I'm Vanessa, a graphic designer living in Portland, OR, with a penchant for beautiful things, tea, learning to bake, tattoo collecting, dreaming of far away travels, and capturing life through photos. Here I share bits of my life along with things I find inspiring and delightful.
Category: Adventures
Our weekend went a little like this. It was fun, productive, eye opening, amazing. We started the fun on Friday night with our friends Andrea and Mike. Dinner at Los Gorditos and our first real comedy show experience – we saw Garfunkel & Oates! The show was pretty awesome, those ladies are so funny.
Saturday we woke up late and decided it would be fun to check out Old Town Pizza in Old Town Portland. It’s located inside the old Merchant Hotel, a 132 year old building. The pizza was really good – we shared a small Dragon Lady pizza and it was really tasty.
We decided to add a little adventuring into our day so we checked out the Mississippi and North Williams neighborhoods.
Porch Light is a really cute and thoughtfully stocked antique boutique currently located on Mississippi Ave but soon moving. I’m going back next week to take advantage of their moving sale.
I really loved these wrapping papers of old typewriters and beautiful hot air balloons. I don’t know if I’ve shared my love of hot air balloons here, but I’m a crazy fan of hot air balloons. It’s serious.
Flutter is an amazing eclectic shop full of amazing oddities in the form of books, home decor, apothecary, clothing, toys, and many things in between. It’s one of my favorite stores in Portland. These Q&A books were hanging out waiting to be picked up.
The lightbulb store. Enough said.
What a grudgey park name
North Williams! One of my favorite cocktails at one of my favorite bars and a fun street with a few addictingly beautiful shops and lovely homes. I loved the simple design for this restaurant sign.
Ink & Peat is an amazing store – I’ll have to share more about this place later. It deserves a post of its own.
Alex and I both enjoyed the color scheme of this house. I especially like their little globe sitting on their front stoop, perhaps by accident? There’s a cute, surprised Alex.
Purchased from Flutter, now living on our walls.
I’ve already dove into the Handmade Marketplace book I bought at Ink & Peat. So many great ideas that I’m already putting to use. My moleskine that I ordered in December finally arrived and is now full of ideas, lists, plans, and sketches. One plan now recorded is a letterpress class that I registered as soon as we came home. I’m so excited! I’ll let you know how it goes… Hope you have a good week!
This past Saturday the only time I left the house was to take my car in for its’ oil change. While it was being lubed up (har har) I walked over to the Fabric Depot and walked around this giant building looking at fabrics galore. I wish I knew how to reupholster furniture, they have so many great patterns and textures that I would love to use to liven up some old furniture. The only thing I bought was a skein of red yarn to crochet a hat.
My parents came for a visit to Portland in September but flew in through Seattle so we would have an excuse to check it out. We picked them up from the airport and went over to Pike Place Market. We had delicious fruits shoved in our faces and bought super cheap dahlias to take home.
My parents are super cute. We went down Post Alley and found a cute place to have lunch. Alex and I shared a vegan chowder bread bowl with Strawberry lemonade. My parents had some world famous clam chowder.
We decided to walk over to the Space Needle and stopped in a few shops along the way.
I can’t wait to see more of Seattle next time!
See ya later, 2011! Can’t wait to waste more time on instagram next year.
This morning we got up & going to attend the Alberta Street Fair. Sometimes I’m really thankful for social media because I find out about great events like this one! Sometimes I really hate social media, but that’s a horse of a different color. 
This was our first time attending the Alberta Street Fair and I was very pleased! It didn’t have the overwhelming crowds that Last Thursday (also on Alberta Street) brings, or the number of vendors but I think that made it a bit more relaxing for me. It was kind of like a refined version of Last Thursday and throw in some of the vendors that you see at the Saturday Market in downtown Portland. A few of the vendors that caught my eye were jewelry makers. Portland has a very unique and skilled collection of jewelry artisans, many of whom use vintage jewelry to improve upon. My three favorites were Agnes, Palindrome Circus, and Aunt Adeleine’s Vintage.
Aunt Adeleine’s Vintage used a lot of vintage hardware, found objects, and brooches in interesting ways.
Her presentation/pop up shop was very on point for me. Among the items she used were old suitcases, lovely fabrics, and wine corks.
A few of the pieces that Palindrome Circus was showing were made from the internal mechanics of vintage watches.
I finally had the extreme pleasure of checking out Wanderlust! You may have seen images of their shop floating around, it’s absolutely precious and very well priced!
I guess it was a day of firsts because I also had my first French Macaroon! Oh. My. Alex and I each picked a flavor, I had pistachio and he had chocolate. Before I turned around Alex had consumed his. They just melt in your mouth! I was kind enough to share a bit of the amazing pistachio with him… very kind indeed.
There’s two things, somewhat weird things, I do at street fairs: 1. people watching 2. dog watching. I’m sure it’s a litttttle bit annoying everytime I pull at Alex’s arm to LOOK! at a well dressed lady or LOOK! at a precious puppy. Portland has puppies galore and well-dressed ladies galore. Maybe Portland’s new advertising campaign should be LADIES! and PUPPIES! that’s all.
Oh, hello! What’s that? You want to come home with me so I can twirl your little tail and boop your little nose? Okay… if you say so.
Oh, hello well-dressed lady and your precious Corgis!
I should stop here before I further disclose my weird habits. Happy Weekend everyone!