Junk Festival

One of the most coolest places I went to in Portland this summer would have to be the Plucky Maidens Junk Fest located in the McMenamins Edgefield location in Troutdale, OR.  I love love love that there were many unique and cool items such as window frames, bottles, and various antique/old pieces.  One of my current obsessions are to find and collect old ball jars, the ones that are made with a blue hue like the one above.  I think these jars make a great piece for decor around your living space.  Price wise, it's really a hit or miss, many of the smaller items were actually not too expensive, the bigger pieces can get very pricey.  Most of the bottles were between $7-$10.  There were window frames with the pane still intact selling for $8 and there were items like old suitcases which go up to $70.  Plus there was a local Portlander which won the second season of HGTV's Design Star that showed up to this event,  it was Emilie Henderson.  I should've taken a picture with her.  Dang.

Some of the old signs were pretty cool.

 Love bicycles, this one was pretty expensive.

 More jars.

 So many letter signs that I wanted to buy.

I love typewriters, I just don't have any space for them in my house.

Part 2 coming soon.

Dim Sum for Breakfast

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I had a rare weekday chance to go eat dim sum for breakfast. We met up with my sister and mother to go eat at this fairly new place called HK Cafe. You know a dim sum place is good when the restaurant is packed with people, and not just any people, these were old chinese folks and on a weekday. Usually dim sum places are only packed on a weekend.  After the initial first bites of the usual dishes I usually eat, the shomai above and the ha gau below, I knew this place was awesome.  I recommend this place if you haven't tried it. It's very comparable to the dim sum in Wong's King.

The durian filled cream puff was pretty good. Don't try it if you don't like durian.

Summer Sounds

A while ago, I had the opportunity to attend a family Sunday bbq.  This type of gathering was different from any other bbq because growing up my family always gathered with other close families almost every weekend and had a good time with each other accompanied with food and singing.  Basically, I miss this feeling of a simpler time from my childhood where there was very good traditional Indonesian food, fruit drinks and just an awesome time with old timers poking jokes at each other and laughing my guts out while listening to them.  I really miss the food a lot, above is a prime example of what I ate very often growing up, traditional marinated sate (chicken skewer).  Below you might notice that I take many pictures of kids because they remind me of what I experienced when going to these gatherings when I was younger. What a great day to end the week.

 

 Love the hat.

 I was playing hide and seek with these two kids through the screen window.

I love the expression he has as he runs around the yard.

 In action.

 Good old singing

Random & Saturday

I love it when there are Saturday where we don't have any plans and don't know what to do. So we decided to drive around Portland to random places.  On this particular summer Saturday, we ended up in the Williams area in North Portland.  We took our time and hung out at Ristretto Roasters in the Lincoln building.  Keila randomly wanted to be a turtle.

Next to Ristretto Roasters is a home goods/floral store called Ink&Peat which is another store that I always end up going to because they have so many cool items that I want to buy. Not the floral stuff though, more like their display tables, letters, signs, etc...

 Cool light fixture at Ink&Peat

Mississippi Field Guide

Here are some of my favorite stores that I usually always check out when I'm in the Mississippi Avenue area. I really like unique decor pieces for my house so I usually like to go to many home/decor stores. This store with the live birds above is called Flutter, they are a specialty home goods carrying very random pieces like books, posters, cards, letter blocks, carpet, mirrors, frames, etc.. you get the point.  I like them because they don't carry normal stuff, they have unique items you can't find anywhere else in Portland. The wombat card and the chandelier are also from Flutter.

Manifesto is another cool store that I usually go to, they are one of many collection of worthy independent  shoe store to visit in Portland if you don't like big retail chains. They carry women's and men's shoes, hats, bags, and accessories.  I always want to buy boots when I come here.

Last but not least is Porch Light, a very cool home goods/furnishing/vintage store. They are currently my all time favorite store of any kind to go to in Portland. If you are into cool home pieces or thinking about giving more character to your home, Porch Light is the best place to find items to do so. Some of their items that I always like to look at are old bicycles, window frames and shutters, vintage books, old boxes, ball jars (the blue ones), chairs, crates, tables.  I would live in their store if  possible. That's how much I like the store.

Many cool items like vintage maps.

They also have vintage cameras, you have to be quick though because they sell very well.

Mississippi Flea

Here we are at the first ever Mississippi flea market. I had this picture in my head that the flea market would be awesome because Mississippi is such an awesome area, but in reality it wasn't like what I imagined.  My first impression was, did everyone just came from Urban Outfitters?  Seriously, all the people in this flea were all hipsters.  Anyways, these are my thoughts on the market, first it took only about 5 minutes to go through all the vendors, second, the reason we stayed about 20 minutes in the market was because we were waiting for tacos. At least they were good. I'm not here to bash on the market and it wasn't a total failure either. I will give props though to whoever started this because I see the potential for this flea to grow and really be a stable event in years to come.  There were some items that were pretty cool like the typewriter below.

The tacos were pretty good. Very fresh.

Nice.

Most of the items are good alternative and more affordable pieces compared to Urban Outfitters.