Viewing entries tagged
travel
L&G Nation! HELP us win a trip around the world by VOTING OUR VIDEO we made for Travelocity's Great Gnome Nabbing! You can help us travel to places where we'll study and learn cool crafts around the world and share them with everyone!
Everyone can get ONE VOTE per DEVICE, per DAY.... so VOTE as often as you can and help spread the word!
If we win, we'll send our love, postcards, and even rad souvenirs! \(^0^)/
We will forever be greatful with all your support!!
XOXO,
Jean & Dylan
Finally feel like we're getting around to do something fun & creative in the studio!
We'll be going up to Vancouver to be part of the Interior Design Show West (Sept 29th-Oct 3) along with JOIN. This will be L&G's first time showing some of our furniture pieces, but also it will be the first time for all of us to show in Vancouver! Very exciting...
I didn't realize how much I missed hand-making models with color pencils, chipboard, balsa wood, and all that. Totally felt like a kid again.
More to come, but here's a lil' sneak peak...
Some sample look books
A prototype of our new concept...can you guess what will be?
After 5 long grueling days of smiling, staring, smirking, standing, and more smiling at the NYIGF, I finally got some personal downtime right after the show ended.
and totally had myself the most perfect day....
First, I stopped at the closest Dean & Deluca and paid for an over priced iced latte and one of this amazing carrot cake doughnuts from doughnut planet and "wrote" a card to Dylan with one of these Utility Cards by Grain. Each card is filled with words all of sorts for every occasion possible. It's more than brilliant!
It took me a while but composed my own phrase "WAHZZ....UP....MY....BOY....FRIEND....I....MISS....YOU....WAY....TOO....MUCH....YEA..."
Then I walked through Highline checking out the new addition, which is even more amazing than before!
I sat one of the the lounge benches and ate one of these deliciously handmade peach elderberry popsicle.
Then I actually got to soak up some sun for at least couple of hours... and as shameful as this sounds (but I'm not longer ashamed) I starting hearing Sheryl Crow's "soak up the sun" in my head out of nowhere!
Normally I'd freak out if that song were to pop in my head at any other moments, but instead I kept my cool...and just embraced it.
I got to read a bit, stared at the clouds, did some people watching, and all the while still humming the song....it was so refreshing.
Then what made it EVEN more perfect is that I met up with Chika & Jesse and got to enjoy THE most perfect dish at Joseph Leonard with all the simple ingredients I love the most....
Just look at that perfect egg sitting perfectly on top of a cute little piece of brioche..next to a perfectly healthy bed of frisee salad topped with perfectly crisped bacon bits....
Can't say that I get to expereince a lot of days like this anymore, but whenever it happens...I just totally love every moment of it...even if Sheryl Crow comes into the picture.Can't say that I get to expereince a lot of days like this anymore, but whenever it happens...I just totally love every moment of it...even if Sheryl Crow comes into the picture.
Nothing gets me more than seeing tiny miniature things....like this video filmed in real life but they made it like a living diorama!
This totally reminds me of the time when Dylan & I went to the Victoria Island's Miniature World museum after Chika totally raved about it. We were probably the only people there but it was probably one of the the most unexpectedly enchanting place I've been. I think I spent more time in there than in the Louvre! Hard to believe... but true... 
Just the music tickles my heart! :)
We feel so incredibly lucky to have been safe at Depot when the earthquake hit Japan. As we felt the room shake and shake and shake beneath us that afternoon, we had no idea the toll the quake(s) were taking on other parts of the country. We were shocked, dismayed, and overcome with an eerie feeling as we watched the news later that night to find out about the incomprehensible damage just slightly north of us.
This unease persisted as we continued our trip. As we headed south to Kyoto to attempt to reconvene our travels, we couldn't help but feel like we were traveling in the wrong direction - that we should be going to North to help somehow. Unfortunately, the fears of the nuclear risks kept us away as we managed to enjoy ourselves in the south all the while feeling a bit guilty.
We vowed to do what we could to help once we returned home, so here's a start: We're producing 5 special piggy banks for our own charity raffle. These cute fellers have a vibrant red dipped nose and are individually numbered 1-5. We're hoping to raise $2000 or more for donation directly to the Japanese Red Cross for the earthquake relief. Tickets are only $7, so we hope you and your friends, and your friend's friends will join in for a chance (or five) to win one of our special piggies. Buy now through 4/11. Thank you for your support and
xoxo Jean & Dylan
Saw this link of EVERY SINGLE earthquake & aftershocks that started on March 11th and up to now. It's broken down by date, the exact time, the level and the range of each of them....
