This is my father in law, Bill, an appreciator of fountain pens, typewriters, classic Hollywood, analog photography, pocket watches, etc. Lately, we seem to have a bit of bad luck with our cameras: his dropped and the back won’t close while my last roll of film is out of its spool and stuck in the camera (yikes!). But I love these shots he took during our trip before the camera drop, and I hope these glitches are just minor setbacks.
The good things that can get lost in the craziness …
A made bed, a trip to Sloan Hall where we picked up a piece from the Dream Collective aka my strawberry earrings and a shield pin for BJ, a resilient plant and organized home, afternoon naps, a gifted bowl from ND’s ceramic sale (Thanks, Tien!), shrimp tacos for dinner from Goop via L.A in Bloom, sisters sleeping over and a trip to El Bolillo for cheap, delicious pastries, taking my mom to see the MFAH Impressionist and Post Impressionist exhibit before it leaves, and a belated  Mother’s Day Cake from one of our favorite recipes -Orangette’s Marmalade Cake with extra orange and lemon juice)
Roadtrip to Austin to see my cousin finish the MS 150. She beat her time by a lot this year, so we missed her crossing the finish line, but we were there to help her celebrate afterwards!
Ahh, weekends. I love you.
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It’s been busy around these parts, but I wanted to post illustrations my youngest sister Thuy has been creating. Hope everyone is doing well!
Goodbye Spring Break, you gave me a much needed rest. Of course, I wish I could’ve done more. The last few days were filled with good eats at City Hall’s Farmer’s Market, visiting local shops for the first time, cooking, and visiting friends. Not bad at all!
Houston. Please drive better. We had a scare Saturday morning: an impatient car abruptly moved right into our lane, driving us off the road, up over the curb, onto the sidewalk. And the driver didn’t even notice! Thankfully, we ended up with only dented hubcaps and no injuries—a blessing, but nonetheless, it was a little hard to shake off.
After a trip to Kaboom Books where I got to visit the owners’ sweet dog, the rest of the weekend was nice and relaxing: a good game of darts at my cousin’s birthday, tidying up the house, brunch at Shade, dinner for my mom’s birthday where forwent the traditional cake and instead shared mini desserts and pastries, working on personal projects, hunting for treasures at the Texas Art Asylum*, and catching a matinee of The Adjustment Bureau (3.5/5 stars: great cast, but maybe a bit anticlimactic).
* For you teachers, it’s less than a year old, but they have plans to open up another store down the road where teachers can grab bags of stuff for a few bucks.
One more week until Christmas break. (yippee) I’m planning on making a few handmade presents for some of my family this year.
My sister Tien made us over 1000 of these paper cranes for our wedding present, and I’m still blown away at how tiny and thoughtful they are. I hope time and creativity will be on my side.
Oh man. On Thursday, I slept through my alarm and BJ had to drive me to work (since me + stress+ Houston highways = bad morning), dealt with a few difficult kiddos who made me consider throwing in the towel, and, for the third time, missed seeing Beach House! And this was only 1 day out of a pretty rough work week for the both of us. So this weekend—filled with food, family, friends, and alliteration—certainly restored our spirits a bit.
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We had friends over on Friday for wine, snacks, and girls-versus-guys Taboo. After the girls beat the guys, I went to bed early, but everyone else drank and talked until 3 a.m. The next morning, we hung out with Mai and her dog Scrappy at the new Market Square Park downtown. She invited our cousins over to her place afterwards for slowly cooked lamb shanks, ribeye steaks, mashed sweet potatoes, and bacon-looped jalapeños loaded with cream cheese. Highlight of the weekend, though, had to be playing with Scrappy, who loved to jump onto the bed and spoon. (Meanwhile, Igby was in such a territorial, jealous mood all day; her inner Napoleon rose to the surface.)
(photo by Bill)
Last weekend, we made our trip up to the northeast for a backyard wedding party. BJ’s mom went all out with the decorations, cooking, and assorted prep work. She even had a cartoonishly enlarged close-up of us that BJ half-jokingly referred to as the Asian funeral poster. We were so lucky to see many of his relatives and parents’ friends and to have Uncle Bob sing and play his accordion during the party.
We badly needed a break, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather, which was surprisingly chilly at times and much much drier than Houston’s (hello, smooth hair!) Saturday morning, as we walked from his dad’s to his mom’s and toured the town with the windows rolled down, I was like a broken record expressing how awesome the weather was. I loved being in the valley surrounded by all the hills, and the drive back to Seattle was picturesque with the evergreens, low clouds slash thick fog, fly-fishermen, orchards, and rocky cliffs.
BJ’s dad also let me test-drive an old Canon of his and—ahhhh!—I thought I took a good amount of nice portraits, only to discover I left the flash on. Those flash-on photos were washed out and gave people unhealthy, morgue-like complexions. Above are a few sun-kissed photos that I liked. With all that light in the lens, they suggest amateur versions of Fader photos. The girl in the second photo is Carly, my fellow cake lover and a little friend of the family. (And daughter of the sultan of Brunei’s former oral surgeon.)
