Portland Trails Exploration

Tis the season...for Birthday Parties

Little Seoul-Portland

At one of my favorite restaurants for eating in or taking out. Korean is the new Thai (at least for me). I was obsessed with Thai food for the past few years, but once I tried Little Seoul, all I can think about when asked where I want to go out to eat is the udon noodles and how effing tasty they are here. I don't even remember what dish it is specifically that I get, but the sauce that they use, paired with the udon noodles and fried tofu is utter perfection in my mind. Nothing gets better than this. Not even sesame tofu at my old Thai food haunts.

Sometimes I realize that it's a season, like summer, only to realize that it's already passed. I feel like I am forever late to whatever it is that is going on, even if it's the turning of the seasons or of the hours ticking by. I can't believe that fall is already leaving and that winter has already graced us twice with overly large snow storms for such an early point in the year. I'm still ready for pumpkin seeds to be roasted in the oven and for Halloween costumes to be worn, even though that was to be done a month ago. I can't express how much fun that I have been having over the past few months, because I have been able and fortunate enough to be surrounding myself with so many people that love me and support me. There are times that I would like to just run away from Maine and to try new places and people, but then I always come to the conclusion that there will never be friends like my friends that are here and that even though new places are so fun for a while, nothing is ever as great as home is. Home is where my friends and family are and that is where I must be in order to be happiest in my life. I love you all. I even love you Maine when you only have sunshine for what seems like three hours out of every day. The countdown is on to when you will be having longer and longer days, instead of shorter and shorter. Lets do this.

Apple Picking for the First Time

This year was the first time that I had ever been apple picking. At least, that I can remember and that my mom could remember. She said she had never taken me and I could not recall a single instance in my past that I had gone. It was amazing! I picked so many apples!

Then we brought them back to my friends apartment and made caramel apples! The caramel actually became too hard for me to be able to bite off the apple, but it was so delicious. So were the crepes that we made in the next few days for breakfast, with apple filling from the apples we had picked ourselves!

One of my favorite things about Portland is that there is the ability to escape the big city and go to all of these amazing outdoors options. You can go hiking on so many trails, even within Portland, that will make you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Then you have the ability to go apple picking, berry picking or to any of the beaches that are a quick car ride or even a stroll, if you wanted to visit the East End Beach. There are so many fantastic areas within and around Portland to Explore.

Mister Abner can testify to that

Duck!

Pumpkin Boat Races

This past weekend I went up to Damariscotta to visit my family and to see the Pumpkin Festival! It amazes me how big it keeps getting every year, but people love giant pumpkins used as boats. I love it when people fall into the river. Pumpkins are fairly tipsy when used as boats.

Reny's Grand Opening-Topsham

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the grand opening of the newest Reny's location, in Topsham! The store is huge and the selection is fantastic. It was slightly bizarre to be walking around in a store that had it's shelves fully stocked and all merchandise in it's proper place. Once the crowds of people that had gathered outside were let in, the shelves did not stay fully stocked for long. It was amazing to see how many people came out for the grand opening and came out to shop. I had just purchased over forty dollars worth of goods from Reny's the prior week, so I didn't have an immediate need for any new things, but I did spy some toys that my niece and nephew might need to have in the immediate future. There is also a clock radio that would make a nice addition to my office during tax season, which is when we are able to listen to the radio on the weekends.

Roller Skating BDay parties

Car rides

Best Friends Braid Hairs

Alice was home for a week or so, as you can probably tell from the posts with her pictures in them. She braided Sequoia's hair into a spiral around her entire head. It was really impressive. She also did two french braids in my hair and it looked so adorable. I wish she were here to do my hair all the time. And you know, to hang out with. I will miss her oh so much now that she has left to go back to her now home state of Oregon. Hopefully she will be able to make the trip home for Christmas this year.

Wiscasset Summer Traffic

The opposite of fun. My least favorite part of the summer, especially when you think that you will be safe due to the time of the day you are going through Wiscasset, but then you still in fact get stuck in traffic for almost an hour.

Damariscotta-best friends time

Red's Eats

Crazy lines even in the rain

I love sticker graffiti! Thank you Portland artists for brightening my evenings out and about.

Thursday nights are for dancing

Smith Street sunset

Congress Street-Late night

LePrick...LeHilarious

Graffiti political commentary on Preble Street

Mackworth Island Fun

I have wanted to go to Mackworth Island for a while. This Saturday was the day that I finally made the trip over the three bridges that took me to the island. It takes maybe ten minutes of driving to get there from my apartment and there is limited parking on the island, which makes it a relatively tourist free location. I wanted to go swimming, but the water was much too cold for me to venture in further than my ankles. I am a sally. I love that from some of the beaches you can see Portland.

