Happy Weekend!

It's the weekend! What are you up to? If you were here, Evie would tell you a knock-knock joke and sing you a song from Annie, two of her specialties.

Michael and I haven't been home and available to really work on the house together for a couple weekends, so we are planning to do nothing but stay here and finish up projects. I am so excited! The floors are looking great and the trim is really starting to come together. I'll have a post up on that early next week. I can't wait to share.

Now, back to the wheelbarrow. We decided to take down the rest of the faux stone from the fireplace in the living room, just to be safe. I've been hauling the stone out all day and I'm officially exhausted! Jason's coming over tomorrow to frame out the new fireplace and then I'll start working on the trim.

Just a little sappy note - I am so happy we live in this house. It is really starting to feel like ours. We put up the door trim and a bit of baseboard yesterday and it was one of those major sigh moments. It's all coming together. :)

Blossoms Make Everything Better

2013 is rocking us a little. Michael and I have been working like dogs. We definitely had a weekend's worth of work to do, but when Saturday morning rolled around and the sun was shining  and spring was calling, we decided to throw work to the curb and hit the streets.

We ended up at the Brooklyn Museum and Botanic Gardens, where we were able to catch the blossoms in full bloom. 

Catching blossom petals before they hit the ground is good luck in our family. My girls say that they get a wish for every petal. Among others, Saturday's wishes included:

1) That Linus would learn the standing trick

2) That we would build a swimming pool in our back yard (???) :)

3) That the street fair that was right by our house last weekend would come back soon.

Note to self: working weekends are never necessary. 

A New Leather Source

I've really been wanting a chair in our small bedroom. I looked around for a while and then remembered the Plycraft chair that I had tucked away into storage. It fit perfectly in the small nook by my closet.

But the vinyl on the chair is all ripped up and in bad shape, so obviously it is time for an upholstery job. Because the walls are so dark in here, I thought something a little on the lighter side would be pretty.

I started hunting online for a hide of leather in a light shade and I stumbled across Leather Hut on eBay. They had a ton of great options at really affordable prices. Then I realized their showroom is in Brooklyn! It's open to the trade only and only by appointment, and it did not disappoint. I found two identical hides of navy leather for a client's dining chairs and this half hide in a really lovely pale camel, almost blush. I love the color and the sheen so much!

I think the color will be perfect on the dark rug and against the charcoal walls.

I've got some mink oil that will help protect the finish and it will probably darken it a little bit or at least make it look a little more broken in. I'm so excited to pull off the wood shell on this chair and get to all that tufting! :)

