Studio Audience

When planning our time in LA I thought it would be fun to be in a live studio audience at a show. I looked online and found tickets to Last Man Standing which airs on ABC on Friday nights and stars Tim Allen! Tickets to shows in LA are free and all you have to do is sign up online as long as there's space in the audience!

We couldn't have our phone or camera so this is a photo from Google. This was our view during the show however.

I had no idea what being in a studio audience would be like and in the end it was a great experience!

When we arrived at the studio (CBS even though it's an ABC show lol) the parking security man was really rude to everyone showing up for the show which made me wonder if we should even stay for the filming. When we got parked and to our designated meeting place we got lined up in order of our arrival to the studio. About 150 people showed up and after waiting around for about 45 minutes we were taken to the set and got in our seats. There were pages seating us but nobody told us what time the taping would start, how long it would take and we weren't allowed to get up and go to the bathroom. Again I thought, uh it was a bad idea to come to this. At 6 pm a comedian stood up and got the show on the road.

The comedian and a DJ entertained us and told us what was going to happen for the evening. After that about 40 people came out to get the cameras and lights fired up. The directors were getting ready to roll and the whole thing was pretty exciting. The actors came out one by one and we cheered for them and everybody was super pumped!

We learned that this show is filmed once a week. The cast went through their entire episode with only a few retakes due to mistakes. It was amazing how well everyone did their lines and didn't make hardly any mistakes. After each take the DJ turned up the music and the audience cheered wildly for the actors. The purpose of the live audience was to laugh at the funny scenes. There were microphones in front of each of our seat sections to record our laughter.

About 1.5 hours into filming we were served one slice of pizza and water! That was nice because we got there at 4 pm and it was dinner time.

Around 9 pm the show was done! It took about 3 hours to film an episode. Would you like to know how much Tim Allen made for his talents that night? $235,000 per episode! The whole experience was really fun and it was so neat to see Tim Allen in real life! He talked to the audience and told us a few jokes. You can tell he really wanted to entertain us while we were there.

Tim Allen telling some jokes! Source

I'm also amazed at how pretty female actresses are in real life. Their hair, makeup and clothes are perfect.

All in all we showed up at 4pm and got to leave at about 9pm. It was a fun experience once the show got started and I'm glad we went.

There were two ladies whose job was to put props in the correct places on set. I think that looks like a super fun job. The make up crew also looked like it would be a fun job. After each take they would bombard the actors with more makeup. Talk about getting up close and personal with famous people.

If I ever come back to LA I'd love to get tickets to The Ellen Show or to The Price is Right!

Tahoe Tuesday!

I hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day!

I've been enjoying the warm California weather this week! It makes me feel a little hyper and when I'm hyper I like to jump in the trash can, good thing it was empty-

Check out how big I'm getting! I love to stretch out super long sometimes to show off how much I've grown!

Have a great week!

Malibu

Malibu is a beautiful area with an even more beautiful beach just north of LA. We went for the morning to check out the beach and the amazing homes right on the beach.

Here I am pretending to be a Malibu Beach lifeguard-

The day was very foggy but look at the houses on the beach! You can't get any closer than that right there.

I kept my eyes peeled for celebrities but didn't see any. One more post from LA coming up later this week!

Beverly Hills and Hollywood

The Luxe Land Yacht has made it to Los Angles! It's crazy to see places in real life that I've seen on TV many times. What surprised me most about LA was the different distinct areas such as Beverly Hills, Hollywood, the beach and the hills. When I was on the beach I felt 100 miles away from Hollywood and when I was in Beverly Hills I felt like I was in a beautiful bubble of sunshine and swankyness.

The weather in LA is amazing. If you're stuck in the cold somewhere and want to get away to awesome weather, then LA would be a good choice in case you didn't already know that.

Here are some photos from our day in Beverly Hills and Hollywood!

Sunny and palm trees, amazing! We also saw Bruce Jenner while in Beverly Hills! I didn't get a photo but he was hanging out drinking a coffee with some other dudes.

Matt with a Bugatti Veyron! LA has the largest concentration of over the top cars I've ever seen. Every car is a luxury brand and Bentley is one of the most popular.

On Rodeo Drive, definitely pretty!

The gardens and landscaping in Beverly Hills was so nice and it's amazing that tropical flowers are able to grow in February!

This is me mailing a post card to my brother from one of the cute neighborhood mailboxes in Beverly Hills.

After Beverly Hills we headed to Hollywood. Hollywood is interesting. It's kind of gross but something I wanted to see. Here is Grauman's Chinese Theater (now called the TCL Chinese Theater). We couldn't see the walk of fame in front of it or get very close because they were cleaning up from a movie premier the night before!

There's the the Hollywood sign!

More photos from LA to come later.

Tahoe Tuesday!

Sorry I'm a day late in posting! We've been in the wilderness and didn't have good internet connection!

Now we're in a place with great internet!

Lately I've been traveling with Matt and Michelle. I'm a good traveler and get better every time they put me in the car. Here are some of the ways I ride in the car-

Here I'm like, Matt, pay attention to me!

I look like a crazy owl in this photo

Most of the time I sleep in my carrier or on my blanket in the backseat though.

When I'm not riding in the car I'm playing-

And of course sleeping!

Have a good week wherever you are, see you next time!

Santa Barbara- Where SoCal Begins

This week we got to spend a few days in Santa Barbara California. I can see why people love Southern California so much. It's tropical, the ocean is beautiful, the weather is lovely (mid 60's in February). We are so lucky to get to experience California from top to bottom. Santa Barbara is really where I've noticed a major change from rocky pretty coastline to sand a palm trees! California is getting some much needed rain right now so our time in Santa Barbara was a little cloudy but still pretty!

We got to see some friends from our hometown of Tyler, TX while in town! They actually live in beautiful Santa Barbara, aren't they lucky!?

view from the courthouse

the courthouse, love the Spanish style buildings here

Matt and Ben Franklin

The church inside the old Mission

inside the mission

We visited the Santa Barbara Auto Camp, cute right? Notice the bunnies!

Remember it's February, wow!

Cute shops on the main drag