furniture proposition.

I’m interrupting what’s turning out to be a lengthy (yet informative?!) California vaca recap to post a little home-related somethin’-somethin’. Last month-ish I had a startling realization of sorts. Since we moved into our house last summer, we have only made one (just ONE!) furniture purchase for our new home. I guess we’ve been so busy doing other things that we didn’t notice? The problem (aside from the multiple unfurnished areas of our home) is our furniture wish list is a long one and grows all the time, almost to the point of being unattainable. It was then that I had a moment of genius.

I proposed to Jamie that we start filling up our place already by purchasing or otherwise obtaining one furniture item per month. This could be do-able? The idea would be to spread out the expense over time while not blowing our budget by alternating when we buy small or large pieces. Alright, it might be a little unrealistic but at least having some sort of goal can get the ball rolling, ya know?

Jamie, on the other hand, had a proposition of his own: to completely finish one room in the house. So far we’ve prescribed to the all-over-the-place technique of home improvement, working on little projects here and there whenever the mood strikes us. But really, it would be rather awesome to have one space totally done. The room closest to completion at this point is the living room so we merged our goals and bought a sweet new piece of furn to go in it.

See, over on the left side of the room we have this kinda awkward blank space between the window and the railing. A little plant stand used to live there for awhile purely as a space-filler and during that time I realized we needed something with more height over there, preferably something functional. A tall-ish bookcase seemed to be the natural choice.

So we snagged this nifty angled bookcase from Pier 1 (literally snagged, because it was the last one in the store…again). The color description says “black” but ours is actually more of a black-brown like our Ikea Hemnes TV unit. The shelves are varying widths — smallest at the top, largest at the bottom — and the whole thing actually folds flat for easy moving. I like the open feel of it (lighter than the av-er-age bookcase) and the height + dark color contrast is exactly what that side of the room needed.

Once it was in place, I had fun filling the shelves with cute and useful items. I’m actually not very good at displaying small collections of things but I did my best to make it look balanced. Aside from being pretty, I wanted the contents to be practical and make sense for a living room. I’m sure things will rotate over time, but for now I like these choices…

A small print, a photo album, some decorative items, and plant life. A candle, a few eye-catching books, some vintage-style board games, and a neat stack of Martha mags. All things that we or a house guest might find useful or like to look at.

So far my furniture proposition is off to a pretty good start. This month we’ll finally be pulling the trigger on choosing a new bed for our master bedroom. Let’s see how long we can keep this up.

our california vaca: muir woods + wine country.

When I left off, we were just wrapping up our stay in San Francisco and heading for Muir Woods on our way to Wine Country. Muir Woods, located just outside of San Francisco, is a preserve for old-growth redwood trees ranging from 500 to 1,200+ years in age and growing up to 250 feet tall. Huge!

There are paved trails winding throughout the forest, which are particularly nice for non-hikers like myself. Not far into the park, we stopped near a group of people who were whispering and taking pictures of this:

A sweet, little baby fawn! All curled up under the plants! We overheard these people had notified the rangers and were told the deer may have been there for a couple of days without it’s mother. Sad! I’m not sure of the little deer’s fate…did the mother come back? Or was the little deer taken to an animal rescue shelter? Either way, I’ve convinced myself it was a happy ending.

Alright, back to the ginormous trees. Jamie and I were surprised to learn redwoods grow from relatively small seeds, about an inch long or so. These seeds look like cute, miniature pinecones — and there were tons of them scattered along the edges of the trails. No, we didn’t take any with us…what?

I thought these caves at the base of some of the redwoods were pretty cool, mainly because I imagine David the Gnome might live there. These caves were formed by some forest fire from way back in the day. The crazy thing is, despite the fire cave, the tree is still living.

We were initially freaked out by what we thought were “tumors” growing halfway up some of the tree trunks. In the words of Arnold, it’s not a tumor — rather it’s a burl, aka a mass of dormant buds, and it’s actually a pretty sweet survival system. Come hell (fire) or high water (flood), the burl will sprout off shoots that will later become mature trees. Clever ol’ tree.

Once we were satisfied with our walk through Muir Woods, we began the drive to Sonoma, our Wine Country destination. We stopped in Sonoma’s historic town plaza for lunch at the Sunflower Caffe. Wow oh wow, this meal was good. I got a bacon, avocado, and goat cheese sandwich on ciabatta (a mind-blowing combo, really) along with a mango smoothie. Jamie had a yummy, deconstructed version of lox + bagel with capers and the whole bit. To top it off, they had great milkshakes, too. Go there if you can!

After browsing the various shops in Sonoma, we made our way to the Benzinger Winery for a tour and wine tasting. This winery was a bit unique compared to others in the area because the grapes are produced using Biodynamics, “the highest level of organic farming.” Oh yeah, we’re getting fancy now.

