Bari J.

Field Trip: Japanese Book Store

The other day, PKM suggested that a great place to take my girls was the Japanese Book Store in San Jose. She was right again! The girls and I were both thrilled to bits.

They have tons of irresistible magazines:

Sewing books out the ying-yang:

And all the Japanese Cute my two teen daughters could ever want:

I managed to get out with just a bit of loot (rather than the whole darn store worth which is what I wanted). Cotton Time Magazine, Liberty Prints Catalog and a Sanrio notebook (sewing related of course).

You could tell the Liberty Print catalog came with some sort of freebie, but because I don't read Japanese I couldn't tell what it would be. And you couldn't open to look. I thought it was a going to be a pack of charm squares for some reason. But alas it was a little bag. And though you can't beat a bit of fabric, it's not totally disappointing. It will here-to-forth be my new embroidery bag. 

After the bookstore I had promised my girls a trip to Valley Fair mall where we'd never been in our whole 14 years in the bay area. While there, they schwinked me into buying them Tom's shoes which they have sworn to wear into the school year. My bet is on them schwinking me into the new latest trend when the time comes. Ah. Well. At least Toms gives a pair to charity with each pair bought. Sigh. No new shoes for mom.

 

San Francisco's Crown & Crumpet

I love this place so much. I've been there a couple times now. The owners of Crown and Crumpet used to own a store called la Place du Soleil, and I sold them some jewelry and collage art back in the day so I've known Amy for a long while it seems. Not only is she a really great business woman, she's really nice too.

Today my mom and I made a special trip into the city just to go there. We ordered tea for two which came with 2 pots of tea, tea sandwiches, scones, and dessert.  It was all wonderful and you just can't beat this ambiance. All the Cath Kidston fabric makes me melt.

You can see there's been a lot of shopping on Etsy too. I see a lot I recognize here.

In the front of the store, there's a little boutique that is very much like what la Place du Soleil was like. And I recognized these from Lori Marie right away!

I also recognize these although I can't remember whose they are. I bet you do though and can tell me.

If you are ever in San Francisco, put Crown and Crumpet at the TOP of your must see list. It's in Ghiradelli Square which is also a must see.

 

 

 

First day of Summer Break: A Tour of Pixar, what else?

I couldn't believe my stroke of luck when I Tweeted: "Just saw "Up!". Go see. It's definitely a classic". 

Soon after, I received a response from a reader/follower who said "I couldn't agree more!! (Of course I might be biased. My hubby worked on it.) :)". That tweeting follower was Keri of Forever Folding Laundry who in a later tweet most generously invited us on a tour of Pixar. How nice is that??? Too nice. But not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I jumped at the chance. And last Friday we trekked out to Emeryville (only 40 minutes away) for an incredible afternoon.

I can't even begin to thank Keri and her wonderful husband Gary who worked on the special effects for the movie and gave us a fabulous tour including much of the artwork and background of how "Up" was made. Our kids were beside themselves. Of course, I might have been a little beside myself too... And I might have had just the tiniest bit of fun embarrassing my children. Look at the straight-faced Super Husband. That has me cracking up. Dude! Play along, won't you?

The icing on the cake was when Anna, on the way home, told us that she could really see herself doing something like that. And that the tour made it seem more within reach! If there is one thing I want those girls to know, it really is that if you can dream it, you can do it. So, darn if that didn't bring tears to my eyes.

Thank you Keri and Gary! We had a wonderful time!

A Wicked Week

It was all of my own doing.

I didn't check the calendar before I hit "purchase" and "confirm". 

Last month, in lieu of a birthday party for Emily, we decided that as a family we would go see "Wicked!". So in an excited flurry and afraid I wouldn't get tickets anywhere near her birthday, I got the ones closest in date which were this past Tuesday.

But I didn't check the calendar first as I was confident we couldn't possibly have something going on on a Tuesday night.

And "we" didn't. But Emily, the birthday girl, did. She was scheduled to go to her fifth grade outdoor ed event for four days starting that morning.

So after a month of trying to sell the tickets, I came up with a plan. I would drive out to the camp (2.5hrs one way) with the class, spend the day there with Emily as parents were invited to do anyways, and then go to the city to see Wicked. Super Husband and Anna would take the train in, we'd go to dinner and then see the show. We'd go home for the night and then I'd make the trek with Emily back to camp the next morning.

