Happening right now

WATCH out! The animals are alive?! WATCH out! DADDY and BOWIE and mommy...WATCH OUT, the animals are here?

These are the words (as far as I can decipher them) to Baby Boy's new song that he just made up.

Steel Big Wheel Mystery

I found this steel big wheel in the trash on the Upper East Side and of course had to pick it up. I have often wondered about its origins,but have been too lazy to actually track it down, but thanks to Daddytypes, I don't have to. He posted this rickshaw:
for sale at modern50. A few quick googles later I found that the company, Angeles, is still making products. Thanks Greg!

update: Go figure, a site called, Tricyle Fetish, has a whole bunch more info about the company Angeles, history and a couple cool shots of their products. Go check it out.

Family Photo--On Vacation

This is the last picture I am posting in today's desktop clean-up. Last month we went to DC for a few days, before going down to Charlottesville to visit friends. We took Baby Boy to see the White House, and here is the obligatory photo. I think it was a bit of a disappointment for BB though. We told him we were going to see Obama's house and I think he thought we were going for a playdate with Obama. He was very upset when we couldn't go up to the house and spent the rest of the weekend asking when we could go see Obama.

Baby Boy-The Photographer

This is James, one of our neighbors. BB loves her.

B loves to get his hands on my camera, after which sessions I find images like these. I actually love these portraits....they have a strange otherworldly quality. I think though, that B does live in a world different than mind, all his edges are still soft.

Baby Boy and his Daddy

I love this picture.

Annoying Light

I didn't post this when it happened, but this light continues to annoy the crap out of me! Our bathroom light had to be replaced and I picked up the replacement fixture. I had this clever idea to get an inexpensive light that was meant to be mounted over the mirror, and turn it on it's side so it aligned with the mirror, as a side-light. I explained this to the "electrician" (I put that in quotes because this guy barely deserved the title!) but gave him the option of mounting the light in the more traditional manner, if he was more comfortable with that, and left the room so as not to hover over him in a 6' x 8' space. When I came back this was his interpretation of my instructions; excuse: didn't have a long enough wire to lower the light another 4 inches. Like I said, the light continues to annoy the crap out of me, but at least it works, which is more than I can say for the ceiling fixture (which the "electrician" did not bother to remove).

A perfect rainy day we had:

We painted and baked banana muffins (an ongoing project to find the right proportions for sugarcane processed sugar free baking, note the Agave syrup).
At the end of the day I had a partly blue B covered in batter:

A great excuse for a splashy bath!

Wierd things I have seen.

This post is part of a massive desktop clean-up. I have all sorts of images sitting around that I haven't gotten around to posting about. These are from 2 years ago......anyhoooooo, sitting on Columbia U's campus with Baby Boy and his BFF and this group of students starts playing with this GIANORMOUS balloon. As they were playing with it they were slowly joined by every mobile child (BB and BFF couldn't walk yet) in the area! I have no idea where they got the giant balloon, but I can tell you, I think I am going to get one for B's birthday one year; I think it would make the party.

Tear Drop Lights

This is more of the strange day I had walking about in Manhattan, and it really deserves a whole entry, but I wanted to put a pic up of these lights so I could link to them.....I remember when this restaurant opened, before I was pregnant, when I was living in the West Village. I remember it because of the lights, they were so amazing! They all appear to be hand-blown milk glass, each one a different size. (I know the pic doesn't do them justice, but I had trouble shooting the photo through the window) The restaurant is closed now, and the sign on the door says by order of the Marshal, so I guess they got evicted. Signs of the times I guess. I wonder what will happen to the lights?

NYC gone wild!

I had to go to the city yesterday, and saw all sorts of strange and not so strange things...I have pics of some of it, and I will post them later when I can sort out all the photos. However, I don't have pics of the first thing I saw when I got out at Union Square: a hawk, sitting in the middle of Union Square Park surrounded by the feathers of the pigeon he was devouring. Moments before I got there it had swooped down and caught the pigeon, one of the amazed bystanders told me. I have lived in NYC for almost 17 years, and this is one of the most unexpected things I have ever seen.

