Acorn & The Oak

02/19/2025

📣 A new magical conjunction is coming to the old Acorn space this summer! 📣

Back in February of 2019, my husband & I went all in on this cool old building by a lake.

It was in rough shape and needed a lot of vision and even more love, but that was fine by us! We combined our passions to make a super cool spot for the community, where our guests celebrated life’s occasions big & small with beautiful flowers, inventive cocktails, and top-notch food, all under one roof, for nearly five years.

We closed this past summer to focus on our family, and the space we built stood waiting for the next visionary to come along and breathe a new dream to life within its walls. Well, friends, it’s finally happening!

Bookish, an incredible bookstore that has been serving Camas’ kiddos (and the families who love them) for about three years out of their fantastic lil’ space downtown on 5th, is itching to expand - adding in coffee, wine, beer, and snacks - and now they have JUST the space to do it! They’re moving into our old home this summer! Follow them here for details about the move as they come by!

On a personal note, I have to say a few things. Melissa (the owner of Bookish) and I have been friends for a few years now. We cheered each other on as small business owners across town, we frequented each other’s places, we fell in love with each other’s kids, and basically became family.

Chuck & I can’t think of another human being we would rather have take over the space (that we still consider our first baby), than Melissa. She is so smart, so kind, so selfless, so courageous, so careful, so wildly fun…just, ALL the good things a person can be!

I’ve known about her dreams for Bookish’s expansion for a while, and I’m beside-myself-excited to cheer her on as she stretches her wings and FLIES, making an incredible new space for the community as she soars! I just love her so much and am constantly in awe of what she can do.

It’s going to take a lot to expand Bookish in such a big way, and as they say, it takes a village. If you want to be part of it all, check out:

https://givebutter.com/Bookishatacorn

And of course we’ll keep you updated here. So excited! 🥰

02/19/2025

We’re absolutely overjoyed to invite you to join us on this exciting journey as we transform Bookish from a beloved children’s bookstore into an all-genre haven complete with a cozy café and a welcoming wine and beer bar! Our dream is to create more than just a bookstore—it’s about building a vibrant community hub where friends, families, and book lovers can come together, share stories, and make lasting connections. And here’s the best part—our vision is to bring this dream to life in the very space you already know and cherish: the former Acorn & Oak! With your support, we can make this incredible transformation a reality. Let’s make magic happen together!

By Bookish

02/19/2025

Ooooopsies! Ye olde cat is out of the bag! I’ll post more later, but for now, people of Camas, know this: Bookish will be moving into the old Acorn space come summer…AND they’re adding coffee, snacks, beer, and wine! Many more details to come. We are so excited for Bookish - and for the town of Camas! 🥰

By Bookish

10/18/2024

The past 5 days have been so challenging! I’ll probably always handle stress and think about anxiety like a wedding florist, (force of habit!) and it’s felt like the most intense wedding installation of the century. You have your team (in this case Chuck and me and the movers and the realtors) all dividing and conquering, making beautiful messes and magic, but you’re on a tight timeline and you have to keep retreating and cleaning as you go.

The goal is to have everything designed and installed and to be back behind the curtain with your entire mess and your entire team hidden from site before the first guests start to arrive. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, and if you’ve ever worked events I’m sure you know exactly what I mean!

In this case, the name of the game was to get out of our house and have it spotless and ready to transfer to the new owners yesterday. We retreated to the apartment with our baby and animals, and once we got here we had to pack everything up here (upstairs and down) before the movers arrived - and they were FAST! All the while trying to keep this place clean for showings (the building is listed and has been getting some bites!) which is easier said than done with two adults, a two year old, two dogs, and two cats all coexisting in a relatively small space.

It has NOT been fun. 😳 But, it is almost done now! All of our possessions from all three spaces are currently packed into the most gigantic semi I’ve ever seen, en route to Dubuque, Iowa. And in a matter of days I board a flight with Charlie bound for O’Hare. Chuck will follow us in the car with the dogs & cats. 😮‍💨

Here are some slices of life from the past 5 days! Just to remind myself it wasn’t all bad - there were many bright spots of sunshine.

1: A few more baths in my favorite tub!

2: A few more nights in my favorite apartment!

3: A few more nights gazing at our beautiful neon sign from the living room.

4: Name ideas for cocktails that never were.

