guest weekend

So in honor of having people visiting all last weekend for the holiday, I figured I'd share a little bit more and show off some of our adventures. It is cool having visitors because it definitely gets you to do fun things you've probably been wanting to do anyways.

Friday morning we met up with Perry, Heather, Jerry and Brian up in North Beach for some breakfast at Mama's. This is the best breakfast place I've eaten at in San Francisco, and probably one of my top 5 breakfast places ever. I plan on taking as many people here as possible. Anyways, there was a crew, my roommate Amanda came, plus Charleen and Jeremy. Afterwards, we walked up to Coit Tower
Yarrrr!

Later on we went to the Union Square Tree Lighting. Before...
I'm pretty sure it was a full moon! You can see it blurry in the upper left hand corner.
After!

After debating what to do next, we headed up to North Beach to get dinner with Perry and Heather and play some Guitar Hero III on Wii. Good choice! We ate french fry sandwiches from a local eatery (sooo good) and turned up the ROKK! Apparently, while Jerry and Brian were staying there, they stayed up till 3am at least every night playing Guitar Hero. SICK!
We tore ourselves away ONLY because it meant we could go to Bow Bow for some amazing karaoke. Somehow I only managed to record one song! This is Charleen singing Summer of '69. A classic.

Saturday morning we took the ferry to Oakland to eat at Kincaid's (Jeremy's place of employment).
He offered us some free clam chowder and, well, we are from the east coast! Plus we all got to admire him all dressed up in his 'work' clothes
Not only did we get some great, cheap food, we also got to taste 150 year old Grand Marnier!
This was sort of random
Later on that night we went to Vesuvio.
This is a cool little bar known for being famous writer's hangout, such as Jack Kerouac. It is located at Jack Kerouac alley too!
This is from upstairs, looking down onto the bar
The bathrooms had fun little vending machines. In the men's: and the women's:

Lastly, on Sunday, before Jerry, Brian and Charleen went to head back to Southern CA, we had brunch at Tangerine. Where Jerry threatened to hit me, or maybe it was give me a hi-five.
Something about rye bread if I remember correctly...

Turkeys in my house!

Yup, it's true, Charleen, Jerry and Brian came up from Southern CA for Thanksgiving! I hosted about 9 people last Thursday. It was definitely the best alternative to being home with the family. Everyone chipped in and there was a ton of food to eat. I got a 14 lb turkey to cook, and with the thoughtfulness of my mom I had all the recipes and ingredients to make herb roasted turkey, stuffing, beer bread and pumpkin pie! So I did.

This is me holding the turkey and bagging it, and Brian peeling cukes:


Once all the prep was done, we got to relax with some cranberry mimosa's. Jerry doing the honors of opening the champagne

Then, tada! Look at all this food!
slowing down...

Here's everyone around the table

Then of course, per tradition at least in my household - cleaning every last bit off the turkey for leftovers! If this isn't enough to make you go vegetarian, not sure what is.

We took a little break and watched the Big Lebowski, at least till the second dream sequence, then had some pie!
helping myself, of course
yum!

I had so many leftovers! We tried to do a re-thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night. I think we finished off the candied yams and mashed potatoes but still had tons left. I had to toss everything out this week. There are still 3 flavors of pie left, thankfully I got roommates to help out with that! Just yesterday Mari had 4 pieces!

Thanks again for everyone that came and made food - you made this one of the best Thanksgivings ever!

zee Apartment

Drum roll please...
Apartment pictures!!!

So, let's start with the exterior. Here is 95 Hancock St. It is a 3 story house, broken up into 3 separate apartments. The landlords live on the top floor. The people on the middle floor, I haven't met, but someone snores pretty loudly and I can hear it sometimes at night!
From there we move on into the house. To the direct left is Mari's room. Mari is one of my roommates. She's been in SF for about 10 years from what I gather and she recently sold her half of her dog walking/pet sitting business to her partner. She's from Sweden, and totally looks it too!

To the right and up a couple steps is the living room.

It's fully equipped with a fold out couch, TV, bookshelves, chairs and a view. I like it because it's cozy. That's Amanda, my other roommate sitting on the couch studying for her license exam. She's a therapist/social worker who's been in SF for about 4 years now. She's originally from NJ and she also owns a Bianchi! (we rode bikes today). The only strange thing about the living room is that our windows are at street level, really really really close to street level. One side of the house is on a hill, so literally it is about 6 inches from the tar.

If you walk into the living room, to your direct left is the 'blue' bathroom. What you can't see is a mirrored double closet opposite the sink.


Ok, so the other direction after you walk in the door, past Mari's room on the left is the hallway which takes you down to the two hallway closets (on the right) 2nd bathroom (on the right), my room (on the left), Amanda's room (straight) and kitchen (all way down on the right).


Here's the "pink/brown" bathroom with claw foot tub!
Seriously with all the bathroom space, I sometimes feel a little cheated with my 10x10 room.
Here's my room...I painted the walls Victorian yellow, or so it was called, and it has a nice golden tone to it. I think I spent a full hour at the paint store hemming and hawing over what color I wanted to go with, but it was worth it because I am pleased.

So this is looking into my room from the hallway. You can see my bedspread and queen sized bed that I acquired. I got it off craigslist and got a deal. Basically paid half of what I would of had to pay for a brand new full sized bed. It does take up a lot of room, but I think it's worth it, and it's so much more comfortable then my old IKEA mattress! You can also see my green bureau find, also off craigslist. The woman I bought it from is pretty sure it was hand built, and it definitely looks like it. It has really fun lion face handles and I lined it with some vintage inspired black and white flower vinyl stuff.
On the other side is my desk, some shelves I just put up this weekend and a little cabinet thing. All from IKEA.

This one is looking back into the hallway
Then there's the eat-in kitchen, which I think is a decent size with good counter space.
That little door on the right is just a mini storage area with the hot water heater. Then if you walk through the kitchen to the left there's the laundry area.

Then....the backyard zen garden! This one is looking out from under the deck stairs at the cottage out back. We share our laundry facilities with the woman who lives there.

Our landlords own a flower shop I believe so they like to take care of this area. It's basically for everyone to enjoy that lives in the house.

Well, that's all I got. I hope you enjoyed your little tour! Come visit soon :)