California

The family gathered in Santa Cruz last weekend for a celebration of my Mother’s birthday. We’ve been doing a version of this each summer since my grandmother had us all camp out at the dearly-departed Miramar Hotel in Santa Barbara. For this trip, we stayed in a cute old rental house in Seabright. Just a…

Easter at my parent’s home in San Luis Obispo is our annual spring tradition. It’s always great to see Rob’s sister and his four nephews and to spend time with my sister and her kids too. This year, I smuggled in some chocolate kiwis from our trip to New Zealand: My new ASOS maternity dress…

My holiday traditions each year seem to always go like this: Mail 100+ Christmas cards Buy and decorate a tree Have 20+ people over for brunch Have a tea party with some young ladies Zoom around the city for holiday parties Christmas shop on Hayes Street at the last minute Come down with a cold…

Calvin Trillin, one of my favorite authors, wrote vividly about hypothetical moving feasts that sampled from different restaurants all across New York City to make one amazing dinner. He prepared those menus for an imaginary Chairman Mao. Last weekend, Rob and I made it a reality for our friend Josh visiting from London. You might…

Less than an hour from the bustling center of Silicon Valley is a lovely state park with tall redwood trees, ferns and – most shocking of all in this California drought – running streams. Portola Redwoods State Park was the site of this year’s camping weekend for my birthday. It was so nice of 10…

Oh my! We have been so busy the last two weeks. A picnic with the San Francisco Opera was quickly followed by two dinner parties, a volunteer day, a fundraiser gala and a family vacation to Santa Cruz. Let’s start catching up! Every year, the San Francisco Opera puts on Opera in the Park as the…

Every road trip with friends should be full of delicious detours! I like nothing more than living up to my reputation as “delaybot” while discovering local secrets. During last weekend’s Spanish-style winery picnic in Sonoma we stumbled across so many fun gems in Sebastapol and Cotati that we joked about bringing back our own version of the PBS…

Shane came up to visit for the weekend and to celebrate his and Jackie’s birthdays. What better way to enjoy California’s late summer with our favorite Catalan traveling companion than a Spanish style picnic in Sebastapol! Marimar Estate is the (literal) sister winery of Torres, the vineyards we explored outside of Barcelona in the spring. Menu:…

My dear friend Margaret is married off! What a wonderful wedding she had in San Luis Obispo last weekend. After a busy week of last minute trips to Britex for ribbon and Amazon orders for all the tiny details we’d forgotten, I headed to the San Francisco Flower Mart early Friday morning. There’s been a wholesale flower…

I’ve thrown dozens of bridal showers, a handful of weddings and even more baby showers but, by chance, had never hosted a bachelorette party until Margaret’s last weekend! I was nervous to put together something really fun, budget-friendly and very San Francisco for the group of fairly non-party-animal types in our mid 30’s. So Saturday night, we headed out…