Summer Staycation, Part I

Spring started late and when summer started to show we were deep in wedding planning. With Portland's short summers, we were afraid we wouldn't get to enjoy much of it this year. We were completely wrong.

We like to stick close to home during the summer months, opting for vacations when the weather isn't so perfect. So on a random mid-weekday we decided to go be tourists in our own city, hopped on our bikes and headed downtown.

We had a couple things in mind, including a possible mid-afternoon cocktail at the top of this building, but we let the day unfold and ended up elsewhere.

Something we did plan on was to hit up two food carts we've been wanting to try. First was The Whole Bowl.

So healthy, so yummy. Wish we worked closer to one of their carts, it's exactly what a healthy lunch should be - filling and cheap. Everything was well executed from the texture to the beans and rice to the ripeness of the avocado. Only disappointment was the canned black olives. Another bonus was The Whole Bowl's cart concept - 1 item done well, an easy to decipher menu board and only 1 item served in only 2 sizes! Kudos to you Whole Bowl.

However, if we had known how filling it was, we might have taken it to go and gone a much unhealthier route and had a Hawaiin Loco Moco a couple of the other carts were selling. Hey, we're on a staycation, nothing healthy should be consumed!

One cart we did hit up that we wished was not only close to where we worked, but parked out front of our house was My Daddy's Sausage. Unlike the helpful, happy and well cared for Whole Bowl cart, this cart's menu was confusing, poorly displayed, had no prices listed and the girl was irritated we interrupted her game of Angry Birds to go fix us one of her Daddy's Laotian sausages. The minute she handed off the sausage we bolted for the riverfront and happily dug into this fantastic sausage.

The pork mixed with lemongrass, green onions and Laotian spices sausage was stellar. Topped with tangy green papaya, spicy mayo and a green chili salsa, it was delicious. We were now ready for a cooling cocktail and started walking back to where we locked our bikes when we spotted this beauty - Ono Shave Ice. Hawaiin Shaved Ice - Yes! Please!

We were looking for something refreshing and sweet and when we saw a father stop off for a simple snowconed shaped sweet for his daughter and when said daughter was handed a plastic flower boutique shaped cup with a mound of shaved ice covered in red syrup as big as her head, we were sold!

We ordered 1 Shaved Ice - Hawaiin Style with 3 flavors (Blue Hawaiin, Mango, and Guava). Hawaiin style includes topping the humungous pile of syruped shaved ice with adzuki beans, mochi bits, sweetened condensed milk and a scoop of ice cream. We opted for no ice cream, but everything else.

This thing was hard to share to say the least. We tried to alter 1 person holding and eating for 1 block and then the other person holding and eating for the next, but we soon just pulled off to the side and dug in.

Ono's shaved ice was so good we decided to forgo a trendy cocktail and instead met friends for happy hour at one of our favorite summer time patios at Bernie's Southern Bistro.

We enjoyed the summer sun and garden setting while sipping on Lynchburg Lemonades and Mojitos, snacking on cornmeal fried okra, deep fried pickles, buttermilk fried chicken salads and sweet potato fries. Ahhhh summertime.

Not yet in a food coma we decided to bike off our fried feast with a beer up the road at Prost, a German beer hall.

We contemplated getting something to eat at either the Mississippi Marketplace food cart pod connected to Prost or just order some German food from the bar, but we decided we wanted to continue snacking, so we hopped back on our bikes and headed for a late night of chips & salsa and some ping pong before heading home, not feeling full at all from a day of staycationing.

Travel Inspiration

We're in the middle of finalizing some details on our wedding. Yes, the planning is finally underway! Once some of the larger details are decided we can finally move onto the fun stuff, like the theme and invitations! We've been looking for inspiration that screams Anne & Mike, possible a theme we can run with. There's so many examples out there and in our search for ideas we came across some great typography city posters we fell in love with, like the prints above by design team The Heads of State.

Continuing on theme of great cities, we found so many great prints, which made us want to go out and book an airline ticket - pronto! Here are some of our favorites. The colors, typography, design and style of these prints made each city that more appealing and we definitely gathered more than a few ideas and lots of inspiration.

Digital Poster Prints by Taylor's Typographical Art Posters

City Prints by Blanca Gomez

We fantasize about a whole wall in our house covered with city prints that we could put little red dots on the corner of once we have visited the places in the poster. These prints by Belize artist Ignacio are a perfect example of what would have on our travel wall.

Steve Forney's tranquil travel prints would also be on our travel wall.

As well as his landmark illustrations

This print series titled "A Toast to...." by JHill Design are graphically gorgeous with fabric inspired cut outs and come in numerous states and countries.

We found romantic art deco travel posters by French illustrator Roger Broders that capture the beauty, romance and appeal of his European cities posters he created for the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranee train lines.

And what collection of travel posters would be complete without a few Kerne Erickson prints? His Americana-style, bold colors, vintage style and unique sense of type inspires us to create something that makes us feel the same way we do when we look at his posters - excitement about hitting the road for some new adventures.

Kerne Erickson's retro prints are said to be inspired by vintage photographs and brochures. Whatever his inspiration his love of beach scenery had us dreaming of a coastal vacation soon.

We have gained so much inspiration from these prints and posters, we hope to be able to capture the same sense of nostalgia and beauty. For now we're finding inspiration from this Ork Poster given to us as a gift, we just need to frame it and get our travel inspiration wall started.