Bookcase of the Day

Sometimes I get bored and I go trolling about blogs, looking for some inspiration/motivation.....I just found this blog, which is cute, but what I love is this lady shares my obsession with bookcases. Check out the bookcase of the day collection on the side bar!

You can move far away, but you can't escape your childhood, especially if it keeps popping up all over the net!

A few months ago I posted this detail of the wallpaper from my childhood bedroom.

Here is more of an overall shot.

A few months later I went to a housewarming party for some old friends upstate, and, while touring their house, saw this room. It took me a few minutes, but I realized it was the same pattern, just a different color-way.

A close-up of that.

A few months go by and I see this shot from a house tour at design*sponge.



Then today, while doing a vintage wallpaper search in a quest for something to cover B's bed drawers, I come across these 3 different color-ways, each with multiple rolls available, from different sellers! I did find out the wallpaper was from a manufacturer called Thomas Strahan. A few googles later and I now know that the company was founded in 1886 and was later responsible for multiple historical reproductions. All of the ebayers say the wallpaper is from the 40s, but the wallpaper in my parents house was hung in 1975, and the renovation of my friend's house responsible for their color-way was also from the 70s. I wonder when and where the pattern was originally designed....

More Urban In-fill

Love this entry way!

Here it is in the context of the building. It looks like they are still doing work...I wonder what the rest of the building will look like?

Giraffe Hat

Baby Boy went to the Bronx Zoo with his dad last week, but the trip was kind of a bust. Evidently, though B likes lions and tigers and bears in theory, the up-close and personal experience was down-right terrifying! Especially the tiger....the tigers live on a "moutain"; the boys had to leave the stroller at the bottom and climb up a big hill, at the top there is a glass viewing window. I guess the tiger walked right up to the window, and B jumped up his Dad, and they had to run back down the hill. Pretty much repeat story for every other big animal. Oh well, they came back with this cool visor.

Nice Patterns....(the baby and dog aren't half-bad either)

I was doing some back-up of old photos from my hard-drive this morning and I came across this pic from my sister's house. I mean really AWWWWWWW, but besides the cuteness of my sister's yellow lab and my roly-poly little baby, do you notice the two fabrics. Some people just have an innate ability to throw together a few things and have it look great. My sister and her girlfriend are both some of those people. I love the pillow and vintage sheet mix; the scale of the patterns, the colors, everything just works together. Great moment!

Metrocard Flowers

Things you see in the trash in New York City! First: WOW, just WOW! but second, Why? Why would you spend god knows how many hours collecting empty metrocards and carefully turning them into flowers, just to have it thrown in the trash? Maybe it is the end to a tragic love story, the reminder of which, has been tossed out to the street.....

Proof: the 80's is back.

Little B playing with his 80s vintage "Supercar" while wearing his brand new Yo Gabba Gabba hoodie.

Not my House!

These people probably think that I am some crazy stalker, because I cruise their house several times/week, usually stopping to take pictures. I guess I am sort of stalking, just stalking the light as it plays across this incredibly beautiful roof line!

Big Boy Bed

This is a BREKKE bed from IKEA, a discontinued item that I found on Craigslist and bought this weekend. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for, I wanted an old iron daybed, or cot base, but I have been looking for a while and haven't found one. This is nice, I can style it like a nice daybed, and the storage drawers underneath are useful, I think I will look for some vintage kid's wallpaper to put over the drawer fronts. A plan is coming together for B's room finally! I'll try to pull together a materials/inspiration board to post.

Yet more pics of my house

I am constantly restyling, but I hope working towards an overall vision. I wanted to enter the house in Apartment Therapy's Small Cool Contest, but had trouble with the upload. However, here are the shots of my clean house. Things to note: I finally finished the wallpaper above the door in the dining room; there are mirrors covering the hole in the wall, and the quilt has been moved to form a headboard as it was always meant to be; the rug is fairly new, a cast off from my sister; I did not shoot the dining room because just beyond sight is everything I didn't want in the photos; I only styled that corner of B's room, the rest of it is pretty much a mess. The first pic is actually a hastily thrown together floor plan, but it gives you an idea of the overall layout.

