owl love

I've had a thing for owls for as long as I can remember. One of my very first memories is of a bulletin board in my playroom with a tiny little owl in the corner of it, and that little owl was always my favorite thing about it. I have two fairly large owl tattoos. Owls have been present, in one form or another, in several important moments in my life. If I bought into the idea of spirit animals? The owl is for me, all the way. I do try, however, to not purchase every little owl thing that I see, and that's become challenging in the last few years. Owls are everywhere! They are, I think, the woodland creature du jour. Every now and again, though, I see one that needs to come home with me, and while browsing at a Japanese dollar store downtown recently, I found the little duder pictured above. He's pretty great, right?

wes anderson love

Anyone who knows me knows my love of all things Wes Anderson. Starting this weekend, Lopo Gallery on Polk here in San Francisco has this exhibit, and I couldn't be more excited. Over 60 artists will be represented, all putting forth their Anderson-inspired works. Go and see it if you can!

new home love

After searching for almost two months, and vacillating between buying and renting, Jared and I finally signed a lease last night for our new place. Yay! I'm so, so excited to be moving for lots of reasons, but reason numero uno is the fact that we have a second bedroom. San Francisco peeps can attest that it's not an easy thing to find and afford in this city, so I'm feeling pretty grateful right about now. The second bedroom is going to serve a few purposes: an office for Jared, since he works from home quite a bit, a guest bedroom (achieved by popping a futon in there) and a sewing/craft space for me, about which I am stoked. I've long since grown accustomed to sewing and making things wherever I can find the room, both in our current apartment and in my last place (which was a tiny studio), so it's going to be kind of amazing to have a dedicated space for such things. In any case, lots of my current brain energy is being consumed by thoughts of packing and moving and decorating, and it's much nicer than stressing about FINDING a place.

In other news, October is being its normal crazy busy self. It's always been my favorite time of year (my birthday and Halloween happen!) and since moving to SF five years ago it's also become the busiest. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass went down last weekend, and this coming weekend is my absolute favorite music festival, Treasure Island. Besides getting to see a ridiculous amount of music (Belle & Sebastian, The National, She & Him, LCD Soundsystem, and Broken Social Scene, JUST TO NAME A FEW. Sheesh), it's a great space, the weather usually cooperates and there's a ferris wheel! The following weekend I'm camping in Big Sur for both my birthday and several other October birthday friends. And oh right, I need to pack and move in the midst of all of this fun. Wish me luck. :)

san francisco love

Here is my lovely city, doing its thing:

The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

creativity love

I've always been creative out of convenience and necessity. For example, I probably wouldn't decide to make a peach pie, take inventory of my cabinets, go to the store to pick up any missing ingredients and then come home to bake. I would, however, wander into the kitchen at midnight, see that I seem to have what I need to throw together something....chocolatey? Something with fruit? Cake? And then I'd proceed to review my fridge and cabinets until I figured out something that I had all of the ingredients for and that also, you know, sounded good. Likewise, I have a stack of things in my "project pile" that likely won't get tackled until a) I happen to come across, by chance, the exact missing item that is needed to finish said project or b) I absolutely need to finish said project by a certain time.

I used to fight this part of myself. I had this vague picture of being super organization girl, with a perfectly stocked pantry, the exact tools I needed to bake well, a million different fabrics stacked neatly in their place (in my colossal craft room, of course) and my ideas stored in some tidy fashion, waiting to be executed in good time. I'm sure this person exists somewhere, but it's not me. I've slowly started to figure out that creating something out of what you have in front of you can be super rewarding. It's challenging, especially when I'm working in the kitchen, and I like those moments spent cruising my shelves and my brain, adding and subtracting, weighing my choices. I like digging through my bags of crafty things and waiting to be inspired by one thing or another.

I figured some of this stuff out when I recently spent a month in rural Alaska. I learned to "make do", as my momma likes to say, and making do isn't a bad gig when you have rhubarb and raspberries and blueberries growing a stone's throw from your back door, and a kind neighbor with a garden to die for a half a mile away. One of my first nights there I gathered some wild rhubarb and some raspberries to make a cobbler. Not finding any baking dishes of any kind in the kitchen, I ended up popping it into a cast iron skillet. Necessity, meet delicious.

apartment love

Jared and I have started looking for a new place to call home. I moved into his place about six months ago and we've never done a proper merge, so we have far too many things cluttering a fairly small space. Not to mention that we're not super thrilled about our 'hood. It tends to be pretty foggy in this part of the city, and it can be a bummer to look out to colorless skies nine times out of ten. In any case, we've come close a few times to landing our dream apartment, but competition is fierce these days. So while we're still on the hunt, I manage to spend lots and lots of time drooling over other people's homes on the internet (all of today's images come from design*sponge) and tucking away certain images that may work in an SF apartment.

crayon love

Luxirare is one of my favorite sites to visit. Is he an inventor? A foodie? I can’t say, but his photographs are gorgeous and his dedication to letting his ideas play out in real life (see those crayons up there? they’re EDIBLE) is enviable.