plant collection

Pretty recently, I went to my local Goodwill and came back with a book that cost about 2 dollars.

It was published by Spring Books, this copy from 1963. Unfortunately all the plants in it are natives of England, but I bought it because I love the drawings. 

I think if I could draw I would have loved to be a naturalist and plants illustrator.

The book made me think of all the plant things I had recently collected. I haven't been studying plants for very long, but I've always been attracted to them. 

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Graduation cap: I planned last minute on decorating my cap, so I ran to my front yard and hot glued some grasses and leaves on my cap. I'm pretty sure all the grasses were invasives, but it's okay.

Plant ID Books: These are a few books I stole borrowed from some close friends.

Mini posters: Left is from Jill Bliss when I ordered my wallet from her. It's a little postcard with poppies! The right is an herb postcard sent by the man who printed out the poster below it.

Native Grasses Poster: This is the same poster that is hanging on the wall between the offices of a few of my favorite plant professors at UC Davis. It's the same one that hangs in the meeting room of a plant nursery in San Francisco that I would love to one day work for.

Poppy art: I bought this at a craft fair a long time ago, when I was a little kid.

Welcome Home Garden Kit: Given to me for free at a very cute farm fair I worked at. It has a packet of many different vegetable seeds and recipes for the things you grow with them!

Grasses cards: I bought this as souvenir for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, which is so beautiful and inspiring. I also bought some native wildflower playing cards but can't find them anywhere :(

I hope my collection keeps growing, one day involving a thriving garden with fruit trees and plenty of house plants, along with a library filled with books on plants...one can dream!

craft: embroidery

I've always loved embroidery, but I don't really know anyone that embroiders, so I've had to do it on my own. I wouldn't necessarily say I embroider, but I have done it in the past, using the little kits from Michael's. I did a few when I was a little kid, finishing a whale and a happy face.

These are the ones I'm working on right now.

Let Heaven and Nature Sing

My first embroidery kit not meant for kids. I worked on this during my trip to Korea two years ago and never quite finished it. The butterflies and flowers need to be outlined, and the lettering needs to be finished. I love the heart fence and sunflowers though.

Elegant Oriole

I like this design a lot, even though I think the printed pattern on the back is a little...contrived? Odd? I'm not sure the word for it, but I like the bird and the flowers.

The real thing next to their pictures

Hopefully I will finish them soon. I'm not really a huge embroider, but I would like to get better at it and make my own patterns and the like. 

Have you ever tried embroidery?

garlic-y winters

Erik and I went on a date night for our 1.5 year anniversary (are they anniversaries if they're not annual?). This past November.

So I'm not good at blogging on time whatsoever. I still reallyreallyreally wanted to share these photos because it was a really great night with some amazing food! 

Our 1.5 is actually at the end of October, but I believe we went in early November, most likely because of Halloween and other busyness. I had Erik choose the place because I always feel like I'm choosing where go to. He chose a tapas restaurant called Ficelle based on the Yelp reviews. We had been wanting to go on a date night in Winters, a small sleepy town about 20 minutes from Davis, ever since one of my TAs suggested it in class. 

 Excited about our date night!!

My outfit. I was planning on dressing up more but it was rainy and dreary. I figured I'd rather be warm than pretty.

It was extremely rainy and dark that night, which was a little scary since the way to Winters is using these old country roads surrounded by farms and lots of nothingness--pitch black. Luckily Ficelle is located on the east-most side of Winters, so it was soon after we got to Winters in their little downtown area. 

Ficelle is a tiny, tiny place, first of all. We arrived at 7 pm and it was jam packed with people. I think normally the space is widened by the restaurant's plentiful outdoor seating. However, since it was raining and the outdoor area has no ceiling, everyone was huddled inside this bustling, little area. It was a little awkward having to stand around for 20 minutes while bus boys, ladies with their wine, and the owner ran back and forth. Luckily, they have an extensive menu, being a tapas place, so we decided what dishes we should order during our wait.

One of the things I really loved about this place is that it is very casual and the workers are extremely friendly, in a very cozy small business style. You order your food and then snag the table as fast as you can right after the people sitting there leave, since there is no real wait list or waiters save the lady who hints that you might be next. It is truly different from any restaurant I've been to, but I liked the informal nature of it all.

Also, the food is so so sooooo good. And not that expensive, not even a little bit. Erik and I have tried a few local expensive restaurants using Groupon to afford them, and this restaurant far surpassed all of them save maybe Magpie in Sacramento (where we went for our 1 year!).

