Just wanted to take a minute to say how wonderful my friends are.

I feel lucky to have such great people in my life, and it doesn’t hurt that they love and appreciate all the crafty details that I do. 

This christmas, some of my favorite gifts were handmade (with love) from two of my best friends. 

Anna made me a glorious homemade herbal facial, of which she learned how to make last summer at the Women’s Herbal Symposium. I’m going to have to beg her for the recipe when I run out of it, because it’s really that good. She also made me a brown sugar hand scrub, which isn’t pictured but was just as lovely.

Heather gave me her own herbal tea mix, which is one of the best tasting teas i’ve had in awhile (really, not just saying). She also made John and I hand-dyed pillow cases (the woman is a power-house I tell you, a power-house) and some unbelievably yummy caramels with salt. 

Besides the gifts themselves, both of my ladies took the time to make sure that everything was wrapped beautifully, too. Since i’m someone who appreciates those kinds of things, I wanted to share a few of my presents with you. 

They’re great, right?

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Well, john and i made it back from portland, and oh man, did we have a good time.

We stayed in a very cool turn-of-the-century guesthouse, the kind of place with old wooden floors and lots of character. The room we were in had this amazing vintage oak armoire and a ridiculously orange velvet chair, which is what I captured in the polaroid above. 

Anyway, we had a great time. It was actually kind of a busier trip than planned, but lots of necessary items on our wedding to-do list were checked off, which feels wonderful.

Beyond all the wedding related stuff, I just have  to say that we ate so much GOOD FOOD while we were there! One of the main reasons John and I love Portland, and one of the reasons why we are so excited to move there next summer, is how amazing the food scene is. Lots of great restaurants, and most of them use high quality and local ingredients. We’re kind of sticklers about where our food comes from, and apparently, almost all of Portland is too.

A few of my favorites that i’m still drooling over are  little t baker (the bread! the pastries!), ken’s artisan pizza (wood-fire oven pizza, made by a former baker, need I say more?), cafe broder (swedish brunch, so delicious) and pok pok thai food (curry and spicy thai fried chicken that is so good you might do a little dance). 

…and of course, as to be expected, John and i totally nerded out in the many record stores in Portland. We ended up coming home with a decent-sized stack of jams to add to our ever growing collection.

Now we’re back in the redwood forest, looking forward to another few weeks of break before i’m back in school for one last semester. In the meantime, we have so much to look forward to this year, and we’re oh so excited for the future.

Happy monday!

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I was so busy last week, making new jewelry and working on new projects, and then new year’s eve happened- that I completely forgot about my promise to share some wedding news with you.

So here I am. A little late, but nonetheless: 

John and i have OFFICIALLY found the venue for our wedding, which means we’ve also OFFICIALLY set the date! It’s all really exciting, over here in wedding world. Big news, i tell you. Big NEWS.

The venue is located on the grounds of an old farmhouse from the late 1800’s, and it’s local, which makes everything easy, and really, it’s just lovely. It’s surrounded by acres and acres of pastures, so it kind of feels like you’re in ireland, and everything is really quiet and green, except for the sound of crashing waves, which yes, you can hear from the venue because the beach is literally right around the corner. 

The best part is that we have access to the entire property, which happens to have a secret garden.

Seriously, a real secret garden.

The first time i walked into it I kind of flipped out. It’s like a giant open courtyard that’s tucked away and completely surrounded by enourmous hedges, and it took me like a total of five seconds to know that it was EXACTLY where I wanted to have our reception dinner. 

Anyway…..

The place is beautiful, with just the right amount of wild, and most importantly, it feels like us.

Oh….and the wedding date is set for August 25th, which sounds nice when we say it out loud.

The count down begins!

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