Tag Archives: san francisco

Braid Night with Oh Happy Day

Posted on January 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

Last Friday my friend Lindsay and I went to another Oh Happy Day craft night! This time around was a braid tutorial by Rubi Jones from She Lets Her Hair Down.

Lindsay & I rockin our braids
Rubi giving us the low-down
Gorgeous letterpress illustration, by Samantha Hahn
Lip & cheek stain I’ve used every day since
“Draw a sheep” 2013 calendar

These events are always fun because they get people out from behind their laptops and into the real world. (Reminds me of the idea behind the party I went to at the Pinterest headquarters.) Lucky for me, I live in SF so they’re easy to attend!

Rubi was really sweet and easy going. I’d love to get my hair cut by her at one of her next pop-up salons. (My friend Kara hit her up this time around and loved it.) The hairstyle we did was pretty simple but had room for creativity and expansion.

The best part of the night was the gift bags Jordan made us. (Sponsored by Bing!) I was blown away. The bags themselves were screen printed with the word Happy and were full of Rubi’s favorite hairbrush, bobby pins, hair product samples, a Ban.do hairclip, a gorgeous letter pressed calendar, and a Fat & the Moon lip stain. Booyah Grandma!

I’d like to host another craft night for my friends again at some point. Creating with your hands while chatting with your gal pals is a pretty sweet place to be. Thanks again to Jordan, Rubi, and Bing for sharing the love!

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Posted in DIY, San Francisco

Tagged DIY, san francisco

Tintypes

Posted on December 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

My dad, stepmom, and cousin came to visit a few weeks back, so I booked us appointments to get our tintype portraits taken in the Mission District at Photobooth. I’d been wanting to go there forever and thought it’d be a fun little afternoon activity for us all to do.

The process was pretty intensive, the photographer took a long time setting the camera up and angling our heads just right. The depth of field is really short, so I can see why our positioning was so important. She told us to think “mildly pleasant thoughts.” The actual picture only took 3 seconds or so, and then she went to the back and processed the aluminum plate with chemicals. Mine actually got messed up and had chemicals smeared across my face, so they redid it for free.

Tilly’s was the hardest, she did not want to sit still!! She moved too much on her first shot so they let us re-do it thank goodness. The second time around we held up an Elmo video on my phone and she sat perfectly still, haha. They gave us both images of Tilly and I can’t really decide which one is better – both strike straight to my heart! I think she looks like a dust-bowl child from the 30s, and Josh looks like a civil war general. I love the way his freckles popped. My dad looks like an old colonel and my step-mom and her neice look like native americans. Not sure what I look like – a librarian maybe? Isn’t it amazing!! And… they have a 200 year warranty. How about that!

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Posted in Family, San Francisco

Tagged family, san francisco

Ale to the Chief

Posted on November 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

Josh is a member of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild and a few weeks back they held their first competition. It was based on the recently released White House Honey Ale recipe, so everyone made basically the same beer with a little room for creativity and variation.

The tasting event was held at the wix.com lounge in the Mission and had about 30 brewers pouring samples for about 200 guild members and guests. I was a little nervous to represent Josh’s beer but after a while I got the hang of it and could rattle off his process and special spin.

What I loved most about this day was that Josh and I were a team. I was so proud to represent his beer and to introduce myself as the brewer’s wife (and official taste tester). We met some awesome (and some very unique) people and although we didn’t win the competition, I think we still came out on top.

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Posted in DIY, San Francisco

Tagged san francisco

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

Posted on October 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

We went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival for the third year in a row a few weeks back (here’s years 1 & 2). Last year it was Tilly’s first concert, and I hoped to recreate the magic. To be honest, maybe music festivals aren’t the best fit for us right now. It was a mile walk there, super crowded and hot and loud. Miraculously Tilly napped in her stroller, but once she woke up she was cranky and not into it at all! Didn’t she realize Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band were singing directly to her?

