little black journal

I landed back in Seattle on Thursday night, and though it was hard to bid farewell to my temporary life of leisure, it felt good be greeted at the airport with a giant bear-hug from Shane (I needed his body heat almost as much as his affection – brrrrrr!).  And I’m extremely grateful for my suitcase full of goodies from the Coffee Mill, and my head full of memories of blazing sunsets, sandy beaches, and long chats with my lovely lady relatives.

My time in Florida was every bit the vacation I had hoped it would be.  I fell into an easy routine of a morning jog or walk with my mom; then a visit to the Coffee Mill for a caffeine fix; lunch somewhere outdoors, whether at a restaurant patio or a nearby park; an afternoon full of shopping or pool-side sitting or sipping iced lattes back at the Mill; then dinner with various extended family, followed by a sunset walk on the beach; and finally, a mellow evening at my grandma’s house, spent talking or reading or watching TV.  The weather was perfect while I was there – plenty warm to sport tank tops and sip cold Sangria with my lunch, but not the sticky, humid kind of hot that I remember from my mid-summer visits to Florida as a kid.  It felt so, so good to wake up in the morning, throw on my running clothes, and head outdoors into the fresh, sun-laden air for a jog on palm tree-lined paths.  I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve missed being outdoors until I had the chance to feel the sun on my shoulders, hear the rustle of leaves, see the multitude of greens that make up grass and plants and trees.  I also got a good dose of wildlife, as Florida is rich with all kinds of birds and lizards and turtles and snakes (ok, so seeing a snake shimmy across the path right in front of me inspired more fear than reverence, but still…).

And iced coffee after breakfast – ohhhh…I’d forgotten that coffee could be served cold.  I passed several hours at the Coffee Mill while on vacation, sipping my lattes, browsing their stock of various goodies, reading on the porch out front.  My grandma started this business when she was in her late forties, on her own, and realizing that she needed to find a way to support herself.  Thirty-five years later, through the commitment and hard work of her and my aunt, the Coffee Mill is still going strong.  I remember visiting this place as a kid, standing in front the shelves filled with candy jars, asking Grandma what I could by with the 75 cents in my pocket.  She must have given me an extra-special family discount, because I remember leaving with a good supply of gummy bears, jelly beans, and lemon drops.  This time, I was filling my basket with coffee beans and tins of tea (and maybe a little bag or two of mint chocolates and cinnamon candies).  And it turns out that Grandma still cuts me a pretty good deal.  Score!

Being so close to the water was also an extra-special treat, and I made sure that I experienced the feeling of sand between my toes whenever given the opportunity.  Everything seems more colorful when you’re at the beach, from the paint on the buildings to the color of the sunsets.  And those Gulf sunsets are really somethin’ else.  Every night was different, but they were all equally lovely.  And just when I thought the view couldn’t be more incredible, we looked out one evening and saw a group of dolphins jumping out of the water not far from the shore!  It was like a scene out of a movie.

Sunday night:

Monday night:

Tuesday night:

We spent one perfectly beachy afternoon having lunch with my aunt at John’s Pass, a cute little fishing village with restaurants and a boardwalk.  The seafood was delicious, our table in the sun was ideal for Sangria-sipping, and the pelicans were especially lively as they swooped down each time a fishing boat came in.  After lunch, we drove over to Pass-a-Grille Beach in St Pete for drinks and dessert – more sun, more beach, more mmmmm…

As much as I adored the sun and the water and the coffee, the quality time I was able to spend with family was the thing that made this whole trip worth it.  My mom and I really, really enjoyed the chance to spend so much time together just doing ‘girl stuff’ – talking, shopping, even just sitting together and reading by the pool.  And goodness, if I’d known we be spending so many hours sitting with my grandma in her living room, listening to her memories and stories and ups and downs, I would have brought a tape recorder.  Those late-night talks confirmed what I already suspected – my grandmother is indeed one of the kindest, most faithful people I have ever met.  It was so meaningful to hear her talk about how she found peace after my grandpa left after over 20 years of marriage, to hear her childhood memories of Sunday afternoon dinners shared with dozens of cousins, to see how she has been able to take every sorrow and every joy in her life and lift it up for the glory of God.  It was also nice to catch up with my aunt and my cousins – I hadn’t seen some of these family members for nearly ten years, so a reunion was long overdue.