Bathroom to do list:

Just to put a damper on the toilet excitement....a list of things to do in bath to make it not look like a crack house (working toilet and non-holey walls only being a few steps):

Repaint (after repairs were made, it ruined my initial paint job, so have to redo the work)
Refix the fixed light (someone did finally show-up to fix the light fixture, can't find a pic now but will post what they did later. At least I do have a working light fixture now!)
Paint? floor, haven't decided how best to do floor
Paint over pink sponge paint job on bathtub exterior (black? or deep blue?)
Hang towel shelf with hooks
Put frosted window film on windows
New shower curtains
Strip door?
Wallpaper back of shelf
Curtain around sink

To think this is all a rental! I do love the fix-up though, and I do try to get landlord to pay for as much as possible.

New Toilet

So one of the things that happened over the past month is that we got a new toilet....YEAH!!!!! It is a cool low-flow model, with an impressively simple mechanism....anyway, here are way too many pictures of toilets, but what can I say, I am easily pleased:


Waste-line, don't know why I love seeing all the pipes and stuff, but it thrills me!

There was no shut-off valve for the toilet, so the plumber installed a nice shiny new one!

Out with the old 1971 model, in with the new, low-flush modern model.

Ta-Da! Here is the final product!

My 35th Birthday

I turned 35 this weekend. We had a nice party. Other things have happened and I will post pictures, but mostly life is plodding along. I am neither sad, nor full of joy, just in the middle...enjoying my boy in all his 2.5 year old glory, but not a lot else going on. I wonder if it matters really....I used to think life had to be something, always happening, always moving, but maybe this is enough...just my boy and me, filling each day with sticks and trains and lions...well that does sound quite adventurous now, doesn't it?

Our Family

This week spiraled out of time. I have a million things to catch up on, including week 3 of the cure, which I did nothing on this week. In the mean time though, we are applying to nursery school (crazy process here in New York!!!!!!) One of the schools asked us to send a pic, and when I realized we didn't have any recent of all 3 of us, we did a quick family portrait, arm out style.

Love Letters

To my dearest Baby Boy,

You are sleeping now. We ran all over the house this morning, you helped me bake banana muffins and oatmeal cookies and then we did somersaults on Mommy's bed. I love the way you talk, so precisely, each word thought about and pronounced carefully. I love that you don't use k sounds and instead use t sounds; "otay, i toming" is a phrase that makes me feel as if my heart will burst. I love that you love to paint, no markers, no crayons, glue doesn't float your boat, but with a paintbrush in hand you are a master creator. I love how picky you are about food combinations; raisins in oatmeal, not bananas! Pears in pancakes, not blueberries! Broccoli in cous-cous and peas in mac & cheese. If these are what you desire, let me cook them everyday! I know that lately it seems as if your mama has been half-asleep, but you, my dearest lovely son, you always bring me back. I can not imagine not hearing your laugh, I live for your sweet little "I love you", I like you clean and fresh from the bath, streaking through the house, and dirty and snotty, climbing in my lap. You build towers for me to be amazed at, you make me wonder at the lives of squirrels.

Little boy, I love you too,

Your Mama

Secret pictures

Sometimes when i download my camera there are pictures my boyfriend took while I was asleep. It feels so sweet.

The Cure: Week 2

Week 1 done, and I am already behind...oh well. I still need to get the Baby's room swept and mopped today and that will catch me up. Week 2 is supposed to be about the kitchen mostly, but I cook every night, and while my kitchen could use some reorganization, I could use a little money to do that, and since there is none to spare this week, I am putting it off. So instead I am combining the exercises of week 2 with week 3's landing strip.

