The Hilyard Family grows

In my opinion, there is nothing more wonderful in life than being an Aunt. Our family has always been small, and I have always been the youngest, so it was a welcome change when Ryan was born 3 years ago.  Just last week my new niece Mallory was born and I can't wait to meet her!  There's something so warm and happy about kids, and my nephew and niece make me really happy.  I don't even need to elaborate more than that...they just make me really happy :)

Tessa, Ryan (age 3), Mallory (age 1 day), and Doug. Love this shot!

Portland, Oregon

I visited Laurie is Portland a few weekends back and had such a fun time. When the high cost of living in San Francisco starts to outweigh my love of this place, then I could see myself moving to Portland someday. It's a city of parks, murals, food, cafes, books, rivers, and great farmer's markets...many of my favorite things in the world. Laurie was an A-plus tour guide, taking me to just about every park in the city. The highlight was seeing Halprin's Portland sequence, which Laurie is currently working on nominating as a National Historic Landmark. It's an amazing series of fountains, which are fascinating even when not turned on.  Some pics below of the highlights of my trip.

Halprin's Ira Keller Fountain

Farmer's bounty at the Saturday Farmer's Market

Plenty of modern architecture!

Lion guarding the Chinatown gate.

Which way to go? Like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

The Chinese Garden, a serene place, tucked away in the urban fabric.

Oh how I love owls!

I've been obsessed with owls long before they became the most popular items of Etsy. I blame it on the 1970s macrame that mom had decorating the house when I was a kid.  I just love them and recently found this fun tutorial online for making cute felt owls. Here is the link, and here are my creations!

http://bugsandfishes.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-felt-owl-brooch.html

Sewing with Holly

My Nana taught me to sew when I was a little girl, so it's always something I've been interested in, but have never fully pursued. Recently I've become absolutely determined to learn how to sew properly, so I've been learning and practicing with some friends. My friend Holly is an incredibly talented seamstress, and has been helping me on some projects. This has proven to be such a wonderful experience. Holly has this amazing sewing room at her house, and it's always such a pleasure to sew with her in her beautiful space.

I feel like in some ways I'm channeling my Nana by doing this, while refining a skill I didn't fully recognize I had. It's sort of like riding a bike...cutting out fabric, lining up seams, sewing straight lines, and voila!  You have 1/2 a project completed in only a few hours. Today I worked on a baby quilt for my new niece to be (she's due in April). I just love combining all these different prints and you end up with the whole new creation.  Holly and I went to this Amish quilt show at the deYoung Museum on Friday night and it totally inspired me to do something with lots of little blocks.  I've still got a lot of work to do, but nice to see so much progress on a project in only 1 afternoon. 

 

The original 6 fabrics I picked out at Cliffs (the butterflies are my fav)

 

 A sampling of additional fabrics from Holly

A sneak peak...

Dolores Park

This is my park (well "our" park, but I feel like it's mine)...how can they change it?

The City is planning this 2 year renovation of Dolores Park (I live one block away and whenever possible, spend sunny Sunday afternoons there reading the New York Times). As part of my job, I'm often involved in the public process for proposed alterations to historic buildings, but what about this wonderful gem of a historic park?  I'm still in the fact-finding process, but I want to make sure that this "renovation" has considered the park as a historic resource, because it most definitely is.  An official City park since 1905, it served as a refugee camp during the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and had been an icon of the neighborhood ever since. It is a welcoming gathering place...it's where we go to movie night, where Chester Copperpot makes his rounds, where strapping young men sun themselves on the "beach"...and is by far my favorite people-watching locale.

Time to join the Nimby bandwagon on this one for sure.

Craft Day #1

Alex and I have been talking about doing a craft day for some time, and today we had our very first one!  It is so exciting for me to have a friend who also is obsessed with Real Simple magazine and likes to make things.  She has a sewing machine and a nice big table, so I ventured out to the Outside Lands (aka. Outer Sunset) for a lovely afternoon. Today happened to be a beautiful sunny day after almost 2 weeks of rain, so it seemed even more special to make the trip out there.

I finally made the yellow birdcage pillow I had purchased fabric for ages ago.

And, I made this yoga mat bag from my "Sew and Stow" book of patterns I've been excited to try.

Alex was on a roll and re-opulstered all of their dining room chairs and made a pillow out of her favorite childhood tee shirt. 