I loved the Hipstamatic photos I took last year so I tried to recreate some shots this time around. I can’t believe how dark Tilly’s hair was back then! Here are some then and now pictures.

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Posted in Family, San Francisco

Tagged music, san francisco, toddler

Nursery upgrades

Posted on October 16, 2012 | Leave a comment

I’ve made a few new additions to our nursery lately. (See older pics here and here.)

A while back we purchased a mounted stuffed rhino head at Paxton Gate Kids in the Mission District and I finally hung it up above my desk. We went back and forth between the rhino and the toucan, but really we couldn’t have gone wrong with either one. Also we recently moved our wardian case (which also happens to be from Paxton Gate) into our bedroom and put a big rubber plant in its place. The green plastic pot looked pretty drab, but I wrapped it in some felt ball garland from Tantrum in Cole Valley and it’s suddenly darling!

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Posted in DIY, Toddler

Tagged Decor, san francisco

Anthropologie Craft Night

Posted on September 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

A few weeks back I attended a craft night at Anthropologie hosted by Jordan Ferney of Oh Happy Day. Can you believe my luck?! The first 20 RSVPs were accepted and my nimbly pimbly fingers got me in under the gun! It was totally awesome and gave me some cute ideas for christmas prezzies.

Each place setting had a hand-crafted bag of supplies and a letterpressed instruction card that should probably be framed. We made flower party hats out of this really amazing italian crepe paper from carte fini. It’s like sculptable paper, so rad. The event was 1 hour long, but everyone could have stayed for hours. It’s about time I hosted another girls craft night – I’ll have to load up on these supplies and see what we come up with!

You can read Jordan’s blog post about the event here (yep there’s my confused looking mug plastered on my favorite blog!) . Between this and the Pinterest Party I went to a few weeks back, I’m having the Best Summer Ever.

After the event, my friend Rachael and I went out for a drink the mission wearing our hats – fun fun fun.

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Posted in DIY, San Francisco

Tagged design, DIY, parties, san francisco

Pinterest Summer Celebration

Posted on August 15, 2012 | 3 Comments

The other night I was lucky enough to attend the Pinterest Summer Celebration! There were about 120 pinners in attendance and it was held at their new offices in San Francisco. I heard about it on Facebook, they were asking pinners to create a video about how Pinterest has inspired them in the past year. I edited my already existing video from Tilly’s first birthday party and showed how I got most of my party ideas from Pinterest. It worked! I got an invite a few days later. (Here’s my submission, influenced by my “Tilly’s Turning 1″ Pinterest board.) They specified that I couldn’t bring any guests, so it was a little nerve wracking rolling up all by myself, but most people there were in my same shoes, so it wasn’t too hard walking up to strangers and introducing myself.

They had 4 activity stations around the room to help people mingle. First was a temporary tattoo station, then a stamp/postcard station, then an instax photobooth, and finally a mason jar terrarium station. Each was super cute and they all totally reminded me of crafts you’d see on pinterest. (Especially the mason jars, practically the backbone of pinterest DIY boards!)

The entire pinterest staff was there, about 60 people, so I chatted with designers, spam fighters, programmers, and community specialists about ways to improve the website and what types of things I use it for. I also met other bloggers, moms, nonprofit employees, and stylists! After talking to other people I discovered that most of the guests are “super-pinners” who were on an evite list based on their super high number of pins, in addition to their location being San Francisco. As it turns out, only about 20 videos were submitted… HA! One of the staff members even recognized me from my video.

The big announcement of the night was when Ben & Evan, the cofounders, made their welcome speech. They revealed the new pinterest app for android and ipad, as well as an updated app for iphone! People were downloading them as the speech was going, it was kind of funny.

All in all it was a fun, engaging night. It made me think about Pinterest in a different way – it’s about community and inspires people to actually step away from their computer and enjoy the world around them. It’s also about self-exploration. Have you ever scrolled through your pinterest boards and realized you’re really drawn to a certain motif and didn’t even know it? It helps people express themselves in a way that’s not limited to 140 characters, or any words at all, really. And it’s so dang pretty!

