It was said in the YouTube comments, but Aurora is a mini-Sia. Maybe a mini-Sia crossed with Robyn, since Aurora is a 19-year-old Norwegian blonde? Anyway, she is so cute and charming in this NPR Tiny Desk concert, asking the audience if it's ok if she sings loudly. What she really sounds like in this song is a new incarnation of First Aid Kit.
‘‘These people don’t buy handbags, they buy belief.’’
“Luxury is something very few people have,’’ Karl said. ‘‘And to buy a handbag is to have a dream of getting nearer. That’s our culture and tons of people — me included — make a lot of money from it. ”
My Outdoor Voices Interview For Racked
Outdoor Voices makes the best cropped top out there, I think. Just look at this top/leggings combo from the Man Repeller x Outdoor Voices collab, plus you get a colorful jump rope and a chocolate bar to go with it! I love their aesthetic, and OV is definitely going places: they just raised over $1 million in funding. Here's my Racked interview with Tyler Haney, the 26-year-old founder of Outdoor Voices!
That's So Portland
This was me, running around the airport in Portland, pointing at various things like an artisanal gin display and saying, "That's so Portland." That's not annoying at all, right.
Look, the iconic PDX carpet!
My shoes were way too ugly for a shoefie.
We would go on to buy socks with this design, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. First things first on this vacation, we drove to a beautiful cabin in the Mount Hood area to meet our friends.
Kind of like Ferngully. So lush. We went up to Mount Hood to see the historic WPA-era Timberline lodge. It's incredible! The murals reminded me of the Coit Tower in SF.
Oregon's most beautiful ping pong table.
After a few days in the wilderness (our friends climbed Mount Hood!), we drove back to Portland for a non-stop eating and boutique-shopping tour.
This marks the spot where I first heard the Portlandia theme song, within five minutes of arriving in the city.
I know it makes sense for a dumpling food truck, but is this really the name you want to go with? This is in the food truck pod downtown. I ordered a Hawaiian-inspired plate instead.
I couldn't get over how many boutiques are in Portland! I majorly fell for Canoe, Woonwinkel, and casual camping store Poler, which are so worth a visit.
A mural at Poler
Joe and I also kept The Athletic Community in business that day by majorly upgrading our sock drawer. We chatted with the cashier and he told us that a section of the Portland Airport carpet was going to be the grand marshal at a parade. That's so Portland!
Day 2 in Portland, we decided to go to brunch, which turned into a four-hour ordeal. Was this Portlandia episode based on Sweedeedee? We ordered a ton of pastries to pass the time.
I also had plenty of time to photograph this giant carrot.
File under, activities that don't involve eating, the test rose garden was gorgeous! We probably went at such a great time to see it.
Rounding out our eating tour, we went to Pok Pok and Bollywood Theater. They're right next to each other, in a very charming neighborhood.
This was a banner day in Portland. If I lived here, I would take Katie to Laurelhurst park every day.
But my greatest hope is that this person finds their sock. Let me know where I should visit next time we get to Portland!
The Life-Changing, Wardrobe-Shrinking Magic of Tidying Up
This is all the tops I have left for summer after the great Marie Kondo-induced purge. That's what I wrote about for Racked, trying to incorporate all of Kondo's life-changing tidying tips into my routine without disturbing Joe's life too much. I'm still folding all my clothes into these tiny envelopes. Joe's clothes I just fold normally. I loved writing that essay and amazingly, The Atlantic linked to it!
But now I'm faced with the fact that I got rid of the clothes that didn't spark joy, and that turned out to be almost all of them. Unfortunately, I'm also following Kondo's advice in The New Yorker: "If I want to lose weight, I do that first, and then go shopping." Which means I can't go shopping until that happens, gah.
Katie O'Chapin Graduates Beginner Dog Class
When we adopted a six-year-old whippet in July and named her Katie O'Chapin (Katie is her given name), my mom the dog trainer asked me when we would get her into dog class. I saw a summer stacked with weddings and tennis matches, so I demurred. "We're a little too busy right now to commit to six weeks of class," I said. My mom was horrified. "You know, I've heard a lot of people say over the years that they're too busy to train their dogs. But I never thought I would hear that from my own flesh and blood," she said.
GUILT TRIP. Mom has never really guilted me about cleaning my house or eating less or visiting more. But not training your dog is a mortal offense to her. So finally things slowed down after the holidays and we enrolled Miss Katie in Petsmart's beginner Saturday dog class.
As dogs go, Katie is completely chill. She sleeps for maybe 20 hours a day. She'll sleep in however late you want to sleep in, and on this, we are kindred spirits. She is the perfect blogging dog. She's currently curled up next to me, sleeping, as I type this.
The only time she gets excited is when we come home, even if we've only been gone for 30 minutes. It's called the zoomies and she tears around our tiny apartment, leaping over the coffee table and flying across the couch. It's very exciting to watch, so we haven't discouraged her. (Hopefully Mom isn't reading this.)
Katie is a little angel but she does have her foibles, though. She will steal anything off the counter. One day, we got a nice loaf of bread from Union Market. We ate half of it, which was probably too much. I came back from the bathroom and said, "Wow, Joe, did you eat the rest of that bread?" He hadn't, but the bread was gone. Katie's dog bed was full of crumbs, however.
A week or so later, I came home and Joe said, "You'll never going to believe this. You know that bag of shredded mozzarella? When I got back from work, the bag was on the ground and all the cheese was gone. Katie must've grabbed it."
"Oh yes! That's exactly what must've happened. It was...Katie," I said. It was the dog. It wasn't me lazily shoving handfuls of shredded cheese into my mouth straight from the bag as I blogged and then tossing the bag on to the ground. Couldn't have been.
So Katie is a great little scapegoat. She's also way more cuddly than anything this skinny has a right to be. And she did so well in dog class! Way better than I thought. I think she liked to engage her mind, she seemed happier too. She can do all the major things (sit, down, stay), well, she can do them in theory. She has to have the right mindset.
My mom didn't cut us any slack in dog class, even though it's her granddog. She wouldn't even pose for this photo. In fact, we often got showed up by a tiny dog named Boo Boo who wore a bowtie and was the star pupil. No favoritism at all. But Katie held her own. And after her perfect attendance in class, she received her Petsmart Beginner Dog Certificate. It's totally social promotion, but Katie O'Chapin is certified! Now if only we can convince her to stop pooping on my $80 Anthro bathmat.
Here's Katie modeling my crazy new silver backpack purse while wearing her orange fleece pjs. I'm thinking she could be an astronaut for Halloween, maybe I could make some kind of helmet. Do you see it?
