A Fig in Sweden Portland

a colorful front

When my friend Alisa told me she had booked a flight to Portland and asked what she could bring from colorful Colorado, I replied, "Just colorful you."

And, although she arrived with the Pacific Northwest rain, for four days things were definitely a lot sunnier around here. I'm not sure what I enjoyed more: having my best friend here to do all the things girlfriends do (have I mentioned how much I needed that?!) or seeing how close she and Sophie became.

We're all looking forward to the next colorful front to make its way over from the Rockies.

(Editor's note: Portland's top restaurant, Metrovino, lived up to the hype. Wow. And, move over French martini, there's a new cocktail in town: The Parachute. Double wow.)

laughing planet. smiling parents.

I think it had something to do with hearing The Wiggles sing "Hot Potato" for the 56th time in a row. Because when Lewis got home on Friday night, I gave him a look of sheer desperation and *begged* that we go eat out somewhere.

I did a search for family-friendly restaurants and saw that Laughing Planet Cafe was in our neighborhood and got good reviews for its food. Jackpot. Until we pulled up and I saw that it was in a strip mall. I told Lewis, "If it looks like it sucks, we'll go somewhere else*." (*Lucky Lab Brewery, which is our sure thing.) After that first impression, every other impression was great — booth seats; friendly staff; dinosaurs on every table!; yummy, inexpensive, quick food; sustainably produced ingredients; and great beer on tap. If you are a parent in Portland, you should really check it out. (You will be in good company... the clientele was 95% families.)

I sat down, took one sip of my beer, and my mood did a 180. If that's not fine dining, I don't know what is.

P.S. To the parents who gave us weird looks for our daughter's fashionista-ness: Yes, we let Sophie wear her new ruby slippers to dinner. Because she loves them, and she wanted to. If you don't understand, listen to this song 56 times in a row and then see if you care what shoes your daughter picks up on the way out the door.

why we need to find a babysitter soon

Photos for Portland Monthly by David Lanthan Reamer, whose fiancée happens to work with Lewis.

i want this ride!

I think Lewis and Sophie would look great pedaling around Portland in this sweet ride. (I'll take the powder blue one for me.) And with this blog post, I have now entered to win one. Sweet!

it's only temporary

As a contrast to my last post, I thought I would show you the less-glamorous side of our life in Portland: our apartment. Since we will only be living here for 6 months, we're keeping the walls boring and hole-free. And since we have a full house of furniture coming from Sweden, we didn't want to buy anything we already have.

So, instead of a dining table, we have a plastic folding banquet table ("We can always use that," says my frugal husband) and folding chairs from Target...

I'm using a coffee bean container to hold our utensils...

I'm making toys out of cereal boxes. (Thanks for the ideas and free templates, Joel.)

We're all sleeping on the floor...

And we're eating off of 4 melamine plates.

Now, we did buy a few nice things: a red IKEA EKTORP chaise lounge sofa and a dark brown IKEA HEMNES TV bench. We figured the TV bench could take on a new life as a shoe bench once we moved into a house. But I actually really like it for the TV, which is also new. And big. Oh, and we bought a Blu-ray player that connects to the Internet and plays YouTube videos (hello, free Charlie and Lola videos!) and streams Netflix.

Sometimes I wish we had one more pot, and a proper mixing bowl. Until that day comes, I will continue to live the high life vicariously through my Netflix-supplied Mad Men episodes.

please don't punch me

Carrie Brownstein, one of the writers behind Portlandia, recently told the Willamette Week, "Portlanders are smug...The smugness comes from our countless progressive victories. We win a lot here—just living in Portland sometimes feels like winning...There should be days when people from Gresham, Hillsboro and Vancouver get to come into Portland and punch us."

I've only been a Portlander for something like 40 days. So there is a LOT I don't know about living here. But, one thing I do know is that November in Portland is pretty rad.

P.S. The building with the bright orange trees is Sophie's preschool. She starts as soon as she's potty-trained.

 

portland bag

Bag fetish + newfound love of Portland = must have the Portland Bag by lizbags!