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.

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.....