It's more than chilling to watch since there are 850+ earthquake & aftershocks up to date.
We were feeling many of those small-mid aftershocks when we were there, and it's insane to see it broken down like this and see how there were so many more than what I even remember feeling during those earlier days!! Scary!! (>.<)
I really hope things will get better soon!! We're praying for all our friends, families, and everyone there!!
Day: 6 A day at Mami & Seiya's bike & lifestyle shop, Depot in 市川 Ichikawa.
SIGHT:
Charming handmade ceramic pieces of all sorts at the shop by their friend, Koichi-san & Waka-san.
TASTE:
World's most AMAZING ramen we've ever had...handmade noodles, softboiled eggs, and light soy sauce broth at 菜ラーメン Sai Ramen....droool....
FIND:
The mess that we saw at our friend's home just couple hours after the most devastating earthquake of all times in Japan. A 7.5+ level that shook for 2-3 minutes long. Luckily no major damage where we were...but not so much the case in Northern Japan...
We're filling up our camera and memory banks of incredible experiences here in Japan! So much to blog, such limited internet access!
A basket of wooden lids at a used restaurant supply store (SO COOL!)
"Stations are city gateways. Never an ashtray." and other subway warnings.
Day 5: A little nostalgic
SIGHT:
This photo wouldn't be as awesome if the women sleeping wasn't sitting on the 70's upholstery on the train...
TASTE:
Freshly made rice crackers in the historic neighborhood of Tokyo in 浅草 Asakusa.
FIND:
One of my favorite item...Japanese 手ぬぐい Tenugui. They're simple cotton hand towels with a versatile purpose and can be used for wrapping, cleaning, or simply for decorating.
Day 4: Full day of visual stimulation
SIGHT:
Seiya & Mami's took us to visit their kids, Aika & Yume's, elementary school to talk about the difference of school & lifestyle between the States & Japan.
TASTE:
Dinner at the Minatos and hand 手巻き寿司 Temakizushi with super delicious & fresh fish of all sorts.
FIND:
A used restaurant supply store filled with fun things of all sorts that made us want to open a restaurant just for the fun of it.
Day 3: Roaming around
SIGHT:
Playground with a globe marry go round.
TASTE:
Mami made us a well-rounded breakfast with the best tasting egg.
FIND:
Got stuck looking at tiny microscopic miniature people of all sorts in the model making department of 東急ハンズ Tokyu Hands....a department store of 7 floors filled with materials, supplies, and everyday items of anything you'll ever need and everything you CAN'T think to need but feel compelled to get....Pretty much, it's like heaven and hell at the same time.
Day 2: Woke up and saw this...
SIGHT: 
Snow in March?!
TASTE:
Lunch & a lovely dessert set at a close by Japanese-Italian restaurant in 市川 Ichikawa where they made their own desserts.
FIND:
Got couple of vintage 暮らしの手帖 Kurashi No Techo lifestyle magazine at Seiya & Mami's friends vintage book shop, Smoke Books. They had a whole shelf of them from the 70's & 80's filled with the best photos of everyday delights!
This is start of the our trip with the series of 3 photos highlighting our daily discoveries where each photo represents an interesting sighting, some yummy food we tasted, and things we found.
DAY 1: right after we arrived...
SIGHT: 
At 林檎の木 Ringo No Ki Gallery in 千葉 Chiba checking out our friend Atsushi who makes Gunung bike & lifestyle accessories.
TASTE:
Got to taste these beautiful seasonal 桜もちSakura Mochi wrapped in shiso leaves as the first thing we ate after landing.
FIND:
Handmade steel tape dispensers by a local artisan in 市川 Ichikawa.
So we got some DOUBLE exciting news for L&G and for us!
We currently have some L&G goodies & hand selected vintage items at our friends' shop in Japan called Depot Cycle & Recycle. It's a charming family run bike & lifestyle shop in Ichikawa owned by THE MOST adorable, loving, & happy people we know!!
For the past month, We've been sending some fun things from L&G, R&L goods, and Piano Nobile goodies for their house & lifestyle area of the shop. They just sent me the photo of what it looks like and I'm already in love with all the things, the colors, and just the charming aesthetic of their shop!! I Especially love all these beautifully made ceramic ware.
