the week in review: good reads, magic and Mozart

A pictorial review of the week.

Flower appreciation.

 / 1 / 

Prettiest flowers I have ever seen growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. 

 / 2 / 

Campanula. Why do they remind me of toys, images and characters from my childhood in the early 80s?

/ 3 / 

My beloved clematis burst into bloom this week.

Living room progress surges on.

/ 4 / 

Evan spent most of the evenings this week scraping, and scraping, and scraping the 10 windows in the sunroom. 

 / 5 / 

More attention and commitment to detail - original hardware covered in layers of paint by decades of DIY homeowners without Evan's attention to detail. Soaked in baking soda and water, and scraped and polished. Like magic.

 / 6 / 

Living room on lock-down - the sanding has begun.

 / 7 / 

One wheel down, three to go on the antique industrial cart that we're turning into a coffee table (see here). 

 / 8 / 

Sully telepathically communicating.

 / 9 / 

Dinner at Left Bank - a 16 oz porterhouse steak that I thought would be impossible to finish, but alas, was not. 

 / 10 / 

Dinner at home. An odd medley of ingredients in the fridge that actually turned out quite tasty and definitely unexpected - feta, cilantro, red onion, jalepeno, cider vinegar and lemon.

/ 11 / 

Impromptu vinyl session inspires Hey Ladies dance.

 A lot of Billy Joel, a little Jefferson Airplane, a lot of hip hop and some Mozart to wrap things up.

Good reads. 

/ 12 / 

What a fun surprise to get this in the mail this week from my friend Penny - a down-to-earth, hilarious approach to parenting that I can really get behind. 

/ 13 / 

And some more parenting tips. This made me smile while waiting to take Sully in for blood work at the vet. Might have to pick up a copy.

These weekly roundups just reiterate how quickly time flies. Like woah, Nelly. 

Hope you all had a great week. 

xoxo

the week in review: good food, good music, coffee table project and family

A (mostly) pictorial review of the week.

(A wee bit late ... should have been posted last Friday). 

/ 1 / 

Lemon Buttermilk sorbet, inspired by a recent trip to my favorite restaurant. Recipe found here. The official kick-off to homemade ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet season - highly, highly recommended! My only modification came from a lack of planning - I only had one lemon, so that's how much zest and juice I used. Honestly, even though I am a lover of lemon and all things intensely tart and sour, I can't imagine making this with any more than one lemon. 

/ 2 / 

St. Vincent at the Town Ballroom. Annie Clark was such a great performer - obviously her voice is stunning, but she also seemed comfortable and genuine in her comments between songs which is always a bonus. Her crowd surfing at the end made me nostalgic for high school ... my first concert and crowd surfing experience was at Dinosaur Jr. at the State Theater in Portland, Maine in 1994.

/ 3 /

Dinner at Bambino with my lovely lady lawyer friends. We shared a lot of things, but this was by far the prettiest - assorted melon balls over arugula and proscuitto with balsamic drizzle. 

/ 4 / 

A coffee table in the making. I found four industrial carts locally on Craigslist - we bought two, convinced another friend to buy a third, and then sold one of ours to other friends. They've all finished restoring and converting theirs already and both of them look amazing. Things on this end are moving a bit slower due to the living and sun room renovations underway. 

One of the wheels after Evan cleaned off some of the rust and gunk (new pictures of this wheel completely gunk free coming soon). I love the pin detail. I'm feeling pretty smug that we'll have something like this for more than ten times less. The thrill of the hunt and being able to watch it transform from a crusty work horse into something beautiful for the house right before my eyes makes it that much more satisfying. If you are interested in one and cant source inexpensive carts in need of DIY'ing, Etsy has some great finished options. Not inexpensive, but now that I am seeing all the work that can go into cleaning one of these buggers up, I can say that they are not overpriced either.

/ 5 / 

Summer bedding switchover!

Not pictured: Getting to visit Evan's Aunt and Uncle on Friday - they just moved to Buffalo from Nashua, NH this week. It is the first time since we moved here 10 years ago that we've had family in the area, and it feels great. Evan's Aunt and Uncle met each other while living out here over 25 years ago - his Aunt was from here, his uncle was from Massachusetts. They moved to New England but always came back a few times a year to visit her family. When Evan's grandparents passed away, they decided to move back to be closer to her family, and incidentally, ours! They do not have children of their own, and Evan is their godson - so it will be like having one set of grandparents nearby when the little guys arrives in September. Good stuff. :)

the week in review: renovations, fabrics, birthday pampering, and - of course - dogs.

A pictorial review of the week.

/ 1 /

The gold yellow painted wallpaper with popcorn-like texture is now gone. Gone!!

I almost wish we could keep the walls in this stripped down, textured look - but it has a fuzzy surface now and doesn't look so good in person. It will be stripped further, sanded, and painted.

Sully always finds the sun, even if it is in a corner littered with scraped wallpaper remnants and paint chips. Behind him, the one last gold surface in the sun room.

/ 2 /

Sully's perch during dinner time. I've been trying to snap a photo of this for a long time but he always looks away. 

Surely from the shame - so naughty.

/ 3 /
Picking fabrics for a "follow the lines" quilt for the little guy coming in September. Scenes from my favorite (a fabric from Japan) below:

A loss in translation, but it sounds so profound.

 Makes perfect sense to me (and to Sully & Otto).

This one, not so much.

This one made me laugh out loud. 

"Good travel."

"Let's enjoy every day with us." Words to live by.

Bonus - this fabric can serve as a teachable moment in grammar in later years. 

