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

suburbia - week nine. NINE!

although overall it has been easy + smooth, 10 weeks is certainly a long time to live with at home. enough said. 

my youngest brother is graduating college this month. we went up to see him + attend an award ceremony last thursday. after the ceremony there was a light reception. sweet! while in line for yummies everyone in front of me and behind me were raving about the sushi. "how fancy", "ooh wow, sushi!" "yum, this looks great" " i've never had sushi". i spied the white rice + dark seaweed from afar. my mouth started watering, preparing itself for a simple spicy tuna + avocado...

...yet, as i got closer i only saw green or orange in the middles. well folks, this is no sushi. it's cucumber. that's it. just cucumber. cucumber rolls and carrot. and not even juilenned carrots, just a fat chuck of giant carrot. not even any pickled ginger. i wanted to cry laugh out loud and tell these people they were not eating sushi. just vegetables. i also skipped the badly paired roasted pepper + gruyere quesadilla and opted for the coffee bar. I MISS NYC!!!!

we are just coming down off our wedding trio high. three gorgeous weddings in 3 fabulous places and everything was just perfect. we also just had our first ever extended trip away without nia. although we had moments of slight guilt and even more moments of missing her, we had a great time and did some much needed relaxing. 

to add chaos to our already jam-packed chaotic circumstance, my brother who just graduated also just moved back home. last night. that's six people in a four bedroom house. 

nia was temporarily taking over his room, but now that he is home, nia is back in with us. her dresser and diaper set up are in the dining room. crib in our room (did i mention our room here is 8' x 8' and barely fits our full bed + dresser??) and toys, clothes, shoes, and laundry are dispersed throughout the house. 

nia usually wakes up each morning doing a little talking and transitions to crying pretty fast, telling us to come get her. however, this morning she cried for a milli-second and then realized we were a mere 18 inches away and said "hi!"

after reading this i'm sure you'll realize how not-exciting things are here beyond the recent weddings. i mean, half of this email is about faux sushi. so please let me know of all/any fun adventures, trips, food experiences, and celeb spottings ASAP and stop me from my craigslist addiction of looking for the perfect dining chairs. 

love

L