oh hi ojai

So I've been wanting to go to Ojai, CA for years... ever since I read about the amazing Ojai Valley Inn & Spa in In Style Magazine a long,  long time ago.

While I haven't made it to my weekend getaway packed with wine and massages surrounded by lush green hills, today I did finally make it to Ojai, for the happens-once-a-year (usually on the hottest day of the year) Ojai Valley Lavender Festival.

Luckily, I was with friends who'd been to the festival before. So we left the San Fernando Valley for the hour or so drive north to the Ojai Valley at 8:30am and arrived just as the festival was opening at 10am. It's not a large event... it takes place in Libbey Park on Ojai Avenue and consists of about 40 booths with local artists and vendors. But once it hits about 11:30 the place is packed.





Since we arrived early, we were able to buy delicious lavender sugar cookies and pound cake before the Island Breeze Macaroons and More booth -- that makes lavender infused baked good just for the festival -- sold out (which they looked close to doing when we passed by again around noon on our way back to the car).  I'm enjoying one of the cookies right now with a cup of hot tea :)

I was also able to be choosy about the bunches of fresh lavender I bought (2 bunches for $9) from the Rivendell Aromatics booth, which was mobbed as we left.

My final lavender purchase of the day was lavender lemonade -- delish! The nice woman at the Lori's Original Lemonade booth even suggested mixing it with vodka to give it a kick. A woman after my own heart :)

At the festival, we also learned that owls are still trendy... at least at the Ojai Raptor Center, where they rehab and release birds of prey... like this real owl and hawk who were just hanging out, staring and being stared at all day.

(Sidenote: While I know they were there to educate people, I could've done without seeing the stuffed and mounted birds [or in some cases, just their big beautiful wings] in the booth :(   )

Once we were done walking the festival in about an hour, we did a little shopping across the street and enjoyed the small town feel a mere hour and a half from cray-cray LA.

It was amazing to see that people in town had already put out their folding lawn chairs along the main boulevard, claiming their spots for the 4th of July parade. And, while they were roped down/together so no one could walk off with them, I got the feeling that, except for all us out-of-towners-from-the-big-city, no one in Ojai would even think of doing such a thing.

We ended our day trip with lunch at a lovely local Italian restaurant, Boccali's, which had amazing cheese bread and pesto, and huge helpings of homemade lasagna and spaghetti with meat sauce and homemade meatballs. But the absolute BEST thing they had was homemade strawberry shortcake! The perfect way to end a day that started with things of my favorite color and ended with my favorite fruit/food on the planet :)