Playing with Fresh Paint

I was thrilled when Microsoft reached out to me about trying out a new app called Fresh Paint they developed for their Windows 8 touch screen device. Fresh Paint was first introduced in MoMa's Material's Lab, and was met with high acclaim. I was also totally blown away by the realistic look of the painting application.To practice I referenced this painting and tried my first go-round. Here's the base:And here's the finished version:And my second try, with apples:The dimension of the strokes looks a lot like real oil paint, right? Like any more involved app, it takes some time to figure out how everything works, but after three or four paintings, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on how to use all the functions. I like "real" painting a lot, but it is so much work to pull out all my oils and make a huge mess and then there's the clean up with all those chemicals, not to mention waiting around for a week for the paint to dry. I love that with Fresh Paint, I could make a painting in like 20 minutes while I'm lounging on the sofa. Such a relaxer!So once I felt like I had the hang of painting with the app and the brush stylus, I tried Fresh Paint's cool feature where you can import any image and the colors become wet paint, so you can manipulate the image and make it look painted. It's like advanced doodling - no creativity or brain work required! So, so awesome.Since Mother's Day is around the corner, I decided I wanted to use the app to make something special for my Mom (and she already saw the painting, so I'm not blowing any surprises here.) :) I've talked about my Grandma Johnson before, who immigrated from Sweden when she was 19. This photo has always been my favorite of her. It was taken just before they left their home to move to the US.Grandma Johnson lived to be more than 100 years old. She was independent, headstrong, lovely, intelligent, creative, and loving. We all think of her as the matriarch of our huge family. One of the first and most memorable things we've done since moving to New York was to go to Ellis Island when my parents were in town visiting. We were able to check the scans of the ships' logs to see Grandma's and her parents' signatures. It was really amazing.I thought it would be fun to see if I could use Fresh Paint to paint on top of the old photo scan and recreate a loose, more abstract and painterly version of the photo in color. To do this, you import the photo in the same way as the "wet paint" method, but this time I layered paint color on top of the black and white image, just using the photo as a sort of template. I liked getting to guess what color her clothes would have been, and it was fun to add color to the room through the rug, wallpaper and furniture.I think the thing that makes the Fresh Paint app so realistic is the seemingly infinite color possibilities. Every shade you could ever dream up is right at your finger tips.   The brush stylus makes the process feel so real. I was able to smooth out her face and add in more detail in the room. And here's the finished painting. I love that it's not a perfect replica of the photo. This actually looks a lot more like Grandma did as an older adult, which makes me really happy. This is more like how I remember her.I had two of the finished images printed on heavy cardstock at my local printers for $2 each (talk about affordable art!). I'm giving a framed one to my mom for Mother's Day, and the other I framed in one of my favorite antique frames and hung in my girls' room.My girls know all about Grandma Johnson and how special she was to me, and I love that they get to see her photo every day in their room. I can't wait to keep practicing with the Fresh Paint app! I've already got a whole folder of images on my desktop that I'm so excited to paint over and print out. :)This post was sponsored by Microsoft's Fresh Paint app, available exclusively on Windows 8. All opinions are my own. 

Sending Love

I'm sure you've been glued to the computer and television like I have. (Checking Reddit until 3am? Yeah, me too.) My heart aches for my poor Boston. I hope you all are staying safe, especially our old Cambridge friends. We're all praying and hoping here that this lock down ends soon. I hate seeing all those so-familiar places as the setting of such scary circumstances, but I know you guys will continue to pull together. There's no tougher city than Boston. xo

Spring Flowers

One of my favorite things about where we live is the proximity to Trader Joe's. I have to pass by it to take my girls to school each day, which makes it easy to pop in for the day's food. I stopped in yesterday and the $5 ranunculus giant bunches are back! I love peonies as much as the next blogger, but there's something special about ranunculus blooms. I love that they are a little quirky with their meandering stems. And I like that some have really dark, almost black centers.

What are you favorite flowers? I'm also a big fan of white anemones and garden roses in any color.

PS I met the queen of flower arranging at a party once and she is hands-down the coolest person. Isn't that the best when online people exceed coolness expectations in real life?

Happy (Spring?!) Weekend!

It's the weekend! We are so ready for spring around here. This winter has been cold and long. Lately we've been trying to stay outside all afternoon to combat the cabin fever we've been suffering from basically since Hurricane Sandy in October. :/  It's so fun now that Evie's old enough to ride her scooter and we don't have to take a stroller down the subway stairs. It feels like the city is our oyster. My little scooter gang is coming to get you this spring, NYC!

(This photo cracked me up when I found it on my phone (Gracie's becoming quite the little sneaky photographer). Do your kids climb inside your jacket when they get cold? I secretly love the extra snuggles (and warmth!), but now I'm thinking it must look a little weird to passersby? ha!)

Linus and I have been going out for runs together along the Promenade and I'm remembering how much I love this place. I was talking to another woman in my church about how sometimes we just want to move somewhere easier and cheaper to live. She gave me some wise words: Never make any decisions about moving away from the city in the winter, or your emotions will get the best of you. :)

Well, I think spring must be just around the corner because all the fancy brownstones in the Heights are putting out cut flower arrangements in their window boxes. Talk about luxury right? There's some major wiggle room in your budget if you can afford weekly flowers for your neighbor's sidewalk viewing pleasure.

