instagram gift tags
December 22, 2013 § Leave a comment
So my crazy holiday schedule this year led to a last-minute plan for crafty Christmas gift tags, which turned out to be awesome! I love Instagram and have so many great pics of my family. I chose a couple of favorites and took a few more holiday fun ones of my girls. Then I copied the photos into a Word document and printed them out on cardstock. I’m so happy with the results, such a cool touch to my Christmas packages. It’s like an extra little gift on the gift – yay!
paris (and a camera phone)
April 20, 2013 § 2 Comments
It’s been a whirlwind couple of months: buying a new house, selling an old house (in that order) and turning 40! I’ve not had a lot of time to spare, but have been managing to squeeze every bit of fun out of this busy life as possible. We’ve just returned from a lovely Spring Break to Paris, a special trip in honor of the big 4-0. It was Drew’s idea that we celebrate my birthday in my favorite city, and who am I to argue? So even though the timing was a little crazy, we went for it and got lost in the world for a blissful week.
It was the rainiest visit to Paris I’ve ever had, but typical I think for the springtime. We weren’t able to do quite as much strolling and sitting around in parks, but that left more time for eating and drinking, both of which are so good there. We had many fun moments curled up in the booths of cafes and boulangeries and brasseries together.
Since we were only there for a week, I relied on my iPhone for my photos and got to play with a few of the photo apps I’ve been so obsessed with lately. I had discovered Instagram a while back, but ever since my girls’ weekend in Chicago, where my friends Jean and Jen so kindly filled me in on the joy that is Picfx, I’ve been having so much fun playing with pictures and exploring several different and fun photo apps available. My current favorite is Camera+, and its “Fashion” FX effect is so cool.
The only thing better for me than taking and looking at pictures of my precious girls, is taking the pictures and then getting to edit them over and over to my heart’s content – ahhhhh!! This is much to Drew’s dismay as he loves to tease me that there is no reason that a perfectly good picture taken in 2013 should look like it’s been dug out of a cedar chest circa 1973. But I say he’s wrong! There’s something alluring about these edited images, they seem somehow timeless. They’re fun, and they make me happy.
So last week as I found myself in Paris, my favorite city, with my three favorite people in the world and my new favorite photo apps – I felt like such a lucky girl! And even though it was only a week, I have a lifetime of beautiful photos to help remember. Here are some highlights:
where the day takes you
February 21, 2013 § 1 Comment
This past Monday was the only day my girls’ mid-winter breaks aligned, so I decided to make the most of it by heading out on a little road trip with my brother. I feel so lucky that he moved out west and now lives only 15 minutes away from us, much to his nieces’ delight. We had no plan for the day but decided on a whim to try to find a fantastic little hole-in-the-wall restaurant we’d been to once before on a road trip when I first moved out here and he’d come to visit. We couldn’t even remember how long ago it was, except that my now eight year old was in a baby car seat.
Jason thought the restaurant had the word “anchor” in the name or there was some sort of nautical theme – that and the fact that we remembered it being in one of the small waterfront towns near a ferry port north of Seattle was pretty much all we had to go on. It was fun taking off for the day and retracing the steps of our past adventures. And as soon as we hit the little town of Anacortes, with its quaint historic downtown, it all came back. We’d obviously been there several times since along with Adrift (the restaurant we’d remembered with the most amazing burgers and shelves filled with old books), we also came across a pizza place and a country-style restaurant that we remembered going to.
