lingering daydreams

{essentials} oysters

by Lila on June 20, 2012

The summer weather makes me want to find ways to spend time with friends outside. One of the benefits of living in San Francisco is its proximity to Tomales Bay, where there is a very well known oyster farm. The drive along the coast makes you feel like you are getting away from it all, the oysters are delicious, and the picnic spots are breathtaking.

1. Weck Glass Jars: I am a lover of condiments. My favorite way to eat oysters is raw with Mignonette sauce. If you are going on a picnic, make your mignonette in advance, put it in a jar, and pour it over your freshly shucked oysters. Epicurious has a recipe for a Chapange Vinegar Mignonette here and the food network has one for a Cucumber Mignonette Sauce here.

2. Oyster Knife: Gotta have an oyster knife if you want to pop open your own oysters.

3. Tray: Fresh oysters are best stored over ice. A deep try like this one, filled with ice, helps keep the oysters chilled and creates a convenient surface for the shells to rest on.

4. Grill: If you like a a grilled oyster, bring a barbeque and eat them straight off the grill.

5. Cooler: On the way to the picnic it can keep your wine cool and on the way home it can carry some fresh oysters for later.

Enjoy your summer picnics!

{ 1 comment }

{dreaming of} a summer filled with

by Lila on May 21, 2012

{photo}

… vanishing for a couple of days into a world of relaxation. Never would I have thought that I would be going to Tucson this summer, but I am. Disappearing with my cuz on a trip focused on rejuvenation. I cannot wait.

… movies in the backyard. I am itching to purchase this and use it all summer long. I’m already dreaming up a party with popcorn and popsicles.

… sleeping under the stars. I have been surprised how many stars we can actually see from our backyard despite the fact we live in San Francisco. When the mister and I traveled to Hawaii we bought a star map and a book filled with the stories of the constellations . I am waiting for that clear night when we can throw down the sleeping bags and tell each other stories about the stars.

… building a chicken coup with my own two hands. I’ve purchased these plans and have just one or two ideas to give it a little flavor of my own.

{ 1 comment }

{inspired} dining room

by Lila on May 14, 2012

{five jar chandelier, zinc chair, dylan dinging table, printmakers sideboard, iron bird tealight holders, zinc letters, recycled glass vases}

I have mad love for craigslist furniture, don’t get me wrong, but looking at our brand new, freshly painted dining room has me itching for a couple new items. Several things have been catching my eye lately, but the ones that have really stuck with me are the items above. There is a little shop called Therapy that carries the iron birds, which I have set back down after carrying around the store with me while I shop twice now. So far in this little life time of mine I have not yet bought a piece of new furniture from any store other than IKEA. Maybe this is the year!

{ 2 comments }

{home} styling the bookshelves

by Lila on May 7, 2012

Slowly, but surely the boxes are being unloaded. I decided to knock the bookshelves out as best I could. I have never found it particularly easy to style bookshelves, they house so many things and it feels easy to overload them with a chaotic collection of “where can this go” items.

There were a couple of key things that I changed from the last time I reorganized these mighty shelves, after painting them from a sage green to this gray. Key points include:

{Books Organized Loosely by Color} I like the visual. It is less chaotic and easy to look at, but, after arranging them strictly by color the last time, it was driving me nuts that I couldn’t always find books easily. So as I unloaded book after book onto the shelves, I found a balance. These books are loosely organized by color, but they are also organized by topic. Attractive and functional, gotta love it.

{Cute Bookends} I have come to the conclusion that when a bookend is basically a piece of art, it helps with the styling process. I used to only roll with the black metal Ls, but am a somewhat recent convert to the cute. I picked up the little owl, which I think is technically a paperweight, at a little shop in Santa Cruz. The A-Z bookends screamed at me from across the store in Barnes & Noble.

{Open Space} Our bookshelves were previously crammed with books. They were shoved in every corner you could fit them in and then others rested horizontally on top of the vertical ones. It was madness. In an attempt to calm the storm I put a bunch of the paperbacks in the basket on the bottom shelf, hauled a load to Salvation Army, and I boxed up all our childhood favorites and put them in the basement. We are book junkies, but only so many have to be out at one time. I love that now I can grab books and put them back without a battle.

{Small on Top, Big on Bottom} I tried to anchor the eye with the larger items on the bottom shelves. I really tried to keep the top shelves fairly clear. In the future I would like to have even less stuff up top, but I couldn’t help myself. There are only so many things I can let go of at once.

