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.

Mount Tamalpais - Marin County, California

Last Sunday two Polish friends and I set off for a little excursion outside the city. The goal was to hike Mount Tamalpais, which is the closest peak to San Francisco from the northern side of the Bay Area. The biggest reason for running away from the city was the fog. In the summer usually the whole city is covered with this white, milky, cloudy substance. In fact the SF nickname is "The fog city". There are days when only the eastern part vanishes behind the veil of fog and there are days when the whole Bay Area disappears behind it. But the sun always shines over Mount Tam (yes, it's shortened). We set out for Mount Tam in search of this precious summer sun. First we drove to the parking lot not really far from the peak and we started hiking from there. Most of the mountains in the Bay Area are accessible for cars.

Monika & Monika

looking north

San Rafael bridge and San Quentin prison

SF is hidden in this fog

some kind of funny plant

cute mailboxes

... more from "the flat country"

The second city in the Netherlands we had the pleasure to visit was Nijmegen. It took us like a hundred tries to finally pronounce the name correctly. It doesn't sound like an English or German word. It is typically Dutch. There is a weird accent and a deep throat "g" that sounds like the "h" sound we make while rinsing our mouth.
Despite the pronunciation Nijmegen is a cute town with medieval old town and one of the best universities in the Netherlands, Radboud University.

probably one of the most frightening culinary experiences: food from the box for 1 euro

in the university library, the "book pilar"

main square

Saint Wilgefortis - female saint with facial hair (The legend says that a teen-aged noblewoman had been promised in marriage by her father to a pagan king. To thwart the unwanted wedding, she had taken a vow of virginity, and prayed that she would be made repulsive. In answer to her prayers she grew a beard, which ended the engagement. In anger, Wilgefortis's father had her crucified.)