Before pics of my entryway (aka landing strip):





Week 2 To Do:
Fix one thing in my apartment--I am going to pull up the cracking, stinky entryway floor. I'm not sure that I can keep the vinyl (1 layer down, cracked, and painted on) or the linoleum beneath that (unsure of composition, also painted on, don't know about overall shape) but I don't think I am going to try going all the way down to wood (don't want to deal with pulling up linoleum, this is a rental!!!!) Eventually I think I will put in something from FLOR.

Clear Space For an Outbox--Straightforward
Clear one Surface and use the Outbox--I think I will pick my closet, not a surface, but it is in the entryway so the two go together.

Buy fresh flowers--I think I might buy a plant instead....I have a black thumb, but periodically I try.

Determine your style--I need no help there...that sounds arrogant, but it is just a fact, there is a reason I was an Interior Designer after all.

Find a new recipe and cook one meal at home: I cook almost every meal, but I am trying to revise the way I eat. My sister, who was macrobiotic for 2 years, just gave me 2 books on macrobiotics, and I think I am going to try out macrobiotic cooking and practices for at least the duration of this Cure. This week at least one recipe from my new books, I think something with barley....and a lot of chewing!

Choose the date for your housewarming--Feb. 28th (my birthday is March 1st, I will be 35!!!) so I can celebrate my home, my family, and growing old!

Create Landing Strip--List--Pin board, calender, set up mail station with shredder, clean up shoe area and hang art. I am not going to buy any of this, I will make from what I have.
Quick repair list for this room: Front door handle and lock: need to call locksmith, should I try to order fancy door handle? Get landlord to cover replacing with cheap option, and I will cover difference?
Strip front door (paint rubs off every time it opens and closes, worried about lead dust) Need to clear entry to other door, and order peel-away, another thing that needs money......

Clues, clues and more clues.

I love trying to figure out the history of decoration from the little bits left behind by previous inhabitants. I posted awhile back about the fish wallpaper and sponge paint job discovered while doing work on my bath. This is a pic of the linoleum tile I found underneath several layers of vinyl and stick down:

It seems to be a match, color wise, to the fish and sponge paint job. Also the paint is on the outside of the clawfoot tub, and the linoleum is the last layer of floor to go under the clawfoot legs. I thought the fish wallpaper was maybe from the 20s or 30s, but here is a link to a picture of a 1952 Armstrong Linoleum ad. Isn't that the same tile?

(PS American Vintage's Flickr stream, where I got this ad from, is amazing!!!!!) (I have been browsing it for hours, this post should just be about that.)

Variations on Buckwheat

Baby Boy and I have been having buckwheat pancakes for breakfast almost everyday lately. This is the Arrowhead brand mix, though I like the Bob's Mill better. Sometimes we have it with an egg on top, sometimes with jelly, sometimes with a little side of clementine......

However, as much as BB requests them, I do get a little bored. Which is why I was so excited when my neighbor's Mom made us upside down (buck)wheat cake!!!! She just sauteed a little of whatever leftover fruit she had around, than poured the batter over it, cooked until bubbles begin to appear, and than fliped! Here are my pears and apples sauteeing:

Here's my batter cooking:

This is what happened when I flipped it!

@**@! When I saw neighbor's Mom today, I told her of my problem, and she said, oh just keep a plate near by, slide it out, and then flip it back into the pan. DUH!!! Oh well, Baby Boy and I enjoyed our broken cake with a little honey.

(I think the plate is a little big for the meal!)

The Growing Story

I left the charger for my camera battery in my sister's luggage on the way back from Kentucky. We have not been able to hook up in the chaos of starting a new year yet, and so I am without camera. However, this is a good chance to clear my desktop of posts I've been meaning to put up, like this one:

I ordered a lot of books on ebay, mostly because it was cheap and I recognized an old copy of Dr. Seuss's Foot Book in the blurry picture. The box arrived and it was a treasure trove of old children's books. This one, The Growing Story, written by Ruth Krauss, and illustrated by Phyllis Rowand, was first published in 1947, by E.M. Hale and Company, though mine appears to be a special edition released by Cadmus Books. I am so charmed by the illustrations, and the little boy is so sweet. The basic storyline: little boy puts away his winter clothes as spring arrives; wonders if he will grow like all the flowers and plants; seasons pass; boy gets back out winter clothes; realizes they are too small; egads, proof that he has grown!
Sorry for the pics of pages, but I can't find my scanner (from moving more than a year ago!).

