Cool Stuff for Today

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I thought that sentiment would be perfect for a nursery.



The prettiest spring dress in the world, from Burda magazine. Look at that gorgeous burnt-sugar bow on the strap - are these people color geniuses or what?

Mother's Day Card from LizzyClara on Etsy

Spring Flowers

Flowering quince and a hydrangea waiting to be planted.

The pea shoots are coming up. We planted pansies this weekend.

Nursery Update

Thanks to a week of ice storms, snow, slush, and resulting time off work, I did a lot of work on Charlie's nursery last week. I wanted something a little brighter than Jack's nursery. The room was already a nice Wedgewood blue on 2 walls, white wood on two walls, so there was no painting involved. I bought some fabric and the crib bedding, but everything else we already had around the house.









Jack and I made a productive trip to the fabric store yesterday and bought a mobile, the sort of thing marketed as "room decor", but could be sold by some enterprising person at a modern baby boutique for 5 times the price ($4.99, for anyone who is interested). It's made of plastic circles, beads and bits of mirror, and to tell the truth, we all are kind of fascinated by it as well. We also got two lengths of striped fabric for new covers for the changing pad, and a mod pear print for a throw pillow to go on the rocking chair.

I am still looking for a comfy chair pad for the rocking chair. Country Curtains has some in ticking stripe, which would match Jack's little rocking chair.

Festive Update

Christmas preparations are going swimmingly so far. I sent Robin to the post office with two big boxes of gifts for the relatives, which I always think is the hardest part - shopping, wrapping, finding the correct size box, packing, finding the tape, digging for addresses. Jack helped me wrap all the presents this year. I have one stocking still left to make, and 1.5 socks to knit. We are having pre-Christmas on Saturday with some friends who will be out of town for the holidays. Ham, here I come! My sister will be here tomorrow night, in time to bake more cookies and wrap more gifts and have light-saber duels with Jack while Mommy puts the finishing touches on Robin's Christmas shirt. Jack's vintage 1978 Millenium Falcon is stashed in the laundry room, waiting for me to buy a whole lot more wrapping paper. Three kinds of cookies have been baked.

So really, what more is there to do but sit in front of the fire, eat popcorn and read Twilight?

Deck the Halls

We spent a busy weekend picking out our tree, decorating, making cookies and enjoying the snow. We also went to a great dinner party and had currywurst and spatzle with cheese, perhaps the perfect winter foods.
Homemade stockings for Jack and Robin. I'm still working on the rest.

Decorated white pine Christmas tree. I think it still needs a few more lights.

New red velvet curtains in the dining room keep us toasty while we're eating.


I made the browned-butter Spoon Cookies from Gourmet with a four fruit preserve filling. They are so delicious, but you must wait at least 24 hours before eating them. They turn into a melting buttery cookie with a toasty brown-butter flavor. Nest weekend: almond toffee and ambrosia macaroons.

Christmas Whirlwind

I'm so excited about Christmas this year. I sometimes feel, like everyone else who celebrates a family-centric holiday involving gifts, decorations, cooking and visitors, overwhelmed by Christmas. But not this year. First of all, we are staying home, and some of our family are coming to stay. This, to me, is the best kind of Christmas. We have a big house; it is no inconvenience to have guests. I like my own fireside best of all.

I have big plans for Christmas cooking, involving filet of beef and 5 kinds of Christmas cookies:
ambrosia macaroons
chocolate almond butter toffee
cut-out cookies
cinnamon pecan shortbread
brown butter cookies

Some of these will go to the cookie exchange.
The lights are up, the garland is on the mantlepiece, and the tree will be coming home soon. Christmas gift shopping is still looming, but I am looking forward to it.

