Entries from February 2010
Bryan picked up a new book/magazine for me, the Maritime Gardening in the Northwest. It’s a great guide to gardening and has a good deal of focus on gardening in a yard – using cloches, sowing indoors or under covers and transferring seedlings to the outdoors, keeping your soil healthy. The book covers all these things (and more) in a way that I can find ways to apply what I want to do but in our small condo. A large focus is breaking up the book into chapters by months. Each month tells you what seeds to plant outside or inside, and other activities you could be doing to keep busy with your garden.
I have only read to March, because I want to not get distracted with reading too far ahead. I am trying to plan all that I can plant and nurture on our small patio landing.
draft of our patio garden
At first, my goal with this book is to plan our garden and have more to eat from it than last summer, when we had lettuce, strawberries, rosemary and basil. However, as I read more of this book, I am finding that I am starting to think if I could actually kind of have crops on our patio and exercise crop rotation. That might be taking it too far, might be too much to manage on a little patio.
After I figure out what we can start with in our small space, I’ll move on to figuring out if I can garden through the year with more than one set of veggies and fruit.
Categories: Outside · Uncategorized
Tagged: apartment, condo, patio, small spaces, urban gardening, vegetable garden
February 21, 2010 · 1 Comment
Mid-February and it feels like April here at Stevens Pass. We didn’t get to the ski hill until the perfect time: sun had just warmed it enough to start the corn snow forming.
I love skiing when it’s sunny! Cruising around, up and down the side walls, taking little jumps when they pop up … Whoops and hollers heading down the mountain and smiles all around.
I’m still hoping for more big snow to fall and gift us some powder days but I’ll take the sunny fun days in between the wait.
Categories: Activities · Outside
Tagged: snowboarding, spring skiing, stevens pass, sunny, washington
I forgot to tell about our dinner we had on Valentine’s Day! Now, I’m not a super fan of this holiday. It’s not that I get hung up on the Hallmark thing, more that I just don’t feel like I need a specific day to tell people how I feel? It’s probably bad – I woke up to Bryan handing me a very sweet, heartfelt card (I bawled reading it), and I hadn’t even made his card yet!!
We decided to visit Fresh for Sunday’s dinner. We love this place and hadn’t been in a while. While their food is great and the staff is always friendly, I like that they approach their menu seasonally and pull from local sources. This doesn’t mean they are 100% seasonal or local – there’s plenty of mango and avocado to be found. It’s the way the menu feels out taste and ingredients from the season. Even their liquors, some of those are from Washington, Oregon or Idaho!
Dinner was a five-course meal. Wow! I haven’t ever had the luxury of dining like this. It was definitely more than we anticipated spending, which I won’t even go into; every bite was savory and we were there nearly 2 1/2 hours thoroughly enjoying ourselves. First plate was oysters (yes I ate two oysters), with a little ahi sitting atop mango and avocado that had a little sesame/soy type brittle.
Next up was a soup: delicata squash – puréed perfectly. I could have sipped on this for an hour. After the soup came a salad: fig, prosciutto and frisée … mmm! Next up was the entrée (can we get some more acute accent marks in here?), I took a photo with my phone after the waitress walked by hearing me ask Bryan “what do I do with THIS!?”. I was actually kind of amazed at all that sat before me, I didn’t know where to start. She smartly remarked, “well – first you take a photo of it with your phone, then you tweet about it and post it to Facebook to let ALL your friends know, and then you dig in.” I kind of laughed her off, like yeah right I’m going to promote your restaurant, but that’s kind of what this is all about – right?
Main course: lobster, steak wrapped in bacon, sweetbreads and veggies
This dish was over the top. Beautifully married flavors of steak wrapped in bacon with truffles, there’s a sweetbreads with foie gras fritter in the back/left corner, and then front & center we have this lobster sitting on top of tokyo turnips and colorful carrots. Just a dream to eat. I took this photo with my iPhone and had to touch it up i the Photoshop app so it’s kind of grainy, but the dish was one heavenly bite after another. Except – don’t tell anyone this – I had to pass the lobster to Bryan to finish. I’m not a lobster person!! It’s partly the texture and partly the taste. I tried, and I’m sorry.
