Natural Bridges State Beach & The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz

On President's Day, me and a few friends decided to head down to Santa Cruz. It was my second time going to Santa Cruz. The drive there was shorter than I remembered.

Our first destination was Cafe Brasil. I love that cafe. It has a great menu and I like their food. I ordered the Chicken Delight again and got a guava shake. This is the only place I found that offers guava shake or guava juice, which I love!

After eating at Cafe Brasil, we went to Natural Bridges State Beach. I definitely wanted to go to a beach while I was still in Santa Cruz, but didn't want to go to boardwalk again since I already been there. We did try to go to the boardwalk again, but we ran out of time.

There were more people in the beach then I had expected. Maybe it's because I usually go to the beach later on in the day.

What attracted me to this beach was the rock formation! I loved that the beach had it!

Yes, that's me on the rock. I was brave enough to go on it and for a picture. I wish I had taken more photos, but wasn't aware that my friend wasn't screaming at me to do more poses.

After we went to Natural Bridges State Beach, we headed to the Mystery Spot. Once we reached the Mystery Spot, we had no reception, so I was unable to check in on Foursquare or use my data at all.

As part of our tour, we went inside this house. When you are inside, you can take some pretty cool photos. Among one of the things you saw in the house was this picture below.

This ball was one of the demonstrations used as part of the tour. I will leave out why it was part of the tour.

The tour guide we had for the tour was very good. He was friendly and humorous. He made a lot of jokes during his presentations. During one of the demonstrations, he ended up picking me as one of the people to help demonstrate something.

Lastly, we ended the day with food. We first got bakery at 85 degrees C bakery in Newark, CA. Afterwards, we ate dinner at OZ Korean BBQ in Elk Grove.

A Day in Half Moon Beach & San Jose

A few weekends ago, I decided to go to the Bay Area and hang out. I wasn't sure of where to go at first because I pretty much seen most of SF and been to other parts of Bay Area already.

My friend told me she really wanted to go to Half Moon Bay, so we decided to go there. When we arrived, parts of the beach were flooded from the other day when the waves were too big. In the image above, this is where a stair leads to the beach, but it was too flooded to go down this route.

I ended up going down this hill in order to go down to the beach. However, on the way back to my car I found a easier route!

I have to say going to the beach was the best part of the day! I tried to be more adventurous by touching more of the water although it was cold. One moment I wasn't really paying attention and I go splashed with so much water.

Our next stop was the Japanese Friendship Garden in San Jose. There was a parking fee for the parking lot at the park, so we decided to park on the street. However, it was about a 15 minute walk to the park!

The pond didn't have much water, but it was a rather big pond.

While walking through the park, me and my friends discovered this donation dispenser. You can get a coin to spin by first putting it on the glass and watching how fast it can go in the hole, which was pretty cool to watch. The money goes towards the garden.

Next, we went to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden.

The fountain was really nice to look at. It's a perfect spot to just relax and read a book or look at nature.

I was really excited to go here because I was really looking forward to seeing some beautiful roses. However, when we went all the roses were cut off and weren't growing at the moment.

Before we left the Bay Area, we went to Bambu in San Jose. I love that place! And, afterwards we went to 85 degrees bakery again. That was a fun weekend!

DIY Pinterest Inspired Projects

For my Bucket List of 2014, I decided to do at least 5 DIY Pinterest projects. I decided to put that in my bucket list because I surfed through Pinterest several times before and Pinterest has many interesting images. There were many things that I not only wanted to make or eat, but go travel to just because I saw it on Pinterest. So, I made it a goal to get one of those things done.

One of the first things that I decided to make was "Fairies in a Jar". It looked so beautiful in the pictures that I saw on Pinterest that I decided that I wanted to make it. All I needed was a few simples items in order to do the project.

When I first attempted to do the project, I put too much dark glitter which didn't go well with the glow and did not work out as much. So, when I tried again the second time I used a lighter colored glitter and added more glow, so the jar would really glow.

My second DIY project was actually inspired by a cute scrapbook note. DIY does mean Do it Yourself after all, so I decided to make my own version of the note that was very similar to what I saw on Pinterest.

Among one of the awesome projects I saw on Pinterest was the "Lollipops in a stick". I thought that it was very cute and simple. I automatically decided that I wanted to do the project. When I first did it, I thought I had enough Lollipops, but I didn't! I believe there's over 100 lollipops in ball! Also, I think this is my most succesful DIY project!

All Pinterest projects look so beautiful. I guess that means that people aren't really a fan of posting their failures. When I attempted the crayon art project, I imagine that all the crayon wax was going to come down slowly in one line. But, I ended up messing up when the blowdryer blew all the colors in the middle and spread them around. I also should have chosen only a few colors.

My last project was inspired simply by seeing a project that had two stamped thumbprints on piece of paper, which was most likely used for a card. I thought it was simple and cute. I decided to do the project and wanted to use my thumbprints to make a heart. Hmm.. maybe I should have decorated it more?

After completing these projects,  I was really happy that I did them all. But, I did have a headache after finishing them. Through browsing through Pinterest to look for more DIY projects, I found myself also interested in making Pinterest inspired meals. I was also inspired to go to places that looked amazingly beautiful on Pinterest!