We're off to America

After what feels like forever, our trip to the United States of America is finally here!

Together with my sister Lucy and husband Marc, I am jetting to the US to begin a five-week long adventure split between the east and west coasts. As it's mine and Lucy's first time to the country, we are ticking off many of the big must-see cities on this holiday, but it certainly wasn't easy settling on the handful of destinations we will visit this time around. Our itinerary will go something like this:

• New York
• Palm Springs
• Las Vegas
• Yosemite
• San Francisco
• Monterey
• Big Sur
• Los Angeles
• Sydney

In New York, we are splitting half our time between Manhattan and Brooklyn, then we fly to the west coast and pick up a car to begin what I hope will be quite an epic road trip. A small stop in Sydney on the way home to Perth will be a good chance to see some friends and revisit our old haunts.

I'm hoping to do a little blogging along the way to document the journey, but until then feel free to follow along on Instagram to see the play-by-play account. Here we go!

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2014, it's been a blast

It’s the last day of the year and, as always, I’m hit with the urge to look back on the year that was and celebrate the triumphs and challenges of the past 12 months.

Eight months since my last blog post here and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone. I think that’s a symptom of growing up really – we have so many things on our plate that it’s not always easy to stop and savour the present. The days rush by at lightening speed and already we are about to pop the champagne on a brand new year. It’s crazy.

At first I thought I hadn’t done too much to speak of this year, but once I started thinking about it I realised that 2014 has been one of the best to date. There has been struggle, but through it all I’ve come out feeling inspired and proud of what I have achieved in that short space of time.

The first big one was buying a house. When we moved back to Perth from Sydney last year, one of our goals was to purchase our own place. It was made more complicated by the fact that we had owned property before, so with stamp duty we were up for a bigger deposit. We scrimped and saved, even moving back in with my parents, and by mid-March we were so thankful to be standing in a villa we could call our own. What followed was months of painting, renovations and interior decorating as we worked to transform our home into the vision I had in my mind. There’s still much to be done, but I learn plenty along the way about project management, using power tools and why you should always keep a spare grand up your sleeve in case your hot water system needs to be replaced. Ha.

This year was also a big one career-wise, as, after several years of writing for The West, I finally got the full time position I always dreamt of. I feel like training for this job will never be over, but to call myself an entertainment journalist is something that 15-year-old Jessie would be pretty chuffed about (because it really matters what your teen self would think!). I’ve met some of my biggest idols this year and interviewed anyone from Chris Hemsworth to Baz Luhrmann and 5 Seconds of Summer. Sometimes I feel like I might crumble under the stress that comes with working on a daily newspaper but for the most part I just feel pretty gosh darn lucky.

Then there are the smaller things, like visiting Bali twice, seeing some beloved friends in Sydney, celebrating Marc’s and my second wedding anniversary, forming a quiz team, going strawberry picking, planting a veggie patch, finally getting my wisdom teeth out, camping in Margaret River, hiking in Serpentine, being totally surprised with Miley Cyrus’ amazing tour and booking the trip of a lifetime to the US.

2014, you’ve been good to me. Let’s hope 2015 is even better.

Our original home listing

I'm not going to lie: this post has me pretty nervous. I'm the kind of person that only likes to share the shiny, positive side of my life online (power of intention etc, etc) so showing off less than perfect pictures of my home makes my insides want to curl up and hide somewhere. But it's also important to share these photos to give a real understanding of how far we have come with our renovations since getting the keys five weeks ago.

I have spoken before about how awful the pictures were of our home in the original listing, and here's the proof. This is the reason we almost didn't bother with the home open. All I could see in the listing was turn-offs, rather than selling points. There were no pictures that showed off the sweeping high ceilings, for example. And none that even covered the second wing of the house with the bedrooms, not to mention the giant (by villa standards) backyard. Even though my own opinion changed drastically as soon as I walked into the property and saw its potential, I was hesitant to show friends these images even after we had signed the contract for fear they would be left scratching their heads as to why we purchased somewhere so dated and dark-looking.

But now that we have completed the key structural renovations and base-level enhancements, I feel confident enough to reveal all now. Our vision has come together exactly as planned and that potential we saw right at the beginning has been buffed, polished and is now ready to sparkle. So enjoy these snaps in all their dated, 70s goodness and await the transformation! We've still got a long way to go but I'll admit it - I'm liking it round these parts already.

