little messes

we’re getting closer to the arrival of the babes. i was hoping to hold out until the end of the month but my appointment today made it look like there will be four of us living in this house sooner rather than later.

we’ve been busy bees around here. in the last few months we’ve finished the hallway refresh that was started back in 2006. i can’t believe that it took us nearly 3 years to finish this work. but it’s done and it looks oh so lovely.

next we renovated the mud room, which meant a new roof and hence a new ceiling and well that room still needs a new coat of paint and all the furniture moved back in, we’re going to make it into more of a sunroom and bring our formica table back into action.

next up jeff gave in to my whining and we added a new sink and cabinet in the bathroom. it’s gorgeous and i can’t seem to stop sighing with delight every time i walk in there.

and finally we have the nursery which for the last 9 months i have been referring to as the “middle room”. that’s as far as i could go with my denial that anything was really going to change around here. but now it’s done, well nearly, and it will soon have new inhabitants if all goes as it seems to be going.

sadly many of these projects have not made it onto my camera yet but i did finally take some photos of the nursery. we made due with mostly recycled furniture we’ve been gathering for years.

first we have part of the set of medical cabinets i scrounged out of a podiatrist office a few years ago. thank you craigslist! the office manager thought i was completely insane when i showed up with a truck and bought two complete doctor cabinet sets. they were in use for 50 years and look nearly new and i was so excited to finally find the proper home for them. now they hold books and small toys just waiting for some little hands.

next we were lucky enough to round up a beautiful second hand oeuf crib for the bugs to share (i’m hoping they can sleep together for as long as possible because adding another crib to this room is going to be oh so tight) and a garage sale chair from a trip to upstate new york. my dear friend adrienne made the bugs a gorgeous quilt with small wise owls to look over them.

i’ve been collecting small postcards, calendars and tiny showcase prints for years and hung up just a few to get some art into the minds of the babes from the get-go.

and our changing table, again part of the medical set with matching trash can. hee! and the one new piece of furniture we bought for the room. an oeuf changing station that can rest on this cabinet or fit on top of the crib to save some space. this baby is stocked up with cloth diapers galore and i can’t wait to wrap these little bums up in all this cotton.

ok, now i’m getting excited.

yeah i’ve been a lazy poster for the past few months. a lot of swimming, sleeping, working and of course eating. oh and rearranging. jeff and i stayed home for the holidays (yeah it’s been a while since i posted) and spent all of christmas weekend rearranging the house. his office moved into the basement where my studio had been and i got some much needed natural light by moving into the back office. yay! now she’s all set up and i’ve been sewing up a storm. it’s good to be back. how’s about a tour:

more photos here

so many of our friends are traveling this thanksgiving so last weekend we decided to have a vegetarian fakesgiving to get everyone together and get our fill of veggie bliss.

adrienne and i, as usual, went a little overboard and decided that it was not enough to do in one day to make 12 lbs of pumpkin gnocchi and pickup up 25 lbs of apples to sauce up and can. yeah. we have a problem with boundaries.

so after about 8 hours in the kitchen we had, well, a ridiculous amount of gnocchi and 29 jars of applesauce to give out for the holidays.

and after dinner, well things got downright silly. first some back story, my friend amy always gives me the best, most hilarious thrifted presents. last year it was this amazing square egg press, which i just love, i mean who wouldn’t, voila!:

and the year before that she gave my friend chris and i a joint gift. a volcano kit! yes! i never made a volcano as a kid for some reason. and who knows why it took so long to get this baby out of the box. but why wait any longer, right!

we’ll have to wait a few days to get the lava flowing but i’ll keep you posted.

next stop, real thanksgiving. and for us that means mexican thanksgiving. bring on the green chiles!

henry and i set off this morning just as the snow stopped falling, which to be honest, made me a bit sad. i love snow. and i love walks in the park with snow even better.

what i love about my fellow dog walking wanderers is that when the city took over the main portion of a path leading from our neighborhood to the park, they met up on consecutive weekends and built a new path to circumvent the project. they even made three step areas out of stones and logs. brilliant. i forgot to take photos of them of course. not so brilliant. guess i was busy just enjoying the air and watching henry run around in the leaves.

on the way home we spotted the very best lost and found sign i’ve seen. thank you fellow litter hater.

our work on our house started within the hour that the sale was final. we found out quite quickly that though deconstruction goes fast and is wicked super fun, putting things back the way you want them takes what some would consider a lifetime. so when it came to the dining room that we began working on, hmm, was it really this long ago, yipes, well, we just finished. and by finished i mean i’m too tired to reconsider the wall paint one more time at the moment.

we actually went from this:

to this! and i can’t tell you how much lighter my step is when i come into this space now

and from this:

to this! ahhhh.

and just to pause for a second to again tell you how much i love the auction, the newest additions to the room were scores we made over the last few weeks. first off there’s this great pinball art from the back of an old broken machine:

and last but not least, new companions for our new dining room table:

the table was not an auction find but is also a new addition, this lovely teak vintage table with two hidden leaves came from my favorite mid-century store in town, home anthology. just try walking in there and coming home empty-handed. i double dog dare you. torture this place.