All of this worked out perfectly. Until... the show ended... and we made our way onto the dreaded Bay Bridge. 

I was totally bragging that I got us to the highway without getting lost ... la la la... when we came to a complete stop. The never-ending construction was in fact still taking place at 11 PM. And in fact, we were being routed off the ramp, back into the city, up a couple blocks, and then back onto the loathsome bridge.

We finally made our way home at 1 AM. And I had promised that I would leave to take Emily to camp by 7. 

Which I did. We finally got to camp at 9:30 in the morning, and I actually napped in the car for half an hour praying she wouldn't see me before taking off to go home. 

And you know what? Despite the fact that I was totally exhausted, we had an incredible time. The day at camp was lovely (the scenery was something out of a dream), Emily and Anna were both beaming with excitement through the whole show, we laughed our way through dinner and the kids slept the whole way home. Plus Emily certainly had her cake and ate it too. 

Super Husband thinks I'm nuts, but I'd do it all again.

The Thanksgiving Road Trip & Coastal Highway 1... The Ackerman Way

We planned to start out at 8:00 am... we decided on 8:00 am because we knew we'd never make it out by 7 am.

We started at 10:00 am. And we stopped at Peets for coffee and my contractor to drop off two boxes of cuts.

We planned to hit Pacific Grove and see thousands of butterflies as we were so promised on Bay Area Backroads last weekend. The butterflies travel there every year, and in this one grove there are suppossed to be thousands. They fill the trees and the sky.

We got to Pacific Grove and saw about 10 - 30 butterflies apparently hanging from the branch of a Eucalyptus tree, but we couldn't really make them out so well.

We were told, "Boy, you should have been here last weekend. It was sunny and bright and there were thousands of them."

A day late and a dollar short.

But we were happy because we were in a new and beautiful place. So what if we didn't see very many butterflies. We were having fun. And we saw a few butterflies. Like this one...

Then we headed off to get some lunch in town, and I won't even tell you about that debacle, but it has to do with Emily pitching a fit about not getting her way. Love that girl.

After lunch and a quick pit stop in a shop that had Hello Kitty stuff (I bribed Emily... I know it's bad, but it was all I could think of at the time), we took off down the incredible 17 mile drive.

Ahhhhh. Scenery. We've done the 17 mile drive along the coast before, and it's really spectacular no matter how many times you do it.

Happy.

And thankful that we live in such an incredible area.

We made it to Point Lobos at about 2:00 in the afternoon, that's central Ackerman time. We were planning to get there no later than noon.

It was as expected, completely beautiful ... despite a small issue with millions of flies that I don't want to think about.

Now we were on our way to Santa Barbara through Big Sur.

Which was nothing less than completely stunning.

And then...

the fog rolls in.

And the sun goes down.

Great for pictures.

Not for driving.

Over the next 65 miles we are in the pitch black with fog so thick that visibility is no more than 10 to 15 feet or so.

On cliffsides with hair-pin turns.

I'm not driving.

I'm complaining. And whining. And hollering. And not at all happy with Kevin's driving.

Which is when Emily says she's going to vomit. She does this a lot, so we believe her. And pull over to give her Benedryl (Doctor's recommendation.)and some air. She does not vomit this time, thank goodness.

Finally, thankfully, we are at the end of Highway 1 and on Highway 101. No cliffs. Much fog.

We know now that we have over 100 miles to go before Santa Barbara where we think our hotel is right off the highway.

It's now 8:30 PM. We have been looking for somewhere to eat for an hour. We stop at the only chain restaurant we can find, Marie Callendar's, because we don't trust the roadside one-offs for a decent meal.

We fill our bellies and hit the road. 60 miles more, we think.

The hotel we made reservations at is in a town we think is right outside Santa Barbara. Right off highway 101. Here's how we found out it wasn't:

Kevin: What exit do we get off at?

Me: (Looking down at the map I printed out a week ago when we made the reservation) Uh, ummm, uh. Well, it says to get off at [such and such] exit and then we, uh, turn at [such and such]...

(I go on and on with directions off the highway. The hotel is not right off the highway.)

World War III begins.

"Well, YOU booked the hotel."

"Uh, no. YOU said you knew where the town was and that it was right outside Santa Barbara."

"Well, why didn't you look at the map?"

"You said to book it. You knew where it was."