Jack's Bistro

I have wanted a toy kitchen for Jack for a while now. I looked at the cute ones at Target, but neglected to buy. This year's model, unfortunately, has pink trim, and next year's is a rather garish bright blue. I considered making one from scratch in *all* my spare time. Then, as fate would have it, I went antique shopping last weekend and spotted the "Suzy Homemaker" oven you see in all its turquoise glory. It does something which only a toy made in the 50's before giant corporate lawsuits would do - it heats up. That's right. I have not plugged it in, so I don't know if that part still works. The oven was mine for $35, still in the original box. I made
Jack some felt chocolate chip cookies and put out his play food and fruit. I had a set of pots and pans that I played with when I was a little girl. They are miniature Revere Ware in stainless steel with copper bottoms (another toy I can't imagine being made today, simply because of the expense). The set has a frying pan, 2 saucepans with lids, a little tea kettle, a mixing bowl and a coffee pot with lid. The little shelves are from IKEA, as are some of the baking implements. The polka dot table and chairs were a birthday present and came from Babystyle. All in all, a fabulous and fabulously easy little restaurant for my little gourmet.

Nursery Inspiration

I am not a big fan of matching furnishings or obsessively decorated rooms. For most of our married life we were poor, and therefore the matching, perfect new furniture was not an option for us. Now, I suppose it could be, but it's not really my style. I didn't match the napkins to the bridemaid's dresses at our wedding either - if you did, you might want to stop reading now. I like a comfortable house with simple, traditional furnishings. Except for the lucite lamps in the guest room. They're modern, but so light and airy that they are also feminine.

In particular, I think a nursery or child's room shouldn't be too perfect. It's a matter of self-preservation. You will not be able to keep the room looking like a magazine spread. Children make a mess. So a nursery should in a sense be pre-messed. This does not mean it should be a dump, just a place where 300 brightly colored books will not clash with the color scheme, where some plastic toys will not look like an abberation, where you can feel comfortable having juice consumed without heart failure.

A couple cute ideas from Pottery Barn Kids:

Such a cute branch mobile, and very easy to make. Some stuffed birds, a branch and some fishing line for hanging. The owls are cute too, and simple to sew from scraps.



Love the framed caterpillar.

Places like this always sell lots of storage, too, which is not necessarily a good idea. Storage breeds stuff. Get a couple of plastic bins for outgrown clothes if you plan to have another child, otherwise a small box for the few heirloom items should do it. Diapers and wipes can sit right out on the changing table, babies don't play with toys yet, and the rattles and pacifiers will just get "stored" in the sofa cushions anyway. A baby's most exciting toys are their feet, and they are, conveniently, permanantly attached.

Nursery

These are the nursery colors I picked out. The walls of the room are already blue, and I couldn't face painting it again.


We are planning to buy a new crib. Jack's was a hand-me-down, and finally was having some structural problems. This is the same crib, but in white:

This is the fabric I used for Jack's brib bumper. It has sage-green ribbon ties.

The crib skirt will be made from some scalloped silk valances I have, and will be a Wedgewood blue.
I would love to get this armchair from IKEA - we'll have to see if we are near one anytime soon.

And, just so I don't forget that I once had abs and will have them again:

I worked so hard post-Jack for those wonderful lines down the side!

Cucumber Heaven

Sally likes to lounge on the couch and watch Squirrel TV

This is her view. We had the world's most hideous blinds in this room (to go with the ugly carpet), and I recently took them down and started putting up curtains. They're expensive, so I'm doing one window at a time. The curtains are from Target, the rods are from PB Teen and I sewed a band of pale blue silk to the bottom of each panel.

Our first cucumber!

Climbing Joseph's Coat rose with lots of buds. I had to spray the roses for Japanese Beetle - we'll see if they perk up now. I love that climbing habit; I'm hoping to cover the whole front of the house with climbing roses.

renegade morning glory. They come up every year, and are trying to get into the garage.

Begonias in hanging pot.

