San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers -- OOTD

Well, this post is more for outing of the day, rather than outfit of the day :-)

All these years living in the bay area, I had never been to the inside of Conservatory of Flowers.  It is either close for renovation, or it happens to be the day it is closed when I visited San Francisco.  This holiday, I made sure that we are there in a day that it is opened.

There was a long line outside.  Kids under 5 does not need a ticket, so we kept teasing my daughter about she can't get in because she doesn't have a ticket.

Inside is really warm.  Most plant in display are the tropical flowers such as orchid.  However the variety is not exotic enough so it felt like a nursery houseplant section.

Is this the insect eating plant? We suggest my daughter put her little finger in it to test it out, but she refused.

This one reminds me Halloween candy.

How about some sur realism?

Here is a spot where you can be framed for a picture.  Hubby and I were taking picture of each other from the opposite ends. Kind of fun.

(I guess this would be my OOTD picture?  Lots of Layers...Top: Ann Taylor Cowl Neck Woll Sweater in gray, North Face  'Animagi' Jacket (Similar here). JCREW crewneck cashmere in deep coral. Gap scopeneck vintage longsleeve T(Love those, so soft)  Vest: North Face "Carmel" Down Vest (45% off right now).   Pants: JCREW Chord,   Boots: UGG,  Bag: Orla Kiely Crossbody)

To be honest, the flower collection is not very impressive, much less varieties than the one we went in Chicago this summer. It also needs more labeling and description for educational purpose.  But the special Edition was quite interesting and make the whole trip worthwhile. You can find detail description here.  The little railway sets in the minatures of plants with architecture landmark models made out of recycled and repurposed materials.

Hubby didn't even realize they are made out of recycled materials.  Kind of missing the point, eh? Can you tell what they are made of?

Being a techie and Chinese, this one has to be my favorite. It is made out of old computer cards and Majong.

And of course no kids can resist Thomas.

Where the lights are - OOTD inspired by Spiffy

I saw this outfit combination from spiffy's blog Where the lights are.  I Love Love the combination she came up with!

Top: Anthropologie Cabled Pathways Pullover
Bottom: Anthropologie Field Skirt
Shoes: J-41 boots

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On a different subject, my daughter's hair looks like the illustration from Stephanie's Pony Tail, one of my favorite children's book. She has to take a nap at school and her ballet bun was kind of loose.  I just couldn't help smiling every time I look at her hair.

A beautiful day - a day trip to San Francisco

Here is a OOTD (more or less a repeat) and it is taken at the San Francisco beach front in the outer Richmont area.

(Top: Anthropologie Visiting Professor Jacket. Bottom: Gap Skinny Jeans Boots: UGG Australia Boots

Sunglasses: Gucci Bag: Orla Kiely Multi Directional Stem Midi Sling - Multi)

It is not often San Francisco is sunny, even for summer, it is always foggy. So for our raining winter to have a sunny bright day is a rarity, a gift from heaven for the holiday. We hardly had a plan to begin with as the day starts.  I had read some review on yelp about twin peak at one point and I thought, that would be good to go take a look to take advantage of the rare sunny weather.  The building and house look like match box model from atop and the panoramic view is quite impressive.

I have also discover that my daughter is very much afraid of height, worse than me. She would not go anywhere near the fence.  Her legs were melting from the fear that she could hardly stand up. We had to carry her in order for her to take a family picture with us :-)

After that, we headed to Cliff house by the beach.  Since there is no parking, we end up parked at the trail head of Land's End.  The outline of the costal redwood against the afternoon sun are beautiful.

You also get to see the iconic Golden gate bridge on this trail from distance.

We headed back towards cliff house through the trail for Sutro Bath

Is Sutro Bath really someone's bath in the past? You can read about its history.

The kids get a break from the scenery at the nearby Lincoln park children's playground, 

We return to Land's End just on time for the sunset. I kept clicking the pictures.  Honestly I can't tell the difference from all the sunset pictures I took.  I just couldn't help it, neither could the rest of people who are watching the sunset.

The fog rose up as the sun progress down.

We finish the day at the PPQ Dungeness Crab Island.  This restaurant gets 1000+ review at yelp with 4 star rating.  Food is amazing and service is awful.  Not sure why my next table came later got their dish (same dish we ordered) and we didn't.  Crab is overpriced at $38/per crab when the local Chinese supermarket sells the live one for $2.99 lb. Will I go back?  Oh, yes....

Happy Holidays!

Hope you all have a good Christmas!

We spent Christmas eve at Arya restaurant. It is a Mediterranean and Italian restaurant. I'm surprised the restaurant opens on Christmas Eve. Everything we ordered are delicious.   After that, we took a stroll at Christmas in the park  downtown San Jose.  We wanted to go for sometime, but the weather hasn't been good.  But Christmas evening is perfect.  It was a mild evening.  The kids enjoyed looking at different Christmas displays and the rides.

After both kids crash in their bed, I spend the rest of the evening wrapping Santa's present for the kids.

My daughter was the first one up on Christmas.  She was overly exited to see if the old man from the North Pole made it through our chimney the night before.  She clamed that she didn't hear the jingles last night and was disappointed not seeing the present.   "Really? Let's see.  If you don't get it, that means you are on the naughty list."  I then offer to look for her Santa present with her under the tree and was really "surprised" to see two new boxes that sign with Santa.

My daughter's face lit up but still a bit suspicious, " How come Santa use the same wrapping paper as ours?"

