Sail cloth

Tocco and I (and Brian DeM!) have been talking about sail cloth today. You can really make some amazing things with it.

For example, I want to make an clean and bright overhead umbrella for a corner of the backyard:

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Tocco wants to add more privacy to the fences along the side of the house:

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And Brian wants a bag that's at least a little bit as awesome as he is:

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Good stuff. I especially love the huge triangles in the sky, like a giant sail overhead. I feel like it would be pretty dreamy in the yard. And it only makes sense since we live near so much water, to add more sail cloth pretty much everywhere.

Seascape

I really love this photo Tocco took today: "The daily ferry commute to work, crossing the bay, a slalom course through one of the largest ship parking lots I've ever seen. I don't even know if I captured all of them. It feels like they are getting more and more each day." 

Danger danger

Just came across this collection of outlet photos from when we first moved in. Goodness! They look so torched and scorchy, I'm surprised the house didn't burn down... 

Art

I found this photo print today at 20x200. It looks so much like our backyard!! We should start ca$hing in. zOMG

Upon further inspection I find the artist, Liz Kuball's, statement charming - and she's from DC! Kindreds.

"When you move out to California from back east, you come for a reason: You're leaving behind a bad relationship, escaping your hometown or thinking you'll be a star. And what you find when you get here is that things aren't what you thought they'd be. There's some of what you expected—sunshine and palm trees and long, wide beaches. But there's more: houses with cacti and succulents in place of the green lawns you grew up with; women in bikinis climbing ladders; trees groomed in an archway, the expected path between them blocked by a gateless chain-link fence. You answer an ad on craigslist for a used car and find yourself in a boxed-in car lot in Van Nuys and go for pie at Du-par's afterward, because pie makes sense when you're on Ventura Boulevard and it's 95 degrees and the car wasn't what the ad said it would be. And you'd think that, after all this, you'd become disillusioned and go back home; some do, of course, but many more of us stay and, instead of growing bitter, we hang on—hang on to a world that, to us, is even more fantastic than the one we thought we'd find, because it's real in its absurdity and because we have stories to tell."

Happy Weekend

Daydreaming back to last month's vacation... take me back

Offsite

I am incredibly lucky to work with some really amazing people. And super lucky to have been invited on a offsite with our Marketing team. It was so. much. fun. I'm not technically on the team, but have done a bunch of work with some of the members and am always happy to join their tribe anywhere anyhow, so I was psyched they included me. We spent all morning at 1AM, a space in SF designed to create a community for street artists, a gallery to showcase their work (and spray paint for sale) as well as a forum for promoting and educating the public about street art - por ejemplo: Did you know the first tagger ever recorded was called Corn Bread? Yes, Corn Bread. 

A few photos of the space... 

We went on neighborhood graffiti tour...

More pics....

Practiced writing our names as tags and then added them to the Data Nerd board...

Practiced with all the colors and nozzles for different spray paint effects, and then filled in the murals our hosts started (and finished) for us... 

They turned out so cool. Can't wait until they're delivered to the office...

Then we went to Mission Bowling Club, where we had all the lanes, all the booze, all the food, and all the silliness you can imagine... 

Not bad for a Tuesday. Thanks everyone! xo

Crazy week

So here's to good vibes all weekend. For us that means lots of the below and this and hopefully good news. And you?

Seals!

We spent the weekend at four different beaches which was pretty amazing and kind of insane that that's even possible. My favorite spot was definitely Half Moon Bay (duh, I'm in love with HMB). We left early and beat all the traffic the whole way, bonus bonus. We caught the light along the way so beautifully I've made it my mission next weekend for Tocco to drop me off at the start of my favorite street in town so I can take all the photos I want, uninterrupted, and not from a vehicle going 50. He'll get a coffee, and then meet back up at the end of the road, perfect. This will make me obscenely happy. Anyway, we got to town super early, had a nice laid back breakfast with the locals at our favorite spot outside and then found a beach we've never visited. Front row parking. We set up and went paddle boarding and it was so, so, so! nice. The sand was golden, the water was perfectly glassy and we nearly had the place to ourselves. There were about a dozen boats anchored in the water to paddle over to and check out the sails, ropes, portholes and general shippiness of. But the best part were the two big fatty harbor seals, white with black spots, like snow leopards, with big black eyes, who were swimming all around us. They kept coming around to check out our bright yellow board, snorting water out of their noses, and spinning up, down, and around us in the water. At one point there was one seal directly in front of me and other at my back sooo close and I did get a little terrified. I'm not used to being out on the water with actual sealife that's not seaweed or minnows. They're so big and at home in the water and it's a little nutty when you're standing on top of the water on a wobbly board. But it was the kind of scary that's fun and thrilling so I spent the rest of my time in the water trying to anticipate where they'd pop up again so I could surf over for a closer look. Next weekend we're going to do it all over again. :)