suburbia update

happy new year!

i'll start from this week and go backwards...

still recovering from a weird chest cough/cold that seemed to come out of nowhere and thankfully has not spread to stuart or nia. stuart went back to work for the first time in weeks today leaving us ladies home. we've been in fancy dresses and ballerina costumes all day whipping up fruit smoothies and watching sesame street

NYE was super boring. we huddled up on the couch, the 3 of us watching "mulan", only intensifying nia's princess obsession and then i passed out at 9:30PM, completely bored by jenny mccarthy and ryan seacrest. 

christmas was awesome! we had to cancel our planned trip back to Wales for christmas due to ridiculous ticket prices. it's like the tickets knew how much, almost to the penny, we had in our savings account and wanted to play a joke. but we had a stellar time at home, just the 3 of us. nia's favorite presents: a tie between minnie light up high heel shoes and princess chapstick. 

i had a week of freelancing back at martha stewart. it was awesome!!!! i didn't realize how much i missed working. and an added bonus of seeing a bunch of sweet, familiar faces. thankfully, the subway map was still in tact in the back of my brain along with old favorite lunch spots on my old stomping ground. best lunch of the week: friedman's pulled pork sandwich with pickled red onion on a perfect brioche bun. 

           

we had nia's 2nd birthday bash the first weekend in december. she was thrilled at the idea of being 2 and loves a good party. plus, her birthday party was the first real event we've had at our new house. we'd be lying if we said we didn't love giving all of our guests tours.

we've had a bunch of fun events sprinkled in between too; our annual friends faux thanksgiving, which was down right delicious and so much fun hosting in our new house, a traditional pre-christmas date with our best buds that was chock full of cuteness, christmas cookie baking date with nia that resulted in 4+ dozen pink sprinkle clad tree and snowflakes cookies, and impromptu shopping trip to bryant park + columbus circle christmas markets to soak in the season. 

updates on the house...

1) we ordered a grown up couch. our very first grown up couch. EVER. big upgrade from our black velvet (horrendous is an understatenent) hand-me-down settes from wales, quintessential NYC apt IKEA futon, and the current pink tootsie roll couches. we're pretty excited. it was delivered yesterday and we are super happy with it!!!!

2) majority of our gutters and drain pipes are full of leaves and debris and are now almost all broken and about to burst due to expanding ice. lovely. stuart was hard at work yesterday tending to them with the help of A LOT of tools, a rickety old ladder that looked totally unsafe, hot water buckets and positive thinking. 

3) while stuarts been home for a bit he has done a zillion little projects around the house. awesome! includes but not limited to: creating shelves in old coat closet to convert to a linen closet, building shelves in bedroom closet to covert to a filing closet, painted the office (a kick ass chartreuse color - martha stewart "mimosa") and patched giant hole in the kitchen wall.  in short, things are really moving along! (pictures to follow soon!)

as a tease, it's pretty much these awesome shelves from the container store meets martha stewart mimosa paint color

  +   

4) we bought not one, not two, but three (amazing) dressers we found at consignment shops and on craigslist. one is gorgeous, refinished wood with pretty little carved handles. it's perfect and needs no updating. it feels so amazing to finally have the last box in our bedroom unpacked. the other two dressers just need a little tlc so i have a growing painting section in the basement that needs tending to this winter. one of the other two dressers is a tall, white french provincial dresser that just needs some serious de-stickering and a fresh coast of white. and the other i have a whole dresser design file to filter through of ideas. i'm thinking pink outside with light pink drawers and natural wood bead strand pulls? or maybe all lilac or mint? or covered head to toe in zigzags? (again, pictures to follow soon)

5) we had/have bat in the attic. well, i heard it one night when stuart was away at work and then the next night it had a repeat performance. we stayed up in bed for over an hour on our phones; stuart googling home remedies for bat repellant and me for bat noises on youtube to confirm our suspicions. suspicions confirmed, however,  UPDATE: we haven't heard it since. do bats hibernate?

6) we picked out a paint color for the wood paneled guest room and once the office is done (this week!!!) that is next on our project list. although, the painted wood paneling is really just a way to put a serious, more in-depth update on this room on hold for a few years. 

love and 58 degrees, 

L

(paint color source)

birthday bliss

we're off to new hampshire for a long birthday weekend. can't wait to fill you on the details of our sweet bed + breakfast, hiking and what will surely be awesome antique shopping

have a fun weekend!

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

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.