This Old House

Okay, our house is not really that old (1953). It is a traditional Cape Cod, with the crown molding and the mantelpiece and the curved banister and everything. It's a lovely house that has been well-cared for, and I love it as much as a person can love a house.
We've done some work on it since we moved in in 2006. Not quite as much work as we'd like to do, because we work and have a 3 year old, but here are some of our upcoming projects:
The living/dining room will be painted with the following:
Behr Interior Eggshell Finish in Vanilla Custard
Ralph Lauren Candlelight Topcoat in Pearl

As you can see, at the moment it is sort of a Napoleonic grey-green.

The kitchen before:

The kitchen after:


The kitchen still needs to be completed, with a small patch of marble backsplash still to be installed, the painting completed, some of the molding replaced and switchplates installed. I will also install a pot rack above the range. We used Behr Lemon Chill for the walls, and Italian marble tiles for the backsplash, which my husband installed himself.

July Home and Garden

July is a lush time here in West Virginia, especially this year as we've had a lot of rain. Our garden is in a series of terraces and raised beds that my husband built last spring. We have a small herb garden (thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary, sage, French tarragon, oregano, dill, parsley, cilantro, lavender and basil).

In the bottom beds we have blackberries, peas, sweet peas, and 9 strawberry plants. In the main bed we have cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, marigolds and nasturtiums. The cucumbers definately get the "Most Rabid Growers" award this year. As you can see, they are mixing with the nasturtiums and having a big ol' time.

In front of the house, we took out a dreadful, half-dead evergreen and put in a rose garden (my husband did promise me a rose garden). It will be a few years before we get the full effect. There is a nice mixture of climbing roses and standard.

Here is the table set for three for dinner, with a bouquet of hydrangeas from the front yard.

When we were married, the bouquets had hydrangeas from my mother-in-law's yard, so they are very dear flowers to me, reminding me both of our wedding day and of my mother-in-law, whom I loved very much and who died this last October of breast cancer, far too young.

Summer Treats

A few of the recipes I've added to my Epicurious recipe box most recently:


Raspberry Chocolate Ice Pops



Peaches 'n' Cream eclairs with bourbon caramel sauce


Coconut-macaroon and lemon ice cream sandwiches


Vegetable pesto salad with warm goat cheese toasts



Toasted-almond cake with strawberries in rose-water syrup



Orange-scented beignets

Sallydog

This is the story of our dog Sally. We decided in April of 2008 that we wanted to get a dog. We had adopted one the year before but it was a young dog and jumped all over Jack and he was afraid of it. So we sadly took her back to the shelter so she could find a home better suited to her. Jack was potty training at the time and that experience seemed to set him back. He still wasn't potty trained a year later.

We picked out a hound named Lincoln, and we visited him and took Jack to visit. We were all set to adopt him, and I went to the shelter in the morning to pick him up. The people right in front of me took him - the first adoption of the day. I was disappointed, but I decided to look around.

I made the circuit of the kennels, but didn't see any dog that called to me. Then I stopped at the last kennel near the door, and there was Sally. She looks just like a little black wolf. She came right up to me and wanted to be petted, and was so friendly and happy. She had been at the shelter for 4 months, and had been brought back from one adoption because she chased livestock. She didn't seem to mind the shelter at all. She had her blanket, and some friendly people around and that was all she needed.

I called Robin and he told me to do what I thought was best. So I brought her home. She didn't want to get in the car, but when I picked her up and put her in, she was good as gold. I took her to work to meet Robin and then home to meet Jack. Jack was worried about having a dog that barked, but Sally never barks. She has never had an accident, never chews, loves to ride in the car now, and will chase anything on 4 legs. She is always up for a walk, has comfy beds all over the house, and loves veggie burgers, croissants, vanilla ice cream and especially sausage. She will let Jack sit next to her and feed her pieces of kibble from her bowl. She is so gentle and loving with us and every other person she has ever met. She is very aggressive toward other dogs, squirrels, cats, deer, etc. and must always be on the leash when we walk. But we all have our quirks!

Jack was fully potty trained, with no night time accidents, a month after we got Sally. We think he just needed something else to occupy his mind. She has been such a blessing for us.