Berkeley Love and Happiness

A couple of weeks ago, Josh humored me by letting me drag the family out on an outing to Berkeley where there were three things I wanted to do.

1. West Elm. After an on and off again hunt for a few years, I finally decided on this duvet cover.

I just put it on today and LOOOOOVE it, my room pics later, but here is the cover. I can't recommend it more from my 12 hour experience so far. It's soft, fluffy, relaxed, and makes me feel like I'm on vacation. Oh, and after lots of dives onto the bed from our end table from my kids, it passes the rumple test, meaning, it still looks great since it's not a perfectly smooth cover like I'd originally planned on getting. I know gas isn't cheap, but it would have cost $20 to ship this, uhh...yeah right, we'll take the fun day trip.

2. Crate and Barrel outlet a few miles away. They were having an additional 10% off over the weekend and there were a couple of small things I wanted, so it worked out perfectly. When we got married we got 4 ice cream dishes from Josh's sister and I loved them. I happen to be a bit of a klutz though and all four were broken within the first year or two. I also shattered a big pyrex pan this week, you'd think it was a hobby. Anyway, I've wanted to get some ever since, but they're not usually stack friendly, esp when they're glass. Until C&B, thank you wonderful design gods. For $.95 each (plus 10% off!), I got 8 of these babies and I feel like I'm in love all over again. And they're plastic. Have I said I'm in love?

I should add that these wouldn't be nearly as pretty or tasty or useful if they weren't filled with chocolatey goodness made by my one true love. My live in expert chef and baker, also my husband. He and C&B knew the way to my heart :).

3. Berkeley itself. Last year I went up with a couple of friends to check out the outlet and I fell in love with the gorgeous tree lined University Ave with cute shops that I'm sure were all way too expensive to even look at, the folksy band playing outside Peets coffee shop, a girl asking a couple to sign a Green Peace petition for something wacky I'm sure (yep, saw it on my very first visit, my visit felt complete). And then to add a C&B outlet and a CB2 right across the street, how marvelous.

Josh made our trip worthwhile for him by a quick visit to the Ghirardelli outlet where they had a 3 pound bag of mixed chocolates for $5. Did you read that? THAT'S LIKE DIRT CHEEP for their fancyness. We bought too much chocolate and still felt like we robbed them. And I'm hurting my scale every morning now, but oh how yummy my days are.

He's the foody in our relationship, so he also found Zachary's pizza. We had to wait 40 min, but we filled that by meandering through shops and a boulangerie to pick up a few other things that are bad for us. So how was the pizza? Holy camoli, it was the most divine pizza ever (which I'll probably say the next time I visit NYC and have theirs again...), but seriously, you should go if you're close. Like an hour away close. It's Chicago style and it was so thick and huge and roll me away and right into heaven style. And it was nice and loud so nobody seemed to hear Rhett screaming, awesome! Oh, and as a humorous side note, we saw one funked out couple holding hands across the table for like 2-3 min, just silent, it looked like they were meditating over their pizza. It was great.

The one place we didn't visit that I secretly hoped to was a birth center. It's the only one around and I know it's not going to work out for us since it's too far away, but I was still curious. I know Josh wouldn't have stepped within 30 feet of the place, but a peek would have still been fun.

When we moved to CA we didn't see ourselves living here more than 5 years, but after visits like that, well, I'm just not putting a time limit on this.

Q: What does your perfect day trip include?