Here is a photo of the lovely Minato Family. Seiya & Mami & their 3 adorable kids, Aika, Yume and Yuni!! ( I'd like to adopt all of them....yes please...) This is pretty much what they look like ALL the time....always happy and adorable....no joke.
The Minato family visited us in Seattle last summer at our duplex and between Dylan, Chika, Jared and I, we had such a blast with them hanging out around Seattle, Ballard and Guemes Island to show them the great NW.
It was especially fun experiencing everything through their eyes since pretty much wherever they go...birds would sing, people would smile, flowers would bloom, babies would laugh, and even total strangers would go up and talked to them and be compelled to be their BFFs...
It sounds like I'm making it up...but I am not exaggerating.
So in about a week, Dylan & I are actually going to Japan to visit them!!
We'll actually get to really see and experience what its really like to live like one of the happy Minatos!
We're especially excited to see Seiya & Mami shop in person and see L & G piggy banks, servers, and doily rugs!
I made couple of Mini-Mega Doilies (One 2.5 ft diameter and the other is 2ft diameter) for them since their space is limited, but I also think they might actually do well at that size in Japan since it can also be used seating pads for the floor or on a chair....I hope they do well!
At that size... it's actually pretty cute if I may say so myself! :)
I also made a little sewn look book for them of our work.
There's something so satisfying about the combination of thread & paper...
Here's what the inside looks like...
I can't explain how excited to see them & also visit Japan!! I'm getting butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it!
It's been a LONG time (7 years!) for me since I was last in Japan studying abroad there, and Dylan on the other hand has never been!
We've been talking about it for couple of years now, and it's also been a long time since the two of us have taken a long personal vacation that's not family or work related!
So it's about time!
....now on with planning the trip......Oh boy!! Where do we even begin or stop!?!
When I heard from Abby (of Abbytrysagain) who's co-organizing with Chelsea (of Frolic!) this amazing looking "Little Winter Market" I was more than excited and impressed. Especially when you put two super talented gals together in making it all happen...you know that even with them calling it little, the result is going be mind blowing! This "Little" market is beyond little when you see the quality of work from the 20+ artist/craftpeople who will be participating!
Date:
November 6th 11am-6pm
November 7th 11am-5pm
Location:
The Cleaners at The Ace Hotel SW 10th and Stark, Portland, OR
I can't wait! We're actually gonna take a little road trip there to hang out in Portland, eat good food and check out this lovely looking market ......
I can already tell that I'll be drooling over everything...food, things, people, bikes...you name it.
There's no stopping me.
Alright, this is totally late...and we apologize, but here's a quick little photo montage of JOIN's premiere New York Gift Fair two weeks ago. We had a great time, the booth looked cowabunga, and there was great interest in JOIN and L&G's goods, so high five for all!
We're toting up to head on back to Seattle at last... Bye bye NY...for now. Before we jet-set, here's the brief run down of the show:
The good-looking JOIN crew in front of the booth, followed by some action shots throughout the fair:
With Seattle's moody PMS weather these days, it's making me wanna take off on a road trip and go somewhere where you see bright blue skies and the sun...even if I have to go Texas for it....
Now that we're on the topic of Texas (which never happens)..... I'd just have to share this great-looking trailer camp site in Marfa, TX, called El Cosmico. The owners refurbished all these vintage trailers to its original condition with few updated details.
Staying in a mobile home has never looked this good.
Great mid-century style interiors where it still seems authentic to what it used to be.
I'd love to stay in these adorable tepee as well!
That bed is calling for me....
I'd love to stay in every one of them if I could...
But apparently there IS something similar in Washington!
Our friend told us about a similar place called Sou'Wester Lodge in Seaview, WA (I've never heard of this place!) ..although not nearly as polished or glamorous as El Cosmico, this place seems to have more of a charming-quirky-bohemian-hippy-vibe to it.
The owners started collecting vintage mobile homes and decided to turn it into a lodge (read their story)....or as they like to call it a B&(MYOD)B as in ‘Bed and Make Your Own Damn Breakfast!!’
Ho ho ho..you gotta love them hippies and their tirades! 
What a great mash of all the awesomeness from all the different eras...you got the 50s wood paneled walls, 60's floral curtains, 70's landscape curtain, 80's pastel couch & chair, and 90's paisley patterned carpet....all harmoniously integrated into one room...just incredible.
Besides collecting mobile homes, they also collects these creepy Cabbage Patch Dolls.....Luckily this collection isn't in any of the trailers or rooms...but you might want to check under the bed...