I think we did pretty well for ourselves today...summoning the crafting ferries for inspiration.

Sea Ranch...

is a very special place.  I have wanted to stay here ever since hearing about it in one of my survey of architectural history classes in college. It's not just about the architecture, or the landscape, but this amazing juxtaposition of the two. There is even suprisingly respective infill around the site (they must have good design guidelines).  I bought this ridiculously large book about it while we were there, and now want to read and learn all about the project, how it came into being, how it changed over time (things only really nerdy historians would want to know). Driving the coast in the rain, although scary at time, was really amazing. We covered a lot of ground in one weekend: hitting up the Point Arena Lighthouse, Fort Ross, Jenner, Mendocino, and Fort Bragg along the way. I love that I live in a major city, and only a few hours away is this totally different world, of pristine coastline and tiny villages, where the speed of life is a bit slower, and you can recharge in only a few short days.  Here are some pics from our trip.

Sunset view from our house.

Walking in the rain.

Oh, that California coastline!

A beautiful Victorian in Mendocino.

Crafting, 1950s style

My Nana taught me all sorts of crafts when I was a little girl. I would go to her house on the weekends and we always did craft projects, whether it be crocheting doileys, sewing quilts, making necklaces with all of her beads, or gluing wood shavings to blocks of wood in PopPop's workshop, she always encouraged the creative side of me (as my mother always did/does too).  I've come to realize in the last few years, that the lessons and skills they taught me are something I will carry with me forever, and are hobbies for which the intrigue never disappears for me. 

My recent facination is with crafting blogs.  There are several that I follow, attempting to gleen new ideas and tips about fun things to make. Sometimes, just the planning part is fun enough, the thrill of a new idea and a new project. I feel like with the recession, lots of folks are harkening back to the days of DIY in the post-war period. Since I also have a fascination with all things "modern", I recently found myself searching for vintage dress patterns on Ebay.

The image is from my purchase last weekend, eight vintage patterns from the 50s and 60s for me to try.  Now, all I need to do is buy a sewing machine and I am on my way to re-capturing the fasionable 50s...an era long before I was born, but one that I feel I can relate to in some way.  I think Nana would be proud, and that makes me really happy.

Sunday: Yoga and brunch

For the last few months or so, my friend Shannon and i have started a regular yoga routine. We meet on Sunday mornings for a 9am class (pretty early if I've been out late the night before). We go to Laughing Lotus Yoga Studio near my apartment. I absolutely love this place, the teachers, the practice, just the right amount of touchy feely chanting and meditation, while also getting a really good workout.  Shannon's fiance, Johnny, usually meets us somewhere in the mission for brunch after (since we are always super hungry after the 90 minute class). Today, to switch things up a bit, we went back to Shannon and Johnny's apartment and Johnny made us poached eggs, english muffins, fruit and hot apple cider.  Yummers!  It's my favorite way to start a Sunday.

Diamond Rings

Who needs a man to buy you a diamond ring, when you can purchase your own CZ ring for $2.99 at H&M?  This is one of the ones I wear stacked on my right hand to make me feel special...and on rare occasions, the one I wear on my left hand to repel sleazy guys at bars (although this trick actually tends to attract the sleezy ones).

Docomomo

Century Theater near the Winchester Mystery House

I was recently named President of the Northern California chapter of Docomomo-US (a non-profit group specializing in the preservation of buildings, sites and landscapes of the modern movement).  I feel honored to serve in this position, as it's an organization I am very passionate about, with inspiring members, and it's fun! It's the era of design I am most passionate about, mostly because of the interesting way that landscape architects and architects worked together during this period to create really vibrant, energetic, thoughtful places. When I was studying historic preservation, I was surprised how I was drawn to the mid-century work, because it's not an era that people easily accept as "worthy" of preservation (whatever that means really).  I find it challenging (in both good and bad ways) to make the case for preservation of these resources, which is why I think our organization is so necessary for raising awareness about the serious threat to these places.

For my birthday this year, I am getting a group of girlfriends together to go to Sea Ranch, a 1960s development master planned by the late Lawrence Halprin (my most favorite landscape architect). Many of the era's most prominent architects designed homes there, and it's really interesting how they achieved their designs, carefully siting the houses in the existing ocean side landscapes. I have been getting this nerdy excited feeling all week as I've been planning the trip, because I first learned about Sea Ranch years ago in an architectural survey course, and now I actually get to go stay there.