This past Sunday we went to Berkeley. Well before that we woke up kind of late, walked to the Farmer's Market and back. And then I relaxed in the garden for about half an hour. My pasty white legs thank me. At around 2pm, we got in the car and headed for Berkeley. "Why Berkeley?" you may ask. Well, because a friend and her boyfriend opened up their very own tea shop! Yes, we're officially one of the customers during Asha's soft opening! Go to their website to find out more! It's herculean what they did to transform this former rug store to this amazingly beautiful space! It's been a while since I've heard people pursuing a dream that is so different from what they were doing before. So proud of them. I ordered the matcha latte and it was good. You can tell they used the real stuff and not some imitation matcha you get so much from boba places. Though I probably should've stirred my drink before consuming because my first sip was all syrup. Oops. And since we were in Berkeley, I had to stop by stores that only exist on this side of the bay so we stopped by 4th. To my shock and surprise, we parked in a lot right next to Rejuvenation. Wait a minute, we have a Rejuvenation in the Bay Area?! After asking, we realized that they've only been open for 3 weeks in this location! How lucky are we! Rejuvenation is a store that sells really awesome lighting as well as some quirky, vintagy home decor items. I loved this industrial stool. Well, I love industrial stools in general. Well, I love stools in general. They have a light bulb bar that you can press a button to light up different bulbs. Kind of reminds me of science class back in high school. :) We love that twisty CFL bulb on the top tier. Much more beautiful than the pigtail design, don't you think? It is really pretty in a clear pendant. This settee is so lovely. I love the green. It feels fresh yet traditional. Next we walked to Crate and Barrel Outlet. I was really excited about this since I only come here like once every two years. Spoiler Alert: I was pretty disappointed with this visit, though. I did see this cute tray of cups. It's a good idea if you entertain 6 people (or I guess 4 people + yourselves) a lot. You can fill everyone's cups and bring it out easily. I have a sickness for cups so of course I was drawn to it. And the only other thing I was even a little tempted by is this storage section. The blue trash bin is $11 and had it been just a shade darker, I may have dragged it to the register. I don't know why I was feeling so stingy but I kept thinking that it's not worth it and I should only buy something I really love. All in all, CB outlet was such a disappointment because a lot of the items are the same as the regular CB stores at the regular CB store prices. What's the point of having an outlet then? The other items are like from Christmas, Valentine's Day and Halloween. Um, I don't need a spatula with a spider on it thank you. Then we walked across the street to CB2. The hipper store of the CB chain. We were greeted with this awesome concrete-like table/bench in the entrance. Not sure what it's made of but it is super heavy. You guys know I have a thing for benches, especially natural ones. Inside the store are more stools/benches! I really like the white one with the wood seat. So pretty. I don't recommend the one with red in it. The head wobbles pretty badly. These yellow stools are nice. I wouldn't mind having one to serve as a side table/seating in the house. With a house our size, I thank the people who do double-duty design. I also really liked these ceramic "silver"ware! So pretty and cute. I guess they're not that practical though huh? I really liked this pillow! First it's very muted and I love that green button detail. But the real reason is the fabric felt really good. It has a nice, substantial weight to it and just felt nice to the touch. It could've totally become buddies with our living room pillows. I also really like poufs in general but I'm always way too practical to buy one. This one has a nice, soft texture to it, but it also pills pretty badly. Then we left 4th street and drove down to West Elm: my favorite store! I'm still not sure if it's a good thing that it's so far away. Every time I do come, I do a very slow walk around the store. These baskets are really pretty. It instantly adds a little color to the room. The shape is also much more interesting than your regular boxy or round baskets. These would be adorable in a kids' room as a hamper. And I basically loved all their towels. Where do they find these fabrics? This beverage dispenser was really, really tempting. The glass is really nice and thick and it just looked beautiful. Plus it's pretty easy to clean because to mouth is wide so you can stick your hand in there. Okay, I'll wait for it to go on sale. And the bedding. One day I will buy bedding from West Elm. When I don't feel as cheap. This striped bedding set is so preppy and fresh. Love both the yellow and gray. This rocking chair is really sweet. Love that wood. And I fell in love with that blue pillow on the right. That blue is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Ack! I'm gushing over a pillow. And I saw these towels in the "sale" section and was so excited! I didn't see what it was marked down to so I asked a cashier and she says they're not on sale, they're still $10 each. So I put them back. *insert sad face. This wooden sphere is on sale. But at $25 I still had a hard time buying something that is purely ornamental. These tiny frames were on sale for $3. They're cute but I didn't buy because I really don't see myself needing another frame. At the end of the day I sort of felt sorry for myself for having come all the way to Berkeley and to all my favorite stores and not buying anything. So I did buy a consolation prize at West Elm. Apparently I never took a picture of it so I'll just have to show you guys later. :)
Is it normal for someone to be eyeing an iron caddy for a year? No? Well, yours truly has been eyeing this Jerdon iron caddy on Amazon for a year. It was just sitting in my "save for later" cart because I wasn't sure where I would mount it. I finally clicked "buy" after we finished configuring the office because I left room for it! The Elfa shelves we have are 24" (2 feet) wide. Our closet is 5 feet wide so do a little math and you'd see we're left with 1 foot of empty space when there are 2 shelves. While I could've centered our shelves leaving 6" on either side, I didn't want to lose that space. So we ended up aligning our shelves to the left and leaving the 1 foot space on the right. It's really the perfect space for it. Just a few notes on this iron caddy in case any of you are interested in buying.
