San Diego

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We are flying to San Diego, a town (okay, a city) with almost a lifetime of personal history for me. My cousin is getting married and it's been far too long since the Js hung out with the Valli side of the family.

San Diego © Julie D’Uva of Seven Dollar Pants

I don't talk about San Diego all that often, my memories of it are so mixed up. I graduated after an arduous 10 years in various places from the University of San Diego. I buried my dear friend and college roommate Corey there when Jaden was less than two years old. Of course, my father, grandfather and grandmother are all buried there also. The Vallis migrated from Queens to San Diego in domino fashion after my dad in the early 1970s. I have friends still there and lots of family. I took my first solo (as a mom) road trip there two summers ago. I also had an amazing life-changing experience on my way there that I shared in this post called Fate.

So, here we go for a wee morning flight and home in the wee night hours on Sunday. I'll be back sometime next week with glorious family wedding photos. Since I'm not the official photographer, it's all for fun! Have a wonderful weekend!

Scene Around Home: Blog Redesign

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I am fully embracing the shift into fall: a new season brings new temperatures, new routines and now, a new look for my blog. Here is the photo that inspired my more seasonal banner.

a creek in the Columbia River Gorge

How are you preparing for the new season? What is your favorite thing about fall? I love crisp air, pretty sweaters and slowing down. I'm hoping to make long walks a new routine.

Surprise! September Dahlias

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I know I'm getting into fall mode, but look what I saw this morning near my house! I actually saw them in my car and I went straight home for my camera and backtracked so I could share them with you all today.




I tell the Noodle all the time that nature provides the most perfect color combinations you could ever imagine. Look at the gradation of colors there! It absolutely stopped me in my tracks. Is this not exactly what I'm trying to achieve in my bedroom improvement project? (Why yes, it is!)

I hope this weekend you all see some splendid color combinations out there wherever you live. 



Sweet MEventide: My Shop is Ready for Fall

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Sweet Eventide on Etsy is ready for autumn

I am spending some time on my shop again now that fall has made her arrival known to my brain. Some cloudy days have appeared here in Portland, pumpkin images are on Pinterest and I've seen a Halloween costumer or two here and there. I made a new banner and put up some of my favorite fall images. I am so inspired and there is free shipping right now through my lab. I am thinking some fall greeting cards may be a good addition to the shop! Stay tuned...

New Site Alert: Gojee

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Good morning! I got an unexpected birthday gift this morning -- the discovery of Gojee. Gojee is a recipe site that is powered by bloggers. This means the photography is stellar and that is enough to suck me in for hours. Apparently they have an algorithm also so the more you use it, the more the recipes will be tailored to your tastes.


Imagine my surprise just this moment when I clicked on the link for LadyCakes new site and she has an announcement that she is now writing for Gojee!  Well, I hope you are willing to scrap all of those plans you made for today because you are now going down a food rabbit hole as deep as Pinterest. Gojee is worth every minute I've spent on it so far.

Happy Wednesday!

Happy Birthday to Me

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I made myself a big fat pinboard to celebrate my birthday today, filled with treats and flowers and pretty things that make me happy. Like cake, a big yummy blue cake for us September Virgos.

blue velvet cake with cream cheese frosting from Adventures in Cooking, yum

I do hope you will come to my little Pinterest birthday party today! Because...


Scene Around Home: Wild Blackberries

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I cannot say happy Monday as I woke up to a hacked email account and messages from dear friends and family that they received evil spam from me. Then we discovered that due to a dire lack of vacation time, we cannot go to California for any of the holidays. This is a big blow emotionally and makes the impact and reality of moving very real.

But let's think about happy things as this day nears an end. I got to visit the Columbia River Gorge this weekend and see my dog swim near a waterfall. I also got to go creek walking with my boys and Betty and we gobbled up delicious wild blackberries warmed in the sun.

taken at Horsetail Falls, Columbia River Gorge

More happy thoughts: tomorrow is a new day, and it's bound to be more cheerful considering it is my birthday. I opened up one present early to cheer myself up today...thank you Toots & Pops for the Design*Sponge book! Woohoo!


Jess Makes an Artist Trading Card

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Hello! In the past week, I have visited the ER with my son for the first time (he is fine after a five foot fall from his bicycle at the skate park, but he sure scared us), primed and painted our garage, unpacked four boxes in my office, had insomnia till 4:30 a.m., watched my son cut his own hair the night before the first day of school, and taken a class about how to can tomatoes among other things. I also made some Artist Trading Cards after a girlfriend mailed me an article about them with some she made.

my very first ATC!


