The weather has been getting a bit warmer, so we decided to go on a one-night backpacking trip for President’s Day weekend at Deschutes River State Recreation Area.
It was a 7.5 mile roundtrip trail, which was a bit shorter than we were hoping for, but this hike was the only one in our book, One Night Wilderness: Portland by Douglas Lorain, that wouldn’t be below 25˚F at night, which was not something I wanted to deal with.
The trail went along the Deschutes River, which made for amazing scenery.
The camp was right on the river and I had one of the best outdoor sleeps that night, even with the few passing trains chugging by.
The next morning, we packed up our gear and took a different route back to the car, going up the hills to see the real views of the valley.
Although this hike wasn’t very detached from the “real world”, it was in a way very peaceful and quiet, even with the passing trains.
THE GOOD: beautiful views, easy hike, modern bathroom
THE BAD: short, low rating on the solitude scale
After the hike, we stopped by Double Mountain Brewery for some delicious pizza and beers.
For my gift tags this year, I spray-painted shipping tags with two coats of green chalkboard spray paint. I let them dry overnight and wrote on them with my white chalk drawing pencil.
I’m liking the way they look with the black/white twine and kraft wrapping paper.
We have been making custom invitations since we opened last year for awesome clients who specifically email us with their ideas. They put their complete trust in us without ever seeing examples and we love them for it. We even created an invitation completely in Swedish last year and will possibly be doing another in French! It’s very exciting.
Now, two of our invitation suites are finally in the shop so that anyone can get their hands on them for their special day. We even gave them cute woodsy names!
THE BIRCH:
THE PINE:
We can’t wait to work with you.
Day 1 | Cut a Christmas Tree and Decorate | Inside: Handmade mitten ornament
We headed to Shriver Farm in Gresham, OR and found a six foot Colorado Spruce that had to come home with us.
Although we could have easily gotten a Christmas tree within a couple blocks of us, it was worth the 35 minute drive because they had a vast selection and it only cost fifteen bucks!
We took out the ornaments I made last year and got to decorating while listening to the A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack and sipping on a favorite beer. It was perfect.
Why are advent calendars mainly for kids? It’s not fair. So I decided to make a grown-up one just for Ian and I that is more about doing holiday activities rather than toys and candy.
Materials:
- Vintage Soda Crate with 24 sections
- 24 2” Boxes
- Advent Calendar Activity Template and Paper in the color of your choice
- Wood Buttons (I used the leftovers that I made for our wedding, but you can get similar ones on Etsy)
- Red & Green Twine
1. Write or stamp numbers 1-24 on the front of each unfolded box.
2. Make a list of twenty-four holiday activites to do at home and in/around your city. Handwrite or print them onto the Activity Template and cut out each square (I like to leave a tiny border around each square).
3. Fold up boxes and fill with the activity and goodies that match (e.g. “Make hot cocoa”; fill the box with marshmallows).
4. Decorate the boxes with the wood buttons and twine (half red, half green). The buttons allow for easy grabbage of the boxes when put into the tight sections.
5. Put boxes randomly into the soda crate, alternating between the green and red twine.
Wood & Grain gift tags are in the shop!
The first set contains six different messages (2 of each):
The second set contains three different messages (3 of each):
Make gifts extra special by layering them with these tags; available in black or white ink.
Want personalized labels with your names? Just message me on Etsy with your inquiries.
Happy Gifting!
Every year, since high-school I’ve cooked at least two Thanksgiving dinners, three being the typical number. This year isn’t going to be any different. We threw the first of three at our home with a few friends. We still don’t have a dining table, so we ended up bringing our patio furniture into the dining room. It actually worked out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself.
To make the table more festive, I reused some of our old wedding decorations (burlap table runner, candle votives and vases) and filled the table with un-carved pumpkins from our Halloween decorations and fall-colored leaves from around our neighborhood. It took me about 15 minutes and cost nothing!
The food was simple: roasted chicken with stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, roasted butternut squash and an apple, pear and quince crostata. The crostata was definitely the highlight for me.
I’ve already made a delicious, yet simple chicken vegetable soup and a chicken rice porridge with the carcasses. I love leftovers.
We decided to stay home on Halloween, so we could pass out candy to all the kids in the neighborhood.
I still wanted to do something fun/scary, so we threw a mini outdoor movie screening on our front porch.
For the movie screen, I used an old white full-size bedsheet (IKEA also has twin-size sheets for less than $5) and nailed it to the porch. I wanted to screen a silent movie so that we wouldn’t have to blast sound and disturb the neighbors. We used our projector and Apple TV to screen “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, which I highly recommend if you haven’t already seen it. (I believe it’s also available on Netflix.)
We served popcorn, apple cider hot toddies, homemade roasted pumpkin seeds (from the pumpkin I had carved the day before) and pizza.
For the apple cider hot toddies:
- I heated up some unfiltered apple juice in a large pot.
- Threw in some mulling spice packets and steeped them for 5 minutes.
- Put a shot of bourbon into each mug and added the apple cider.
For the pumpkin seeds:
- Pumpkin or Acorn Squash Seeds
- Olive Oil
- Salt
- Cayenne
- Clean the seeds, spread onto a cookie sheet and let them dry overnight or until they are completely dry.
- The next day, put seeds into a bowl and mix in olive oil, salt and cayenne (you don’t have to be exact).
- Roast at 275 degrees for 10-20 minutes until lightly toasted. Keep an eye on them, as roasting times can vary.
- Let cool and enjoy.
I was very eager for the holiday season to begin, so I convinced Ian to go pumpkin picking way earlier than normal (the last week of September). We headed to Sauvie Island and started our search for the perfect pumpkins.
There were a ton to choose from and we were particularly obsessed with the white ones.
We were a little nervous that they wouldn’t even last till Halloween, but they are all still looking great.
We’ve been taking it slow on updating and furnishing our new home. Each room needs to be painted/wallpapered and furnished exactly to our liking and it’s really hard to make decisions.
The first room we decided to take on was the upstairs bathroom, because it’s small and easy to work with.
I knew I wanted to paint the walls black. Of course, I used Pinterest to find some inspirational photos and these were the two bathrooms (1, 2) that I fell in love with:
Our upstairs bathroom is extremely small and doesn’t get much natural light, so painting it black was a bit of a risk, but we went for it anyways!
THE BEFORE
I used Sherwin Williams Chip It website to figure out what color of black paint we should get and the results came up with SW 6258 Tricorn Black.
It took a lot longer than we expected to paint such a tiny room, but we did manage to finish in one day.
THE AFTER
We added some hints of wood, white, mint and red to brighten up the room and I can’t be happier with the results. For the first week after the transformation, whenever I entered the bathroom I couldn’t help screaming out to Ian, “I LOVE THIS BATHROOM!”
THE DECOR
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine
THE HARDWARE
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine
A few things we need to fix, but haven’t yet had the time/money for:
- Rip up the linoleum and put in tiles.
- Possibly paint the cabinet white.
- Change all the fixtures (sink faucet, bath faucet and shower head) to gold. This probably won’t happen for a long time since gold bathroom fixtures are insanely expensive.
- Get a better light fixture above the mirror.
