Sugar and spice and everything nice...

Labor Day weekend in Santa Cruz. Visiting with our friends Kristen and Eric and their daughter Zoe… kiddie rides at the boardwalk, father/daughter tide pool exhibit poking at the local Natural History Museum, dress-up dance performances in the backyard, wandering about in the garden at Wilder Ranch… just a few of the activities that kept us real busy. It was all about the girls, and I’d say they had a blast!

Playing around with Rollip again :)

Fern Canyon

We were visiting friends down in Santa Cruz over Labor Day weekend, hence the lateness of this final post from our trip up north... just some pictures I took during a solitary and quite peaceful morning walk along the beautiful and aptly named Fern Canyon Trail.

From the Van Damme campground, the trail meanders along Little River off into the lush forest. Five finger, bird’s foot, lady, licorice, stamp, sword and deer - name some of the various ferns growing throughout the canyon. A close-up of some vertically growing five finger below.

Who-o-o who-o-o... this awesome little guy, a giveaway winning from Anne, probably felt quite at home here in this woodsy habitat :)

The hand woven crop top is an older thrift find that I don’t recall having posted before. It's perfect for wearing with high waisted skirts and jeans.

The way the sunlight filtered through the trees was breathtaking, lighting up leaves with a silvery glow and dancing on the softly flowing water. I was pretty blown away by how gorgeous the trail was and really wanted to keep going even though I had to get back to camp.

One day I’d love to return and do the whole 7-mile loop all the way out to the Pygmy Forest which sounds very cool, with knee-high cypress trees that are decades old.

We drove home along the wonderfully scenic highway 128 and stopped for lunch in Boonville. I took these last two shots out the car window on the drive. The sky was incredible that day...

...even boasting a heart-shaped cloud!

Fort Bragg

On day two of our trip we went up to Fort Bragg to visit Lucas and Isolde’s dad, aka Grandpa Bill. The rustic old shed out back was the chosen outfit photo spot.





His property backs up to a forest of redwoods, fun to wander about in taking pics.

As for the outfit, I think the only new-to-the-blog item is the little Free People beaded cardigan I picked up at the flea market for a few bucks this summer. I love its deep plum color and tiny beads.

Clover’s little plaid dress (like much of her wardrobe) was a thrifted hand-me-down, care of Isolde, cute kid's clothing thrifter extraordinaire! Outfit photos happened to coincide with paper airplane launching in the backyard.

Grandpa Bill… the artist… a bit eccentric, a bit reclusive, offbeat wit and charm, dark humor and wild stories, giver of unconventional gifts… on this visit my brother-in-law went home with a rather large stuffed latex vulture. We love grandpa Bill!

A peek at his studio.

Happy kids during the aforementioned paper airplane launch-a-thon. A fun visit indeed :)

Our awesome husbands took the kids back to the campsite to get dinner started while Isolde and I went to check out what Fort Bragg had to offer by way of thrift stores.


The first place we went was tucked away inside a cool old building which also happened to be a SENIOR CENTER, now if that’s not a recipe for amazing vintage treasures, then I don’t know what is!

Sadly, the place was closed, we had just missed it :(

You may now take a moment to enlarge the two pictures I took peering through the door window like a sad puppy in order to share in our disappointment.

This place looked like something out of a dream, such a sweet and quaint little shop with granny boots and grandpa cardigans just calling out to me *sigh*

It was even called Granny’s Attic and had cute hand-painted signage!

Ah well, there’s always next time. We did manage to find a couple of thrift stores that were open though, nothing like Granny’s Attic, but all was not lost.

Isolde found some clothing for herself and the kids (of course) and I found a cute floral rayon 90’s dress for me and a couple of vintage mini hard bound Maurice Sendak books for Clover.


We returned to a pot roast being cooked to perfection over the open campfire, stewed with fresh onions, peppers, garlic, and tomatoes fresh from Isolde and Jonas’ garden.


Yeah, did I mention the part about our husbands being awesome? Add bread, a yummy green salad, and a nice cold beer and you’ve got yourself one of the best camping meals I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

I’ll leave you with Clover and Lucia doing a little cooking of their own : )

Happy Camper

With the last days of Summer dwindling down, we finally managed to rustle ourselves up a little camping trip! We went up north to the Mendocino/Fort Bragg area last weekend and had a great time camping at Van Damme State Park with my sister-in-law Isolde and her family and paying a visit to my father-in-law in Fort Bragg.

Yup, that's the new Stetson still perched atop my head where it spent quite a bit of time on our trip. I'm calling it my old man hat. The vintage hippie wrap skirt I found at a garage sale down the street from our house for fifty cents.

I used to have a few of these skirts that belonged to my mom back in the 70’s. I wore them in high school but sadly managed to not hold onto them over the years, so I was pretty excited to find this one. If my memory serves me correctly, I had one that was quite similar.


This vintage tee shirt with the hand-painted birds on it is a new favorite. It's super soft and perfectly worn-in. I found it recently but now I'm forgetting where, I think it was like a dollar fifty.

The bird brooch above my right jacket pocket was from the little giveaway package I received from Andrea and the sun/arrow above the other pocket is a vintage Boy Scout pin (very camping appropriate).

When we first arrived at the campsite, I had to take a picture when I caught my stretched out reflection in the wheel of our new to us, drum roll please…

Teardrop trailer!!!

Last year we borrowed my sister-in-law Zoe’s teardrop trailer at the end of the summer for our Pacific Northwest roadtrip and have wanted one of our own ever since. Lucas started diligently searching online for one about six months ago (and by diligently, I mean obsessively).

Finding one that we liked in good condition at a reasonable price, somewhere that didn’t require going out of state to pick it up, turned out to be easier said than done though. We finally went ahead and sold The Duck and within a weeks time, this trailer turned up on Craigslist only a few hours away and at a pretty decent deal.

Of course Lucas was on it right away and now we've taken it on its maiden voyage and couldn’t be happier with it!



Along with being compact and easy to tow in comparison to the bulky tent trailer, one nice thing about the new trailer is that there’s no set up to deal with when you get to camp, so we were able to just park it and head right off for a stroll out to the beach. Beautiful cove-like beach that it was!

Isolde and family showed up with their tent trailer and got the campsite right next door. When we returned from the beach, Clover and her twin cousins Quinlan and Lucia turned the teardrop into a cozy reading nook…

… and then prettied up the parking posts with some chalk :)

Following a yummy dinner of grilled chicken burritos prepared by Isolde and Jonas at their site, we bundled the kids up in the tent trailer to watch a little DVD on the laptop while the grown ups relaxed around the campfire.

Ok, so we weren't exactly roughing it on this trip ;)

The next morning we awoke to pumpkin pancakes… mmm.

As usual, I took way too many pictures so stay tuned for more from day two!