Shelter in Place | April, 2020

I imagine this is going to be a strange time to look back upon, but April was the month in which sheltering at home really began to feel normal, or at least rather routine. After barely going outside during the first weeks of shelter-in-place, I decided to try and expand my radius and also work on fitness by aiming to run a 5k by the end of the month. So the month is filled with neighborhood outings, a lot of videochat meetings, and a whole lot of gourmet home cooking.

Ice cream projects included lavender, lychee green tea, cacao nib, and bourbon walnut. All delicious. We also started cold brewing a lot of our teas to have iced tea on hand at all times.

Office of Accountability monthly meeting. With Courtney as potato.

Sesame chicken noodles with our leftover rotisserie chicken. This became an almost weekly dish. And braised pork over rice, a Taiwanese favorite.

A check-in meeting with friends and clients Dan & Jeri.

Happy Birthday Jacskon!

Veggies become a whole rainbow of pickles.

Weekly check-in with Talya in Berlin.

A lovely call from Amanda and her daughter who keeps saying “Anna Wu” randomly. So cute.

Friday happy hours with Accountability…

… and Lean In.

Our first food pickup was just baked goods from Neighbor Bakehouse, for which you order ahead and then pick up from their window.

Weekly calls with my friend Lauren.. sometimes with appearances from her son. Plus, Stay Home Stickers by Do-Hee. Now sold out!

Rainbow pickles. Lavender honey ice cream.

Happy Birthday to Chelsea & Sean! Love the decor and outfits.

Mornings in the neighborhood.

Weekly call with Whitney in New York.

Photographers’ strategy call to talk about how we might restructure if we’re unable to shoot weddings now.

And weekly AC/DC chat (Anna, Cassie / Do-Hee, Courtney). So thankful for my many weekly chats!

Bagel pickup from Kelly. She placed them outside before I arrived and watched from inside as I got them. Also, giant lemons from our weekly Imperfect Foods delivery.

Craft Day! With Tiffany in Sydney…

And Pei and Jenny in Los Angeles. Actually, this is kind of how our “Old Ladies Knitting Club” has always been, with videochats connecting us from all over the place.

Sausage stew, another rotisserie chicken.

Visits to the garden, an apt use for my quarantine sticker. (Yes, I will back up my hard drive, thank you!)

Tea supplies, including a gift from Courtney. And a food delivery for Deanna in preparation for the arrival of their little one… who did arrive and is now a couple weeks old!

Another Talya chat.

Happy Birthday Tiffany!

Coloring pages from Bowerbird Atelier.

Happy Hour with Acctountability…

… and Lean in.

Lychee green tea ice cream in progress. And having a very Taiwanese American night, with the tea from Boba Guys and candle from Ilha Candles while watching Alan Yang’s Tigertail on Netflix.

Making our own milk teas. Pretending to go somewhere with it with my homemade drink carrier sewn from a Sunny Hills pineapple cake tote bag. And making tea eggs in a bag.

Breakfast tacos, homemade guac.

Another week, another Whitney call!

Lunch with AC/DC. With Cassie’s puzzle presentation.

Old Navy HQ. No people, just racks and racks of clothing. And a glimpse of BART over in Oakland.

A weird week for grocery shopping, when the shelves were all empty…

Happy Birthday Kait! Surprise card + cake delivery.

Ice Cream truck making its rounds. With our lavender and lychee green tea ice creams.

Talya!

And then I started making masks. Some for us and some to give away.

Weekly garden bouquet.

Accountability happy hour,

Lean In happy hour.

Oysters from Hog Island. And another appearance by little J.

Rolling around, taking photos on film for our #isolayered project. More to come about that!

At home pizza making, with dough from Casey’s.

Also delicious: bake at home Porto’s. Excellent, just as good as buying it from the bakery. Highly recommend.

Finished my roll of film and passed it along to Chelsea to shoot over it.

More ice cream supplies. Burrata & honey toast.

Whitney.

AC/DC.

Another craft day.

Our fancy masks made from Rifle Paper Co. fabric. I might’ve had a sewing accident on my index finger, but it’s ok, everyone is fine. Also, we got a digital pet called Nomi on Alex’s Apple Watch, which you feed with your fitness stats, and I walked it in the morning sometimes to keep it from dying. But we still killed 3 of them on accident and are now on QQ4. It’s the new Tamagotchi. 

Purple potatoes! And buttermilk fried chicken.

#annatifftime, our standing monthly videochat! Now just one of so many.

New tiny vase (a sampler size of Taiwanese Kavalan whisky). And Mr. P, the pea plant that seemed to be doing so well but then died an abrupt death thanks to our gnat problem.

I made burger buns. And we make very pretty burgers.

Friday happy hours.

More braised pork over rice, this time with zucchini. And another roast chicken.

Another film pickup…

… and drop-off. Thank you Meg for sending our film off to Richard Photo Lab! Such a fun double exposure project.

Kaya toast. With my mini kaya spreads bought from Singapore last year. And I decided to use my labelmaker and label all of our spices. We’re using them every day, might as well make them easier to find! Next level will be buying matching containers as well. 

The total harvest from two months of growing a pea plant… two tiny peas. Do you see them in the chicken noodle soup?

Another week! Whitney!

Sunset scenes.

AC/DC.

Free coloring pages from the internet: Ken Fulk’s and Nancy Blum’s.

A virtual consultation with Ronny to help him with his new home piano studio setup!

And finally, on the last day of the month, I did complete my 5k run. Very slowly. But done! And I drew this little map of the neighborhood to illustrate it too.

On to May!

 

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures, even in quarantine. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.