Places | Perpetual Tea Party

When Life Gives You Lemons

29 September 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

I’ve noticed the suspicious water glistening along the edge of kitchen wall since the day before (though I did wonder if it might just be kitties splashing their drinking water) but when I heard what sounded like water dripping onto quite large pool of water (sound design skills come in handy around the house more often than one might imagine! I used my audio detective skills to monitor our kids safety all the time, for one.) I said to Todd “You might have to move all your meetings for the day…”. Anyhow, the maintenance guy came in promptly, and upon discovering that the large portion of the wall will have to be demolished, we decided to pack up and head out for the day. Serendipitously, it was a beautiful day so beach day it was!

I think that sandy hands and feet are so happy!

Blueberry Picking

27 August 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

It’s a beautiful summery Saturday and we decided to go berry picking! To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure which ones were in season at this time in Portland (strawberries were 2 weeks late in early summer) but we need no excuse to drive around the beautiful Sauvie Island so off we went. At the farm, we found blueberries!

Sauvie Island — it’s so peaceful here.

I didn’t take any pictures, but we also picked some heirloom tomatoes for $0.99 per pound! How cheap is that? Especially considering it takes almost no effort picking enough for the week.

Lavender Farm

23 July 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

It’s lavender season! We are at the lavender farm.

Here’s a chicken roaming around the premise.

I love lavender, it’s probably my favorite flower. Luckily for me, Portland loves lavender and past few years we’ve enjoyed lavender in all sorts of things — our favorites being lavender honey milkshake from foodcart in downtown, and lavender marionberry jam from the market.

There were many different varieties. They even had beautiful ones with white flower which smelled very nice!

Astoria

09 July 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

We ventured out to Astoria which is located on north western tip of Oregon and is most famous for being the town The Goonies is set in (though the beach in the movie is actually Cannon Beach!).

It seems to be a port town (I suppose I should go read up about it!) — there were lots of impressively large ships about the pier.

It is a really strange little town with lots of old and interesting looking buildings.

It’s about 2 hours drive from where we live, and we promised Immi and Ashland beach time, so we stopped by Sunset Beach on the way home. It was a lovely quiet beach with beautiful sparkly sand.

Strawberry Season

17 June 2011 Written by Kyoko 0 Comments

We went to Sauvie Island because it’s now the farms are open for strawberries. I love Portland for having seasons — not just the four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) but little ones like strawberry season, and raspberry season, and lavender season etc. etc. It’s so much more easier to be in touch with nature here and I think that Immi and Ashland enjoys these cyclic seasonal activities.