(updated 02/24/2022) Welcome! Nice to meet you!
I’m Eden, a fourth-generation Californian. Together my husband, 9.75 year old daughter, and Maine Coon/Ragamuffin rescue cat are in the process of unpacking and nesting in our new 100+ year old Craftsman in Berkeley, CA (until this past December we called a 100-year old, a 847 sq ft Edwardian flat in San Francisco home). We define The Good Life with haves not wants and experiences not things.
I've been blogging since 2006, here on this site and for a couple of other personal blogs (our wedding blog and a recipe blog) and for other businesses.
I write about parenting, cooking, urban gardening, mindful consumption, and simple crafts for the home.
Each February and October, I host a daily See Your Ordinary Instagram Challenge to encourage us to take another look at our ordinary – our everyday – and value it. In our everyday busy-ness, we often fail to see or appreciate the good in front of us. This challenge directs us to look at what we have rather than what we don’t have or what we have lost.
what matters to me (or some of my favorite posts).
It's rare that a writer's favorite works are also their most popular. And that holds true for me. Here are topics that matter to me:
- an appreciation for local, in season food
- and raising a daughter who also shares an appreciation for quality ingredients
- as well as an appreciation for beautifully curated food while not driving other diners crazy (aka my secrets for flying under the radar at a Michelin star restaurant with young kids), and
- bringing family and friends together over food nearly effortlessly and without stress.
SHARING MY TALENTS
We all have valuable talents—talents and skills when applied in the right community help members grow and thrive. I threw myself into the Alt community in August 2012, when I secured a ticket to my first Alt (I'd planned to go in 2011, but was barred from flying due to pregnancy).
I had such a great time learning from others, that in 2014, I decided I wanted to also give back. I taught a Digital Marketing class at General Assembly. In 2015, I spoke at Alt Summit that January and co-taught an Instagram workshop at Makeshift Society SF that March. And, in 2016, I spoke to another community of creatives at Snap! in Salt Lake City.
how I blog.
I'm often asked about how long I've been blogging, what ratio of sponsored to original posts I have, what my pageviews are, and so on. So, I've gathered some posts about my process and thoughts on blogging:
- The secret of getting from here (beginning) to there (mastery)
- The importance of owning your story (with 7 tips for effective storytelling)
- Why I think pageviews are a worthless metric
- How not to sound like everyone else (12 sources for inspiration)
- What I learned from my first five hundred posts
OUR STORY
My husband and I met over 11 years at my best friend's birthday party. At the time, I was dating someone else.
It wouldn't be until 18 months later that I moved up to San Francisco from Sunnyvale and started seeing my friends (and him) on a weekly basis.
By May 2009, we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and by September, we were engaged. A year later, we married unofficially at Burning Man, and that October we officially married in San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall.
Here are some highlights from our story:
- Surprising my husband at Burning Man for our five year wedding anniversary
- Quitting breast feeding tomorrow
- Our daughter is born
- Our first date
RAISING A CHILD
We chose to start our family in The Mission in San Francisco because we wanted our daughter to grow up exposed to a variety of cultures and viewpoints. (Also, while I grew up in a working class, bedroom community south of San Francisco and spent about an hour and a half driving into San Francisco for school, the only place I felt at home in was The Mission--a neighborhood I visited often with my grandfather.)
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we began homeschooling like many other families. Switching from where curriculum is provided to assembling one yourself isn't for the faint of heart! With help from our daughter's former literacy and math teachers and friends who are educators, we crafted a student-led program that showcased the presence of mathematics in the everyday and included hands-on science experiments.
When it comes to parenting, we're not helicopter parents. But, there are a few things we're (I'm) passionate about. Those things are:
- Taking a stand
- Styled lives, not body image, are the problem
- Working with your daughter
- Setting online boundaries and protecting your family's privacy
- Choosing words with intention (and matching words with action)
Credits: All layouts designed by and images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.