The tour portion, which was about an hour long, took us on a tram ride through the scenic vineyards and into the underground caverns where they store huge barrels of wine during the fermentation process. Things ended in the tasting room where we got to try some of the wines they make on site. That’s where Jamie and I got to snicker about a couple who thought they were the coolest by showcasing their wine tasting skillz. FYI, Benzinger isn’t really the type of winery where snobbery is necessary…and that’s why we liked it.

Next up was checking into the hotel — Beltane Ranch, to be exact. I knew I’d be a fan because there were ponies in the fields along the driveway leading up to the ranch house. By ponies I mean a couple of big, beautiful Clydesdales. There are other animals around too because Beltane is a real-live working ranch and a pretty old one at that — they’ve been around since 1892.

The ranch was very quaint and picturesque with a lovely garden out front. The main house contained several guest rooms with attached baths, both upstairs and down, as well as a common area with a kitchen and dining/living room. There was also a cute cottage out back. Another cute thing: the staff make fresh-baked cookies in the evening for guests to enjoy.

After we settled in for a bit, we took a short drive to dinner at The Fig Cafe, another good restaurant to note! I ordered the ginormous, juicy grilled porkchop which came with caramelized onion-potato gratin, brussel sprouts, and bacon. Jamie went with the fish dish special (he’s a sucker for specials, especially of the fish variety). Though we can’t remember the type of fish, we do remember that is was very tasty indeed.

We spent one night at Beltane (comfiest bed of the trip!) and had a delicious home-cooked breakfast before peacing out. The farm-fresh eggs, sausage, fruit, homemade biscuits and blood orange preserves were incredible, and the nice man who cooked it all assured us everything was LOCAL. And it could have been because it was my first hot coffee of the trip, but I swear whatever they were brewing was the shiznitty-bit-bit. Translation: reeeal good.

Following a failed attempt to access the Jack London State Historic Park (FYI, they’re closed on certain weekdays), we ventured further into Wine Country through Napa to Yountville. Why Yountville? Bottega, that’s why! You may know Chef Michael Chiarello of Food Network fame — he has his own show and came in fourth place, I think, on The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs. Well, Chef Chiarello also owns a winery in Yountville as well as a critically-acclaimed restaurant called Bottega. So yeah, I’m totally going to talk about food again, if that’s okay with you.

Here are a few things we ordered: Monterey calamari, caramelized brussel sprouts salad, butternut squash caramelle (that’s a stuffed pasta, like ravioli), and red wheat tagliarini bolognese (basically a fancy pasta with meat sauce). In short, all was magnificent. My squash caramelle was light and slightly sweet; there were a few strips of cooked pear in there and when I had a bite of the pasta and pear together…magic happened, people. I had no problem clearing my plate here.

Before saying so long to Wine Country, we hit up the Oxbow Public Market in Napa. This market is mainly a collection of eateries and seeing as we just had our big meal for the day, we picked up a few cupcakes for the road at Kara’s Cupcakes. I didn’t hesitate to select their s’mores flavor while Jamie predictably chose something chocolate-on-chocolate. I forget Jim and Meredith’s selections, but I think the consensus was (surprise, surprise) they were delish. So far no disappointments food-wise in California!

The rest of this rainy day was spent on the road heading to Marina where we stayed the night before continuing on to Los Osos to meet up with Jamie’s aunts. I think it’s important to note that as we drove through the Palo Alto area, Jamie and I were compelled to crank the volume on the Droid and sing along to Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” a la Pirates of Silicon Valley. Why yes, we are that cool.

Hang tight for the continuation of our California vaca recap in a later post!

our california vaca: san francisco.

Long time, no blog! I’ve been MIA lately because we’ve been busy preparing for, traveling to, and recovering from a trip to California! We returned from our week-long West Coast vaca courtesy of Jim and Meredith (Jamie’s parents) two weekends ago and now we’re still trying to adjust back into our routines. For just one week in CA, we were able to cover quite a bit of ground and got to see some pretty fantastic stuff, including San Francisco, Wine Country, and Yosemite. This is our San Francisco story!

We departed from D.C. the day before Easter, arriving at LAX before connecting to San Francisco. This was my first time flying from one U.S. coast to the other, so I was surprised the flight was only five hours long. Not bad, right? It takes longer than that to drive from central VA to the beach SC. After picking up a rental car at the airport, we wasted no time getting out and about to see the sights.

Jamie and I were supremely jazzed about visiting Alcatraz Island (we’re nerdy for the show) so as soon as we could see it from the hilly streets overlooking the bay, we stopped for a photo op.

We were in the vicinity of Lombard Street, so of course we took a turn down the winding switchbacks of Russian Hill.