After this dish I had to sit and digest awhile. I didn’t want to move on to dessert, it was such a nice flavor in my mouth I didn’t want to replace it with something else just yet. Even if that “something else” was a chocolate cake with passionfruit glaze, baby bananas coated in flambéed caramel and with some chocolate chile ice cream. Mouthful of a description but woah, what a topper to this dinner! Fresh Bistro I love you! And I love Bryan and I love my friends, my family, and just for a few hours on Sunday – I loved Valentine’s Day for giving me this excuse to dine on tasty foods and sip wine.
-xoxo-
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: fresh bistro seattle, lobster, restaurant dining, valentine's day
Two years ago I knit Bryan this hat for snowboarding. It has felt pockets in the ears to slip his Burton headphones into (they’re on the larger size – around 2.5″ across), and an elkhorn button to hold the chin strap in place.
This weekend, I got a lot accomplished. Among my list of satisfying achievements was knitting Bryan a new snowboarding hat. I dragged him with to my new favorite yarn store, the Fiber Gallery up in Greenwood. As a reward for helping me pick out yarn for a baby sweater, I agreed to make him a new beanie for riding. He found two patterns and I helped him find the right weight yarn, so he’s actually getting TWO beanies out of me.
This is the first, and I worked on it most of Sunday. I’m getting faster at knitting! I also have the patience to sit around and knit the same thing in one long sitting (movie + Olympics + no TV). Hopefully, cranking out a couple of quick beanies will prepare me for a sweater from my Vintage Knits book. I am preparing to knit a hoodie that will fit a 12-18 mo-old.
Showing the neck closure
Showing the cables and alternate ribbing
The button for closing up the neck part is a piece of a dyed nut that I got at Fiber Gallery. I didn’t see what type of nut but I liked the texture around the colored part. The hat is actually knit deep enough that the earflaps came around to close almost on their own. I extended one of them about 1.5″ with a garter stitch, and other than that they are just earflaps stretched!
Showing the button detail on one of the earflaps
I did alter the pattern. It said to do a two-stitch cable in-between the C6′s and I thought that was too much twisting, so changed it to be just a k2 rib. OH! The first time I got about 3 rows in to the full loop and realized it was WAY too big. This was knit on a size 9 needle, and it called for a total of 120 stitches – it was going to be about 5″ too wide! So I reduced it down to 90 and it fits Bryan just fine. I remembered it being kinda big on the model in the shop, but couldn’t tell just how big it was until I got a few rows in.
Still have to get the felt pockets in the earflaps – that’s a must for Bryan, he’s gotta tune you out while riding (JUST KIDDING!). Really, the guy listens to music all.the.time while riding. So I have to dig out some soft fabric and get those in, and then this beanie’s all set for snowboarding in.
Categories: Crafting
Tagged: beanie, cables, fiber gallery seattle, hat, knit, knitting, pattern, snowboarding hat
February 13, 2010 · 1 Comment
The Olympics are here! Or, up North of “here”, at least. It’s entertaining for me to see the ads for British Columbia: beautiful! scenic! ethnic! natives, food, snow, activies!!!! I KNOW that a big reason cities rally to get the Olympics to come to their location is to help their economy (bring in jobs and tourists) and it’s going to be very beneficial for BC to get all those people up there. I still can’t really take their TV ads seriously.
On the other hand, I LOVE that the games have started! I enjoyed the opening cermony even though I think it was all a little strange. The tapdancers I enjoyed – not sure if it was the massive choreography and rhythmic sound or the fact that it was a little out of the ordinary? Native clans coming out in their dancing gear – that was pretty cool. I was hoping we’d get more up-close views of their outfits because they looked like some neat embellishments. I can’t believe they were dancing the entier time the countries/athletes were being announced! Dancing for that long has to be exhausting.
It was the guy running and flying part that I didn’t understand. It was kind of creative, not really entertaining, and I didn’t think it was really Olympics-worthy. Call me a scrooge but I didn’t care for it. The skiers and snowboarders flying down the mountain with the skaters below was weird to me too. The audience seemed to enjoy it, so maybe it didn’t get conveyed properly for me across the TV?
