moving on

I'm both excited and a bit sad to say my blog is moving over to a new platform. I don't mean to get all nostalgic, but Blogger was a great way for me to share my thoughts and photos for the past 4+ years. I'll still be writing about the same things with the same blog name, I'll just be over at celestenoche.com/blog instead.

Hope to see you there!

the end of the ranunculus

This time last week I couldn't even pronounce ranunculus. I still might not be saying it right. That's not the point.

I wanted to take a picture of these beauties but they were in a vase that didn't match, in a spot with poor lighting, and in an overall inconvenient spot to take photos. So I borrowed a new vase, found a spot by a window, and as I began transferring them over they began to fall apart.

You can see where the petals are starting to wilt, that they're taking their final breath, and one poor bulb just started shedding petals no matter how I held it. The point I'm trying to make but haven't really reached is that these pictures were work. Not a lot, but they certainly weren't effortless. Almost nothing is (nothing that matters, anyway).

I thought about it and tried to make it work but the final product didn't match what I'd imagined. The funny thing is, I think I like them better this way.

san francisco hotspots for suitcase magazine

Not only am I super excited to have some photos up over at Suitcase Magazine, the entire project was so much fun because I got to work with my dear friend Christian (who happens to have impeccable taste). I'm really looking forward to working with this team again soon.

random order

It's almost-the-end-of-the-day on Friday and all I want is to be in Portland at this table, eating this pie.

only for today

My grandmother would have been 89 today.

I have a small envelope of some of her things. Miscellany, mostly. Notes, a pocket mirror, church brochures, a bobby pin. There's also a small stack of worn cuts of binder paper. You can tell they were held and read over and over-- she hand wrote about a dozen prayers and would read from these throughout the day.

I miss her. Her delicate cursive is so telling of who she was. They make me cry so I try not to look into this envelope too much.

But today, it's okay. Happy Birthday, Mama Hely. Mahal kita.