Tuesday, October 9, 2012

suburbia update: moving day!! (almost)


autumn greetings from suburbia! things are moving right along with our new house. 

stuart has been a painting maniac. he has painted every inch of the main floor and the past week has been making his way upstairs. this is quite a feat as the dinning room was a deep, dark maroon color (now a perfect shade of pink sea salt, same color as this envy worthy room, a mere 6 coats later) and every single window and door frame is flanked by at least 5 inches of molding. madness, i tell you, madness.

in the meantime we are trying to coordinate all of our new, kick-ass (via scratch and dent) appliances being delivered, gas line hook up, cable company, switching electric and water, oil delivery and our new garbage pick up schedule

(side note: getting your own giant garbage cans to bring to the bottom of the driveway felt oddly very grown up. maybe it's because we have a driveway)

the electricity sucking 50's fridge has been laid to rest and i swear it seems all the street lights now glow a little brighter. 

our sweet, old portuguese neighbor brought us a beautiful and huge fresh loaf of bread  the other day, as a little housewarming token. as we were showing him around the clean, freshly painted house and thanking him for the bread, he decided that would be a perfect time to literally block us down in the basement and try to convince us to convert and become jehovah witnesses. he slowly, in broken english, bombarded me with questions on the chapters of the bible and asked me how i pray. while biting my lip to keep from laughing out loud (mostly due to nerves by feeling trapped in my own basement) i shamelessly tried to deflect the questions onto stuart, the non-practicing watered down christian. but it seems the loosely practicing catholic who knows all of her prayers by heart was the better prey. 

...long episode short: stuart is still non-practicing anything and i am toying with the idea of ordering a giant virgin mary for the front yard. 

packing with a toddler is beyond difficult. there is a lot of climbing, missing items and unpacking. as a result, i have labeled more than half our boxes "MISC." my OCD self will be beyond frustrated when it comes to actual moving day and unpacking. my newest idea to help near-future frustrations is buying two different shades of duct tape to close the boxes. green taped boxes are for upstairs and purple is for downstairs. genius, no?!

we're also trying to organize actual moving day(s). we have all of our things from our queens apt in storage 2 counties away. the entire contents from our sparsely decorated 3 bedroom house in wales is in my moms closed in porch (can you say "hoarders") 

then, of course, we have all of the amazing buys of furniture pieces i've been collecting all 7 months from estate sales in my grandmothers garage. in addition we also have all of our current stuff and nia's stuff all over my moms 2,500 sq. ft. house. dispersed evenly, of course. 

not to mention all of the furniture pieces i've been collecting since i was 11 for my future house, waterford and china i bought when i was living abroad, shipped home and now in the basement. there are also plenty of childhood/school boxes from the attic. who saves all of their report cards? me! crazy. why you ask? who wouldn't save ones that note quote: "has demonstrated improved volume control in class". 

moving day 1 of 2 is tomorrow. i'll keep you posted


Monday, October 1, 2012

bathroom makeover

so, as you may or may not know, we JUST closed on our new house. first house. amazing house. charming house.

and although it is bursting with character and has amazing details throughout, we have 1.5 bathrooms that are bare bones and desperately need a makeover.

details: the downstairs bathroom is super small, has no floor, and is complete with just an old, smelly toilet and the tiny-est sink ever. odd pink tiling and bad 80's wallpaper, haf of which is down or ruined and patchy has to go.

we do however have a kick-ass clawfoot tub that we scored months ago that we are building the whole room on. it's gorgeous.

while i'll keep you hanging for actual pictures and a complete makeover recap (we haven't even decided on tiles yet) here are a few images for my ever-growing inspiration file.





fresh raspberry jam

we've been trying to jam-pack (pun intended!) our autumn full of little adventures. yesterday was the first weekend together we've had as a little family in a long time, so we decided to spend the gorgeous day outside raspberry picking.



we filled a little quart container full of ripe red ones, some surprisingly delicious white ones and a bunch of not-quite-ripe pink ones that were the perfect amount of tartness.

this morning i decided to make a yummy + super simple raspberry jam. YUM!

quick + easy jam recipe (from martha stewart)

2 cups hulled raspberries
3/4 cup sugar
1 TBSP fresh lemon juice

puree or blend raspberries to desired consistency in food processor.

mix all ingredients and bring to a boil in a small non-stick saucepan.

boil on medium-high for 10 minutes or so (mine took about 12-14 to thicken)

remove from heat and put in container. let cool to room temp and refrigerate. it will last up to 14 days.


*needless to say, i've been eating toast all day.