bits of home // june

1// This is definitely my most covered wall in my house. Some people like a sparse, minimal office, but not this girl. My eyeballs like to look at color, and art, and funny cards, and a flea market mirror from Spain.

2// I pre-ordered Wendy MacNaughton's Meanwhile in San Francisco months ago, and it finally arrived last week. It is delightful and full of illustrations, and you should buy it immediately. The cover even turns into a poster! My short visit to San Francisco last year felt like it lasted only five minutes, so this book reminds me that I need to give the city a proper visit soon.

3// This little guy wasn't doing so hot until I moved him to a shadier spot in my backyard, and then bam! Thrive city. I'm getting better at this keeping-plants-alive game, I promise.

4// I've talked about my small camera hoard before, so nothing new here. But I quite like how they look on the built-in shelves in the office.

left coast roadtrip part three // san francisco

Day 2 & 3. I'm not gonna lie, the visit to San Francisco was a bit short and more hurried than I would've liked. But we did manage to get our tintype photos taken, reminisce about Spain over tapas and sangria, and play tourists for a few hours at the Golden Gate Bridge and in Chinatown. 

We had about an hour to kill before our tintype portrait appointment, so we parked the car and just wandered around Valencia Street. Lo and behold, we came across a few Spanish tapas restaurants, so we picked one at random and enjoyed a light meal with some killer sangria. It was perfect, and I kept joking that our Spain radar was on point.

And then off to Photobooth to get our tintype portraits taken! The mister especially enjoyed the free PBR they offered.

Here's an instagram I took while he was having his portrait taken. The folks at Photobooth are super great; they even let us into the darkroom so we could watch our prints being developed.

We've officially been tintyped.

How could I visit SF for the first time and NOT photograph the Golden Gate Bridge at least once, right? You kinda just have to. Even though I usually don't go crazy for architectural landmarks,  it was pretty neat to see it in person. Much prettier than I expected. Meanwhile, all the SF locals are all, "What's the big deal, it's just a boring bridge."

Then we got super touristy, and headed to Chinatown for some lunch. And I have to admit, my first impression was not that great, due to some extremely rude shopkeepers who refused to exchange bills for quarters for our parking meter. I'm sure they could smell "out-of-towner" on us. So we had to make it a quickie lunch at some place I forget the name of, and the food was okay. The mister claimed (as he always does) that Wo Hop in New York City is infinitely better, but I was just ready to get out of Rudetown and hit the road for Big Sur. The icing on the cake? We got an $80 parking ticket for parking in a commercial loading zone. Lovely!

I definitely want to visit San Francisco again, and for longer. We barely scratched the surface this time around. 'Til next time.