And so, my Floridian vacation is officially over.  As I type, I am wearing my coziest pajamas and am wrapped up in my warmest blanket – Shane scolded me today for cranking the heat in our house up way too high, but I was just trying to slowly ease back into this chilly Seattle weather.  At least I now have a solid stash of gourmet teas to help keep me toasty.  And plenty of memories of sunny beaches.

I have quickly switched into vay-cay mode, and it. is. lovely. Started the day with a leisurely jog, then sipped a latte at the Coffee Mill, shopped with my mom, sat by the pool with a book, drank happy hour margaritas, watched the sun set at the beach, and am wrapping up the day with a late-night, soul-bonding chat with my mom and grandma… If the Mister weren’t back home, I might consider canceling my flight to Seattle.

Shane sent me an email while I was at work yesterday that said something to the effect of, “Hey, it’s supposed to be really sunny this weekend.” I quickly replied with, “Really? Time for an adventure?” Within minutes, my all-star trip planner of a husband had mapped out a perfect little Saturday jaunt. We were up early-ish this morning, and after a quick breakfast with Jack and La V at Randy’s Diner in Tukwila (imagine Denny’s, but with an even older crowd, and even bigger pancakes!), Shane and I were off to Bellingham to do a little exploring. Our first stop was Larabee State Park, for some sunshine-absorbing and sight-seeing. We shivered when we stepped out of the car and into the crisp February breezes, but decided we would still brave the cold and take the short trail down to the water. Ten minutes later, we were standing on a tiny stretch of beach with the sun glinting off the waters of the Bellingham Bay, and I knew: this was going to be a very, very good day.  We tucked ourselves into a nice little spot on a rock out of the wind and spent awhile just listening to the sound of the water, breathing in the salty air, shedding the week’s stresses and to-do’s.  It was…perfection.

Post-walk, we headed into Bellingham to check out the town.  The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent eating, shopping, drinking, drinking, eating, and shopping.  Lunch at Taco Lobo, perusing the modern wares at Digs, coffee at Woods, cocktails at Temple Bar, dinner at Tivoli, and, for good measure, a quick stop at the Tulalip outlets on the way home.  Did I mention this day was perfect?  We had a chance to really get caught up with one another after a busy week, I delved deeper into Harry Potter book 4 while sipping an exceptionally creamy latte, we found the finishing touches for our dining room make-over, I discovered a new cocktail Shane can’t wait to mix up for me at home (a variation of the Sidecar:  Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice, served in a glass rimmed with cinnamon and sugar), and we both ate and ate till we could eat no more.  Thanks, Bellingham, for being so good to us when we really had no idea what to expect.

There is something so satisfying about a day that is simultaneously busy and relaxing – I’m heading to bed tonight tired, but refreshed.  Amazing what a mini-adventure can do for the soul…

We are 22 days into our third annual frugal January, and although we’ve done extremely well in our efforts to live on a shoestring budget, some sacrifices have seemed harder than others.  The lunchtime hour has proven to be tricky – not just because that Chipotle burrito sounds soooo much more appetizing than my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but because I often rely on lunchtime as my chance to get out of the office and take a breather.  Whether it’s for a bite with the ladies to catch up on office chatter, or for a latte at my favorite cafe to catch up on my reading, there are days when I absolutely need to unchain myself from my desk to recharge.  So…what to do?  Can’t go grab a bite.  Can’t head over to Macy’s to peruse the shoe department (shopping without even the remote possibility of buying is no fun at all).  Can’t even go sit in a cafe.  Ugh.  Luckily, my office is only four blocks away from the Seattle Public Library, which is absolutely free to hang out in, and also happens to be my most favoritest building in the city.  Score!  Yesterday, in need of a break from the pre-deadline stress that’s been buzzing in my head for the past few days, I grabbed my book and headed up the hill to this funky-shaped, diamond-gridded reader’s oasis.  And I tell you, this place blows me away every. single. time.  There is so much I love about this building, from the innovative plan of the book ‘spiral’, to the intense, saturated colors that surprise you around every corner, to the reading rooms flooded with lovely natural light, even on an overcast winter day.  Being able to regularly spend 30 minutes or an hour here almost allows me to let go of my grudge that I can’t buy a latte.  Almost.

