A birthday road trip in the PNW
and some news about launching paid subscriptions!
Happy April Fools Day, my favorite time of the year!
This year, ahead of my birthday, Elliot and I planned a long weekend down to Portland to visit his parents. We haven’t been able to visit together since we’ve had Cookie, because one of us would always have to stay home with the dog. After a long March, we’ve decided that this long weekend will be a great vacation for both of us. We drove down to Portland, veered west to the Oregon Coast, and spent a relaxing three days in the Pacific Northwest. The weather was amazing, to boot!
Launching Paid Subscriptions to celebrate my birthday!
Before I dive into my road trip adventures, I’d like to share that I’m officially opening the paid subscription feature for this substack! This means that you can now support my writing and my stationery adventures with monthly or annual subscriptions. However, don’t worry, I will continue to make my long blog posts open and public to everyone — this includes my stationery trips blogs, The Stationery Newsbox, and my food blog posts at Penguinscreative Eats. This will continue on a bi-weekly basis (I slacked during March). I also welcome you to think of the paid subscription as a little tip jar to support my art and craft here.
Peek into my spreads and art hangouts!
Nevertheless, I’d like to make the paid subscription posts a little bit more special by including short weekly snippets of my personal journals, such as spreads from my Hobonichi, TN flipthroughs, or sketchbook pages that I rarely share these days. I think these will be fun to share and write little captions about, so please look forward to those!
Paint with me!
I’d also like to start up some casual artistic hangouts to paint or draw together. Since I aspire to use more of my watercolor supplies this year, I think these events will be very productive and fun. I’ll share more as I hammer out the details of how I’d like to facilitate these! I’m thinking either through Zoom or YouTube livestreams! Feel free to give me some feedback or suggestions!
An Oregon Getaway
Back to my Pacific Northwest getaway! Although I’ve visited Portland many times in the last few years, I’ve always wanted to experience the scenic Cannon Beach on the coast. The giant haystack rock jutting out from the water close to the beach is a stunning site, and we prayed for a nice day to see the view. Thankfully, the weather is awesome during our trip, a change from several overcast days leading up to this trip.
Hilariously, I forgot to bring my TRAVELER’S notebook for the trip. However, the PLOTTER Mini 5 came in handy for all of my photo opportunities in the charming coastal town of Cannon Beach. I love poking through independent bookstores like the Cannon Beach Book Company. I love the musky smell of bookstores, especially ones that are tucked into small towns. Even though I didn’t buy anything, I thoroughly enjoyed poking around its shelves and checking out its stationery section.
Cannon Beach was stunning. We parked pretty far away from the haystack rocks, so we got to walk along the entire stretch of the beach from town. The sand was tightly packed from the receding waves, so it was easy to stroll along its length. The clouds overhead swept by dramatically, giving the beach an array of shadows and lightness. In a few instances, I was reminded of scenes from Twilight, which was filmed near this region!
We wanted to venture further south along the coast to Tillamook, and my instinct called for us to turn out into an overlook scenic spot from highway 101. We were rewarded by this impressive view of the coast.
It’s a view that makes an artist’s hand itch to paint. I might have to tackle this image later this weekend at my leisure. I find it hard to urban sketch when traveling with other people, especially family members who just want to get to the next destination.
Is jerky a priority on a road trip? It absolutely is in our household. Elliot and I made a point to visit the Tillamook Country Smoker Factory Outlet. The small outlet store was filled from floor to ceiling with a variety of jerky and smoked meat sticks. We are both enamored with these guilt-free snacks, so we purchased quite the haul.
Moving on from jerky, we arrived at our next food destination: Tillamook Creamery, known for its cheese and ice cream. I love the large and open architecture, which includes self-guided tours and tasting stations. We HAD to indulge in some cheese and ice cream to wrap up this day trip.
I ended the first day of our trip with a special treat — a delicious dinner and a midnight concert livestream from my favorite Korean boyband SEVENTEEN. The concert can be watched live in Korean time, so I was huddled in the corner of the pitch-dark room from 2 am until 5 am, head bobbing along the monitor with my headphones on. It was quite the experience.
We stayed in Portland for the rest of the trip. On the second day, I enjoyed a leisurely late brunch at Oma’s hideaway, a delicious Malaysian cuisine-inspired restaurant that served hearty food.
I was tempted to steal their colorful menus, but I refrained. The entire interior was decked out with so much pattern, that it would be a nightmare for an urban sketcher.
This curry fry topped with crispy pork belly and jalapenos stole my heart. I also thoroughly enjoyed my sweet and savory breakfast sandwich that incorporates spiced pork belly, kaya jam, and a hashbrown.
In the afternoon, I met up with Kelly, my podcast co-host who lives in Portland. We had a fun cafe journaling session at Roste Chocolate, one of my favorite places to grab a sweet drink. We both enjoyed our “chocolate chill” (chocolate slushie with their homemade chocolate sauce) because it was such a nice day.
For two hours, we fawned over each other’s stationery items, including ephemera from Papertreats and our fountain pen collection.
I enjoyed doodling and decorating my pages with the minimalistic stationery set up I put together for the trip. Some stamps, washi tapes, PET tape samples, and a pocket palette from TRAVELER’S COMPANY did the trick.
Although Oblation Paper and Press was nearby, I resisted the temptation. I knew I’d be making several online shopping orders over this weekend, so I had to save my budget for some shopping sprees later. Our last morning in Portland featured all of us pigging out over large plates of fried country steak with gravy. We were so into our food, that I even forgot to take pictures.
It was such a relaxing weekend, and I’m happy that I gave myself permission to enjoy some aimless walking, sunbathing, and simply doing nothing much over the three days. This first quarter has been tough, and I’m excited to turn to a new page in the second quarter of 2024. With renewed motivation, I’m excited to share more of my stationery adventures and stories. I hope you’ll come along for the ride!
If you host live sketching sessions, my preference (if I join) would be Zoom. There is much more opportunity to interact as you can actually talk to each other. On YouTube live, all you can do is type comments. I've done both and prefer the former.
Though it absolutely depends on how many people participate. The YouTube one I join has dozens or more, so that would be unmanageable on Zoom! The Zoom one I join has 10 people but mostly less.
yayyy live sketch & paints ! i missed those from when you would do them during the height of the pandemic. i learned a lot and gained a lot of confidence from those😊you’re a great teacher!