Greens

How our garden grows:


Once again, the Hursts have almost killed their pumpkin plants before a pumpkin ever got to grow. We have powdery mildew and Andrew has been trying to nurse these plants back to health. I have a sneaky suspicion that they will not make it simply because I live next to them. I have lost count at how many years we have been trying for pumpkins:


We are growing corn though:


I bought some shrimp plants (Pachystachys lutea) just because I liked the name. They seem happy:

Toys

We met a great family at the park a couple of nights ago. The daddy does this: Happy Toy Machine. Support a local business and create a funky toy today.

Toys:

Presenting

Two videos of the wedding:




Now, it is time to put away my party dresses in exchange for house cleaning clothes. Maybe I will get to put on a party dress to celebrate my friend's birthday tonight. Happy Birthday Skyla!!!

Cake

Man did I do a bad job of capturing the wedding on film. I thought everything was in focus, but once I downloaded the pictures I realized I forgot to turn on the flash so everything with any movement at all is blurry. Here are some pictures worth talking about.

Here is Reade's naughty look before he crawled out of the chair trap I made to try and contain him during the ceremony:


The delicious wedding cake. We had a brunch over at the groom's house this morning and the groom's mom, I love you Karen, sent home a huge plate full of left over wedding cake. I will be working hard at spin class because of that:


Allen and Angie's first dance:


What an event. I love how Andrew's family can come together and really make a party wild. I will upload the videos tomorrow so everyone can share in the fun times.

Wed

Boy did we dance.  Blake spent two and a half hours on the dance floor with me.  Allen and Angie melted everyone's hearts.  More pics tomorrow!

Hipster

We have a family wedding this weekend and I am trying to find the perfect outfits for the kids (a little bit hipster, a little bit formal). Will I have time to make a yellow bowtie for both of them:

Photo

This video is so hilarious. Long live MJ:


Hipster tattoos rock:

Photo

Bugs

What is with the bugs? I feel like I live in the Midwest and I don't like it. The heat has picked up and I guess I got a bit used to 75 degree summer weather. I replanted my whole front yard this last weekend and wanted some respite from all of the sweat. I took the kids to a park in Los Altos with lots of shade trees. I didn't account for the fact that flying insects would constantly try to burrow into my body through my ear and eat all of my delicious bodily fluids. Yuck.

The kids had fun:




I might get around to planting my poppies today.

Pink

Late to the party again, but this time I am in revival mode. I have found a wine I like. I have found a wine I drink every other night. It is called rosé.

I can feel you judging me. Maybe you laughed a little. Read on:
"But over the last couple of decades the supermarket shelf space allotted to Rosé wines has diminished rapidly, and although Mateus and its brethren are still on the shelves, putting a bottle of rosé in your supermarket trolley instantly marks you out as being horribly unsophisticated and embarrassingly out-of-date.

Yet this is not the case in the South of France. There, they drink rosé by the tanker-load. And, by and large, they are more fashionable, chic and 'foodie' than most of us in middle England. Wander past the bistros in trendy Cannes, St Tropez or Cassis, and you'll see what they drink with their Bouillabaisse: probably not white, not red, but pink."

-Wineanorak.com

I will drink to that! Photo pulled from here.

7 Days Away

Who's in with me? An antique shop owner told me I have to go to the Alameda Point Antiques Fair if I am interested in mid-century happenings. It is held on the first Sunday of the month so I am counting down the days until October 2nd! Who wants to meet me there for some wheeling and dealing?

Cute:


Probably can't afford these, but I like them:


I will definitely be donating to this cause:


Info here.

Couches

Why is it that you break your back for something you think is "the one" and then tons of "the ones" keep popping up afterwards?

Berkeley craigslist $299:


Petaluma craigslist $125:


Get 'em while they are hot!

Homemade

Blake has always been fascinated with Andrew's laptop privacy screen. He carries it around with him and today he folded it in half and told me it was his laptop. He kissed me goodbye and said he was going to work like daddy. I thought it was so cute and told him I could add some flare to it. Here is his QWERTY keyboard laptop:

His new desk:


He worked hard all day on that laptop. I love that I had extra Apple stickers. I thought I would never use them:


Blake's face is a mess because he fell off of a cheap Ikea table. I put the table outside so he and Reade can eat snack without messing the house up. Maybe I should be that helicopter mom that makes Ikea put warnings on their tipsy kid stuff. I can see it now: Warning! Don't be a bad mom like Shannon Hurst and let two of your most precious children stand on top of this $7 item because it will fall over. Just for the record, everyone knows this thing will fall over so maybe you should just watch your kids instead of suing us.

Saucy

Time to harvest and cook my apples. You should have seen me out there learning how to use a fruit picker. I would grab some high up apples, turn the fruit picker, and watch as all the apples went bouncing around to the ground, leaving me with a bunch of branches in the catcher. I got better by the end of it. Hours later there were six jars of mushed up sticks. Just kidding!

Since my healthy recipes always turn out yucky, I decided to add brown sugar and cinnamon. Go big or go home:

Spider

Our indoor/outdoor pet:

Eating

Andrew is in one of his Mr. Mom phases again and found this website:


You all must go now and experience the yum. They are Canadian and make comfort food worth eating. I like that they stick to oldies, but goodies and include healthy dishes alongside things like peanut butter rice crispy treats with a fudge coating. All in moderation!