Insomnia=Pictures of Street Art

It is 4:12 AM, baby was having nightmares and Daddy appears to have a stomach flu. Both of them are asleep again, but I can't see to get there.......thought I would post some pics of this street sculpture/pyramid Baby Boy and I ran across last month, I think on South Wythe......



Do you think the green bottle is part of the installation or just trash?

8-Step Home Cure

I am an Interior Designer (well right now I am a Mom, but before that I was a Designer). It is always very easy to put together other people's spaces, but my own never quite seems done. Every space I have ever lived in I have been working on, constantly. Even when I was a child I used to rearrange my room, sometimes daily. I've always enjoyed this process, but it also leads to a certain amount of chaos in my life. I never have a "work" space, things end up in heaps and I don't go through them until they start falling on me, I lose things (like my winter coat for instance!). I'm very good at hiding my mess, and making it look organized, but it never really is, that is always the next project on my list. Lately, I find that I have lost the taste for the constant turbulence of redesign, and I long for peace and tranquility, my wee son provides enough chaos in my life.
In order to break out of my habits, I am turning to Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's Apartment Therapy, eight step home cure. Week one is about getting to know your home and figuring out what to do. While some of the things he suggests I have done (like run your hands around all the walls, and sit in a spot you have never sat in before and consider your home....I do that all the time!) Others are very practical....up first cleaning (particularly all floors) and list repairs. Also a big deal for the cure is an outbox, a place to begin to remove the unnecessary clutter, sort of a half-way house for items you cling to, but struggle with throwing out. This week I am supposed to remove one item from the house, I put out a broken lamp and a piece of wood, god knows what I have been holding on to it for.

Patterns in my Parent's House

We went home for Christmas, and I took a bunch of pics of my parent's house. My stepmother and father live in a four bedroom Victorian house in Louisville, KY. Louisville has the largest collection of Victorian homes in the US. You can see pictures of the neighborhood and read about some of the history at www.oldlouisville.com.My stepmother bought her house in 1975, for the ridiculous sum of $13,900, when the neighborhood was dilapidated after years of white flight and neglect, and promptly rehabbed it, with some help from the city, which was sponsoring some restoration in the neighborhood. Her ex-husband picked out the paint, wallpaper and flooring, and while some of it has a deliciously 70s vibe to it, I still think it stands the test of time. Unfortunately the house is in desperate need of another rehab, but the age of the house makes repairs costly, and while my parents chip away at the mountain of upkeep and repairs, it always seems to be crumbling just a bit faster. The first picture is under the back stairs (there are 2 stairwells) and is paper left over from before the renovation. It was common to use scraps of wallpaper in closets and side entrances in the Victorian era, and I like to think that this wallpaper is left over from the original house, though it could be from as late as the 30s. Anyway, here are some of the other patterns in the house:
Living Room Wallpaper

Dining Room Wallpaper

Kitchen Wallpaper (I love this one, and it is paired with a great mustard yellow paint!)

Laundry Room Vinyl Floor (and yes there is a separate laundry room, bigger than some bedrooms I have had in New York!)

Bathroom Vinyl Floor

Master Bedroom Wallpaper (definitely very 70s!)

Second Bedroom Wallpaper

Third Bedroom Wallpaper (this was my room growing up)

Christmas Roses

My landlord sent me roses for the holiday. How sweet is that?

PBJ

I'm trying to clean house and get packed before we leave at 5:30AM to Wednesday, but here is my Baby Boy eating PBJ!