I’m lovin’ the end result. I love the color of the bookshelves against my persimmon walls. I love the little pieces of art the peek out. I love that the vinyl is all out in the open and easy to access. Mission accomplished.

{ 2 comments }

{dreaming of} summer

by Lila on April 30, 2012

…a little storybook romance. You know the kind that you usually get a teary over when you watch the abc holiday movies (or is that just me). The mister and I will have been together for 10 years this summer. I couldn’t see myself with anyone else that would compliment me and my crazy self the way he does. I’m going to come up with something that belongs in a romantic comedy. This should be fun.

…pursuing my knowledge of design and illustration. I have all these big ideas and I want to start accumulating the skills to make the things inside my head transform into something tangible. Summer might be the perfect time to seize the day and take a course or two at the California College of the Arts.

…writing a children’s book… about a girl with freckles.

…swimming in a freshwater lake. I haven’t done this for a long time. Distinct memories from my childhood float back to me this time of year. Running off of docks and hitting cool water on a hot day. When I was around eight I jumped off a giant rock into this beautiful lake. I don’t remember where we were, but I vividly remember the image of the clear blue and the edge of the rock and my dad’s head bobbing in the water below me. I think a little time on a lake would do me some good.

{ 0 comments }

{crush} spring at west elm

by Lila on April 26, 2012

Owning a new house has given me a new love for all things home related. I have always been drawn to things you can sit on, eat off of, or hang on a wall, but now my little addiction has renewed strength! Not to mention that we now have a legit garden where I want so desperately to put this table and hang these lights…

{West Elm, Dexter Outdoor Expandable Table}

And now that I have gone to one class at the incredible Workshop I am already looking to sign up for a second. They have one on planting a terrarium, anybody interested? If I do sign up, it would be the perfect excuse to buy of of these beauties.

{West Elm, Glass Terrarium}

Then there is the excitement of having a fireplace. I am hoping that our incredibly talented cousin will help me create a new, bigger mantle to hold even more beautiful things. This clock in white would fit quite nicely with the other items I have slowly collected.

{West Elm, Wood Mantle Clock}

Last, but also the thing I potentially want most of all, the 5 Jar Chandelier. Isn’t it beautiful. I love everything about it. I also don’t love anything about what is currently hanging in our dining room, so it seems like such a good idea.

{West Elm, 5 Jar Chandelier}

Anything you have your eye on to spruce up the place you call home?

{ 3 comments }

{workshop} screen printing

by Lila on April 22, 2012

There is a little art studio on the corner of Baker and McAllister that caters to the diy inclined. They will teach you how to make a lamp from a booze bottle, create a terrarium from a mason jar, start your own etsy shop, and much more. A couple weeks ago I decided to wander down to Workshop to wrap my mind around the concept of screen printing.

When you sign up for the class, Workshop gives you the option to design your own screen to take home. You send them your image and they burn it onto a screen for an extra $45. I couldn’t resist. Screen printing as always appealed to me partly because of the idea of creating my own textiles. So I hand-painted three different patterns, scanned them, and sent them on their way.

The class started with an overview of how to make your own screen. The process is pretty straight forward, but there are pieces of equipment that you have to have. The steps are something like: 1. Design your screen. 2. Put your design on a transparency. 3. Coat your screen with emulsion in a dark room and let it set. 4. Place your image on the screen and expose it to light. 5. Rinse and dry your screen.

Once you have a screen to work with your are ready to print.

After the lesson was complete, music was turned on, paint cans were opened, and we were allowed to use Workshop’s many screens to print anything we brought with us. The Pandora station was set to Salt N Pepa, there was a bucket above a mini fridge where you could drop a dollar and take out a beer, and giant work tables waiting to be covered with art. It was a little slice of heaven. Three shirts, two notebooks, and one screen later I headed home inspired to continue my exploration of this new art form.

Lessons learned:

You flood the screen with paint before you use it to print.
You can install hinged clamps that allow you to raise and lower your screen while keeping it in the same location. This way you can tape down a test print which shows you exactly where your next print will end up. Useful trick!
If you use water soluble ink, rinse your screen quickly. That stuff dries fast!
You can use blue tape to mask any part of the screen you don’t want to use.
I heart Workshop and can’t wait to take my next class there.

In the end I used Workshop’s screens because I knew I couldn’t take them home with me. Now my head is swimming with ideas about how to use my own screen. I cannot wait to show you what I come up with.

Have you tried anything new lately? I would love to hear about it!