First of all, it comes with a separate iron board holder, too, but I've decided not to use it because the iron board is a bit too wide for the space. Bummer. Also, know that it does not come with the metal tabs as shown in the Amazon photo. I think those metal tabs were to keep the iron in place. It wasn't a concern for me because mine is in a closet so it's kind of hard for the iron to fall out accidentally from there. Should there be an earthquake that shakes it out, it's unlikely that it'll fall on anyone. We also don't have children or pets so no one will accidentally push it out. To be safe, I would not recommend mounting this on a door or on anything that moves. All that said, the iron does sit at an angle in the caddy so it feels really well-seated and secure. It's not like it's wobbling on a flat surface or anything like that. As for color-snobs like myself, the color is tan/yellowy (exact same color as yellowy wall/switch plates). I don't like the color because it looks so dated. (We actually changed out every wall/switch plate we have in the house from yellow to white when we moved in.) So I just used a can of primer that I had around and sprayed the iron caddy white. Rustoleum sells high-heat white spray paint as well. So if you are super safety conscious that would be a great choice. I plan to let my iron cool before storage so I didn't spend the $5. Lastly, I love the cord holder on the side. Note that it only attaches on the right side so plan accordingly. It's great because I don't have to deal with dangling cords and it's easy to use. You basically just wind your cord in figure-eights then stuff it in the cord holder. The cord is held in place via friction. Simple and elegant solution -- my favorite kind! It made me happy to get the iron a home and get it off the floor! One step closer to a perfectly organized closet. :) Mourning dove mama gave birth to two healthy mourning dove babies this morning! Mama and babies are happy and healthy. :)
Yesterday I picked up a pack of 50 clothespins from Target for $2. Five of them are holding up labels in our closet. I always forget what content is in which storage box. Obviously a way to solve this problem is finding a way to label them. Well clothespins do a great job! Now I don't have to peer into every box to find what I'm looking for! Another dozen or so is holding ribbons! It's nice because the tail of the ribbon is secured by the clothespin. No tape required! Also, I got rid of all the spools which saved a lot of space.
Say hello to our new office/guest room closet! Yup! It now has the Elfa storage system and it is so nice and beautiful! It even has a 2' hanging rod! Yes, I'm no longer ashamed of having overnight guests over! So how did this project come to be? Well, first of all the office closet was a mess so I've been thinking about what to do. At first I really want to build long shelves like these. I know that people all over the blogland have built some sort of shelving. The concept is not hard: you nail 3 strips of wood to the walls then plop the shelf on top. But that said, we don't own a proper saw or a strong drill so it'll probably turn out to be a more frustrating project than it sounds. So I hesitated and scoured Ikea for some ready made shelves we can easily adapt instead. Then one day I was standing in our master closet and I stared at this column of shelves. Granted I pulled off like 10 pieces of strewn clothing to take this picture but it was basically used as a clothes dumping ground because it was available. Then a light bulb went off -- I can relocate these unused shelves to the office closet! I felt like a total genius for having connected the dots! (I know, it doesn't take much to be a genius in my book apparently.) But we basically reused $300+ of unused Elfa shelving components! Recycling does not get better than this!