More gushing about Alan

Did I forget to mention that Alan also gave me a few awesome 1960s lamps to aid in my ongoing battle against overhead lighting?

Bath AA

Henceforth I shall refer to my bathroom from a time either AA or BA. That would be before Alan and after Alan. Alan is the wonderful man my landlord sent to fix the crumbling walls surrounding my tub. You may remember the joys of our bath from such previous posts as this
and this. However, when the walls (which were really just wood paneling) litteraly began to crumble, I had to call in the big guns. Alan is wonderful, Alan is amazing, Alan is my new hero. Even though he had to jury rig a solution and work with-in a limited budget, he left my claw-foot tub exposed and fixed the surround in a non-hideous, even attractive way. I didn't really take before, before shots, so here are some of bath in progress:


This is a nice detail shot of some wood rot and mold:

Here is the AFTER (please add your own chorus of hallelujah):

This is my favorite bit, formed from a scrap of marble left over from another project:

Playhouse

This is the box our mattress came in last year!!! I finally got tired enough of it falling over, and desperate enough for something to entertain B with, that I built a playhouse yesterday, or at least started it.


Playhouse in progress.


B when I told him it wasn't ready yet.


Happy B, when I gave in and just let him play in his roofless playhouse. (Notice the Frank Loyd Wright, Falling Water cornerless window detail.)

Chicken Soup with Rice

Note to self: when you have a very particular 2 year old eater, try to find Carole King ballads accompanied by Maurice Sendak animation to encourage intake of previously rejected food.



He even asked for seconds. (Thank you Penny for the delicious soup!)

Nice House

Forgive the photo quality, my camera was low on batteries and the day was low on light. There is just about nothing I like better than a little urban renewal, particularly thoughtful, inexpensive, modern bits like this house. I especially love the simple entryway and unfinished wood slats (so in keeping with the neighborhood vernacular, but natural and modern at the same time).

Baby Boy's Art Wall

BB and I cleaned his room this morning. Getting him to help me with this is usually terribly unpleasant, but this morning I decided his growing stack of paintings , which is continually getting strewn across the floor, was driving me crazy. In an effort to get them out of the way I started to just tack them up with painter's tape. B loved this!! We ended up spending a lovely morning putting away all his toys and books so that we could "discover" more paintings to hang. Every time we found a new one B would ask to be lifted up to hang it. Here is the result:

Quite stylish and bright I think.

Clean House

I took pics of the house in all its cleanly glory on Thanksgiving morn and am just getting around to posting them.


Entryway with postcard collection (I have about 10x what is hung here)


Living Room


After I took a pic of these chairs I decided that they needed art of their own and dug out the painting.


Living Room with napping husband (and a lot of orange!! I never noticed that before.)


Long view of the apartment.


Another kids chair.


Little B's Room, sort of clean.


Little B asleep in his bed nook with Auntie's painting.

I did not finish the dining room

I did not even finish the wall, but I put the table in, and a wonderful dinner was had by all.

Found Wallpaper

They are working on my bathroom right now, and there were 3 different wallpapers lurking under the layers. First up, the most recent, from the late '60s, early 70s, maybe:

Please note that there are two different different depictions of pink swans, one with a blue bow...does this conotate maleness?

Second is a beautiful, simple all over pattern from maybe the '40s:


The final pattern is a hand-printed fish border (which appears to have been accompanied by a peptobismal pink and black sponge paint job!!!!) :

Despite dubious design pairings, I am very charmed by the pattern. I wonder when it dates to? It is the oldest, on the bottom layer of renovations...maybe the late '20s, early '30s?

First Strip

Yesterday I got all of the boxes and crap cleared out of the room (though some of it is now cluttering up my living room and will need to be dealt with before thursday) and got liner paper up. Today I started to wallpaper. I have to say this paper is so beyond my skill. It is handprinted, and has the selvage, which you are supposed to cut off, but I can't get it to line up correctly....It is also very heavy, and I was trying to do this all by myself. This first strip took me about 2 hours....at the end of the day I only got 3 strips up. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.