PDX

My sweetie and I recently took a quick vacation (four nights) to Portland, Oregon. We stayed at an adorable vegan bed and breakfast, The Cherokee Rose Inn, that I would highly recommend to anyone, vegan or not. The owner, Sandy, went out of her way to make us feel at home. She made a delicious vegan breakfast each morning and had homemade treats available for us each afternoon. In addition, she gave free daily bus passes and even dropped us off at the airport! The Inn is in a great location and we were easily able to walk to parks and other hotspots in Portland such as the "vegan mini-mall."

Here's The Cherokee Rose Inn. It's an arts and crafts style home from the early 1900s.

The living room and dining room are beautiful—she even has a baby grand piano. Sandy has a great decorating style—the perfect mix of interesting antiques and new items!

No trip to Portland is complete without a stop at the vegan mini-mall. This was my first visit to Portland in over a decade and N had never been, so we were pretty excited.

Food Fight of course was amazing. I filled a bag with hard to find vegan goodies right away. There were actually a lot of refrigerated items I would have liked such as nut cheeses that are exclusive to Portland. Unfortunately, we didn't think they'd hold up on the trip home and there was no time to eat them while we were there.

Sweetpea Baking Co. was adorable. I especially loved their scones—one of my favorite baked goods!

 

Last but not least, we visited Herbivore. I've been a huge fan of their shop since it opened ten years ago, but had only ordered online. I bought my first clothing item of 2013 (I've been really good). I love my new hoodie and know I'll use it for many years. It's super soft and made of organic cotton and recycled bottles. 

Image from Herbivore

More to come on Portland soon!

Purim, Puppets, and Vegan Hamantaschen

I celebrated my first Purim at a good friend's house today and had an amazing time. Since I didn't grow up in a community where I had the opportunity to make many Jewish friends, I didn't know much about the holiday before the party.

In the Hebrew book of Esther, an evil king Haman had planned to kill the Jews in his kingdom but his plan was stopped by Mordecai and his adopted daughter Queen Esther. Purim today is basically a celebratory holiday where there is a lot of good food, drinks, and fun, including costumes! My kind of holiday.

Here's the huge spread of amazing vegan food... my friend is an incredible cook:

I had my first Hamantaschen, a triangular pastry filled with a sweet fruit paste. It was delicious and especially exciting for me since they were all made vegan.

I may have eaten one too many of these...

I threw my costume together very last minute. I was the genie from the '60s show, I Dream of Jeannie. Thankfully I had the pink genie suit from thrifting years ago. I added a scarf around my pony tail, some gold colored jewelry, a vintage snake belt, and gold pointy shoes I bought for $5 in a Turkish market. Voilà, a Purim costume (sorry for the glare):

One note I learned from wearing this costume: do not wear a pink genie jumpsuit under a winter coat in February on the New York subway unless you want EVERYONE to stare at you. Yikes.

The best part of the celebration was the amazing Purim puppet show my friends put together. The hostess made the stage, set, and puppets all by hand. I was so impressed with her craftiness.

Here's a scene from the show:

And here's the cast at the end. So cute!

Check out this close up shot I took of the guard puppet. These guys must have taken quite a while to make.

Happy Purim to all!

Reverse Glass Painting

I have a new thing for reverse glass paintings. I picked up this little lady while I was visiting family at Christmas. Her folk art look (plus the kitten!) is what sold me. I think she was done in the 1920s or 30s. No, she has yet to be hung because that takes forever in our house. I'm going to be on the lookout for more reverse glass art when I'm thrifting/antiquing.

Happy Galentine's Day!

I'm actually back for a quick post about Galentine's Day! If you don't know, Galentine's Day is a fake holiday created by the amazing Leslie Knope of the T.V. show Parks and Recreation to celebrate all her lady friends.

This year I decided I needed to celebrate with some of my favorite gals, so I hosted a little vegan potluck and craft party.

The food was so good of course I'm in a sugar coma. I always worry before I have people over that no one will bring anything but my friends never disappoint. A few of my favorites were whoopie pies and heart cookies from the new Betty Goes Vegan cookbook just published by my friends Annie and Dan. There was also an incredible German bundt cake. Here's a peek at our table before even half the food arrived:

I asked my gals to dress up in their most fabulous Valentine's themed outfit (vintage encouraged) and I would give prizes for the best outfits. Of course I forgot to get a photo of 1st place and she went all out. Second place was a friend who decked out herself, her daughter, and her baby girl. I didn't get a photo of them all together but I did get one of her. Here she is in a cute vintage dress with a vintage heart belt from a recent clothing swap. Layered for the big snow storm!