Not too far off was the Palace of Fine Arts, which was pretty spectacular. This massive, ancient-looking structure has a somewhat futuristic quality to it which reminded Jamie and I of something you might see on the planet Romulus or maybe Naboo. Truly, we are nerds.

We checked into our hotel near the border of the Chinatown and North Beach areas, so dinner was within walking distance. We landed on a small, kinda hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant: Macaroni Sciue Sciue. It ended up being a great choice; the food was authentic as was our waiter. After Jim used an Italian word or two, we pretty much became besties and scored free shots (what it was, I have no idea, but it was delish!) and dessert on the house. Totally molto bene. For the meal, I ordered spinach cannelloni and caprese salad which, I’m happy to say, included some excellent fresh mozz so naturally I give this place the Katie stamp of approval.

After swinging by the famed City Lights Bookstore (and passing a street performer singing “Jamie” by Weezer – awesome!), we headed back to the hotel to crash for the night. We got an early start the next Easter Sunday morning (still functioning on East Coast time) to make the uphill trek to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill before our appointment with the Alcatraz ferry.

There are great views of the city and Golden Gate from here. And apparently it’s also a hot t’ai chi destination because we came across small groups of Chinese people meditating at every turn. I get it, though; it’s totally peaceful up there.

We arrived at the ferry port early so we perused the Alcatraz gift shop while we waited. Jamie and I agreed this dramatic, vintage-y print of the island was awesome, so we popped on it.

Soon it was time to board the ferry and head to The Rock! We took approximately 542 photos as we approached the island — it was that intense, y’all. This was one of the best:

Once there, we were free to wander the grounds as we pleased. The main attraction was the walking audio tour of the cellhouse, which was fantastic. It touched on all the hot topics of interest: riots, escape attempts, and prison life in general.

Interesting tidbit: the island has become a bird nesting sanctuary of sorts and we happened to be there smack in the middle of nesting season. We saw loads of seagulls perched about and building nests amongst the ruins. The island’s pretty well-covered in plants and flower gardens, too.

The voyage to Alcatraz definitely didn’t disappoint — for me, it was probably the highlight of our stay in San Fran. There was much more to see though, so we headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch at Alioto’s. This was the view from our table:

I ordered their tasty Bay Scallops Creole, which included tiny bay scallops, peppers, mushrooms, rice, and a nice kick of spiciness. So, so yummy! After lunch, we stopped by the ice cream + chocolate shop at Ghirardelli Square for sundaes. I also bought a bag of various sea salt chocolates, which I’m still savoring slowly.

We had to wait it out a bit (whilst trying to ignore a doomsday prophet/homeless man encroaching on the line), but finally we succeeded in boarding one of San Fran’s renowned cable cars. Three of us got seats inside the car while Jamie was the “lucky” one with a spot standing on the side step.

We hopped off around Chinatown and walked around a bit before returning to the hotel fairly exhausted. For dinner, we opted for take-out from a guidebook-recommended Chinese restaurant across the way: the R & G Lounge. I ordered salmon + avocado spring rolls and vegetable chow mein, all very yummy and authentic.

The next morning we planned to depart San Francisco for Wine Country, but we had a few stops to make first. We swung by Stella Pastry + Cafe in North Beach for breakfast where I happened upon what I consider to be the Holy Grail of Italian pastries: sfogliatelle. I’ve had this seashell-shaped pastry only once before while abroad in Italy and it was to die for. Stella didn’t let me down — their version was just as delish as I remembered.

Our next destination: Alamo Square, site of the colorful Victorian rowhouses (“The Painted Ladies”) seen during the Tanner family picnic in the opening credits of Full House. This was kind of a big deal — I basically grew up with Deej, Steph, and hot Uncle Jesse like they were part of my own family. TGIF forever!

The view of the city from here was pretty awesome, as you can see, and the homes around the park were beautiful and well-restored. I’d love to check out the inside of this one (the mint green’s my fave):

As we headed back to the car, we noticed a couple of guys carrying around TV cameras. I figured they were local news cams and didn’t pay them any attention, until we rode around the corner and saw they were filming Mr. and Mrs. Roloff — yes, that’s the couple from TLC’s Little People, Big World. I tried to get a photo and it didn’t turn out so great, but that was our token celebrity sighting for the trip!

We left town via the Golden Gate Bridge, bound for a stop at Muir Woods to see the redwoods before heading to Wine Country. Just past the bridge is a lookout point where we got some good pics. Jamie and I like to compete for who can take the best pictures and in the Golden Gate category, I totally won:

Stay tuned for recaps of our Wine Country and Yosemite adventures coming soon!

[Image of Alcatraz print via here.]

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