This kind of conversation goes on for the next hour as we drive through darkness for 40 more miles back toward the coast.

At 10:30 pm we find the hotel. We still don't know quite where we were. We were no longer blaming one another, but then, we weren't speaking to each other either.

Nine hours later we hit the road. We've got what we think is six hours of driving ahead of us. Through L.A. (that's a discussion for another day) through the desert and onward to Grandma's house in Arizona... For the next NINE hours.

Not quite over the river and through the woods, but we made it.

The good news: We had an incredibly memorable trip and then a fabulous Thanksgiving... And so much to be grateful for.

Plus, I did some shopping in the historic district which I will show in tomorrow's post. That is sure to be far more interesting than this entry, I'm sure.

Lacey Ellen, The Bunny Bed and Filthy Gorgeous Home

Before I had kids I dreamed that having them would look like this picture.

I want to say it was about 13 years ago. I saw this picture in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. I drooled over the room and knew I had to decorate a room some day like that for my daughter.

I saved the magazine for years and through a cross-country move. I was going to have that bunny bed. I was obsessed with the bunny bed. And I wanted my daughter to have a room "just like that."

Oh, and by the way, I was just married and not even pregnant at the time. Thankfully, we had a girl. I'm pretty sure a bunny bed would not have sat well with a boy.

So, when Anna was ready for a big bed, I went searching the house for the magazine. I'd looked at it only about three months prior. But it was no where to be found. I needed it to figure out where to get the bed. I was sure my husband threw it out. and this was a major source of discontent around the house for a while.

[Sidebar: now that bunny bed can be found all over the place. But back then... nada, nothing.]

I did finally find a picture of the bed in a BHG book, and found that the designer owned a store called Lacey Ellen in a town ironically half an hour from where I lived which is now closed (irony and more reason for me to believe that bed was meant to be in my house because I'd moved 1000 miles to be in this town). I don't know how, but I finally found out the name of the foundry where the bed was made.

It turned out to be a $900 bed. There was no way we could do that or would do that at the time. So, being the completely stubborn, never take no for an answer kind of girl I am, I called the foundry and begged them to give me a good price on it. The sweet man on the phone took pity on me (I gave him the whole sad story... "I've been saving this article, I wanted even before I knew I was having kids"... you get the idea), and finally got a floor sample for a price that I swore I'd never tell (but it wasn't anywhere close to $900).

Happy dance! Anna gets the bed. I decorate the room completely inspired by this look. In fact I spend about 20 hours painstakingly painting cream and white stripes on the walls which Anna later told me she hated.

Fast forward to today... I walk into this new and incredibly fabulous store in Walnut Creek (Filthy Gorgeous Home) where I got the most gorgeous tea towel (some of you may remember that I have a penchant for tea towels) and instantly think I know the owner or have met her somewhere.

So, I go home and look at her website and wouldn't you know it... this is the gal that designed that room. She and her brother work together and this is their new store that they own together. I feel like I've met a movie star. Or at least had an Oprah full circle moment.

[Another sidebar: I knew it would happen some day, but booger Anna doesn't want that beautiful bed anymore now that she's almost 12... it's staying for a while. I have to figure out where I can store it for her little girl... muahhahahahahhaha... evil laugh and secret mom revenge on vintage-style- hating-and-I-know-they'll-change-their-minds-when-they're-old-enough-to-know-better daughters.]

The great adventurers...

We live in one of the most fabulous places. A couple hours from Yosemite, an hour to Napa, a couple to Carmel... And, yet, the Ackermans stay in our little place weekend after weekend. At one time we said, "Ok, that's it. Every month we are going to go visit one of these great places and see where we live." We've been in California for a decade, and we haven't done that yet. Today we decided to get out, and what do we do? Go back to Healdsburg, the same place we've been time and time again. We love it. Healdsburg is up in wine country and it's a sweet little town established in the 1800s. It has a beautiful town square, gorgeous trees and incredible shops... and for some reason every time we've been there the weather has been perfection. There's everything from wine tasting, fabulous clothing shops, ANTIQUES (my favorite part), several fancy pet shops with all the doggie goodies you could imagine (dogs seem to have taken over the town) oh.... and great F-O-O-D (maybe that's my favorite part). So, the Ackerman's are not adventurous it seems. We probably should get out of our rutt, but who needs to when you can go to a place like Healdsburg just an hour or so from home.