{ 2 comments }

{dreaming of} house warming

by Lila on April 16, 2012

{photo by Nicole Polk via Style Me Pretty}

I love any excuse to throw a party. They don’t come around frequently enough. Now that we have purchased our first home, I am itching to have all our family and friends over to celebrate. So currently I am daydreaming of…

…time with the people in our lives that love us and support us. My favorite part of throwing a party are the stories you share and the memories you create in the precious moments where the schedules align.

… wide mouth mason jars to serve mojitos in. I am hoping the mint I planted in the back yard will get big enough to use for some homemade cocktails

… hanging lights outside. Nothing says festive like twinkling lights during the dimming of the day.

… cooking something tasty in a smoker. Buying a smoker for that matter. How far can I stretch the gift certificate we got for our wedding three years ago…

… selecting some tunes. Gotta have some jams and I am itching to buy some new records. Any suggestions? Party favorites?

{ 0 comments }

{grow} blueberry daze

by Lila on April 11, 2012

I have found my new favorite nursery, Sloat. It is a short drive from the house and it has isles and isles of things I want to bring home and fill my yard with. The garden to table movement has caught my attention and I want nothing more than to hop on the bandwagon and have my own grocer in my backyard.

I caught sight of a flyer about Blueberry Daze and couldn’t help but hop in the car and run over to the nursery to grab a couple plants for my raised garden bed that has been filled with nothing but weeds.

Back in the yard I starting weeding and turning fertilizer into the ground. There are a shocking number of rocks in this little garden plot of mine and I spent of good amount of time pulling them out.

One of the things I love about Sloat Nursery is the amount I learn every time I walk through their doors. The staff is knowledgeable and I am always so grateful to them for knowing about the climate of my new home!

Lessons learned:

It is good to plant two species of blueberries together. Although blueberries are generally self-pollinating, they produce more fruit when they are able to cross-pollinate.
They love acidic soil. I bought camellia-azalea fertilizer, which is acidic and reportedly is a blueberry essential.
When growing, blueberries prefer to be in damp soil. (This scared me a little bit because if there is one thing that I don’t do so consistently its water. Not a great trait for an up-and-coming gardener…)
There is a great little cafe near Sloat Nursery with de-li-cious sandwiches and froyo. Yum. It transformed a run to the nursery into a little date for me and the mister.

So far the blueberries look very happy. I have kept them damp (thank you for the help rain) and there are a couple flowers peaking out of a couple branches. Now I am itching to fill the rest of the garden bed!

What are you growing with the Spring sun starting to emerge?

{ 1 comment }

{diy} moving announcements

by Lila on April 9, 2012

It is always a struggle to get paper made and then sent out in a timely fashion. I still haven’t managed to send out Christmas cards… ever. But I was determined to make and send out moving announcements. Given that we moved to the city of San Francisco I saw the opportunity to use my beautiful stamps from Yellow Owl Workshop, one of my favorite designers, especially when it comes to rubber stamps. I am really happy with how they turned out.

What you will need:

+ scanner, computer, paper

Step 1: Draw Your Image

I have a thing for paper airplanes, and I thought it would be cute for a paper airplane to sail over the bridge to our new home, just like we were. It can be tricky when you want to mass produce a hand-drawn design, but as long as you have a scanner at home it is entirely possible.

I sketched my image in a notebook and, once I was happy with it, inked in everything except the bridge, which was holding the space for where my stamp would go. In the end I sketched a border around the edge of the image to give it a frame.

Step 2: Scan

Then I scanned my image as a jpeg file. Once it was on my computer I edited it in iPhoto, making the image black and white and increasing the contrast. After I had cleaned up the image a little bit I dropped the image into a word document and added a text box with our new address on it. I used three slightly different colors of ink for each line of the address to make it pop. In the end I designed and scanned an image for the back of the postcard as well. I wanted a sweet little message and found this one online. It was a little cheese ball, but I have been feeling pretty warm and fuzzy lately :)

Step 3: Print & Cut

Once the images were complete, I printed them onto cream colored card stock. I chose the heavier paper because of the postcard design. I wanted them to be able to withstand being sent through the mail. Once I had cut out the rectangles, I rounded the corners with my nifty corner trimmer. Rounded corners always create a finished look in my opinion.

Step 4: Stamp & Emboss

Last, but not least I embossed the image of the bridge on the card. I used clear embossing powder because I had a color ink that I liked for the bridge. When embossing, you stamp the image, pour embossing powder to cover the wet ink, tap the excess off, and then hit it with a heat gun until you see the embossing powder melt.

It was a success! Maybe a little later than I would have liked, but announcements went out in the mail on Thursday and hopefully will be arriving in mailboxes soon!