In preparation for Halloween 2011

Halloween is coming fast. Girls are getting slutty dresses and boys are impersonating vampires, Frankensteins and star wars heroes. But not only this. Costume ideas are getting more creative with every year. Last year I saw a guy dressed as his own Facebook page, another girl was a Rubik's cube, and someone else was dressed as a cupcake.

We wanted to take it easy this year and just relax. One Halloween preparation seemed like a lot of fun, though, so we decided to head to a Pumpkin Patch and find just the perfect pumpkin. Pumpkin carving known as making a Jack o'Lantern is a well known custom in the USofA, but not too many people these days actually carve their own pumpkins.

Also not many people know where the custom comes form and what it resembles.

Here is what I found in the vast Internet resources.

Why Carve Pumpkins aka Jack o'Lantern

The story of the Jack o'Lantern comes from Irish folklore. Jack was a crafty farmer who tricked the Devil into climbing a tall tree. When the Devil reached the highest branch, Jack carved a large cross in the trunk, making it impossible for the Devil to climb down.

In exchange for help getting out of the tree, the Devil promised never to tempt Jack with evil again. When Jack died, he was turned away from Heaven for his sins and turned away from Hell because of his trickery. Condemned to wander the earth without rest, Jack carved out one of his turnips, took an ember, and used it for a lantern to light his way. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern."

... in the Wonderland

self portrait, GG Park

 

self portrait, GG Park 

Baseball game - SF Giants

This time just pictures ;)

MoKa coasters in SF

A daily cup of MoKa coasters made it to San Francisco! Hurray! Bright room for two is really happy. Now the morning coffee and the evening glass of wine will have a new, fresh touch to it. We are so grateful for the amount of love we got!

On another note, I have been very busy with work, school and photography lately, so there is a very limited time for blogging. Hope to catch up a bit soon. Stay tuned.

1000 blog views!

Yey! This week we reached 1000 blog views! We have visitors obviously form the US and Poland, but as well from Spain, UK, Finland and Russia. Hope we'll grow fast and strong. Here's to the blog! Cheers!

Some might say it's not much, but for us it's a bit of a success. Not only our blog gives us a reason to celebrate, but also the real life does. This past week we just enjoyed the "reversed wedding anniversary". What does it mean? Exactly a year from last Thursday we are going to throw a real Polish wedding celebration in Krakow. The date is set for August 18, 2012. We can't wait! I hope we could fast forward this 12 months and find ourselves in the middle of the summer in Krakow's old town.

There is also other reason to celebrate this week. This Saturday is Tyler's birthday!

So excuse me, I have to get back to the kitchen to bake his birthday cake. Since we both have arrangements later this Saturday, we decided to celebrate his birthday with a really good breakfast.

More details coming soon...

Wedding photography with Sasha

It has been really fun weekend. A friend of mine who is an amazing wedding photographer asked me if I would help him with a wedding shoot. As you probably guess I got almost ecstatic and it didn't take me a minute to say "Yes, I'm coming!".

The wedding took place north of San Francisco in the vineyard in Sabastopol. The adjusting ranch belongs to the bride's parents so the atmosphere was really laid back. It must be great to get married almost "at home".

I have been following Sasha's creativity for a year and a half and I love his art more and more. He became sort of an inspiration for me and now I'm even happier to be there with him. I learned much more with this hands-on experience than I could possibly learn studying books for hours. It was truly priceless experience. Thank you Sasha.

Here is the link to Sasha's Wedding Photography website.

And general photography site.

Also Sasha took some snapshots of me. I thought I might share this too.

credits to www.sashaweddingphotography.com/

credits to www.sashaweddingphotography.com/

credits to www.sashaweddingphotography.com/

We won the MoKa contest!

Just a quick post with the happy news! Bright room for two won the contest of our friend-blog A daily cup of MoKa. Monika & Kamil designed their own cool coasters which are going to fly over the ocean and make our bright room for two even cozier. Here is the post with the contest and here the one with the results. I suggest that you visit their great blog and keep following it.

Can't wait to have a cup of coffee with the coasters.

Amsterdam

The trip to the Netherlands wouldn't be the same without visiting Amsterdam. That day we enjoyed a pleasant stroll through the city. Starting early in the morning we took a train from Utrecht that took 25 min to get to Amsterdam. When we arrived it was still early enough for us to see the many different faces of the city. We saw people biking to work, we saw cafes opening for the first cup of espresso, and we saw the Red Light District, just in a very different way.

It was interesting to see it so early in the morning. I am not so convinced that I would like to see it at night, it's just not my style. But in the morning we saw the "normal" life going on, people cleaning the streets, delivering supplies, walking the dogs, etc. Only a few windows were actually active with not-really-pretty and not-young-any-more ladies.

Later the sun finally came out and we took a walk by the canals in the so-called "garden district" also known as the Jordaan, where we strolled through a very interesting flea market. We also had a very pleasurable lunch in an Indonesian bistro. The rest of the day we spent just wandering around, cheeking out local shops and relaxing. It was a full day in Amsterdam.