The 31 Project

Yesterday was my 31st birthday.

On a whim, I decided to tackle a photography project. I asked 31 strangers to give me advice for my next year and asked to take their picture.

Here are a few from the bunch.


"Never trust Craigslist."
- Thomas


"If you don't protect what you've got, you'll lose it."
- David


"Take advantage of everything. Do it! No regrets! You will be lots of people in your life. Don't ever get too complacent."
- Donna


"Trust in God. Clean house. Help others."
- Bo

You can find all the photos from the project here.

I'll be back tomorrow to talk a bit about the project and my thoughts about it. Hope you enjoy it!

#4

Best. Fun. Ever.

















Cross it off the list!

Valentine's Day: Weekend in Review

It was a lovely weekend, by all counts. I am appreciating the weekends even more right now while I'm working extra hours for a few weeks. I look forward to having my quiet Mondays back, but for now, I am squeezing in as fun good family time and taking care of me time as I can!

Addison had a Valentine's Day party at school on Saturday, which was fun because it gave me a reason to dress Drew up like a living Valentine!

Isn't she sweet?

I was proud of Addison, too because he truly made all 30 of his Valentine's for his friends by hand. I didn't get a picture of them, but I made a heart out of Elmer's Glue and he sprinkled the glitter on each one. He also wrote his name and his friend's names on about 8 or 9 of them and I did the rest. Not bad for a 4-year old! Then he helped me choose a lollipop for each one and tape it on. Hooray for handmade! It was a bit of work, bu mostly a lot of fun. I was proud of myself for letting glitter get all over the place and not worrying about it too much.

On Sunday, Ben and I got lucky. Addison went to his first "dropoff" birthday party for his best friend, and my mom was in town and watched Drew for a couple of hours. We were freeeeeee!

Now let me just say, we get our fair share of dates. We are lucky enough to have wonderful family members in town who are frequently willing to take the kids so we can go out when one of our friends has a birthday or, well, just because. But these types of things are usually at night when we are already exhausted from the day, and our destinations are usually to group functions and certainly all planned out.

This-- this was different. We had no plans, and it was gorgeous outside and it was broad daylight. I came up with a quick plan: to make it to as many photo booths in Portland that we could in the 2 hours we had. Game on!

First stop was the obvious choice: The Ace Hotel

We got our photos in a jiffy and headed to House of Vintage on Hawthorne.

We had a little fun browsing around, too. ;)

We were running out of time, so we decided to check out some of the Portland Food Carts we never get a chance to try. We sampled some deliciousness from this Creperie, and devoured them in minutes.

Mine was smoked salmon, cream cheese, lemon and arugula. Ben's was baked eggs, mushrooms, gruyere and spinach. To die for, really.

It was an amazing couple of hours. Long overdue. And because we only hit two of the places on our photobooth list? Means we have another date coming up soon.

How was your Valentine's Day?

My Valentine's Day part 2

For lunch on Valentine's Day we headed to Petite Provence, a sweet and fairly new bakery on Alberta Street in Portland. This place was hoppin' with families, couples and friends out for the morning, but luckily we came in ahead of the real lunchtime rush. We sampled some kind of 4-layer mousse cake while we waited, which was to die for, and was a good indicator of the treats in store for lunch!



I had their french onion soup and a yummy assortment of veggies piled onto one of their croissants. Can you smell the soup?



It was gooooood.

We really felt like we were on vacation. Maybe it was the food, maybe it was sitting high atop the restaurant on their balcony, or maybe it was just the fact that we never go out to lunch together as a family since its usually Addison's naptime. But he did great, and it was a good lesson in letting things go.



Later, my sister and her boyfriend gave us a couple of hours of couple time, so Ben and I wandered around The Pearl (a section of NW Portland for you out-of-towners!), sampled a cupcake from Cupcake Jones, hit up a bargain close-out sale at a retail store, browsed Anthropologie and swooned pointlessly at all the things that my pregnant body won't be fitting into this spring, perused an art gallery, and reada few magazines at Powell's.


(they have these little enclosed ecosystems at Anthropologie. They have live shrimp in them and are totally self-sustaining. We had one for a long time in college before the last shrimp standing died. We'd love to get a new one but they are pretty pricey.)

After hours of walking, my feet hurt and I was pretty worn out. I came home and happily collapsed into this bed that Ben surprised me with.



Ahhhh, love.

My Valentine's Day part 1

Our Valentine's Day was one of the best days I've had in a long time.

It couldn't have started off any better, with Addison giving us an uninterrupted night of sleep AND sleeping in, so we all woke up rested and ready to start the day. Ben and I exchanged Valentine's while we were still in bed, and I had a couple for Addison too, so the day just felt special and we climbed out of bed with big smiles on our faces.