Mackay (mah-kee)

We live in a Mackay, not an Eichler. We do not live in Midtown Palo Alto, we live in East of Midtown Palo Alto. It has been a wild goose chase to try and find any information about this guy. I know that he graduated from Stanford Law and grew up in Los Angeles. His company, Mackay Homes, was once in downtown Menlo Park. I also found information stating he retired in Montana as a cattle rancher (could be him?). Here is what John Fyten's website states:

Got a Mackay? Good luck finding any information on it. All you need to know about the outsized nature of the Eichler mystique is that John Mackay, a guy who built a zillion ranchers, both contemporary and conventional, is almost entirely forgotten today except for a passing mention in one of Ned Eichler's books, a small park in San Jose and the occasional surviving sales brochure.

Overview: Real estate agents often blur the boundaries between this area and adjacent Midtown. Sometimes that's justifiable, since the MLS area boundaries can be arbitrary. And even if this isn't Midtown proper, many homes here are within easy walking or driving distance of Midtown shopping, and a few neighborhoods just outside the boundary resemble Midtown because the same builders built them concurrently. But things change as you move east from Midtown toward 101 or Loma Verde, from small but charming late-'40s ranchers to slightly larger contemporaries from the '50s.

You don't buy into this part of Palo Alto for its history, but history is here if you look hard—and quick. Rapidly disappearing, and almost buried under the acres of tract homes, are old farmhouses left over from the days when Santa Clara County was an agricultural powerhouse called "The Valley of Heart's Delight". Virtually all these relics are very small and humble, a telling sign that no one was getting rich at whatever they were doing before the developers bought them out. Another piece of this area's history concerns the struggle against housing discrimination. Lawrence Lane was developed in the early 1950s to offer housing to all races, this at a time when racial restrictions in neighborhood CC&Rs had only just been declared illegal in California, and when de facto segregation still kept minorities out of white areas. But this area's best-known claim to fame is also, ironically, the bane of many buyers looking for a home here: the nationally-known, architect-designed contemporaries of Joe Eichler.

Contemporaries or "flattops"—Eichlers, Mackays, Brown & Kaufmans and a few others—are such a big part of the housing stock in this area that I'll give you a little more detail on these homes as I mention them. They may all look alike to the unpracticed eye, but not every "Eichler" is an Eichler-built home. Why does that matter? Because even if you're not actively looking for a contemporary, just knowing the differences between builders may help you make the right decision. Mackays can be found in two adjacent developments built in 1954-5, Elmdale and Colonial Court. Of these 110 or so homes, most were offered as either a 3/2 of 1240 sq.ft. with radiant heat (just like Eichlers) or as a 1200 sq.ft. 3/2 with cheaper wall heaters. They're built on slab and have hardwood floors. One way to spot them is their gated entry courtyard, which enhances the California "bring the indoors outside" lifestyle by providing more outside space for playing and entertaining.

The real characters were these guys. Anshen and Allen were the architects who built this house and hundreds more for Eichler and other mid-century developers. Find their fun story here:

Holiday

Happy Labor Day. From Wikipedia: The form for the celebration of Labor Day was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday: A street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations",^[1] followed by a festival for the workers and their families.

Instead of parading, I took the Adelizi's (minus Nick, Andrew took him on a bike ride) to the antique row in San Jose. Mia hit up the party store next door so she could pick out her Halloween costume. This game seems a tad inappropriate if you ask me:


Oh Paul, do you always have to go around preaching your liberal agenda?:


I fell in love with this leprechaun right away. Is there anyone in the world who will really spend $80 on a ceramic leprechaun? They are just so pleasing and naughty all in the same:


There was a bit of a fiasco when we all tried to chose a place to eat. Juicy Burger ended up being a horrible decision. We all tried to relinquish the blame for that one:


Tomorrow's post will be about how wrong I have been about where I live. Here is a hint: we do not officially live in an Eichler. Dear God, the truth stings.

Wham-Bam

I did a wham-bam trip to Sacramento and back and have the photos to prove it.

I took off on Thursday evening thinking I would beat the Labor Day rush. Not so much :(. Everyone had the same idea and had motorcycles and camping gear packed in the back, ready to play. It took me an hour and twenty minutes just to get from Palo Alto to the Bay Bridge:


Once there, my kids had a great time at their grandparents:


Blake slept while we toured my sister's new digs. She is gaining more space and invited us to stay with her when we are in town. We will try it out, but she may not extend that offer again!:


I fought long and hard for a couch off of craigslist (13 emails later). Yes, I just bought a craigslist couch, but why not buy two? The woman could only do the exchange on Saturday so I told her I would "swing by" San Francisco on my way home from Sac. I left at 6:37pm and was at her house by 8pm. My kids sat patiently in the car while we carried this behemoth of a couch down three flights of stairs and two banister turns. I missed the very last step near the sidewalk and scraped off some flesh, but it was all worth it. My minivan just topped the Eurovan for flexible interior space.

I took out the middle seat on one side and stacked it on the passenger's seat. Then, I wedged the stroller in front of it. On top of that, sits my Nana and Grandpa's pendant light from the 60's that retracts up and down. It works and looks soooooo fantastic in the Eichler. Pictures to follow of course. Don't forget the estate sale bread box my mom sent me home with:


I told Blake this was the gold treasure we got for going through the Treasure Island tunnel. I have spent all day cleaning the cushions (Ellen scrubbed the entire frame) and can't wait to post pictures of it in all of its glory:


Sandy, Paul, and the kids are in town for the three day weekend and we just had a great BBQ followed by a trip to Target and ice cream cupcakes from the ice cream parlor down the road. What a great day.