Here I am with my 3rd place friend. Such a cute look with heart socks!

Our craft was making Valentines and some of the ladies got really into it. We had so many supplies it was a bit overwhelming. Here are a few of us with the fruits of our labor. Sorry for the poor lighting...

And here I am with one of my favorite gals, Jesse Anne O. She claims she is not crafty but made some of the best Valentines in the bunch. We own very similar vintage Valentine deer pins that we both wore. Also, yes that is a red vintage apron I'm wearing. Probably the only excuse I'll ever have to wear it.

Art and Flamingos with Yenny

I've been so busy in my life for the past six months that somehow my poor little blog got set aside. I've even had quite a bit of public shamming from Jesseanneo to attempt to inspire my return. But the main reason I'm back for a quick post is my recent trip to Bonaire, an island in the Dutch Caribbean.

While on my trip I visited a woman named Yenny and her wonderful home she has covered in her fabulous folk art. The best part of my visit was her rescued flamingos! She has six living in her back yard. Yenny told me people have brought them to her when they have found them sick, injured, or unable to fly. I've always loved flamingos and it was pretty cool to meet some in person.

These guys were pretty friendly:

Here's her whole flock of six:

Here's Yenny with two of her babies:

Her art was incredible and there was so much of it that I can only show you a little. I took way too many pictures and it was hard to pick what to share!

She loves making life sized dolls:

Here's a couple more. There are wild donkeys living on Bonaire, so they tend to be an inspiration.

There are cacti growing all over Bonaire, including in Santa:

She also has collections displayed in interesting ways around her house. Here's her shells:

And here's some animals bones she's found. A little creepy...

Til next time folks. I'm hoping it won't be six months again!

The Hike that Turned into Antiquing

This post is more than a little late, but in May I organized a day trip with some friends for hiking in Cold Spring, New York in honor of my sweetie's birthday.

We hiked for about a half hour and had a yummy and extremely filling vegan picnic.

My friend J happened to be on the trip which led me to the temptation for us to go antiquing at the tons of adorable stores in Cold Spring instead of hiking for the rest of the day. I will readily admit this was my fault, although I might have hiked for longer if I hadn't had a fellow vintage lover along.

Done with hiking, vintage is calling!

We found a vintage Christmas display, my favorite and a major weakness!

There was also an entire cabinet full of vintage Halloween. Unfortunately the cost was prohibitive of me buying anything. For some reason vintage Halloween is always extremely expensive. Not sure why, could be that it's really rare? Someday I will own a vintage paper mache pumpkin but I'll need some good luck to find a cheap one!

We finished off our exhausting day of hiking antiquing with a stop to get Go-Go Pops. If you're ever in Cold Spring, check them out, they have a ton of vegan flavors!

The Cutest Vegan Cakes

We hosted a little housewarming party last weekend. Yes, the big news is that we are finally unpacked and settled into our new place. I wanted to order a really cute vegan cake for the party and had just seen an adorable vegan cake donated from a local business called Cakeworthy at a fundraiser I went to recently.

Here's the fundraiser cake that made me call them for my housewarming... isn't it adorable? It looks like it's right out of a Dr. Seuss book. It was refreshing to find a company where all of their cakes are optionally available vegan!

Here I am with my housewarming cake. The inside was chocolate, very rich and tasty. Everyone thought the cake was fake when they saw it. Kind of looks like a toy!

 In other news I went to a coworker's wedding last weekend and wore an $800 dress that I found for $30 in a second hand store. It was in perfect condition too! Sometimes I think Park Slope ladies buy something and only wear it once (or not at all, haha). Sorry for the blah subway background in this photo, I forgot to get a better shot.

Treasures from the Trash AKA Dumpster Diving!

We're finally moved into our new place and have started unpacking. I was in the basement tonight by our storage unit and N and I happened to walk by the trash area. There were several bins full of books and I couldn't resist looking. It seems a very elderly woman in the coop is moving on for assisted care and her kids were cleaning out her apartment. Our coop was one of the original Finnish coops in Brooklyn and founded in 1926. The woman must have been from Finland because of her beautiful book collection. I couldn't believe what was being thrown away. Even a Moonin book!

Here's the best of what I took:

My favorite by far is Tales from a Finnish Tupa. It was published in 1936 and has really beautiful color drawings.

One little book was published in 1880 and has an inscription in the front with the woman's name written in an old style calligraphy. In order to protect her privacy, I won't post a photo of that one though. I really hope she would be happy that someone rescued her treasures from the trash and will enjoy them!