Manic Monday

April 27, 2015April 28, 2015 / Erin May / Leave a comment

For today’s Manic Monday, I’d like to tell you about a wonderful Portland-based walking tour and the local artisanal and craftsman products featured in this tour.

First, a disclaimer: Culture Craft is set to formally launch in May, and is the brain-child of the wonderfully talented and wickedly funny Shauna Noah, who I am lucky to count as among my good friends. This connected lady has pulled together some of the most interesting emerging artisans located in the inner southeast area of Portland, and I got to be part of her test run this last weekend. I also helped her in designing her logo.

Here’s a little glimpse at the fun we got up to:

Culture Craft PDX Walking Tour - Hey Hey Erin May

Culture Craft’s website isn’t launched quite yet, so for more information, I’d encourage you to visit the Facebook Page. And here are links to each stop we were able to visit in our tour:

BaseCamp Brewing.
- Favorite thing: The s’more stout.
- What I learned: the fiberoptic cables on the ceiling make up the constellations!
Jacobsen Salt:
- Favorite thing: The smoked salt.
- What I learned: making salt is more involved than you would think, and produces a lot of calcium!
Ancient Heritage Dairy:
- Unfortunately not open during this first run tour, but I am extremely enthusiastic to learn more about them.
EastSide Distilling:
- Favorite thing: The Burnside Bourbon-what else??
- What I learned: the (very delicious) marionberry whiskey will feature prominently at this year’s Rose Festival.
Potato Champion Food Cart:
- Favorite thing: Poutine!
- What I learned: a sample size of poutine but whets the appetite for more.
Woodblock Chocolate:
- Favorite thing: this is a tough one, it was all so good! I guess the toasted sesame, it was surprising and satisfying.
- What I learned: basically, what makes for real chocolate. I had no idea how chocolate was made, and what it could mean to tie the process so completely together with the agriculture. Informative and tasty.

All in all, I would highly recommend this tour and visiting these places on their own! All nice people, doing beautiful and thoughtful work.

A December to Remember

December 1, 2014December 1, 2014 / Erin May / Leave a comment

How did the holiday season sneak up on me so fast? It still feels like yesterday we were sweating it in August and focused on pulling off a wedding! (The wedding and the sweating were probably correlative).

Here I am, almost 4 months later, and ready to fully embrace the Holiday Spirit. Here’s a little about what’s been going on the last few months:

I got this bike toward the end of summer, and have absolutely loved biking to work. I’d say I bike about half of the time, given the weather we’ve been having lately!

Osa has been working on being more photogenic, to much success. I help by taking possibly hundreds of pictures, and clogging up Instagram with my dog. #Osabear

I’ve had a few recent chalk art commissions, and was especially happy with this woodland/Portland scene featuring a menu for a truly wonderful and laid-back bride.

The weather has turned cold and rainy, so of course that means it’s cyclocross season! We’ve spent a good number of weekends in the cold and rain racing, cheering, and drinking beer for this cause.

Meet my mom’s new horse, Bella! She’s a sweet 10 year old paint, and Mom is completely over the moon.

My brother and his wife moved to California! Jesse was offered a great new job, and I’m so excited for them to start this new adventure! Though I’ll also miss them like crazy.

In anticipation for the holidays, I’ve been reorganizing and cleaning my house. I’m particularly fond of my new color-coordinated book shelf.

Local Color Series: NE Beech

May 28, 2014 / Erin May / Leave a comment

Last weekend, there was a revitalizing the neighborhood effort around my house, and this was one of the projects!

13th and beech-01

Nice, right?

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Don’t drink the water.

May 23, 2014 / Erin May / Leave a comment

Kyle and I have some big plans for this weekend, as you can see 🙂 Enjoy the long weekend, friends!

(and these plans hopefully won’t be put off by the water issue happening in Portland right now…uh oh)

Local Color Series: 14th and Prescott

February 18, 2014 / Erin May / 1 Comment

So this is a new idea I’ve been noodling on.

In an effort to create quick content that makes me feel creative and engaged with this blog, I’m starting a new color palette project I’m calling the “Local Color Series”.

When I’m out and about, I take a lot of pictures of this beautiful city I live in. Some are of store fronts, some are of neighborhoods- but I never really do anything with these pictures. Until now, when I’m going to start documenting the colors I like in the locales I visit.

14th and Prescott-01