"Santa must know we had this wrapping paper before and think we like this." My daughter always has great eyes for details.  She asked the question about wrapping paper last year, that is why this year  I deliberately used last year's left over wrapping paper for those presents so she wouldn't question me and yet she remember the old wrapping paper after not seeing it for the whole year.  Luckily my reasoning convinced her. After all, Santa is very magical.

So what did Santa get her? A book of course, just as she wished for in her letter.

And for my son,  let's just say the stuff rocket handwriting looks like a stump rocket and Santa misread it.

And something for me as well :-)

 Well, to be honest I did not wear this ensemble for the entire day.  I wore it probably for 2 hours. After the kids finish tearing up all the gifts from various teachers, friends and family and we trying to take pictures of the whole family without at least one of kid making some strange face or look away, it is well pass noon.  All the remaining restaurant that are open on Christmas day are full when we call.  They won't even give an estimate when it will have empty seat.  So I put on my oversize sweat shirt from college days and made grill green beans with garlic and stir fried beef with onions in a record 45 minutes.  (B.T.W, highly recommending Wusthof Classic Ikon Santoku Knife, 5" for slicing the beef thin. )  I get to take the nap with my daughter in the afternoon.  The whole family watched How to Train your dragon together.  As usual, my son fall sleep and my daughter is full of question after the movie.  What a day!

Happy Holidays!

In Search for the perfect red sweater.

There is a tag sale at Anthropologie.  Did you score anything?  I didn't because I was too late.  All the goodies are gone.  I was interested in the Glowing Leaf Skirt and the Cabled Pathways Pullover, but was not fast enough to grab one.

On the other hand, there is this little top called thick and thin Henley.  It is $39.99 + 25% off.  It doesn't look like much and it is probably pricy for a jersey top, but the fit is very flattering.  It make you look like 10 lb less and machine washable.  So if you like the easy breezy casual tops that is not fuzzy and still looks good.  This is a good one.  I highly recommend it.

In line with the whole Christmas spirit, I was looking for a perfect red sweater.  I mean red red, not orange red, or purplish red.  It turn out that it is harder than I thought. I originally lock my eye on the JCREW cashmere femme sweater in the color of Cerise. According to Wikipedia,Cerise (pronounced /səˈriːs/ or /səˈriːz/; French pronunciation: [səˈʁiz]) is a deep to vivid pinkish red.  However the item came in with an orange tone and is as radiant as the sun...

I then went with the rusted barn Merino ruffled strata cardigan.  The fit of this cardigan was too long too be flattering for me.

One day when I was randomly browsing things on Ebay, the Casch visiting professor cardigan from Anthro's years ago caught my eyes.  It is  listed as new with tags.  It still expensive, but reasonable for a Casch sweater, especially it is new.   Recall the Best of Bunch Cardi?  It is still at a stiffed price of $228 after all these months despite of all the negative reviews with fitting issue.  The green version of this sweater on Ebay bid over $200 last month. Crazy isn't it?  But I think it also shows how the sweater is holding its value.   This time there is a buy it now option with a less than $200 price tag, I decide it to splurge on it with my year end bonus I recently received.  It turns out to be a deeper color and slightly have a pinkish tone to it.  A Cerise may I say? 

Boy this sweater is warm.   I was sweating in it with the 57 degree temperature. I need to learn how to button that highest button like the one in the picture...

OOTD: Season of wrapping

Do you feel the Christmas Spirit yet?  My daughter has been counting down towards Christmas every night now.  She is the Christmas spirit of our family because she is the one most anticipating the holidays.  She had pushed us to put the lights up outside our house and  buy the the Christmas tree.  Without her, we would probably procrastinate till the very end and not do either:-)  This year she wrote her first letter to Santa, at 4.5 year old.

Luckily the wish is simple to fulfill.

I had spend the last few nights wrapping presents and printing out pictures for the Christmas card.  There should be a rule that all toys should arrive in the perfect rectangular package, no curves, no missing package sides to save packaging material because it just made it that much harder to wrap! By the time I am done with the 4th princess doll, I am pretty sick of wrapping gifts already.

So here is some wrap that I am not sick of.  It is the JCREW Dulphine open cardigan.  My mom said I tend to like all the open cardigans and maybe that is true.  I liked the light weight of it.  I liked the pocket.  I liked the ribbed around rib cage.  I also like the softness of its peach pink color.  I felt the color was different enough than the black so I got another color.

Top: Anthropologie Floreat Ice Capped Blouse

Bottom: JCREW Taffeta skirt

Cardigan: JCREW Dulphine open cardigan (Buy it here)

Boots: UGG Australia

Recreating Fisherman's Companion Sweatercoat

I really like Anthropologie's Fishman's companion Sweatercoat when it came out.

It is always tempting just to buy, but then I thought, hey, I can recreate this with the things I have.

So here is the result.  It was a old banana republic sweater and a JCREW open cardigan that I gift to my mother a few years back during Christmas . She return it back to me after one wear because the openess of this cardigan is IMPRACTICAL for the harsh Chicago winter.  It was slightly bigger for my usual size, so I haven't been wearing it since she gave the sweater back to me.  Now it is just perfect because  I can wear it comfortably over the other sweater. One extra bonus of this?  It is so warm no coats are needed any more.

So what do you think? Does it look like the real thing? Well, I had fun :-)

Here is the complete outfit spec:

Dress: Southward Stop shirtdress
Sweaters: old BR and old JCREW Open Cardigan
Legging: Madewell Denim legging
Boots: UGG Australia Boots.
Belt: Anthropologie Triple Buckle Belt