welcome, welcome

 thanks everyone for being so supportive in my last post. my heart is filled to the brim with happiness and i can't stop smiling.

i would all like you to welcome to the family, two new cacti! please put your hands together and welcome...
harriet with her beautiful orange/red flowers

and wilbur, the smallest & flattest cacti around.

we obtained these guys at the ashby flee market this weekend while dropping off a deposit to get a custom piece of furniture made by a local craft man. sounds fancy? well, yes and no. he will be making us basically a horizontal shelf from solid untreated pine and then we will be adding legs to it. we have been searching for the perfect piece to house tom's ever growing album collection and nothing was right, expensive, crap or too big for our place. we were set on making it oursleves but we are just a bit busy and this guy's pricing is amazing! he is making it for less then $100 and his work is really good. so we, not only get an awesome unique piece but something of quality and we are supporting a local craft too. it should be done fairly soon and i can't wait to move the living room around and share!

xo,
cb

use what you've got

i am very excited that there are only 3 more days till christmas and only 2 days till christmas eve. my family has always celebrated christmas eve which works perfectly with toms family because they celebrate on christmas. two days of family togetherness makes me so happy. really, it is the best present...

speaking of presents i am never one to go get christmas wrapping paper. last year i hand stamped brown paper and this year i am keeping it classy and simple.

 i didn't have any string or yarn and the lace i thrifted a while back looks great with the brown paper. also i have a HUGE rosemary bush outside and i cut few a sprigs off to finish off the look and presto, so cute, free & easy!

i also saw this cool idea in sunset magazine and thought it was perfect! i love vintage scarfs and they are always so plentiful at the thrift store so i snagged a few and am using them as wrapping plus they also serve as part of the gift, nifty, no?
---> to wrap, just treat the scarf like wrapping paper, minus the tape. tie both ends in a knot, i doubled mine as the ends were longer then i wanted and you are all set.

this year my family is doing stocking stuffers and since my marmalade didn't make as much as i thought, i used the left over mason jars and cut succulents from my over flowing pot. i am very excited to hand these out.

xo,
cb

a true california day

hi peaches! hope everyone had a great weekend <3 as always ours went by way to fast but what can you do. i got a lot of things done on thursday and was very happy with myself too :) i will be updating my shop with a small hand full of cute day of the dead pins & hair clips that i made a while back with kelly-anne, i'm really happy with them.

in other news friday was an awesome day! the weather here has been SUPER nice and the indian summer has been lingering longer then expected to my happiness. my tattoo appointment was later in the day so we look our time and got to the appointment early to enjoy a nice cup of joe. sam, my tattoo artist wasn't ready so we walked around our old stomping grounds.

the most AWESOME surf shop EVER!!!

days like this in the city make tom and i want to move back. the sunset district is one of my favorite areas in sf, it feels distant from the city, a bit more quiet but still has the city vibe. you forget that days like this in the sunset though are far and few. 99% of the time the sunset is foggy but that has its advantages too...

succulents grow like weeds here! they LOVE the sunset and rightfully so. we headed out to the beach to watch the waves, it was beautiful! we headed back and got down to inking. sam is really the best tattooist EVER. something about her makes getting inked so painless, really. they have never really hurt and i have know a few people who have been tattooed by her and say the same thing. it isn't extremely fun to be poked by a needle but somehow she makes it feel like a walk in the park. i think she is a wizard or something...

so i didn't get the poppies, just the quail and i couldn't be more in love with him!!!  i absolutley just LOVE LOVE him! he is perfectly plump!!! i just need to figure out a proper name for him. i am trying to think of a "california name" if that is a such thing but i also want it to go with harvey, my jay.

 oh and he got touched up too! since my little fatty quail was so heavy textured i wanted to balance both my arms out so we added a bit of black to his head. i think i might add a bit more to even him out but i like the result so far!