Photos by Lyndsay Taryn
I'm totally looking forward to our action packed 4th of July weekend!!
On Saturday the 3rd, 
We're planning to go on a bike ride from Ballard-Woodinville and back for the first time....it'll be a total of 48 mi. We've made couple of attempts before but always start too late and have yet made it all the way to the wineries. So this time we're gonna give a full day and actually accomplish our goal!!
It's should be a great bike ride since the Burke-Gillman trail follows Lake Washington for the most part with fantastic scenery of the lake, trees, and mountains.
I'm hoping we can see something like this along the way and have a picnic...
Then go do some wine tasting at this modern winery designed by Mithun...
This shall be the first & longest ride we'll do...so let's hope we make it there and back and still be able to get off our bike and walk!!
On Sunday on the 4th...
Our friend is hosting this fun hand-built go-kart race event on Vashon Island for the first time:
It's a car race, potluck, bbq, and a nice excuse to hang out on a island farm. If anything it'll be pure entertainment to see all the cars people built and watch how they run!
Time: 1pm
Location: Pacific Crest Farm, 23720 Dockton Rd, Vashon, WA, 98070
It's open and free to everyone & anyone!
Then we'll end the day with some great fireworks in Fremont....that never gets old...
Not a bad of an itinerary for the weekend, eh?
Happy Fourth Everyone!!
Was just going through some photos and found this one that I took when I was last in Taiwan, which I'm especially fond of...
it reminds me that I really need to get my butt over to the beach and start enjoying the summer!
With summer theoretically behind us (the rain is back with a vengeance), it's time to catch up on all the blog posts we meant to do but instead ended up avoiding the computer screen for one reason or another.
We'd been meaning to go berry picking for years and somehow never got a around to actually going. At long last on a magically fine weathered Sunday afternoon last month we finally decided to pack it up, head to the country and pick us some berry goodness. Cue the dreamy sound bite: doodelet, doodelet, doodelet (yes, I'm waiving my hands a la Wayne's World).
Let me start by noting that as alluded to above that our berry picking prowess has diminished over the years.
First "mistake" was that we somehow talked ourselves into thinking that it was BYO bucket, so Jean being the crafty genius she is fashioned these stylish berry picking baskets using some old locker baskets and cotton rope. The result was easy to tote, high capacity (more on this later) baskets that put any gallon plastic bucket to shame.
We arrived at Bybee Nims Blueberry farm, an exclusively blueberry farm at the foot of Mt Si in North Bend, WA about 60 mins East of Seattle. The scenery at the farm was amazing with the mountain jutting into the sky behind the shimmering blueberry fields.
We got right to picking and taste testing. The berries had this incredible honey flavor that you never get from store bought. We picked and picked and picked...
All the while not realizing (second "mistake") the capacity of our homemade baskets. We set our goal to fill them and aggressively, successfully met it. 
3 hours later, we were riding off into the sunset back to Ballard with the trunk filled with 30 lbs of delicious blueberries.....and $50 less in our wallet. Ouch! What the hell were we going to do with them all??
Well...if you REALLY want to know. We were literally eating them fist full at a time. I gave couple of pounds to all our friends. I'd drop a few on the floor and would just throw since we had such abundance of them! That's like what rich people do, right?
I also decided to try this Blueberry muffin recipe from Tricia! Super yummy! I especially enjoyed the taste of the hidden sugar lemon topping!
Then from the muffins, I decided to bake a blueberry pie. It's been at least 9 years since I made a pie from scratch!! I used to make them all the time in high school when I took a catering class. Oh....wait, I take that back...I guess I did make pie this year....does Frito Pie count? oh yeah...duh, of course!! Why did I even ask!! 
I used this recipe from Martha. It's just a simple blueberry pie recipe. I forgot how much fun it was to make.....I like rolling out the crust part. I was totally excited to use my marble "Gourmet Rolling Pin!" seriously though...a pie is not good unless the word "gourmet" is part of it. 
So...I guess that means my pie is officially a "Gourmet Blueberry Pie!" It totally does sound 10 times better than just a blueberry pie! 
.....Blueberry pie....Pheh! That just sounds like a pie offered at some truck stop that's been sitting in spinning pie case for days....probably baked in factory that uses a processed mixture with at least 2 pounds of sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, swine flu infested hormones, and 0.1% real blueberries...Who can eat that!? No thank you!
I'll take a Gourmet Blueberry Pie baked by me, please.....Mmmmm, much better.....
