A Salty Ray of Sunshine
Part sunshine, part shitshow.
Stories from a life spent figuring things out. I go places, try things, make ideas real, and tell you what happened – usually before I know what the hell I’m doing.
You do not have to know what you’re doing before you try the thing.
What’s inside Field Notes
What actually comes out of my kitchen, plus the meals I’m trying to reverse-engineer at home.
No yard yet, so I’m leaning hard into pots, roses, and whatever survives a balcony.
Cricut projects, sewing I’m aspiring to be better at, and whatever new skill has taken over this month.
Solo trips, couple trips, international trips, and the boat we rebuilt to get there.
The parts that don’t fit anywhere else — the dog, the mess, the actual day-to-day.
Latest Field Note
No plan, and it worked anyway
Matt and I set off for Oregon with zero itinerary. Good drinks, dog-friendly restaurants, an afternoon on the Fruit Loop — turns out we didn’t need a plan after all.
Stories, projects and useful detours
Apparently, I make jewelry now.
One class, one bench, and a mountain workshop already forming in my head.
Learning what roses actually want
No yard, no problem — pots, patience, and a lot of trial and error.
Trying to recreate a meal we still talk about
Homemade pizza, a travel memory, and several attempts to get it right.
I keep following ideas to see where they go.
I live full-time on Brooks Island in the San Francisco Bay — I only come ashore when the weather won’t let me cross or the tides don’t line up with my work schedule. It’s complicated. I also own a salon in the city, and regularly decide I need to learn an entirely new skill.
This is where I bring back the stories: the beautiful parts, the frustrating parts, what I learned, and the moment a reasonable idea became a full-blown project.
Think less polished lifestyle expert and more curious person saying, “How hard could it be?” before buying supplies.
Case in point: I rebuilt a sailboat that had survived a fire — rewired it, replumbed it, rebuilt the motor and the exhaust system from scratch. I’m an ASA-certified coastal cruiser, an advanced scuba diver, and I’ve worked as a deckhand on a 100-ton vessel in the Bay. None of that has much to do with a hair salon. All of it makes sense to me.
What has my attention
Labels for everything I own, apparently.
Jewelry making before I have room for more tools.
Roses. Just roses, right now — and that’s plenty.
Rockhounding in Utah and making jewelry from what we find.