I woke up this morning feeling a little antsy, so I turned to Shane over our breakfast and said, “Let’s have an adventure today.”  Now, considering our January routine of hunkering down inside on the weekends, spending Saturdays napping, reading, and watching football, even a walk around a block could be deemed an ‘adventure’.  It being our month of frugality and all, with no non-essential spending allowed, we haven’t made it out of the house a whole lot.  So we threw around a list of ‘free dates’ and decided to drive 15 minutes south of our house to check out Kubota Garden – a Japanese garden we’ve been meaning to visit since we first heard some friends talk about it a couple of years ago.  I had my thermos of hot tea in hand, my coziest scarf wound around my neck, and we were off!  I was thrilled (seriously, if you knew how many hours I’ve spent on the couch over the last couple of weeks, you would think I had a case of either agoraphobia or mono).  The second we got in the car, it started to rain – bummer…  But I convinced myself that it might not actually be raining 5 miles south of our house, and rain always seems to be falling harder than it really is when you’re driving through it, so we pushed on.  And…we pulled up to the garden entrance and found that it was indeed raining in Renton.  Go figure.  But I was determined to have my adventure, dammit, so I coerced Shane out of the car and we did actually enjoy a pleasant (but wet) stroll through the garden.  I was able to snap a few pictures, breathe some fresh air, and do something out of the ordinary, which was really what the day was all about.  Plus, after our chilly little outdoor bout, my special spot on the couch felt so much warmer, and the hot chocolate I made tasted so much sweeter.  So it was worth it.

After an early-morning spin through the mall with Shane’s mom, and a hearty breakfast with the rest of the family, Shane and I said our good-byes, hopped back in the car, cranked up the heater, and headed to Minneapolis for a quick city-fix before our flight back to Seattle on Saturday.

After checking into our lovely room at Graves 601, we made our way to the Walker Art Center – a museum designed by Herzog and de Meuron and filled with all kinds of contemporary art.  Much of the art was a bit too…’conceptually abstract’ for my taste (a continuous video loop of a tongue rolling marbles around inside of a mouth, for example), but the current exhibit on Yves Klein is crazy, crazy good.  I first became familiar with his work at the Pompidou in Paris and fell in love with his cobalt blue paintings and his innovative use of the human body as a paintbrush.  But this exhibit also contained several of his fire paintings, which were new to me and absolutely beautiful.

The museum itself was also a work of art, with its unique materiality and bold, cube-like forms.  Not my most favorite H&dM building of all-time, but still an interesting place to experience.

Post-museum, we spent some time strolling through the shopping district near our hotel.  We noticed that a crowd had begun to line both sides of the street outside of Macy’s, and decided to hang around for a bit when we heard that the big Christmas parade would be coming through downtown in just a couple of minutes.  As we stood there, shivering and cringing from the cold, we began to question whether the parade would be worth losing feeling in all of our limbs.  After the first rinky-dink float rolled past, we decided it wasn’t.  We took refuge from the cold in a nearby store – I don’t think I have ever seen Shane so willingly agree to shoe shopping.   Once we’d thawed out, we made our way back to the hotel (via an impressive series of inter-connected sky-walks, since it turns out you can traverse a good portion of downtown without ever having to go outside – Score!), and wined and dined ourselves at Cosmos, the super-chic restaurant inside our hotel.  With our bellies full of duck breast, crab cakes, and pork belly, we headed downstairs to the bar at Bradstreet Crafthouse for a couple of late-night cocktails.  We were given a cozy little table in the corner and enjoyed the chance to catch up with each other – we reflected on our time spent with Shane’s family, talked about the people and places we looked forward to seeing back in Seattle, and enjoyed the chance to be in our own little Kelly and Shane ‘bubble’ for awhile, where nothing mattered other than each other.