After our lunch, we continued road tripping to the amazing – but terrifying – Deception Pass bridge. Heights like that freak me out, especially since having children, and I wouldn’t even let my girls go all the way out to the middle. Yikes!! But we parked and had a cool little hike down to the beach below. The girls had fun being outdoors and hanging with my bro, and I gathered a few more of the beautiful colored rocks that you can only find out here on the beaches of the Pacific Northwest. Not a bad way to spend the day!
girls weekends
February 4, 2013 § 3 Comments
Today I’m feeling tired but refreshed, having just come back from a fun girls weekend with two of my besties from college. I flew from Seattle and Jean from D.C. to help our friend Jen celebrate her birthday in Chicago. This is the year that we – girlfriends since 18 – each turn 40, and it seemed the perfect reason to spend some time together catching up. In our 20s, we made more of a habit of these little getaways, staying connected by flying to each other’s cities for weekend trips. But life gets in the way, and it had been more than 7 years since all three of us were together. The day-to-day grind of family and work and responsibilities can make it hard to take time for ourselves. For me, just the prep that goes into making arrangements to leave my world for a bit can leave me frazzled before I even go. It wasn’t easy, but I’m thrilled we finally made it happen again.
It was a perfect weekend! We shopped, saw a movie, ate yummy food, toasted with some fun drinks, went ice skating downtown, and partied with Jen’s local friends. We discussed our careers, our families, our love lives. We spent a slightly embarrassing amount of time chatting about the minutiae that is Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and my new obsession: Picfx (thanks girls). We took lots of pictures (including a few of Jean’s favorite feet pix) and had fun editing and sharing them. We giggled our way through the weekend.
The thing is, life-long friends are few and far between – making the time to stay connected to these women, who I love so much and who have known me so long is important. These friends love me for me and, no matter where I am, their friendship is a given. When life gets crazy, friends keep you sane. I’m a lucky girl to have these friends in my corner rooting for me, and I’m so grateful to have had this time away with them to remember it.
a crafting party
January 19, 2013 § 8 Comments
After a week’s delay for my Bella to get over being sick, she was finally able to have her super-fun crafting sleepover party with a few friends. Bella loves to craft almost as much as I do (and that’s saying something), and so planning this party together was a lot of fun. She chose the cool color combo – aqua and lime green – something I wouldn’t have thought of, and I loved it! We worked together on the decorations; Bella was so proud of her washi tape flags for the cupcakes. I love the sleeping masks I made for the girls to decorate by sewing on buttons and felt embellishments. And my hubby got a laugh watching me sew (yes, sew) the wax paper favor bags closed!
We made button necklaces from an idea I found on Pinterest, and Bella came up with her own game: a duct tape version of charades. During the night, I printed out some cute pictures of the girls that I took on Instagram, and they were able to add them to their SMASH Books (a cool new scrapbooking line). But the best part was how proud and excited Bella was to share these fun ideas and projects with her friends. Here are some scenes from our craft night – with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s time to get your crafting skills ready.
goal setting
January 10, 2013 § 2 Comments
Another new year, time for some new goals – or in my case, re-addressing some of my old goals in new ways. In January, lots of people like to evaluate their choices from the previous year and perhaps tweak a few things. My New Year’s resolutions always seem to be the same: to not worry so much, to enjoy my life more, to spend more time on my writing and other personal projects, and to get in shape. On the subject of that last one, I’m kick-starting my new healthier self with a cleanse that I saw in the January’s Redbook magazine: no processed foods, no caffeine, no alcohol, no dairy, no breads, no sugar. If my celebrity muse Gwyneth Paltrow can do it for three weeks, then surely I can do it for five days. I’m not making her exact recipes and probably eating more than I should, but hey at least I’m trying.
My motivation with these kinds of things usually comes from the challenge. I ran my first half marathon in 2009 mostly because I didn’t think I could. My friend Stacy wanted to run one, and honestly I didn’t think there was any way I would be able to run that far. I’d never been much of a runner and hadn’t even run 5 miles at one time before. But being able to cross something off the bucket list seemed as good a reason as any to try. It makes me happy to be out of my usual routine and to work a little harder to see just what I’m made of. Of course, exactly 0 miles into my new running challenge, completing a FULL marathon in June, I’m feeling a little skeptical of whether the surprising-even-myself philosophy will be enough. I just have to stay positive: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can …
I’m on day four of this cleanse and have been dealing with massive headaches. But focusing on the good – of how proud of myself I’ll be and how nice it will feel to know I’m working hard to stay healthy – may just get me through. That and the fact that Friday evening is Bella’s birthday party, and I for one am planning to have an extra big helping of my homemade mac and cheese and a glass of wine to celebrate. Yes, cross another challenge off the list!