Fairy houses in the community village. Not as many good ones as I had hoped for, but there were definitely three or four that blew my mind. I want to go back and make my own.

There were so many interesting little places for photo ops on the island. A lot of trees that were uprooted that I could then pose in front of/under and make funny faces.

I can't wait to go back. It's the perfect picnic spot. I'm hoping that the water will continue to warm up over the next few weeks and that I can maybe go swimming next time.

Space Dance Party

Smith Street 4th of July

Eastern Prom

This year was the first year I have ever been in Portland for the Fourth of July. I loved it. I love how the symphony plays along with the fireworks and how many people are on the prom.

Ice Cream Social

Summerz

First Friday

Sooooo many people were out and about last night for first Friday. It kind of always amazes me how many people turn out for first Friday and this time was no exception. There were often times that I took to the street to walk, because the sidewalk was much too full to get through in a quick manner. My art walk favs the Portland Slow Riders were out in full force.

I took over 200 photos last night, so expect some more art walk pictures to come. For now though, it is off to bed after writing a cupcake blog post that took much longer than I expected. I am babysitting my niece and nephew tomorrow morning quite early, which I am very much looking forward to. They are the most adorable little kids ever (at least in my very biased mind).

Eric Hou is one of my favorite artists in Portland. I have a few of his postcards that I put into a mobile that I bought in Oregon when I was out there. It makes me so happy to look up and see so many of his pictures just hanging down from my ceiling, turning slightly ever so often. I have a few larger format prints of his as well, that I still need to frame, in addition to some smaller prints that I already have framed and are hanging on my wall in my bedroom. They are so adorable. I also love that every year he does a different Read poster. I have the 2009 edition and the 2010 I think is my favorite so far, so I should probably get one of those as well. I think that I will honestly need a house in the near future so I can hang up all of my artwork in a non-cluttered manner. There are so many local talented artists and it is just so hard to not want to purchase their work and support them.

I took this photo one day when I was wandering around Portland. I am quite sure that I've mentioned my love of the architecture that is in Portland before, but I am continuously taking new pictures of the buildings and specifically the corners or edges of buildings meeting the sky. It is one of my favorite things to just wander around the city and find new spots that I haven't seen or haven't taken the time to appreciate before.

Sneaky IPhone photo taken at the Chellie Pingree fundraiser event I went to last night. Ok, so maybe I was only there for a few minutes. It was so crowded and I had a dinner date with a friend so I wasn't able to stay for long. I actually wore this to work, even though I have had one of my coworkers tell me the skirt is too short, however, my mom (who I also work with) told me that it it wasn't. So I'm going to go with her on that one.

Skirt-Tulle

Sweater-Tulle

Shirt-Banana Republic

After dinner my friend and I went to Local 188, where I had my very first Basil Lemonade. It was fantastic. This summer is going to be full of fancy drinks and fun times with my lady friends. I can already tell.

My nephew playing at my parents house. I love how the sunlight hits his face in this photo. It always makes me so happy to spend time with my niece and nephew. I got on the floor and crawl chased my nephew, which he thought was hilarious! He's getting to the point where he sometimes will walk, but much prefers crawling. It's kind of amazing to see how fast he can get around while crawling. He's like a speed crawler. He actually beat me in the race into the living room, but then again I haven't been crawling on a consistent basis for over 27 years.

Finally, some fashion

I now have a fantastic volunteer photographer who agreed to take photos of my outfits on a regular basis. This is my outfit for a birthday party that I was lucky enough to be invited to last night. The dress is actually from a wedding that I was in a year ago, as is the sweater.

Dress-Tulle

Sweater-Old Navy

Tights-Rite Aid (as bizarre as that is) They are Kushy Feet brand or something?

Shoes-Sketchers

Necklace-My grandmothers maybe real, but probably fake pearls. (I can never remember which ones are real and which ones are fake. I have one of both)

Purse-Nine West

Compost/Manure? next to the North Street community garden. I love funny little signs.

Yesterday I went to the East End School for the Vegetarian Food Festival. It was the first time that I had been able to make it to it, so that was exciting.


The East End School has flowers growing on the roof! How magical! I had never really walked around the East End before yesterday and I was quite surprised at how good the view was looking down onto the city and also how many nice houses were around there.


I didn't even know that there was a community garden up there!


And this beautiful walkway to a lookout point so that you can see the whole city.


It was raining by the time we got to the end of the walkway, but it was still nice to see the whole city from above. I want to go back on a beautiful day to see what it is like then. I love how I can continually find new and beautiful places in the city.

Yesterday changed my opinion of the East End completely, because I had never really been that big of a fan before. I much prefer the West End, but the East End did remind me on the way back to my car how sometimes it smells like a bathroom. Oh East End, you stay classy! Perhaps we can blame the rain on that one?