Now the ceremony is aside and we can look forward to catching all of our favorite sports on TV and rooting those athletes on. When’s the figure skating start? I think that’s what I am most looking forward to.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: ceremonies, native dancers, olympics, opening ceremony
February 9, 2010 · 1 Comment
About a month ago, we were involved with filming two ad spots for the jeweler we worked with for our wedding rings. Greenlake Jewelry Works is an awesome locally-owned and operated business. They make all their jewelry at their Northgate location.
If you know us, then you know how much we are in love with the ring we designed for Melissa’s engagement/wedding ring, and also how much we loved working with these guys. Bryan’s ring is pretty sweet too, but much much simpler.
Always happy to promote our favorite jewelers – here’s the video on KIRO TV’s website. (I couldn’t find an embed code w/permission to use, so check it out there!)
Penny asking us how our ring design process went
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: custom jewelry, engagement ring, greenlake jewelry works, tv ad, wedding ring
Begonia lept into my life October of 1997. She weighed maybe 2 pounds, didn’t know cats were supposed to “hunt”, and had no sense of balance – always falling off the back of the couch.
She was a wonderful kitty. She always has energy, loves to play – when she was younger I’d catch her climbing the curtains when she forgot I was home. A favorite playtime thing when she found you in the kitchen – getting rolled up in the floormat like a fruit roll-up. Well mannered, didn’t really beg, she was the pretty girl who would cozy up on the couch to watch you go about your day.
Eleven years later, my future husband moved in. He was allergic to my furry friend who snuggled me all night through. We tried keeping the house clean and windows open to help keep her dander down, but he was REALLY allergic. After over a year of us trying all these things, he went to the doctor to get tested. Turns out, Bryan is super allergic to cats and living in such close proximity with one was only making it worse.
A few times, Bryan would wake up with his throat swollen. The doctor assured him it wasn’t threatening, but still, would you want to live like that?
Last fall, Begonia moved to my dad’s. I am still sad about my kitty moving out. Sometimes I wake up in a dream-state and can feel her snuggled into the crook of my knees. I miss her finding us on the couch and coming in between us for some attention, or how she’d wander around talking to me.
I love you, Boo.
Furry-belly Boo on our bed
Boo checking herself out
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: begonia, boo, cat, furry friend, kitty, long haired, pet animal
February 3, 2010 · 1 Comment
Portland is a beautiful city. I love driving around and checking out the shops and restaurants, buildings and bridges. Our last visit took me across the St. John’s Bridge for the first time. Until Sunday I had only admired its gothic arches and pale green from afar.
Bryan has some friends that live on the East side, up in St John’s neighborhood, so I’ve heard about the great parks and cute shops in that area. (Stiles, if you’re reading this, we’re sorry we didn’t call.) It was a little removed from town, probably comparable to our West Seattle neighborhood. The houses were a mix of nicer to “need some love” and overall feeling was relaxed, chill.
There is a park around and under the base of the East end of the bridge, it’s beautiful and grassy and great for sledding in the winter, picnics in the summer, and general enjoyment of the outdoors.
Just another reason I continue to love Portland.
Categories: Around Town
Tagged: city of roses, oregon, portland, st johns bridge
Bryan likes to group things together to make this phrase: ______, everywhere!
This last weekend, we gathered at Allyson and Kelly’s house for a baby shower in honor of Steph and Casey. A joint shower: the girls would drink champagne, snack on cucumber sandwiches, cheese and chocolates, while the boys went on a pub crawl. It was a very fitting way to mark the approaching addition to their life.
Every baby shower I have been to has some sort of contribution/gift to the expecting mother. For Stephanie, sister-in-law Allyson and her co-hostesses had asked each person attending the shower to submit a photo that would be added to a book for the to-be child. It was such a fun way to share friends and family with a child through storytelling.
Here is ours. We wanted to add more color than just a photo, so here is our rendition of “under the sea with the Ripkas”.
Under the Sea: a baby shower gift
Categories: Crafting
Tagged: portland, baby shower, stephanie, scrapbooking, scrapbook, baby present, baby book, collage
draft of our patio garden