We had just a couple of hours to enjoy the city the next morning, and I had a grand ambitions of a photographic tour of Minneapolis, but instead decided it would be nicer (read: warmer) to linger over our breakfast at Hell’s Kitchen, and then sit for awhile in a nearby coffee shop and sip hot tea.  Nothin’ wrong with that…

And so, our short-but-sweet 24 hours in Minneapolis came to an end.  I feel like I got just a taste of the city’s offerings and we look forward to getting back there sometime soon (but hopefully in the summer…).

Shane and I just returned from a weekend with my parents at their home in Central Oregon, enjoying a perfect dose of relaxation.  Mornings spent sleeping in, afternoons spent enjoying the great outdoors, and evenings spent cozying up by the fire in the living room and watching baseball on TV.  Lovely.  Some highlights:

After doing a little shopping and eating lunch in Bend on Friday, we headed over to Tumalo Falls to take a stroll and enjoy the scenery.  The waterfall was beautiful, as were the glowing-gold aspens set against full, bushy evergreens.  Shane skipped stones in the river, I found a perfectly seat-shaped rock to perch on and soak in the sun, and we all thought to ourselves how there’s nothing like a sunny, crisp Fall day in the Pacific Northwest.

Saturday we pointed the car south toward Crater Lake, in hopes of deepening our love affair with beautiful Central Oregon.  Success!  We ate lunch at the lodge (French onion soup in a cozy, log-walled lodge on a cool Autumn day = mmmmm…), then slowly wound our way back around the lake, stopping every few minutes to absorb the breath-taking view, snap some pictures, and marvel at how the color of the lake seemed to change with each viewpoint we stumbled upon.  I found it impossible to capture the magnificence of this collapsed-volcano-turned-lake in a single photo, so you’ll have to settle for these snippets of greatness.  Really, though, it was stunning…

(this photo courtesy of Shane’s iPhone handiwork) :

We spent Saturday evening at the house, watching the Giants crush (ok, barely squeak by) the Phillies in game one of the League Championship.  Bam!!!  Shane was so jazzed after their win that he challenged my dad to a 5-game ping-pong dual, which proved to be quite the aerobic workout for the both of them.  It was a battle to the end, but eventually they both emerged from the game room, sweaty and out of breath, my dad grinning and Shane hanging his head low (ok, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but still, it was rather intense for a ping-pong game)…

I also spent much of the weekend cuddling with my parents’ lovable Mini Australian Shepherd, Bernie.  He is a total sweetheart of a dog, and if not for our busy work schedules and Shane’s unfortunate dog allergy, I would be scouring the internet now for a puppy to call our own.

And now, we’re home – bags unpacked, laundry in the washer, and preparations for another typical week underway.  The weekend was so very, very good while it lasted…

I graduated from high school with Amanda, Josh, and Kelly way back when, and was thrilled when Amanda called me last month to tell me they were coming to visit.  It had been far too long since we’d seen each other, and I’ve been looking forward to the chance to catch up and be silly with some of my oldest, dearest friends.  And so Shane and I have spent the past couple of days playing host, eating and drinking and playing and laughing.

We kicked off Friday with breakfast at Both Ways Cafe, near Seward Park.  This has become one of my favorite breakfast places in Seattle, for the warm, cozy setting just as much as the food.  We sipped our lattes and spread jam on our perfect buttermilk biscuits, thrilled with the promise of a sunny Seattle day.  Then we watched the sun disappear behind a pile of gray clouds.  Go figure.