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Posted in San Francisco, Techie

Tagged parties, san francisco

SFPL: Card Carrying Member

Posted on August 1, 2012 | 1 Comment

I am wild about our neighborhood library. It is such a wonderful resource and saves me a crazy amount of money!

Instead of signing up for kids play groups at places like gymboree, we go to the free storytime offered every thursday and saturday a block from our apartment. Saturdays are for babies up to 18 months, and includes 1/2 hour of stories and circle time, followed by 1/2 hour of playtime. The librarian, Pat, is so sweet and welcomes us even when we’ve been gone for a few weeks. It’s an awesome way to meet other young families in our ‘hood and shoot the breeze about challenges or helpful hints to common baby issues.

And for the grown ups, I like to check out the audiobook section and download the cds onto my iphone. Instead of paying $20+ per book on itunes, I get it for $0 and thirty free cents.

We joined the summer reading program and are tracking our reading sessions… our goal is 10 hours total by the end of the month which I dont think is going to be too hard. Even though Tilly’s books are about 10 pages long, we read them every morning and night.

AND… the recently renovated building is gold LEED certified. It’s the oldest branch library in SF! I’m obsessed!

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Posted in San Francisco, Toddler

Tagged san francisco

Tilly’s SF Birthday Party

Posted on June 4, 2012 | 1 Comment

We just said goodbye to the last of our visiting family – it was so nice having them in town for Tilly’s first birthday party!

The party was in Golden Gate Park at the Koret Children’s Quarter. It was a great location with a little red barn as a backdrop and right next door to the carousel. It’s the oldest public playground in the country – how cool! The permit was $55, a deal if you ask me, and we made all the food ourselves besides the cupcakes from Whole Foods.

I made Tilly’s cake the night before (tried to do one of those rainbow cakes from pinterest) and it actually turned out better than I thought. Since it sat out overnight, the frosting was a little dried out and made virtually no mess when she dug into it at the party. It brushed right off!

We had about 35 guests, including a whopping 4 babies. The adults played bocce and frisbee (and drank covertly from plastic cups) while the kids played on the grass. Some friends of mine took Tilly on the carousel but she got a little freaked out, not surprisingly!

Grandma Dottie’s highlight was riding down the 100+ year old concrete slide. She ran back to us with such excitement and pride in her voice that she had conquered it! Another highlight was my dad running alongside the carousel trying to get pictures of Tilly. He says he took 900 pictures total, and if you know him, this is no surprise!

I’m finishing up a little movie from the party but until then, I hope these pictures hold you over. (update: here’s the video!)

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Posted in Family, San Francisco, Toddler

Tagged 1 yr, holidays, san francisco

Bike ridin’

Posted on May 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

We’ve been planning on getting Tilly a bike seat for her birthday for a while, but the weather on Sunday was just so beautiful that we gave in and bought it early! We had planned on buying one from REI but we did some quick cost comparison on our iPhones while we walked to our local bike shop, and decided the local place was worth it.

That afternoon we found ourselves whizzing down JFK along with dozens of other San Franciscans! We went all the way to the beach and kicked back for a while on the grass at the Park Chalet. On our way there, I could hardly contain myself… It was so wonderful!

I think we took a little too long at the beach because Tilly was looking pretty tired as we saddled back up. Right on cue, she tried to fall asleep on the ride home but instead just cried the whole way. Boo! The whole ride home is uphill, and luckily Tilly was on Josh’s bike, so I tossed him the keys and he zipped home to get her to bed. Meanwhile, I slugged up the hill… I kid you not, a jogger passed me. SAD! But I didn’t stop and finally conquered it.

I can’t wait for our next ride, hopefully this weekend. Maybe we’ll make it a Sunday tradition…

Here are some pics. Doesn’t Tilly remind you of Bob the Builder in that yellow helmet? So cute.