Bread and garlic aioli

This comes free for every table, and there are endless bread and aioli refills. The aioli is unfortunately hidden in the picture above, but it is hands down the signature item of the restaurant. All the Yelp reviews mentioned the aioli, and I understood why as soon as I tried it. It is a garlic explosion. It's almost like biting into a clove. It's intense and flavorful and so great with their bread. Maybe not for you if you don't like garlic or spiciness, but I like both so I loved it. It looked like everyone else did too.

These dishes were shared between us to celebrate the tapas fashion. I loved tasting a little of everything and wish I could have tried everything on the menu! There were so many choices that looked yummy.

Bruschetta with tomato, herbs, and cheese and a mixed salad

Bean and cheese empanada with dipping sauce

Creamy polenta with cherry tomatoes and asparagus

Sangria (sorry, forgot to take a picture until it was all gone!)

The sangria was the other thing all the Yelpers mentioned, and it really is something else. It had oranges and apples, was refreshing, and was sweet without being too sweet. Every table there had ordered the sangria. 

The restaurant ended up being a success! We were both was pleasantly surprised. And the best part is that it was 25 dollars to completely fill both of us and have a drink, which is not a bad price for such fantastic food. After we had eaten we walked around downtown and even ran into a park ranger I used to work with who lives in Winters. However, it started to drizzle so we hurried home and watched episodes of Parks and Recreation on Netflix. It was a pleasant and low-key date night, and I loved it!

What restaurant have you been to recently that has exceeded your expectations?

friday favorites

These are my favorites for this week! Such a chilly week in California, whenever we go out we have to pour hot water over our windshield to melt the ice. I'm not used to doing that unless it's very early or late usually. I know, Californians and their weather, we are so spoiled. Although the northern part does get cold, if I do say so myself.

                                  baby whale broach                            ::                     wood triangles pendant

starry sky broach

TheTwentyFingers has some very cute brooches and necklaces! These are some of my favorites but the shop has many cute things. Kaylah over at The Dainty Squid had me considering brooches as accessories lately, something I had never really considered.

 

leather camera bag

I have been looking for a nice camera bag, and this bag is so great. I love that it doubles as a really stunning messenger bag as well. It's something I'll definitely have to save up for though. But my SLR needs a case stat!

shock top honeycrisp apple wheat

I love this beer. I picked it up from my local market a few days ago. I am a total girl when it comes to drinking, preferring fruity and sweet over...nasty? I jest, but I definitely prefer pale ales to IPAs and stouts. This seasonal Shock Top is essentially hard cider mixed with beer. Delicious, since hard cider is sometimes too sweet for me but a lot of beers are hard for me to drink.

Unfortunately, I don't know the original sources of these. But I found them on my friend Rachael's Pinterest board, which I have been looking at a lot recently to motivate myself to get off my butt. She's extremely motivated and confident, and these quotes remind me that I should be too. The above were my favorites, the first because I need to be reminded that being introverted and a homebody aren't exactly bad characteristics, and the second because I love Kerouac and everything he stands for.

Top: floral burst knob, calico owl knob, singular bloom knob

Bottom: garden glory knob, lisbon knob, cloisonne chrysanthemum knob

I was looking for dresser knobs a few days ago since the one I got second-hand was missing 4 of 6 of its knobs. I eventually ended up getting them from Lowes for cheap, but I knew that Anthropologie would have ones that would make my heart melt. And they do. I would love these for my future home. 

What is something on your Friday favorites list?

craft: spun yarn

Posting continually is hard, but even harder is maintaining a schedule once unemployed and graduated. It's an odd place to be in life and an odd feeling! But I understand this is the plight of every 20-something-year-old, and there's a bunch of television shows out to try to explain this such plight, so I'll save you the mundane details.

While in college, I took a couple classes from the Craft Center on campus, which is exactly as awesome and crafty as it sounds. The place had cheap classes students and community members could take, from screen printing to developing photos in a dark room to looming. I took a class on yarn spinning, three hours a week for three months, getting to campus at 8:45 am, ending class at 6:00 pm, going to class until 9:00 pm, and then catching the 10:10 bus home. It was absolutely worth it.

We spun a lot that class, but this is one of the ones I'm most proud of. I definitely wanted to keep spinning after that class, and even bought some beautifully dyed wool roving. Unfortunately, I am not the most talented at using the drop spindle, and spinning wheels are so expensive, even the cheapest lines. I haven't used the yarn I've made in that class for anything yet, but I plan on it soon. Sneaking it in to a beanie or using it for a granny square and knowing I made that yarn would be a great detail and internal secret, y'know?

Since this was a short post lacking in pictures, I added a photo I took of my dog, Dow, when I was home. He's 13 years old, but still as cute as when he was a puppy! Except he's a little overweight now, but he gets a free pass because he's elderly.