letting it happen
January 3, 2013 § 3 Comments
It’s funny how things work out sometimes – so different from how you planned, yet sometimes so much better. The annual Christmas card is always such a big deal to me. Sending them out and receiving them from family and friends is one of my highlights of the season. I love to really think about our card. I’m a planner, and I look through old photos or set-up little photo shoots to get the perfect image for the card each year. This time around, I found a really cool card on Tiny Prints with a Beatles quote (one of my faves) and knew I wanted to use it. We needed to get one great shot of the girls set to the side so that the wording would show. So we headed down to Volunteer Park in Seattle where there’s an awesome brick wall, the perfect place for my perfect Christmas card photo. But life – and our little sister – had something different planned.
The posed shots from that day were just OK, not many real smiles and a little stiff, but when Sophie decided to bust out her rock star moves (so Sophie), it cracked us up and ended up being more than perfect – it’s one of my favorite pictures ever of my girls! And all the other candid photos from that day were wonderful, too. Sometimes it’s those unplanned moments – the pictures between the pictures – that really captures life. Sometimes just letting it happen lets the real us shine through.
chihuly glass
December 29, 2012 § 2 Comments
I don’t think blown glass was something I’d given much thought to before we moved to Seattle. But here in the backyard of the famous glass blower Dale Chihuly, you can’t help but take notice. With my mom who’s in town visiting, we went to check out the newest addition to the downtown Seattle scene: Chihuly Garden and Glass – a comprehensive collection of Chihuly’s work displayed through indoor halls, a glasshouse and an outdoor garden. The size and scope of some of the pieces were so impressive that a lot of the conversation by the admirers was about the sheer logistics of making, transporting and installing work of this nature. I think I was most impressed by the colors – every one on the color wheel everywhere you looked. We went in the evening and the lights gave the garden a truly magical quality, but the daylight view is supposed to be equally stunning. Guess I’ll have to make plans for a return visit.
The work of Chihuly is known and admired around the world. Two years ago when we were in Venice, we went on a glass blowing tour on the island of Murano. When the man in the studio heard we were from Seattle, he excitedly told us in broken English that Chihuly has visited them there to work and collaborate on projects. There in gorgeous and impressive Venice, I was proud to be from gorgeous and impressive Seattle. It’s just another little thing that makes this a cool place to live.
a year of flowers
December 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing this blog long enough to have entries a year in the making. Last January, I gave myself a challenge: to put together one fresh flower arrangement for the house every month. I stipulated that the flowers and greenery in the arrangements must be chosen separately by me (no pre-arranged flowers for this girl), which forced me to take my time, think about colors and textures and types of flowers, and to arrange them in a pretty way. I have always loved flowers and love that Drew gives them to the girls and me to mark important occasions. This has been a fun project and may be something that sticks around for a long time. Because these fresh flowers have definitely added a little more happy to our house, and our darker Seattle days have seemed just a bit brighter. It’s little things like this that make life more beautiful.
baking party
December 16, 2012 § Leave a comment
We just went to an awesome baking party yesterday, and I was reminded of Bella’s 6th birthday. This was one of my favorite parties! Fun party planning for me always begins with a great idea for the invitation and the party favors, and for this one the recipe card invites and the homemade aprons were so much fun to make. I loved the retro papers and fabrics I used – I even found a matching dress for my birthday girl to wear. I’m not great with patterns but pretty handy with the sewing machine, and these aprons weren’t too hard to cut and patch together without a pattern. The guests were set up around the kitchen island and spent the evening making their own pizzas and rolling and decorating sugar cookies. Most children love to help in the kitchen and, just like at the party yesterday, the adults were impressed with just how quiet it got as the little one focused in on their grown-up baking. It was an adorable party, and the memories are unforgettable.
little things i love 