Last PNW Post: Carnival Bars and Japanese Shopping Sprees

Can you believe it? I'm finally doing the last post about our vacation from this fall. I'm so glad we were able to finally visit the Pacific Northwest. I can't wait to go back!
After the museum we went to dinner at a vegan restaurant that everyone in town recommended to us. It was really mediocre and expensive, so we'll just pretend it never happened. After dinner we went to this bar called the Unicorn. It was carnival themed!

It was so cool inside! This was another photobooth.net find. 

I got a delicious drink (it was called a Unicorn Jizz) and some quinoa balls. Travis wasn't into them but I LOVED them! They were kinda spicy and all kinds of yummy. Like tater tots.

Can you imagine my shock and despair when I saw that they do a drag production of Little Shop of Horrors here? The next afternoon, right about the time our flight left for Nashville. Two of my favorite things combined! Argh!

We got a strip of photos in their booth, is the third from the left here. These are all our strips from this trip. There are SO many booths in the PNW!

As we were going downstairs we passed this guy. He is traveling around doing portraits for tips. We thought what the heck and gave him all the cash we had left (about 10 bucks).

And he drew this portrait of us! I LOVE IT!! So much. I tried to find him online but can't find a trace. If you come across him in your travels, get him to do a portrait of you (If you like weird stuff, haha).

We left the bar and walked to our car. All the cross walks in the area were rainbow striped! Cool!

Next we made our way to Uwajimaya Village. We had been in a Daiso earlier (a Japanese dollar store) and when I was trying to find it, I saw mention of this place in a bunch of reviews. I'm crazy for Japanese stuff so I figured it was worth a trip. The grocery store part was so cute!

Look at that precious sake!

When we got to the bookstore portion I went crazy! It was big and full of cute Japanese stuff from stationary to toys to books to plush! It was really hard to decide what to get!

Ah! Pusheen!

Sonny Angels!

Gudetama! (He is my favorite Sanrio character right now. A lazy egg. He is so cute!)

Look at that HUGE Pusheen! It was $399!

They had tons of Studio Ghibli stuff. I was tempted by those Totoro coin purses, and the Jiji plush in the back!

They had so much Rilakuma stuff too. It was heavenly!

Here is the stuff I bought there. About half was gifts for Crystal. But a lot was for me. I can't find that Pusheen pencil pouch though! I know I didn't leave it in the yurt, but can't find where I stashed it.

We went back to the yurt and fell asleep under the star lanterns. It even rained that night, which sounded awesome beating against the sides of the yurt. I can't wait to stay in another one!

The next morning we got up early to drive back to Portland for our flight back to Nashville. All week I had been full of regret that we didn't get clay portraits while we were at the Portland Saturday Market. Travis suggested we get into town early enough, and see if we could make it work. So we got to the market moments after it opened. It was raining (The first rainy day of our whole trip!) so there were barely any people walking around.

I think this is such a cool idea! You sit there and the potter makes a portrait of you in about 15 minute! He did Travis and I as gnomes. Me holding a camera, Travis holding a pocket knife.

Look at how cute they are! What a fun souvenir! We left them with him so they could be fired and booked it to the airport. We made one last stop for pastries and sandwiches at Sweetpea Bakery and maybe cut it a little close at the airport, but I needed that strudel!

Here is our plane flying over the Rocky Mountains. We had an amazing trip. I'm so glad we were able to go, and I can't wait to go back.

Pacific North Wonderland: Seattle Day Two

When I was looking for places to stay in Seattle there were tons of fun options! I was really leaning towards staying on a boat, but was worried about how cold it would be. The weather ended up being GREAT but I'm glad we decided to stay in this yurt! It was in the backyard of a natural healing center, and so cool!

I should have taken a photo before our luggage got strewn around, but oh well. Isn't it neat? We loved that four poster bed too. We called it the Ebenezer Scrooge bed, and slept with the curtains closed. The ceiling has a skylight so it was filled with beautiful natural light during the day. It was heated with a little gas stove.

And there was a kitty in the backyard! Bonus!

One our second morning in Seattle we had breakfast at Silence Heart Nest. Isn't that the weirdest name for a restaurant? There had been a lot of indulgence in the previous week so we started with some fresh juice.

And finished with pancakes and biscuits and gravy. Ha! Well it is all about balance I guess. 