I did buy another $40 worth of Elfa components to round out the space (like the closet rod, another easy hang standard and track) but that was well worth it! And all said, we got all the original shelving for free courtesy of the previous owner. Those birch decor Fascia are $20 each and there are 7 of them here! The shelves were $12 each and again there are 7 of them here! So we basically spent $40 and ended up with a $350 shelving system in our office closet. And thankfully, Elfa is a relatively easy system to install (it's like 7 holes in the wall, although that proved to be frustrating even for us because we own such a weak drill). But it is still much easier than installing wood shelves! Plus, it's easy to move around if I ever want to reconfigure the space! It's pluses all around! I'm so excited that I'm using way too many exclamation points! And I did just place a few things on the shelves to demonstrate how awesome the space is. But I've since reshuffled the items as I saw fit. :) Oh happy, happy day! We have a mourning dove family in our garden! Well I should say we have a mama mourning dove who has been roosting for the past week or so in the eaves of our balcony! Hi mama mourning dove! Here's papa mourning dove, sitting on our next door neighbor's fence. We only see him once in a while. I'm guessing he's out scouting for food? But he really shouldn't worry too much. He has a super considerate friend (named David) who researched mourning dove diets and found that they like millet! So guess who went to 99 Ranch to buy millet? Yup, said consider friend. Hope we see baby mourning doves soon! Or...at least hear them say coo-woo-WOO-woo.
So last time, we cleaned out the right side of the closet. Well, here's the left side. Clutter? Check! Shelves that are all wrong for the space? Check! Misc unknown objects stuffed everywhere? Check! If there were laws to an organized closet, we probably broke them all. Well, after hauling everything out of there we were left with this. Ah, much nicer. But I was pretty sure this ubiquitous ClosetMaid wire shelf/hanging rod wasn't what we needed for this space so out it went, too. After patching some holes and applying touch-up paint, we finally had a glorious blank slate! I have (hopefully) a great idea for the space and already got all the supplies! Here's to hoping things turn out as well as they are in my head! As for the rest of the room, see for yourselves. Here's Exhibit A, Exhibit B, and Exhibit C (yes, stuff flooded over to our bedroom as well). Since we can only live like this for so long I'm sure we'll try to get it done sooner rather than later! I'm so weirdly excited about the potential storage space that I'm currently grinning like a fool. :D
It was strange having a day off in the middle of the week but no one is complaining here! We went to Muir Woods. My second time, David's first. We went with this little guy and his family. :) At first he was really shy, but at the end he called me auntie 4 times, held my hand for like a full minute in the park (thanks to his mother for assuring me that he would take my hand!) and was all smiles. Such a cute kid. I've never met such a good kid either. He didn't fuss or cry once even after being awaken from a nap or being overdue of a diaper change. I wonder if different kids just have different natures. My cousins must've won the kid lottery. Anyway, obviously I'm a proud auntie. These redwood sorrels are the current ground cover. They're so pretty. I think I have a thing for ground covers in general. The entire park is clearly very well managed. There were 4 other bridges just like this one and they are gorgeous! They are, of course, made of sequoia sempevirens (coastal redwood). They're called sequoia sempevirens because they are evergreen. I love sequioas. They are so straight and tall that their presence is grand yet orderly, with seeming respect for their neighbors. The park ranger in the entrance to the park told us we may see banana slugs and we saw one! It was pretty cool! There's a creek in the middle of the park that fills with water in wintertime, which is our rainy season. Apparently it is also a place where salmon swims upstream to return to their birth place! I really want to come back in Nov or Dec to see them! A national park, unlike botanical gardens or nurseries, always keeps things real. There is both the living and the dead. What I've found so impressive about the parks we've visited this year is learning about "nursery logs". A nursery log is a fallen tree that has become a place for seeds or other organisms to grow upon. I find that very inspiring, that even in their deaths those fallen trees give life from their stored richness. Humans can learn a thing or two from nature. And of course, sequoias are famous for their resistance to fires. Actually they need fire and that's why there are controlled burns in other redwood national parks like Sequoia and Kings Canyon. The park ranger said that Muir Woods hasn't been burned in the past 160 years or so because the last people to do it were the Miwoks and they were forced off the land. The park has recently partnered with them to learn about how they've taken care of the land in the past. I think that's pretty cool. :)
After this visit, Muir Woods is officially one of my favorite parks. It's not a big park, but it is a really nice one. So glad we went today! |
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