 I have seen ATCs all over Etsy and the blogosphere for awhile but never made any before. It turns out my trusty gouache set makes a perfect stress-relief companion while I'm on hold with banks for my day job!

Have you ever made an ATC? I see what all the fun is about, I mailed off two sets already to my friends. If you want some, leave me a comment and I'll send you some next week. :)

Italy on Film, Circa 1999

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Happy Friday! Last weekend, I unpacked my photo albums and pulled out a few of my pictures to share with you. I took these photographs during my trip to Italy in 1999 with my grandma. Her name was Rose, but actually she was born as Rosina which I discovered very late in her life. I fell utterly in love with her Italian name. Her father was from Mistretta, a tiny town (with a tiny Wikipedia entry) that we visited during our trip to Italy and Sicily. I do not have any notes on where I took these photographs, but I do remember the sparkling blue sea of Taormina.




way back before I called myself a photographer, I was fascinated by the magic of the ordinary



When we visited Mistretta on that one random Tuesday in the October of 1999, absolutely magical things happened in our family. I feel brave enough to share that someday, I hope to travel there again and photograph it all for a book. I even have a dream publisher for my book, which will be part biography, part cookbook and part travel photography. What do you think of this dream of mine?

P.S. I'm sorry I have not taken the time yet to remove the dust on these scanned images. I will add it to my to-do list, I am too impatient and excited to share them with you!

Scene Around Portland: Art and Gelato

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This weekend, I toodled around Alberta Street, the Pearl and NW 23rd Street. I fell in love with Manor, a home furnishings store that is 100 percent in my taste and out of my budget. After drooling all over their goods, I drooled over a cup of the best gelato I've found so far in this town. I brought my camera so you could enjoy some of the sights too.

a new-to-me artist, Holly Cappello


eye-catching store signage


seen at the ever-colorful Cargo in the Pearl

my fabulous cup of canteloupe and banana gelato

This week is full of school preparations, we have a supply list to deal with for the first time. Our backpack that is still in great shape since kindergarten is too big for the shared lockers here, so sadly we must find a new one. The Noodle found out yesterday he is in the same classroom as his penpal-now-local-friend so that is great news. The boys will be happy to have one friendly face on their first day. 

I love Portland and I'm tickled to be living in a city I love now, but all of the school prep has made me quite homesick to be honest. I miss the trust and comfort of the school community we built there over the past three years. This is the hardest part of the relocation for me so far.

Scene Around Portland: Scooters

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Portland loves two-wheeled things, this is well documented.


And now, this darling Vespa has been documented by my camera, as seen on my recent walk around the neighborhood. Wishing you a wonderful weekend friends, we will be taking a tour of the Noodle's new school and working on the campus cleanup and hosting our family for Sunday dinner.

Also, I'll be sending safe thoughts for those of you on the East Coast all weekend long.

xo,
Jess

Whoa, Where Did I Go?

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Okay so relocating is quite the time-consuming life adventure! I wake up, get the Noodle off to camp, work  six hours at my day job, rush to pick up the Noodle after camp, plan/make dinner, maybe do a little bike ride and then it's bedtime for the Noodle. After that I work like a dog on the house until 11, watch a little tv to try to shut my brain down and collapse at midnight in bed.

a little nook at last



I am making progress though, and I have the big deadline of Sept. 6th motivating me. That is the first day of school and I want all systems a GO before the madness of the school year sets in. We've been painting maniacs and the living room is 90% done. I finally found bookcases last weekend. I need a bench and shoe storage in the garage/mudroom/bike room and more more more hooks for backpacks, purses, etc. I got more lunch containers and I picked up the school supply list a couple of days ago. (I had a rant on Twitter about the requested pink erasers but that's another post for another day).

Anyway I could go on and on. I wish I had started a 365 project for my first year in Portland. But when on earth would I get that done? I am exhausted my friends. Happy in Portland, loving it, but nesting takes lots of time, lots of energy and yes, lots of cash. :)

That's my short report for now. Miss you!

My Bedroom Improvement Project

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I've been working hard on a new pinboard for the past few days to inspire me to work with the wall color in my bedroom. I called it simply My Bedroom Improvement Project. :)


photo from free people 



green rosettes photo by Silvana Ferreira


serene blue photo by Silvana Ferreira

I am working on pulling in the soft pink and orange tones. I have a new crisp white coverlet for the bed to tone down my seafoam green walls. My MIL is flying up to visit today and bringing her Benjamin Moore paint decks with her, yippee. I am not going to paint yet as too much painting going on downstairs for now, but I will finally get a color name for the current wall color. There are lots of other inspiring images on my pinboard for this room, and I am starting to love the idea of working with it.

