Until a few weeks ago, it had been a while since I’d done any serious swimming. I first got into it in grad school, when I took a swim class with a fantastic coach in UC Berkeley’s gorgeous marble-decked pool. Learning to swim properly has been more useful than a lot of other things I [...]
Hi, friends. I ended up taking an unexpected break from just-for-fun blogging this summer, I suppose. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that I’ve been knee-deep in working on my forthcoming sewing book. I imagine that any of you who actually care about such things read The Coletterie already, [...]
For my birthday (a couple weeks ago now), Kenn and I decided to take a little drive to Cannon Beach. Being from southern California, the beach here is nothing like the beaches of my childhood, which were featureless but warm. Here in Oregon, the beaches are beautiful but freezing cold. Kenn wore the shirt I [...]
… or is it a butterfly bush? I’m not 100% sure. I’ve seen about 18434920 times more bees on it than I have butterflies. It seems to lure the big fat buzzy bumblebees like nothing else. Not that I’m complaining, bees are awesome. But if any of you other plant-lovers out there can set me [...]
Finally, I’m ready to show you our house! Check out part one for the before pictures, and part two for a few shots of the renovations in progress. These photos were taken just as we were moving in. The living room with its newly gleaming floors was painted in Benjamin Moore Whispering Spring. It’s a [...]
I’ll just show you a few in progress photos before moving on to part three, the after shots! See part one for the before shots. As renovations go, I guess ours were pretty minor. There were two main things we wanted to do: Paint just about everything, and restore the floors to their natural wood [...]
I fell in love with this house the moment I saw it. We’d looked at a lot of houses at this point, and we’d even tried to buy two of them (both had severe structural issues that we couldn’t afford to fix right away). There are a lot of cute houses here in Portland, but [...]
About six or seven months ago, I took up running. Portland Winters are wet and gloomy, and I’d started to feel a little stir crazy being inside all the time, so I picked up this excellent book called Outdoor Fitness. I highly recommend it. It’s not about running per se, but more about integrating exercise [...]
Hi friends! You may have noticed that things have been pretty slow around this blog. On top of working on a million different things for Colette Patterns, Kenn and I have been engaged in another huge undertaking… buying our first house! It’s taken us many months to find one, but we’re both excited and absolutely [...]
I am a big fan of baked fruit in the Winter. With a few nuts and spices, it is the perfect sweet and warming breakfast or dessert. I saw some beautiful jewel-colored baked grapefruit at our local favorite neighborhood brunch spot, the Swedish restaurant Broder, and decided to replicate it at home. All you have [...]
