Eats * San Francisco

Last September, my Mr. and I took a trip to SF for a wedding. We took a few extra days off to enjoy SF with some of our friends. And by enjoy, I mean eat the entire city. I am always amazed at how good the food in SF is. Everything is so fresh! I don't think I've ever had a bad meal here and we were averaging about six meals a day.

Ike's Place

3489 16th Street

San Francisco CA

Sandwiches galore! Our friend took us to this place right after he picked us up from the airport and it was the perfect meal. Their menu is massive! I wish I worked by this place so that I could try a new sandwich a day. The sandwiches are generously packed with fresh ingredients and there's something for everyone.

 

Hard Knox Cafe

2526 3rd Street
San Francisco, CA 94107 

I had a random craving for chicken and waffles and lo and behold, our friends live right around the corner from an awesome southern comfort food place! Their chicken and waffles were lovely. The waffles were fluffy, the chicken crisp and juicy. And their sides... so tasty. I accidentally filled up on their cornbread before my chicken and waffles came out but I didn't even regret it. It was that good.

Bi-Rite Creamery

2526 3rd Street
San Francisco, CA 94107  

Salted caramel. Lives up to the hype.

 

Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot

215 S. Ellsworth Ave

San Mateo, CA 94401 

I'm pretty sure that their broth is made of crack. Usually when you eat hot pot, you have a little sauce on the side to dip whatever you fish out of the broth into before popping it into your mouth. No sauce necessary at this place. The broth is so flavorful and anything you put into the pot just soaks up all that deliciousness. It's a must eat for us when we visit SF.  My favorite add-ins are a-tsai and dduk (rice cakes) and my Mr.'s is fish tofu.

MissionPie

2901 Mission St

San Francisco, CA 94110

Pie! It's the new cupcake. Super charming place and friendly staff that are happy to point you to their favorites. We bought a mixed berry to share with our friends and a turkey pot pie for a snack. Delicious!

This was only a handful of the places we ate at during our trip. Can't wait to go back and discover more tasty things to eat!

Reads * Graceling

I cannot get enough of this series. The last time I read this fast and sacrificed this much sleep to read was when I was reading Harry Potter for the first time. Strong but real women, imaginative fantasy worlds, sweet but not too sweet love stories. Kristin Cashore is my new hero. I read these when I was feeling blue and stressed and these books provided the most perfect and complete escape from reality. As soon as I finished Graceling, I wanted to flip to page one and start all over again.

Makes * A quilt for Henry

So while I was away from this blog, my sister and brother-in-law made me a new nephew! And he is CUTE. I just want to cuddle him all day long. For christmas, I decided to make him a quilt but I wanted to kick it up a notch. Lucky me, Rachel over at Stitched in Color was running a penny patch quilt-a-long. Perfect! This totally looks doable and fancier than my usual quilts. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to give quilting a try. Rachel does a fantastic job of breaking down the process and walking you gently through it all. I don't really have work in progress photos because I whipped this baby up in record time but I'll share the few photos that I did take.




My fabric choices were all based on a super cute woodland animal print. Using the colors found in that print, I selected a bunch of fabrics with smaller patterns. I had to add in a handful of solids when I realized that I didn't have enough different fabrics to make this design work. I would have liked to go easier on all the darker colors but I'm a practical sort of gal and this quilt will have all kinds of things spilled onto it in its lifetime so I figured darker fabrics will hide stains better.

Lots of arranging and rearranging. It's easier for my eyes to catch patterns in photos rather than in real life. I'd arrange, take a photo, then rearrange. It helps me to more evenly space out colors and patterns. I have about twenty of these photos.

This is my "I rolled out of bed and straight to my sewing machine look. This is the step that makes my arms sore. I learned that rolling up the quilt helps with the "Where do I put the $%*^ the parts of the quilt that I'm not sewing??" dilemma. But the quilt does get heavy and even with a walking foot, my hands are super tense as I feed the quilt through the machine.

Finished! I spent Christmas Eve frantically finishing up the hand sewn binding - my fave part of quilting!

I must have ripped miles of stitching because I couldn't get the quilting straight. My mismatched corners didn't help!

Look at the gummy smile! Eemo loves you!

