merry christmas to all you lovelies! hope you have amazing times with friends and family this holiday. i’m off for a mini christmas break starting off in white rock, and then to edmonton [brr] for a wedding for new year’s eve. be blessed this christmas!! xo
p.s. if you haven’t seen this video called the christmas story, please watch it. it may be one of the best christmas videos i’ve ever seen! warning: your heart might melt.
i’m always on the hunt for a new and delicious coffee shop; and portland has no shortage of them. i had heard of heart coffee roasters the last time we were in portland, but we ran out of time because we’re so obsessed with stumptown [and barista was good too], and a girl like me can only drink so much coffee! it’s quite the hipster scene in heart however, but they make good coffee and kept my heart happy. [note: cheezy play-on-words]
no trip to portland is complete without stopping into the ace hotel stumptown however. love hangin out in that lobby reading the new york times, and chatting. so sad the photo booth was broken though. that is always a highlight!
p.s. i’m obsessed with terrarium plants lately. i’m going to d.i.y. some in the very near future. can’t be too hard right? just shove some dirt and moss in a jar and voila?!
have you ever seen the show portlandia? if you like the idea of people poking fun at the idiosyncrasies of the pacific northwest [specifically portland], while loving on it all at the same time, then you’ll like portlandia. we watched a few episodes at night while we were in town actually, and it was really funny. there is something so unique and distinctive about portland – i really love it there. our visit was quick though. involved lots of stumptown, mother’s bistro, voodoo doughnuts, and ken’s artisan pizza.
if you’re looking to make a dessert that covers your kitchen in icing sugar, makes your kitchen smell like chocolate + mint, and assists you in losing all sense of self-control… make these. peppermint patties. super christmassy, ridiculously addictive, and they freeze amazingly well.
here are a few more shots from astoria. did you know the goonies was filmed there? classic, hilariously awesome film, btw. [we watched it after our last trip to astoria and laughed our heads off!] anyways, it started to rain after some gallivanting around town, so we headed to the coast to the beach [naturally... because it makes so much sense to go to the beach in the rain], and then we headed to portland. stay tuned for some coffee loving, ace hoteling updates in the near future.
have you been to a pop up shop before? seems it’s becoming an emerging trend in vancouver. it’s where a shop literally pops up, and is open up for only a short amount of time… usually a month or less, and then either closes or hits the road for another city. my husband and i went to one the other night and i absolutely fell in love. it’s in gastown, the historic part of vancouver, and it’s called the found and the freed.
the reason i loved this shop so much was that a) it was all amazing vintage home decor [think: vintage school maps, old lamps, rickety wooden chairs, weathered photographs, globes, etc] and b) a lot of it was vancouvery/canadian! i especially loved the vintage bus reels.
our morning in astoria was spent walking around looking at how cute and all-american everything was. i love small american towns. and it was remembrance day too [veteran's day] so there was music and everything, just bursting around town.
my favorite place we went that morning was the astoria coffee house & bistro. check out those vintage globes! the decor was fun. it’s the kind of place you feel happy just being in. we would have stayed longer had we had more time, but we wanted to hit up some thrift shops, and head toward the coast to see the water. but fyi, they make a good cappuccino. if you’re into that. and bonus: they are open all day, for every meal, and make everything from scratch.