now we only have one room left on the main floor of the house. and it’s a small one, but perhaps replacing the roof on a small room isn’t necessarily a small job. but i’m going to pretend that it’s going to be really fun and fascinating… oh and it helps that we get to tear stuff apart first! let’s just hope it doesn’t take us 2 years to actually finish the job. i’ll keep my fingers crossed if you don’t mind.

and so it begins. a night spent glued to the tv, sipping wine to calm the pit in my stomach. see you all tomorrow on the other side.

we’ve been doing some rearranging and renovations round these parts. finally. the last renovation we took on was a year ago in september, the kitchen. we had just returned from a visit out west to see dear friends in portand and seattle when i announced to jeff, “We must redecorate the kitchen!”. to which the smartest man on the planet replied, “maybe we should finish one of the other rooms we’ve already started” as i ran out of the room with my fingers in my ears. I had somehow convinced myself that the renovation i had in mind; (i.e. new paint on walls, new paint on cabinets, new countertop, new sink) would be finished in two weekends. yeah, i’m a dummy. it’s was over 3 months and actually i still need to put the molding up around the backsplash, but no matter! we’re on to the dining room.

when we first bought our house just over 3 years ago, we spent the first year going from room to room and stripping 100 years of wallpaper off the plaster. most of the rooms we tackled are now sitting pretty from follow-up renovations a few years back, but the dining room, well, she’s been a touch neglected over the years.

so this is where our friend j comes in, because we realized we will never find the time on our own to patch all the plaster and prime and paint, good ol’ j has come in to get the ball rolling. i’m so flipping excited. i can’t wait to share what becomes of our dark green & brown dungeon. three cheers for j!

and just so i can get some photos into this rambling post, here are a few corners of the home from this beautiful saturday morning.

there’s nothing quite like growing something in a yard the size of a suburban bathroom.

and then in the span of an afternoon…

it goes from this:

to this:

to this:

ahh summer in baltimore city. who knew it could get this good. for a very first batch and try at canning, i have to say i know it won’t be the last.

nothing says saturday night like tax returns and risotto.

yeah that’s right, things are getty pretty crazy tonight. aw yeah. if this kind of action keeps up, i’ll be maxin’ and relaxin’ real good all night long. maximizing my deductions that is.

ok. sorry, i’m in rare form tonight. must be the week i’ve had.

i went to my standard six-week appointment with my oncologist, thankfully these appointments are really easy these days and just involve a standard blood test to make sure me and my cells are still friends. i randomly asked my nurse about vaccinations and if i’ll ever need to get any. (in case you have no idea what i’m talking about look here, but essentially, after a bone marrow transplant you actually lose all of your previous vaccinations because really, you have the immune system of a dear sweet baby.) my nurse looked at me with a strange narrowing of the eyes, trying to figure out if i am trying to make funny. she says, well, you should have been re-vaccinated at 14 months post-transplant. i then return the look to her… i’m nearly 5 years out people! so we look back over my records and figure out that at 14 months i had just moved from nyc to here and it must have slipped through the cracks. nice.

so essentially i’ve been walking the world for the last 4+ years with my arms wide open in search of polio or diptheria. twice as nice!

ok, so yesterday i had the pleasure of getting all this taken care of by pushing up my sleeves for 5 vaccinations. 5!!! 4 intramuscular and 1 sub-cutaneous. the sub-cu i could do in my sleep, but the 4 intramuscular were a killer. nevermind that small helpless babies get the very same shots and probably only complain for a touch, and their complaints are embroiled in adorable whimpers and helpless cries and greeted by soothing motherly voices and calming swaddles. i, on the other hand, came home and whined my friday away. seriously, at first it was fine, just a few pricks from my lovely nurse. no problem. i can handle that. then as the day went on and the soreness deepened i started to fall apart. really. sadly. in my most pathetic moments, i dragged my frown upstairs and got back in bed (for the 3rd time in one day) and watched really bad tv. and cuddled with henry. who promptly kicked me in the arm. darn those adorable pushy paws.

ok, so today i’m back on track. still a wee bit sore, but much more adult about it all. and as for my saturday. well, there’s nothing like a little math to make you forget physical pain.

so our folks came on down to baltimore for a weekend of fun, but instead i locked them in the house and bade them work on my kitchen… ok, well not quite but sort of. and geez did they work. my dad and jeff’s dad and i formed a team and put in those countertops we did. they even gifted us a beautiful cast iron sink and a new faucet to boot! how lucky are we. not only to have such amazing family but to get to spend time with them and get to use their elbow grease! bonuses all weekend.

from the conversation and laughter to the food and drink and even a bocce game right after dinner at la scala (who ever decided the bottom floor of this restaurant needed a bocce court is a genius)… it was a super-duper wicked fun weekend.

so… who’s coming to visit next? we still need to install the backsplash and paint those pesky doors! he hee!