5 - 7: Trying to find time for fun out back with the doggos and Charlie.

8 - 10: Closing things out at our beautiful house.

11 & 12: Take only what you need to survive!

13 & 14: Most gigantic truck ever.

10/09/2024

Check out our plant babies, living their best lives with their new, loving families! There were so, so many and I don’t have pictures of all of them. But if you’re out there seeing this and you have one of our green babes with you now, we love updates! 🥹

Okay, so updates! Together, we raised just over $3300 to jump-start Bookish’s not-for-profit! Isn’t that awesome?! Plants and people can do so much together. ✨ There are a few plants that didn’t go at the auction that are now available (maybe still?) at Bookish, and the proceeds from those will all go to the not-for-profit efforts, 100%.

After the auction was over, Melissa and I stayed at Acorn waiting for pickups to finish (people had to come with u-hauls and vans and stuff!) and had a glass (or 5) of wine, and just felt so….good! about the whole dang thing. 🥰 Financially, we got off to a great start with Bookish’s noble efforts. Emotionally, I feel so happy that our plant babies are settled in with people I *know* will love them forever, and realistically, all these freaking plants are out of our two properties that we must soon let go! 😂

There is still so much to do! The listing for the business/building is going live this week. We got ourselves a house in Iowa and we sold ourselves a house in Camas. But this plant auction for Bookish gave me the *best* closure for our business baby. Acorn & the Oak came into this community with a last-minute auction to benefit the Camas Schools and the Clark County Food Bank, and we went out with an auction for a small local bookstore that is going to do BIG things throughout the entire county!

One could say a very simple measure of success is leaving a place better than it was when you arrived. And in that respect, I feel like I can heave a big sigh and start packing for the future, knowing that we did good. ♥️

Thank you all for EVERYTHING. Acorn & the Oak has been closed since September 6, but now with this successful auction, I’ve turned the last page on the story in my heart. Next I’ll have to tell it to all of you in a book!

10/04/2024

They grow up so fast. 🥹 The first picture to the last is a six-year glowup of PointDexter - a goofy little cactus of mine that is actually two cacti but I’ve always potted them together and consider them a single being. He talks about it in therapy every week.

Our big plant auction for Bookish is tomorrow at Acorn & the Oak from 11 - 2! Jesus I better get my s**t together! 😳

It’s cold and rainy but I’ve spent some time this morning cataloguing, pricing, and recording stories about some of my favorite plants we’re auctioning off. I also dug back into my old instagram account to find baby pictures of some of my favorites! Wasn’t PointDexter cute?!?

PointDexter doesn’t have an emotional story like some of the other plants do. I just love him, always have, he makes me laugh! I always wanted to affix googly eyes to this pot so he looks like a bunny but never got around to it. Maybe tonight! 👀

10/03/2024

Tuesday night we reunited with our team from Acorn for a family meal feast at Kachka in Portland. It had been three long weeks since we last saw each other on our final day in service, but it felt like no time had passed at all! It was the most heartwarming evening for me, seeing them all again and watching them all laugh together and love on each other and give each other s**t, just like every day at work.

As we passed around appetizers and family-style entrees and did toast after toast of Kachka’s incredible infused vodka, I couldn’t help but think, “This warm, completely content feeling I have…I bet this is what it’s like when you’re a mom and all your kids are grown and they come back for Thanksgiving and you see them all there together again and they’re all happy and eating and it’s the BEST.” 🥰

I had always wanted to go to Kachka, and I’m so glad that’s where we took our people! The team there treated us like royalty, with pure, unadulterated hospitality in everything they did. It was a perfectly delicious evening - thank you, Kachka!

And to Team Acorn, thank YOU for making Acorn & the Oak the magical place it was. We love you all very much. ♥️

10/02/2024

I just realized I never posted pictures of the pumpkin I made with my aunt and sister the other night! I love making these dang things. 🥰 I think I may make a few to auction off on Saturday!

09/20/2024

It’s beginning to sink in that I’m probably not going to be able to take my plants with us on this cross-country move. And we have SO. MANY. And some of them are huuuuuuge! And have been with me for decades! 😭

I’m trying to get myself to this place of zen where I’m good with letting go of all possessions that tie me down to any specific place or time. And if that doesn’t work, there’s whiskey.