Another contender - Alexander Henry's "Animal Kingdom." Even though the quirky Japanese fabric charmed the pants off me, I think this one might be better for the follow the lines quilt. 

/ 4 /

Mantel top in progress. Scraped and slathered with wood filler, waiting to be sanded.

With the walls no longer deep red, its easier to appreciate the reflective sunlight coming through the beveled glass windows. 

/ 5 /

Sunset on the Niagara River.

/ 6 /

The bump looks like a mountain here. I wonder if Sully has any idea what's in there?

/ 7 /

Birthday toes, preceded by an hour long facial with scalp, head, neck, shoulders, upper back, arms and hands massage - all by the lovely Annette at Fix Salon. Heaven - thank you Evan.

/ 8 /

After the deluxe facial and pedicure, a shopping trip to Chic and Sweet clothing and accessories boutique. A Happy Friday indeed. 

I bought a Living Social voucher back in December, before I knew I was pregnant. It expires on Monday, so I used the whole voucher on accessories: a few pairs of earrings, a vibrant scarf and three long beaded necklaces. Sometimes being forced to have a limited focus is a good thing. 

{Bad blogger alert} A highlight not pictured: wrapping up a fun filled Friday with a fantastic dinner with girlfriends at Jewel of India, newly opened in my neighborhood this week. So, so, SO good.

Have a happy weekend everyone. xoxo

making my week

I am shamelessly borrowing this idea from one of my favorite blogs, Reading My Tea Leaves - a weekly feature summing up the little highlights of my week (or, at least those that were captured on my iPhone). I like that it is a way to pull together all of the random things that inspired me to snap a photo during the week, no matter how profound or mundane. 

If you have not checked out Erin's blog, you should do so now.

/ 1 / 

Azalea branches budding in the yard brought in to brighten up the bathroom.

/ 2 /

Sully is no dummy - if I were his size this is exactly the place I would want to curl up for a nap - buried in down pillows.

/ 3 /

Otto's own moment of bliss. If I panned out you would see that he is napping on top of the back cushion of an oversized chaise, all by himself. Yes, he fancies himself a king, and admittedly we don't do much to dispel the notion. 

/ 4 /

Progress in the sunroom - goodbye gold! Its a very slow work in progress, but little by little the living room and sunroom are transforming, shedding their old, unfortunate, "what were they thinking?" McDonald's red and gold identity.

/ 5 /

This page from Bringing Nature Home on the three foundational elements of a natural, wild arrangement. Game changer!

/ 6 /

The long lasting dubium - I think I bought the stems almost two weeks ago, but I just got around to making this arrangement today. 

And last, but certainly not least, finally feeling ready to make this announcement to the world at large: 

/ 7 /

At almost 20 weeks along, we are due to have our first child in September. And I have definitely popped. :)

Happy weekend everyone. xoxo

slow transition - a living room story, pt. 1

Anyone who works full-time and endeavors to do nearly all home repairs and updates themselves knows that even the smallest, simplest of projects can move agonizingly slow. Add a house with a history novice, DIY homeowners having their hand at said updates, and now a current owner who is busy lawyer, and who, in a former life, was a wildly talented, but anal retentive, perfectionist house painter (talking about Evan here - I have no such talents) - and you quickly come to appreciate just how agonizingly slow it can be.

Living room furniture shoved like a Tetris game into the dining room. Do you spot the two boston terriers? They will not be deterred from napping in their favorite chairs.

But in the end, its always worth the wait both financially and aesthetically. Evan really does do great work. 

The current project underway is the living room - Hallelujah! New visitors to the house always compliment us on its charm - the loads of windows, beveled glass and built-ins galore, which I gladly accept ... 

dust everywhere from Evan sanding off the faux popcorn finish on the ceiling 

- yes, there is such a miserable thing.

... But then comes the obligatory polite compliment on the wall color. The wall color which I have come to absolutely loathe over the past two years, which was chosen two owners / at least 8 years ago. I usually try to preempt this by interjecting defensively, "All of the paint colors you see downstairs are not us - we just haven't been able to repaint them yet!" 

Thankfully those days are numbered!

sun room sealed off

Walls patched, waiting for primer. A nice view of the dark red, cream and black 
color scheme... did I mention I loathe it? 

And then, VOILA! Red walls no more! Its kind of pathetic how giddy just a coat or two of primer on the walls has left me. Evan could walk away from this whole project right now, and never touch a paint brush again and it would be a vast improvement in my book. Despite all the windows in this room, it felt like the red walls just sucked every ounce of natural light out, which was especially hard to cope with through the long dreary winter. (A friend of mine recently called this shade of red "yuppie crack den." Wonder if Benjamin Moore still carries it.)

And no, I dont karate chop my cushions. My dogs just happen to love sleeping in the middle of the back cushion (see first photo, above), leaving this unfortunate indent.

My only job in this whole process is to pick out the paint colors. Sounds like a fun, simple task, right? Hah! Leave it to me to turn even the most superficial, non-urgent, far from life-threatening decision into an ordeal to lose sleep and hours of productivity over. I want a very light neutral, that will still have enough contrast with white trim to show off the built ins. I thought this would be fairly simple to choose. 

Of all these options, I narrowed it to four, all Benjamin Moore colors: Ashwood, Overcast, French Canvas and Halo. Evan painted swatches on three different walls, and while I thought they were all lovely, I found them all too dark. 

So the search continues ... as will this saga. 

I know you'll be on the edge of your seat, waiting for more.