Have a lovely weekend friends! If you're celebrating Easter, I hope it's a great one for you and your family. xo

Claire's St Patrick's Day Birthday Party

Claire's birthday was last weekend. I can't believe she is already six years old. She was born in Boston in the middle of a snow storm, two minutes before midnight, which I was thrilled about because I didn't want her to have a March 17th birthday. I mean, who wants to have a St. Patricks Day themed birthday every year? Apparently this girl:

In our family we don't do friends parties for every birthday and for Claire's birthday this year we decided just to have a celebration at home and invite over our cousins that live in Westchester. I've talked about my sweet friend Jenna here before. She has absolutely cornered the market on cuteness - her clothes, her kids, her blog, are all amazing. And girlfriend can throw a mean party! Between Jenna's skills and Claire's enthusiasm about a St. Patricks Day party, I knew I wanted to do something fun for the decorating, while hopefully not breaking the bank.

The Dollar Tree, Michaels and Party City came through for me. All of these stores have dollar or less sections that carry pretty cute stuff. You just have to hunt a bit, and then get creative. Streamers are two-for-a-buck at the dollar store, and buying eight rolls was an easy and cheap way to make a rainbow wall for our photos.

It was Claire's idea to make the chandelier look like a cloud that the rainbow was coming out of. We picked up a couple of these accordion garlands at Party city for $2 each. We added the green garland, satin bows and dangling clovers for good measure.

I love that my girls came up with most of these ideas and that they executed a lot of it by themselves. Nothing makes me more proud than seeing their little creative brains at work.

Since we are from Arizona originally, we hold true to the idea that a party's not a party without a piñata. I showed Claire the Pot O' Gold DIY piñata that Jordan posted a week or two ago and Claire said we just had to have it.

This was my first piñata and I was surprised at how easy they are to make! And pretty fun actually. It took me and Claire about two hours in all to cut out the cardboard and glue the fringed tissue paper. We watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People while we were at it, to get us into the spirit of the thing. :)

The pinata activity at the party worked out perfectly this time, which as any mother will probably know, doesn't happen very often. 

This time every child got two full turns at the bat and then Claire, the birthday girl, was the lucky one to bust it open. 

Chocolate coins and gold nuggets were everywhere! I think the candy scramble is so hilarious to watch now, but I remember being so stressed out as a kid as soon as that candy fell out. Must. get. all. the. candies!!

The kids used their party favor baskets to collect the piñata spoils.

Claire and I found the tiny little baskets at Michaels for 99 cents each and just chose the ones with the most green on them.

Claire embellished the baskets by herself with a little ribbon and some monogram placards made from stickers and cardstock.

There was plenty of room in the baskets for more candy and other little trinkets we picked up in the dollar section.

We also gave these little leprechaun clover pots as favors. Aren't they so cute? My local flower bodega guy was selling them.

We picked up the clover when we were buying some forsythia branches and a bunch or two of daffodils.  (you know it's spring when the flowers start to get cheap again!) :)

I think the rainbow backdrop was my favorite part of the party though.  It made for some fun shots of the kids.

I have two instant-print cameras (both are really pretty inexpensive), the wide format is here and the small, credit card size is here. I'm finding it's such a chore to get my digital images printed out these days that these cameras are such a treat to have on hand. Especially when we have visitors over. And seriously, who doesn't love the magic of watching your image appear in a matter of seconds?

We let the kids pick out their favorites to take home with them, and then once the party was over, the rest of the photos were moved to the coffee table, where I'm sure we'll enjoy them for a couple weeks.

All in all, we had a busy but a great weekend. Claire told me in her sleepiest voice last night as she was drifting off, that no one in the world has ever had a better mom or a better party than the one she had this weekend. Which of course made me feel like a super hero. I'd go to the dollar store every weekend for the rest of my kids' lives if it meant hearing lines like that. :)