Happy Friday

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Happy Friday!

This is seriously just a typical street in Laurelhurst

It has been a long week and I am very grateful it is finally Friday. I have been having a lot of problems with my back due to my desk so all week I was a little obsessed with figuring out how to resolve it. At home in California, I had two desks and I got rid of one of them for the move. Well, I rarely sat at the one I decided to keep and it is about 3" above normal desk height. After three weeks of working at the wrong height, my back and shoulders were in trouble. I found a chiropractor last week and that is helping a lot. 

I saw this sleek, gorgeous desk for two on IKEA Hackers and fell in love. My husband vetoed the counter height due to my back issues and while sad, I do agree it's not the best for my back. I couldn't get the image out of my mind though, so this week I decided to do an homage to the IKEA hack. (You can see my exact set up on that link but I got the trestle in metal with a white gloss coat). 

We put two of these set-ups side by side for me and the Noodle on Wednesday night. It looks great and is way better for typing but I have now lost the three desk drawers I had left and I'm now down to zero. Storage is a serious problem for me right now. I have 10 boxes in the office closet alone that cannot be unpacked, not to mention all of our books since our only bookcase has been put to use in the kitchen as a pantry. Meanwhile, I prowl Craigslist daily.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, I plan to keep hunting down furniture in my budget and up to my aesthetics. We are also hosting Sunday dinner for the first time, we are alternating weeks with Jeff's cousin & his family and started last week at their house. So I guess this weekend I will also finish painting the dining room. =)

Happy Friday

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Hi Friends,

It has been a long week and I am very grateful it is finally Friday. I have been having a lot of problems with my back due to my desk so all week I was a little obsessed with figuring out how to resolve it. At home in California, I had two desks and so I got rid of one of them for the move. Well, I rarely sat at the one I decided to keep and it is about 3" above normal desk height. After three weeks of working at the wrong height, my back and shoulders were in trouble. I found a chiropractor last week and that is helping a lot and Wednesday night I found a solution at IKEA of course that will hold me over for quite some time.

Portland Homestead Supply Co.

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On Tuesday, a little dream came true for me. I went to a canning basics class at the Portland Homestead Supply Co.. I discovered this place shortly upon arriving in Portland and immediately signed up when I realized they offered classes.

Canning can be intimidating when you read about but our instructor, Cara from Modern Preserves had a calm, reassuring manner about it all. No need to fear, especially with sweet Belle the goat near!



So, if you want to learn to can and preserve the wonderful bounty happening right now, I would be remiss if I didn't tell you to hop on over to my dear friend Green Bean's amazingly timed canning set giveaway! I know I am entering because I want to be very prepared for Aug. 31 when I'll be at Portland Homestead Supply Co. for their tomato class.

Sweet MEventide: New Moo Cards + Rue Magazine

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Yes, I had intended to have this be a regular feature on Thursdays but then life got in my way. 


I recently ordered new Moo cards because I finally ran out of the last ones. I see I got those almost two years ago, hopefully I run out a lot faster this time. Unfortunately the lens I used to photograph my last Moo cards broke during the packing mayhem. Sad, but true. So I couldn't get as sharp of a focus this time but still, I am loving my new cards. 

© Rue Magazine, May/June 2011 issue, Color Trends spread

I am beyond excited to share my discovery this week that my photo was featured in the last issue of Rue Magazine. I noticed in my Etsy stats that they were my #2 source of traffic so I tweeted about that and they tweeted back --


How exciting is that?! I had no idea during May or June because I was 150% preoccupied with my health and preparing for our move. It doesn't matter when though, it is still a joy to discover things like this online.

So I am trying to get back to my routines and my personal creative dreams. I want to seriously start building my business in what is left of 2011. I know I do not have hours per day right now to devote to it, but I want to spend a little time each day doing something, anything to stir up the energy! Like Michelle always says, 15 minutes per day lady!

Scene Around Portland: Help Me Grow

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Everywhere you go in Portland, you'll see newly planted trees with little blue signs begging you to "Help Me Grow." I love all these little trees dearly and want to get one of my own someday, when we become homeowners again.


I took the daisies shot from the ground looking up, with Jackson sitting nearby. I love daisies but wanted to look at them from a different angle for a change. It was getting to be eventide so the sky was casting a lovely shade of blue, but I processed it to bring it out even more for the purposes of this diptych.

I thought I would try sharing a little more information about how I work on my images, based on some fun feedback on a Facebook discussion yesterday.