About

Hello! Welcome to Sun Sabbatical! We are millennials raised in California who spent our lives surrounded by coastal redwoods, beaches, foothills, and desert valleys. After graduate school, we followed jobs to the Pacific Northwest where we are the parents of the sweetest, most wonderful kid who we're pretty sure holds the key to understanding the universe. "Sun Sabbatical," the name of the blog, describes leaving a sunny area.

When we have a little time left over after being working parents, we're preoccupied with making a home on our little slice of Earth. Here, we'll share how two Californian's navigate eight months of winter hybernation (home renovation, crafts, recipes), and all the outdoor fun we get into during the four months of sunshine (garden). This blog is 50% tracking our progress.

We're based in Vancouver, WA, so have a lot of thoughts about what Californians—and others!—should know before they take the plunge (spoiler: get in, the water is nice!). A lot of the narrative about Washington State is created by boosters (real estate agents, moving companies, etc.) who are hoping you'll buy something from them. When we moved to Washington, there was the odd Reddit thread that helped to add more context to what we found on those booster sites. This blog is 50% an attempt to show what it's really like to put down roots here, so you can make a more informed decision.

You might subscribe to our newsletter if you meet any of the following criteria:

1. You are a Californian looking to move to the Pacific Northwest
2. You are from any state and you love the idea of living near Portland, but not in Portland
3. You are from any state and you just read that Vancouver, WA is on Livability's Top 100 Places to Live in the US and now you're curious
4. You have recently moved to the PNW and you are not sure how to make sense of the gardening season here
5. You are a parent in the PNW and you want ideas for how to get your kid off the screen, doing something active
6. You have a home garden and want to follow yet another blog about home gardening and cooking from said home garden
7. You like home renovation and want to follow yet another blog about home renovation, but make it Portlandia this time
8. You value a zero-waste, low-budget approach to life and came here for how to do that in chic ways
9. You're my mom and support any random thing I get myself into

Thanks for visiting!

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Sun Sabbatical is an independent publication launched in December 2025. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows Sun Sabbatical to continue to exist. Thank you!

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