The Palm Room

The other day I visited one of my favorite shops in Ballard: The Palm Room. It has the coolest plants and containers and terrariums and I love stepping into its light and green filled space.



I brought home this pretty pot for my farmers market plants.



And I picked up this cactus and pot from The Palm room on a previous visit. I'm hoping to slowly fill my apartment with plants.

Winter feasts

One thing I appreciate about winter is all of the delicious food that's still around and how wonderful it feels to eat a warm meal when it's cold outside. Here are a few things I've been enjoying lately.

* lunch at La Carta De Oaxaca, home of Seattle's best guacamole and a fun salsa bar.
* herbed beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and sunchokes for roasting.
* number 25 off my 25 things list: oatmeal honey bread modified from this recipe (I used half whole wheat flour and only 1/3 cup honey since my farmers market honey is so potent). It was amazing. And I discovered that making bread is not so bad! It was very rewarding to watch it grow from various stages of mush into glorious loaves that tasted like heaven.
* sweet potato soup from my favorite soup recipe book.
* The lunch buffet at Flowers where everything is vegan and almost everything is fantastic.

Pathways and pastries

I love this ivy arch. I've come across it several times on walks around my neighborhood and each time I'm thrilled by it and I try to make a mental note of where it's located but it never sticks in my mind. I just have a vague notion of where it is in relation to my apartment. But I guess that's okay since each time I come across it I'm happily surprised.

The beautiful plum danish in the bottom photo is from Cafe Besalu, which is probably my favorite bakery in the whole world. It was a deciding factor in my apartment hunt this summer. When Allison and I were talking about winter projects she suggested that we become regulars at a cafe, which I think is the perfect excuse to treat myself to a pastry here once a week.

Fading light

I miss the days when I could come home from work and know I still had several hours of daylight left for possible photo walks. Now I need to rush out the door immediately after entering and I'm still fighting the sun setting. In a week or two there won't be much light at all when I get home: I'll go to work in the dark and it will be dark when I'm done. Yuck. So I'll have to get creative, maybe work on night photography, maybe take some shots of my daily life at home, indoors.

We're singing la, la la

Taken around my neighborhood on a photo walk.

I came across Anastassia Elias's work recently and can't stop thinking about it. She creates tiny scenes inside toilet paper rolls. They are magical.

Thyme Patch Park

I stumbled on this P-Patch yesterday. I love the idea of community gardens and someday I would love to join one or something similar. I am dying to grow my own food but don't have many options since I live in an apartment building without much gardening space. Do any of you guys participate in community gardens or know how I can get in on this?

On the border

The weather around here's been pretty weird lately. I thought we were moving steadily into fall but now we are getting some heat back and it's just warm and muggy and blah. I am ready for crisp fall days, scarves, hot drinks, the butternut squash bake I have been craving for months, everything pumpkin-flavored, trying new fall rustic desserts, crunching through piles of leaves.

Wilderness downtown

Just some photos around old Ballard. It's been nice to start exploring some areas I wasn't too familiar with before and the more I see the more I fall in love with Ballard.

I've really been enjoying Mike Sinclair's work lately, especially City Beautiful.

We used to wait

I seriously cannot get enough of Arcade Fire's new album The Suburbs. I was listening to it on loop for my long walk down to the marina. If you haven't heard it yet go listen. It might change your life.

This moment is breakfast

A friend and I got up early for breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe and I took this photo for the New York Times' global mosaic project. I am so excited to see this moment in time all over the world! Did anyone else participate?