Best of Bali: El Kabron

*Yep, I am a little behind on getting these Bali posts up, but in my defence I have been neck-deep in renovations, painting and Ikea furniture building. Hope to get up to date by the end of the weekend so I can start sharing about the new house!*

In all honesty, I am a little hesitant to say our visit to El Kabron should be considered a highlight but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and just say they were having a bad day.

We had made a booking (make sure you do this) and hopped in a taxi, but the driver had never heard of the place. I thought it was somewhere near Seminyak. Boy, was I wrong. To cut a long story short, we were in the taxi for about 1.5 hours and got lost several times in remote southern areas of the island. Turns out, El Kabron was literally in the middle of no where in the region of Uluwatu, but to get there you need to risk your life driving down steep, unsealed roads and potentially perilous hairpin corners.

When we finally got there we felt pretty drained but I felt our spirits would be pepped up with a swim in their amazing-looking pool while watching the sunset. Except when we got there, the pool had been drained for maintenance. When you book a coveted pool-side spot with a minimum spend, should they not tell you that said pool will be out of action?

So I think that was the main thing that tainted our experience here after the long drive. The food was decent but pretty pricey, but I appreciate the fact that they had vegetarian paella on the menu as this is a real rarity. In terms of the pros, it's a very magical place to watch the sunset, while checking on the progress of surfers and tiny fishing boats far down the cliffs below. If the pool was in action, then this would be a fantastic "cliff club" with a real edge of difference to other Bali hotspots. If you are prepared for a drive (and be sure to choose a sturdier vehicle than a normal taxi) then I would recommend checking it out to see what you make of it. 

Akmani Legian

The real reason we decided to go on a little Bali getaway was because we scored $130 return flights with Air Asia. I am not even kidding, they were that cheap. So we didn't have a huge budget to splash out on a fancy hotel. Instead we were looking for something around the middle: clean, new-ish, nice pool area, decent location but simple.

We looked at a few places online but ended up settling on the Akmani Legian, which came out at about $70 for the room per night between the two of us. It was only a year old and had a really interesting design, with lots of greenery, sculptures and geometric brickwork. It felt very boutique and different, which I really liked. And the location on Jalan Legian was extremely central - we were a $5 taxi ride from Seminyak but could also walk into central Kuta.

The rooms themselves were no simple, clean and no frills - but that's all we really needed as we barely spent any time there. It was strange how the bathroom had a clear window to the rest of the room, so we had to pull a flimsy blind down whenever we wanted to take a shower. But that was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

The two real highlights of the hotel were the staff and the pool area. True to Balinese style, everyone that worked at the hotel was just so friendly and accommodating and nothing was ever too much trouble. The fact that the premises had both a ground-level and a rooftop pool also sold me. The rooftop pool was pretty shallow (maybe for health and safety reasons?) but it made a beautiful place to go and have a cocktail and little swim at night. It was just a shame that the rooftop area was so quiet - we were the only guests up there at one point and I did feel a bit sorry for the three staff at the rooftop bar who had no customers. But when any guilt like that started to come over me, I had to remind myself that WE were there and it was better for us to give them our business than not.

Overall, I would stay at Akmani Legian again but I think next time we will find somewhere in Seminyak as we seemed to go there three times a day. I thought staying in Seminyak would feel far from the centre but it has changed since I last went to Bali and is now definitely the place to be more than ever.

Best of Bali: Motel Mexicola

Motel Mexicola absolutely blew my mind. I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the best places I have been in my life, anywhere in the world. It was on my list of spots to go for dinner but fate led us there for lunch instead as we stumbled on it by chance as we left Body Works after a massage. It was very quiet at that time of day which let us really soak in all the venue has to offer - and that's plenty!

It's a colourful, Mexican-style restaurant and club with multiple spaces, from tiled bars to lounge areas, outdoor benches and diner booths. The decor is just out of this world, with cacti, black and white photos, religious icons, flowers, candles and South American paraphernalia filling every spare corner. There was so much going on that you probably could have taken a different photo with each step, so culling down to just these 13 snaps was quite the challenge!

The food was also outstanding; simple and delicious. We had the vegetarian fried empanadas and the corn and cheese quesadilla plus some fruity mocktails and aqua fresca. We also couldn't pass up the Mexican churros for dessert complete with a thin caramel dipping sauce that was soaked up in the doughy goodness of the churros. Yum.

I could probably go on all day about how good this place is but I'll keep it short and sweet by saying if you go anywhere in Bali, go here. It's probably even more lively by night but be sure to visit by day too, even just to go crazy photographing the place. I immediately started fantasising of a second wedding here, guys. It's that good.