Let's try this again

hello? is anyone there? it's been awhile dear neglected blog o' mine. this poor thing has changed so many times over the years. i give up. i'm just going to share everything i like! let's think of it as a smorgasbord of happiness. onward!

project life: update

i started project life on my 29th birthday and i thought the half year mark would be a good time to share some thoughts on this new (to me!) style of scrapbooking. i talked a little about it back in this post but basically, project life is a scrapbooking method developed by becky higgins. it's meant to encourage the documentation of everyday life and to simplify scrapbooking. the best part is that it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be.




getting started
i started off with a three ring binder by we r memory keepers, a big variety pack of page protectors and the amber core kit which i had won from a giveaway hosted by paislee press. my plan was to keep it simple and stick to the kit...

where it all went wrong...
by the time i hit the six month mark, i just wasn't feeling it. i wanted project life to be a big journal but it was becoming a lot of work and more of a "i have to do it" than a "i want to do it". i missed my old journal. then i saw this blog post by document life workshop on why she "failed" at project life 2012 and suddenly, everything became crystal clear.

the amber core kit is great but there were a few problems for me. i like softer colors, blues, neutrals and simple designs so the amber kit just didn't feel quite right. there also weren't any horizontal 3x4 cards or vertical 4x6 cards so when i need these (or was looking for my fave colors), i tried to make my own or print freebies. this led to stress and a jumbled hodge podge look to my album which led to more stress.

there are so many great project lifers out there. it's easy to get distracted by what they create and think, "ohhh i should totally do that too!" some people can design layouts for every 4x6 and 3x4 pocket and it looks incredible. but that's just not for me. this is meant to be my journal where i save photos, hoard bits and pieces, doodle and write about "dear diary" moments. it takes me AGES create one 12x12 layout and trying to make a layout for 16 little boxes a week will destroy me and make me forget about my doodles and "dear diaries".

how i'll make it right again
for christmas, my sister got me the seafoam core kit. she didn't know that i had decided to stop with project life but that's okay because this kit changed my mind in an instant. it's everything i've wanted in project life and more. i love the colors (really, these are my favorite colors) and the design feels so right. all the cards are reversible so that they can be use vertically or horizontally, as a journaling card or a filler card. woohoo!!

 front and backs of the cards. pretty! lighting. not so pretty!

the matching vertical version is on the reverse side

i still would recommend project life to anyone whose looking for a way to document their life. it's a simple concept that can be adapted to whatever you want and need it to be.

i'm determined to use up the rest of my amber kit on the remainder of this year. why waste a good kit? then in june when i turn 30, i'll bust out the seafoam and start fresh. go project life!

a quilt for little lottie

hello and happy new year! my, i was gone for awhile wasn't i? it's been a busy year. i took on a second part time job and then the holidays hit and the next thing you know, bam! it's 2013. i haven't been too crafty lately but there was a big project that i took me about ten months to complete and i wanted to share it with you.

last winter, i threw my sister a baby shower and one of the activities was to design a quilt square. i pre-cut several cotton squares (and sealed the edges with a fray check) and provided permanent fabric markers for guests to doodle on or write messages to my growing neice.

once they were done, it was time to take the squares home and sew them together, cut the batting and backing, and bind it all together.

 

and that's where it usually goes downhill for me. bindings are my weakness, my achilles heel. but this time i was determined to do it well. so i did a lot of research on youtube and discovered that there are a million ways to bind a quilt. i found this video by HeirloomCreations to be incredibly helpful in learning how to make your own binding, mitered corners and pockets.

i was so proud of my first mitered corner! they're so tidy and satisfying and surprising easy to make. i used a premade binding since i'm lazy but in the future i think i'll make my own.

then came the time for some hand stitching to secure the binding to the backing of the quilt. more youtube research led me to the ladder stitch. this little stitch is amazing. it's so easy (almost therapeutic) and results in a beautifully finished binding! hand stitching the binding is now easily my favorite part of quilt making.

 and here is the finished quilt! it took about eight months longer than i had hoped (sewing a quilt in a steamy hot summer apartment is not my idea of a fun time) but it's done! i'm quite proud of the results and am a lot more confident of my sewing/quilting skills now. i hope little lottie likes it too <3 br="br">

new supplies

last weekend, i went to michaels looking for some replacement blades for my cricut (was there a national shortage of cricut blades?? it took months to find a store that had them in stock) and i came out with a bunch of new crafty things to play with and i thought i'd share my finds.

i stepped into an aisle and found myself looking at a wall of washi tape. holy guacamole! michaels' brand, recollections, makes washi tape in a huge variety of styles and for really great prices. this is going to be dangerous.

 i find it hard to resist anything travel themed.

crocheted flowers. not something i usually use in my scrapbooks but these were in the clearance section and i love the colors. i suppose i could make them myself but i feel like crocheting with thread would make me go blind(er).

i love new supplies and how they inspire me to try something new. woo!