But we weren’t going to let gray skies keep us down.  After breakfast, we headed to UW to rent a couple of canoes and spend some time paddling around Lake Washington.  We wound our way through the arboretum, rowing our way through patches of lily-pads, under canopies of leafy green trees.  And this is why I love Seattle…

Friday night, after a quick happy hour downtown, we walked over to Safeco Field to take in the Mariners vs. A’s game.  Amanda and Josh are huge Oakland A’s fans (I don’t hold it against them), so they were stoked to watch their team cream Seattle.  It was a fun night – not much of a game, but still, the garlic fries were good, the weather was perfect, and really, there’s nothing like a lively rendition of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ with friends during the 7th inning stretch.

Saturday morning we pointed our car east toward Yakima.  Amanda’s grandpa lives there, so we dropped her and Josh off for a visit with him, while Shane, Kelly, and I headed over to Red Mountain to do a little wine-tasting.  We started at Tapteil Vineyards, and picnicked on the patio while enjoying a couple of their Cabernets.  We then headed to Fidelitas, a cool little winery with modern interiors and an extensive tasting list, the highlight of which was their Merlot.  Our last stop in Benton City was Cooper’s Vineyard, a brand-new winery that seems to be getting a lot of positive buzz.  This was by far our favorite stop of the day – the wines were fantastic, and the time we spent chatting with the winemaker made every sip even tastier.  His genuine enthusiasm about sharing the fruits of his labor with us was infectious – I’ve never been so engaged in the act of wine-drinking.  On our way back to Yakima, we stopped in Zillah for one last tasting, and then…we…were…done…

After a long day of driving, nothing sounded better than a round of pizzas from Tutta Bella and a couple of scoops of ice cream from Full Tilt. As if our breakfast pastries from Columbia City bakery and our cheese-and-salame picnic lunch wasn’t indulgence enough…

We bid farewell to our visitors this morning, sad to see them go, but thankful for a weekend full of fabulous memories.

Yes, it got even better:  An incredible blue-skied hike out to Loookout Point, followed by a suddenly misty trek back to the car; quality beach time, with sand between my toes and ocean-soaked pant cuffs; lazy mornings spent drinking coffee and playing with Elise…  This weekend ended far too soon…

Our weekend at the coast was, in a word, perfection.  Leisurely walks on the beach, evenings spent lounging around the house with my family, falling asleep to the lull of the ocean and waking to the sound of Elise’s chatter downstairs…  I had forgotten how beautiful the Oregon Coast is, and savored every sandy moment spent there with my family, from my morning jog to our sunset stroll.

Elise is quickly moving from baby-hood to little girl-hood, but maintaining all of adorableness.  She is curious, funny, affectionate, and has us all wrapped around her cute little finger.  She is also totally smitten with her Uncle Shane, and spent much of the weekend nestled into his lap.  Whenever any one of us asked if we could help her with something (“Elise, can I read you a book?”, “Can I brush your hair?”, “Can I change your diaper?”), her immediate response was, “I want Uncle Shane to do it!”  And thus, we all got to see a side of Shane we never knew existed – he’s actually a diaper-changing, hair-brushing, toddler-snuggling genius.

Some of my favorite weekend moments were spent just hanging around the house, eating, lounging, and laughing.  We took advantage of the fresh, local seafood offerings and pickup up a couple dozen oysters from Barnacle Bill’s for an appetizer on Friday night.  Mitch gave Shane his first-ever shucking lesson, and the two of them slurped their way through oyster after oyster.

After our dinner of fresh salmon and roasted veggies, my dad and I grabbed our cameras and headed across the street to the beach to catch the sunset.  The misty glow of the horizon and the interesting topography of the low-tide beach made for an incredible evening walk.  I could so get used to this…

Still sorting through the rest of the weekend’s photos – more picture-perfect memories to come…