since the poppies were too big and i didn't want to reduce the size, i need to design a smaller flower to fill in the blank spots. i also want to add a mushroom some where. i have a native california flower in mind and will for sure be calling sam to get another tattoo in about 6 months...so far that has been the trend, every six months... and i like it that way :) well, time to start planning for the next bit!!

xo,
cb

what grows in your garden?

a while back i had my mom over for dinner and she brought me a tray of cabbage, chard, spinach and lettuce to plant. when we first moved to our little place i wanted so badly to have a garden...but the ground is so incredible hard that i just lost all desire to plant...thus i have my succulent garden, which i am very very happy with!

so when my mom brought me these veggies, i was a little scared i would kill them but luckily one of our neighbors was getting rid of a wooden trough which i had planned to put more succulents in but then this worked out better! my mom was so nice to plant them for me as i had some business to attend to....then we went away on our honeymoon and i wondered how they were doing and when we came back it was like a tiny little edible jungle had sprouted! i was so excited!!!!!!

cabbage

spinach

lettuce & chard

so yesterday i made a mixed green salad with lettuce, spinach & cabbage. I made sure to leave about 2 inches on the lettuce after i cut off what i wanted and only took the bottom leaves of the spinach and cabbage so that more could grow. i am thinking that my chard might need more time to grow so i left him...

it was so awesome to step out our front door and pick lettuce for dinner, the most fresh salad i have ever had! we get a organic box of produce each week which i know is extremely fresh too but this totally trumped the lettuce and spinach we get in that box. i am used to getting our spinach covered in mud but these greens were so clean and almost bug free :)

the salad turned out so yummy...grilled chicken, garbanzo beans, tomatoes & cucumbers topped with monterey jack cheese and oil/vinegar/dijon mustard....oh so yummy!

i am so happy with the results i am going to OSH this weekend to buy another trough and some more greens!!

what grows in your garden??? i  would LOVE to hear tips or any advice you guys might have!!!

tomorrow's FRIDAY and me and the mister are going to go to the dia de los muertos exhibit at night!

xo,
cb

succulent garden!

sunday was another busy day for me...with all this business you'd expect me to be exhausted but you know what..i'm feel pretty good!  i have been really wanting to do some gardening especally since i have 3 pots that contain dead flowers in them...it is quite sad really. my icelandic poppies have been dead since may! but boy where they gorgeous! i would run to the store right now if they were in season!  it was sooo cold this winter that the frost killed two of my succulents and to make matters worse one was a wedding gift from our landlord! i was very sad that it died...but we have this really cute tiny cactus that given more room can grow up to 6ft tall! so now he has a new happy home :)

by our communial laundry room there is a HUGE patch of sedum succulents and someone had ripped out two buckets worth of these guys and i had been meaning to ask my landlord if anyone had claimed them and to my happy surprise no one did! she was happy to fork them over to us as she knows me and the mister are kinda succulent crazy... so i decided to go to osh hardware and pick up some flowers for one of my pots along with some succulent dirt and these really cute ground cover sedums...i am pretty happy with the results..i have couple of different species of poppies that look like they are about to die but i am giving them one more chance before it is time to plant something new.. :)

i am by no means a gardener and when we moved to our little casa over a year ago i totally thought i could plant all kinds of things... mom used to garden all the time and she always did an amazing job and i thought well if she can do it, i can do it too! well first of all our dirt is not dirt it is clay and it is the hardest thing to dig in...so it takes A LOT of motivation to play around in our garden...secondly...i don't have the time i thought i was going to have to tend to my flowers and veggies so i have started a succulent and cactus garden...if someone where to ask me any advice on how to garden my first piece of advise is to first realize what type of gardener you are...if you have all the time and patience in the world i say go crazy but if you are like me and have no time but want a pretty lush garden...succulents may be your best friend! i love each and everyone of my succulents and cacti..they are so happy and easy to care for and they LOVE the northern cali weather!


whats in your garden?

xo,
cb