One of my gifts to Ben was this pot of succulents that I put together myself. It was as fun to make as it was to give since I had the great help of the salespeople at Pistils Nursery here in Portland. They helped me pick out plants for the pot I brought in, and they had all the necessary charcoal, soil and gravel I needed for proper drainage.



I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and now I want to make another!



The trip there was really fun since they have baby chicks hatching right now, and Addison got to see one still wet from the egg, eyes closed and stumbling around in the incubator, plus 4 other cute little fluffy ones beeboppin' around in their pen. Fun and educational!

Next, I had fun plans for our breakfast after getting this great idea over at suziebeezieland.
Piggy Pancakes!



These were pretty fun and tasty without being too decadent. Our pancakes had chocolate chips, pecans and bananas inside, and I used pear slices for the ears. Addison loved them, and asked for them again the next day. Luckily I had a few leftover!

Next up: a French bakery.. (ooh la la!)

verticals + warm memories

While exploring around a vintage shop the other day, I found myself drawn to this woodstove.

I have no way to prove it, but I swear this could be the very woodstove from my childhood house. Perhaps it isn't. Maybe a million of these were manufactured and they can easily be found. But I like to think this might be the very stove that warmed my frozen mittens and damp socks on winter days in 1986. It could be, right?

my camera is joining itself to my hip

Somehow it feels like I've been away from my blog for weeks! Life has gotten busy lately and I've missed being here.

Today was fantastic. Addison and I spent the sunny afternoon perusing shops I've been wanting to peek into, eating ice cream, and running races on the sidewalk, and racing matchbox cars at home.

My camera is becoming more and more a part of me, and I sometimes feel insatiable in my desire to explore the city and take photos. I am certainly disappointed each time we head out somewhere, whether to a friends house for bagels or downtown to window shop, and I arrive only to discover I've left my camera at home. It can really sort of ruin my trip.

But today I remembered, and it was so satisfying to come home with a camera full of images.

Here are a few of my favorites:







I'll post a few more tomorrow.
How was your day?

a little yogurt makes it better

This past 3-day weekend was a long one. Long in both the good and bad sense of the word. Why? Because the stomach flu was an unwelcome guest and we all took turns passing it around. Yuck. I originally had really great things planned: a really great party that I didn't have to plan but could invite all my best friends to, and a concert that I've been anticipating since I first heard of the band...

Results of the fun weekend?
I left the party mid way since I was so nauseous I could no longer have a normal conversation. Its really bad when you have to interrupt someone you are just getting to know to tell them, "I'm sorry, but I just have to sit down".. and mosey on over to the corner of the room and sit by yourself. And to make matters worse, it was my husband's office party, and I felt like I was giving off the impression to his coworkers that I was either too bored or too insecure or too lame to be having fun. In reality I was just too sick, and I went home at 9:30. Le sigh.

I also missed the concert. No good story there, except I was just sad to be at home watching old SNL clips instead. Le double sigh.

Luckily, after we'd all had our turns being sick, we managed to get out of the house all together on Monday for some frozen yogurt at Skinnidip. Wow, I had heard about this place, and it even made my to-do list, but the experience far surpassed my expectations! It was creamy, delicious, tart and not too sweet, and the topping choices were great. I enjoyed the plain yogurt with fresh raspberries best.





Addison ended up liking mine better because I'd gotten brownie pieces in it. And, when every last bite had been devoured, he nearly cried because he wanted some more. Oh the joy of toddlers!

Here's to a fine new week, with better health, a fine new President and hope on the horizon!

Oregon, breathe on

Smell that? Taste that?

You don't?

Me neither!!! That's the un-smelly, un-smokey flavor of ALL of Oregons restaurants and bars as of January 1st. As someone who cannot stand coming home after an otherwise lovely night out, smelling like an ashtray, I couldn't be happier about this NO SMOKING law taking effect.

Rock on healthy lungs!

And, in other good news, laws will also take effect that put a 5 cent bottle deposit on all plastic water and flavored water bottles, and you can now recycle all TVs and computers at Oregon recycling stations for free!

Oregon, I love you and all your forward-thinking citizens!

Cargo (or something to distract me while the election results pour in)

Hi.

I'm listening to npr call the election state by state, and its sounding pretty good, but I'm not celebrating til its over.

In the meantime, let's look at some pictures.

























Aren't the colors in this store amazing?

If you haven't already, I highly recommend going to Cargo. It is a feast for the eyes... and a photographer's (or in my case, someone who likes to pretend to be one) dream.



Now back to the election (fingers crossed)...