memorial day weekend (inspired by Sunset) May 26, 2009

This weekend was just amazing. I can’t remember the last time Andrew and I both had three days off in a row (it definitely wasn’t in 2009) and I got to do a lot of my favorite things — gardening, vintage-dress-wearing, barbecuing, visiting the farmer’s market, going out to lunch, taking a long walk, and playing with Pearl. And on Sunday, the three of us headed out to Silver Falls State Park and went for a beautiful hike, right around the curve that takes you behind the South Falls.

Silver Falls

Andrew + Pearl at Silver Falls

me at Silver Falls

We also got some unexpected inspiration for a last-minute Monday-afternoon baby-playdate-cocktail-party-barbecue with some friends in the neighborhood, which turned out to be awesome. Sunset is my favorite magazine, and I’m always happy to see the colorful new copy in my mailbox (and maybe try a new recipe, or file away another place I want to visit — this time, it was grilled corn and bay shrimp risotto, and Boise, Idaho, where Andrew and I went about nine years ago and haven’t been since).

Sunset - June 2009

But the timing has never been better than the June issue showing up just before the long weekend. Aside from falling madly in love with the cover (and putting “find some wooden chairs and paint them an awesome color” at the top of my backyard to-do list), I loved the luau feature, which updated a 1965 Sunset piece on the same topic with some very cool modern ideas and recipes.

Sunset - luau article

We spotted a recipe for pineapple drops in the mix,

luau article with pineapple drops recipe - Sunset

and wow, those are good.

pineapple drop + dark and stormy

We made them along with dark and stormys (my all-time favorite cocktail)

dark and stormy

with a few different ginger beers to try on the drinks table.

drinks table

Neither of the cocktails are supposed to have mint, but it’s so green and fresh in my herb garden right now that I couldn’t resist.

limes + mint

I made the shishkebobs and Andrew did all the grilling.

shishkebobs

Our friends Mark and Mary brought quinoa salad

quinoa salad

and amazing homemade strawberry shortcake

strawberry shortcake

and Andrew found another Sunset treasure, an asparagus summer salad recipe, and made that too.

asparagus salad in Sunset

My plate was gorgeous.

my plate at the barbecue

I only wish I’d gotten a picture of the shortcake stacked up — it was beautiful, but with babies to wrangle, I just couldn’t pull off that one last photo before it was all gone.

There are a lot of other cool things in this issue (those fuschia chairs in that gorgeous backyard are my personal favorite), but super exciting to me is that Sunset used one of my photos for their California Road Trips insert!

Sunset - California Road Trips

They saw this picture I took at the Rose Bowl flea market a couple of summers ago in my flickr,

vintage dresses at the Rose Bowl

contacted me about using it, and here it is!

Sunset - California Road Trips

I was so excited to see it on the page. I love the Rose Bowl, and it’s such a treat to be part of their travel guide (which I really hope I’ll be using myself one of these summer months). Thank you, Sunset!

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