Cache of Los Angeles Vintage Trikes

It seems that now that I have found out where these bikes are from I keep seeing them. Don't know where I found this pic, it has just been sitting on my desktop for a while, but there are two more of Los Angeles vintage designs sitting front and center amongst all of the modern kid's bikes.

Baby Boy's room at Ohdeedoh!

I entered baby boy's room at the big color contest on ohdeedoh, and they actually put it up. I am overly excited by this. Now I want to get to the finals, but my photography is pretty lacking I must say. Oh well.

Sweeeeet trash find

Found this little library table in the trash the other day. I think I am going to do a poor-man's laquer job on it...maybe a bright yellow, or a peacock blue.....hmmmmm. Any suggestions? I want to use it as a bedside table. I can't locate my camera to take a pic of the bedroom right now, but I have the now discontinued Hemnes 4 poster bed in yellow from IKEA:

with the Thomas O'Brien Willow coverlet, in natural, from Target:

Congrats BFF

This is BB and BFF walking down the boardwalk on B's third bday.. Congrats BFF on turning 3 yourself, and on your fresh out of the oven baby brother!

Kid's room accessories I like

Love this hippo and elephant made from recycled shoes, available at Anthropologie. They are big enough a kid could sit on them, but I wonder if they are sturdy enough.....also a little pricey for a decorative piece for a kid's room. At $298 you might as well save yourself $8 and get the Eames elephant, at least there is an established resale value there.

R.I.P. Eames Chairs

I have owned these chairs for many years, 12 to be exact. I bought them for $100 from an architect I worked with at the time, who lived in Sty Town. My ex and I carried them home six blocks to Alphabet City, on our heads. They are one of the few things I took when we broke up. When I bought the pair the original 1978 orange leather was in perfect shape; but several cats, even more moves, and one baby boy later this is what they look like.
Realizing these were from another part of my life, one that I didn't need anymore, I finally put them up on Craigslist. A lovely young couple came to get them, and I watched them carry them down my stairwell, a chair on each person's head.

Dream House

Look carefully...do you see the house hiding in the back? This is my dream property...a house tucked behind a building and a secret garden. Totally run down and ready for me to give some love to. (it is also one block from the subway!)

Baby Boy's Big Boy Room

Spent most of last weekend working on B's room. Of course still lots of things I would like to do, but here it is, hopefully ready for play and sleep. Had our first playdate in it today and both kids had a good time. The tiger painting isn't actually ours but it is on loan from neighbor until we find just the right thing.

Yellow doors

I love this house I walked by the other day. Love everything about it; the inexpensive materials used so well; the way the light glances off the aluminum sheeting; the thoughtful placement of the windows, just high enough that you can't see in from street level, but I'm sure they flood the house with light, and the corner window on the second floor; the fact that the house is off-set on the lot so that you enter through a bright yellow gate, and then the door to the actual house does not abut the street; the yellow gate! and how well it plays off the grey/metallic aluminum; also I think this is one of those properties, that seems to have been common at one time in the greenpoint/williamsburg area where the original house is set on the back of the lot, and this new modern nicety, seems to have been added, while the original house hides, tucked away sweetly behind the yellow gate and front of modernism. I have in fact been thinking a lot about how you deal with residential properties that face busy streets, and the designer of this place dealt with that beautifully.
I am especially charmed by the hand-painted address:

I will say that I have been obsessed with all things mustard lately, and am in fact working on two projects where I am dealing with yellows. I think that mustard yellow (particularly when combined with grey) is becoming a major trend, and just to prove my point, about five minutes after I passed that house I passed an almost completed reno with another yellow door:

Street Shoes

Have you ever noticed how many shoes are left on the streets of NY. I have pictures of them that I have been collecting pictures of them, here are a few nice tennis shoes hanging out by the mailbox.

Happy New Year

Last week we had an amazing Rosh Hashanha dinner courtesy of BFF's grandparents. Wonderful night for all and the boys delighted in each other's company as always.

First Day of School

Here is B dancing on his way to his first day of school last week. So far he loves it. There are 6 kids total, and they all seem to like one another, and they all love their teacher, Ms. C. I love her too. She teaches B new songs and games, and he comes home filled with news of tree exploring and games that I have never heard of. He has one friend that likes to be Batman, which is good because he likes to be Spiderman, so it all works out for crime-fighting and knocking down the robots.
I also must say that I enjoy the almost 6 hours of uninterrupted time I get to actually do work. I think, in my quest to overly record my child's life and please his grandparents with a steady supply of new pictures, that I am going to attempt to blog his outfit every day (so far he still lets me pick it out most of the time, we will see how long that lasts, lol) on his style blog.

Summer is Gone

This summer was full for us, and I have neglected posting. We went visiting, I went back to work...I may even post some pics of the work I have been doing....but it was delightful, even if our family was soooooo busy I barely slept. However, now it is fall and yesterday was Baby Boy's third birthday. I guess I should start to call him big boy. He is as beautiful as ever, delightful and clever. I can not imagine my life before him...even on our worst days he is a joy to behold. Yesterday we went to the circus on Coney Island and B and his BFF played in the sand and chased each other about. B's aunt gave him his very own camera and he took pictures of the day (though I must say there were a lot of crotch shots, LOL) He said that now he doesn't have to pretend to take pictures.
Today he went to school, just for an hour, as an introduction, but tomorrow, at 9am I drop him off for his first full day. I look forward to packing his lunch and getting him dressed in the outfit we picked out tonight and walking in the crisp fall morning air to drop him off. He is so excited, I predict that he won't even kiss me goodbye at the door. I think I might cry when I leave him.

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.