Music and Boats!

I think I can get away with boats plural in the title of this post. We were only on one boat, but we saw row teams and kayakers out on the water with it, so it applies! Last night we boarded the Portland Spirit for the second Google HotPot Best Ever Concert. The bands playing were the Builders & the Butchers and Red Fang. A boat is a small space, and while we did get to enjoy the bands I could see little more than tops of heads and tambourines being held in the air. So my photos are of the boat and the views from the boat.:

 

The route started in Waterfront Park went down to Lake Oswego just past Elk Rock. Per informational cards provided that's where the Willamette River is at its deepest. We turned around near a rail bridge, came back to downtown and passed under the Morrison Bridge for a view of the city before returning to shore. I took this picture near the rail bridge, and some other pics of the rail bridge that didn't really turn out because it was so dark. 

We passed under 5 bridges, only one of which had to be raised (twice!) for us, the Hawthorne Bridge. Everyone on the boat was pretty excited about stopping traffic. And there were plenty of excited "I'm on a boat" proclamations throughout the evening, from both the musicians & the passengers. 

The city as seen from the water at night with all the reflections is pretty amazing, especially with good, local, live music! 

   

Update: Google posted a set of pictures from the event here.

Found Hydrangea

 

When we hiked up to the Pittock Mansion over the weekend I was so excited to find this hydrangea flower on the ground. It was in the road, actually, likely to get crushed the next time some one drove by, so in a sense I saved it, although it is already dead. Even so it's very pretty, I was staring at the transparency and texture in the petals as we made our way home. (Although it was pretty cold. I am glad I was wearing mittens while I held it.)

I love the idea of finding things from nature and bringing them inside for decorating the apartment, but I've never had much luck finding great looking stuff. Around Christmas this year I really wanted to find a nice big branch to bring in, hang on the wall and hang stockings from. However, between the fact that it's wet here all winter long and the fact that they seem to clear fallen branches out of the Park Blocks every night, I did not not find a branch this year. Maybe next year!

Meanwhile I think this dead hydrangea is so gorgeous. I am hoping it stays dried and reasonably well preserved, I'd like to have it around for a while. I don't know a lot about keeping dried flowers so this will be an interesting experiment.

Right now it's in a white bud vase from Ikea, which is a little big for it, but I love the colors together. I'm going to keep it with my blue votive holders from World Market (which are no longer on their site.) It's a very inexpensive arrangement, but very pretty nonetheless.

A Parliament of Vegan Owl Cookies

I've really been wanting to try to make these since the moment I saw them on tumblr (which it looks like was about month ago.) The originals were from The Cinnamon Tree Bakery in London, England, picked up/photographed at the Borough Market by LipglossJunkie and posted on flickr well over a year ago. One of my flickr contacts, Sonya Phillip, made them recently too, and I think I must have gotten the idea to add the wings from her. (She does very cool knit art, by the way, worth checking out!)

 

I used the Shortbread recipe from Vegan Cookies. It made eighteen of these guys. I mentioned my lack of a circle cookie cutter when I was making the Oreos, so I just used a glass. The eyes are Chocolate Chips, and the beak is an almond. Plus a few lines from a fork for the bottom feathers. Watching them come together was fun:

Of course now that they all have eyes I do feel a little strange eating them, but they are too tasty. I can't wait to have them tomorrow morning, since I bet they will be great with coffee!

Music & Skates!!!

I got to go roller skating last night!!! It's been too many years. I'm not even entirely sure when the last time I got to go skating was. I remember making Chuck and some friends try ice skating years ago when we still lived in Ohio...so that was 6 years ago at least...and for the first few laps I was not very sure of myself, but I think it came back to me alright, as long as I didn't really need to stop very quickly. I promise I was going faster than this picture would have you believe. I just slowed to say hi to Chuck, who was not skating (although I tried to convince him):

 

There was also live music from Lifesavas and The Thermals. Not to mention the live organ music played before and in between sets, there's a Wurlitzer suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the rink, with a glass booth for the player on the side of the rink. While we didn't get any great pictures of the band, there is a nice set from the event over on Oregon Music News and here is one from Google. This event was all thanks to Google, they are using Portland as a test city for a new service: HotPot and are having a series of events to promote it. I picked up my wristband for the next show, on the boat Portland Spirit, earlier today!

They also gave us a a cute booklet with a link to the "Best Ever Mixtape: Portland" with lots of local music, which seems to be available streaming at besteverpdx.com

Update: Google added a video from the event to their post and I found myself in it! I'm at about 0:13 to 0:14 from a little left of the middle to offscreen on the left. I couldn't find chuck though, probably cause he wasn't skating!