We were in Freemont so we walked a few blocks to pay our respects to the Freemont Troll. 

Our big event of the day was a visit to the EMP Museum. That stands for Experience Music Project. They had a horror movie exhibit, which we really wanted to see. Sadly we were a few weeks too early for the Hello Kitty one!

While we were sitting out front we saw this girl trying really hard to get a selfie with her dog. I've been there.

To get to the horror exit, which was called "Can't Look Away" you walked down this creepy red lit staircase surrounded by screaming faces. Awesome!

They had all kinds of cool props, like the axe from The Shining and the Xenomorph costume from Alien! Ah!

They had Mr. Pointy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer! And the Book of Ascension. I think we need to watch the whole series again.

They also had a Critter! The cover of Critters used to scare me so bad as a kid! I always saw it at Blockbuster when I was there with my dad. I've always been a chicken. 

They had a scream booth too, that took your photo. We learned after doing it that it was NOT sound proof.

I really loved these little booths they had to watch short films about some of the most influential horror movies. It looked like you were trapped in some dark woods, and they had a scary horror soundtrack going. It was amazing.

The horror section gave way to a Science Fiction exhibit. Woah! They had a fake star ship bridge (it was so crowded we never got to get to it) and cool props from stuff like Ghostbusters and Alien and Star Wars (and Trek!)

I'll take this little guy for my personal collection, thanks!

I loved this big display case of alien and space weapons. So cool!

The EMP just kept getting cooler. We went upstairs to the indie gaming exhibit next. 

It was full of all kinds of interesting games! People sit and play FOREVER though. The only ones open seemed to be broken in some way. I stood waiting for this cool linx game for probably 20 minutes but never got a chance to try. Bummer.

The one game we did get to play was Binding of Issac, which was so fun and weird!

There was a Fantasy exhibit too. They had weapons from Lord of the Rings, David Bowie's goblin king stretch pants, and Sirius Black's coat! They had lots of stuff from The Princess Bride, including Buttercup's beautiful wedding gown. I loved the felt aplique on the guard's costume from the Wizard of Oz. And did you know the Cowardly Lion's costume was made from real lion pelts? The sign said it was almost unbearably hot under the stage lights. 

We spent over four hours at the EMP! Highly recommend if you are in town! It is right next to the Space Needle. We didn't end up going up, but it was so cool looking!

Archie McPhee!

While browsing for photobooths in Seattle on Photobooth.net I found out that there was one in the Archie McPhee store. I love using that site, not only because I love getting strips from real (not digital) photobooths but lots of the time they are located in cool places I wouldn't have found otherwise. Archie McPhee is a huge producer of novelties, if you have been in a small gift shop recently, you have seen their products. The store was SO FUN and we were in there for close to two hours! I had to give them their own post.

They had TONS of different animal masks, I'm sure you've seen the horse ones. They seem to be everywhere! It was a week before Halloween so they had lots of costume stuff out, and you could take it in the photobooth! We did a strip of us as a squirrel and a rat.

Travis as his favorite animal, the humble pigeon.

The animal paws made us laugh so much! They had horse hooves and pigs feet. Here I am as an alluring lady horse. Gorgeous!

There was so much fun stuff, it was hard to decide what to bring home. I probably should have gotten on of those unicorn horns for the pugs.

So many little weird rubber things. I love those "finger hands." 

Archie McPhee seems to be kind of a haven for creative weirdos. If you are one of those, you should read this post on Secret Fun Blog where Kirk visits their head quarters. I found it really fascinating.

Definitely bought some of these...

And you know I bought a vintage Laika the Space Dog snow dome. 

Need a 6 ft cardboard coffin? Only $34.95!

They had a big selection of weird stuff you could use in art projects. Like these cute taxidermy eyes. They had rolls of caution tape you could buy by the yard. Bigs of all kinds of little plastic containers. Rolls of holographic vinyl.

There was a huge stack of these bins full of tiny stuff. Kid me would have gone CRAZY over this stuff. Adult me spent maybe too long deciding what to get. I ended up with some weird little plastic witch charms.

Thought I was tempted to buy a tiny tube of Aim toothpaste. 

We ended up with a pile of weird stuff, mostly gifts (that pig foot didn't come home with us, but I thought about it) and then headed on our way.

Archie McPhee was such a fun store, I'm so glad we were able to go when we were in Seattle!