B K I N T H E H O U S E

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don't forget where ya came from baby!

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G U A R D I A N A N G E L S

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some special photos of us with our parents in the baby's room

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M O R E S T U F F !

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a bit more storage is always welcome....this was the fastest ikea assembly ever. assembled during baby's 15 minute nap.

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B U C K E T O' F R I E N D S

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F L Y I N G F I S H

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since the base color of the baby's room is gray (of course) i thought this mobile for the crib would be so adorable...i think it's a bunny riding on some fish. whatever they are is just so damn cute!

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U N D E R F O O T F U N

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all of the floors in the lower level are polished concrete...to warm up the baby's room a bit we found this cute rug with large spots...reminds me of twister!  this is a pretty cool looking run for a youngin'...we didnt want to go with anything too baby-ish or kiddy. the circular shapes are also a nice theme to pick up on for other parts of the room...like the little yellow circular table next to the sleeper chair. looking good!

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C O M I N G T O G E T H E R

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we finally got the crib together...it's been sitting in a box in our utility room for a few months now. it's a beautiful dark walnut to 'go' with a dark wood vintage dresser we're keeping in the room. this was a gift from baby's grandmother. how wonderful right? hopefully she will sleep long and peacefully in this!
all those ties are for the bumpers which have a gray and white chevron and yellow accents (i know there's some debate on bumpers now...ugh). we're hoping to get her sleeping in this over the next week or so...wish me luck!

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R O O M F O R B A B Y

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after 2 months sleeping in our room, we're finally getting our act together with setting up the baby's room. this room used to be our guest room. i still want the option of being able to sleep in there (which might be essential in the first few weeks she actually sleeps in there by herself...yikes!), so we bought this cool gray chair that can fold out into a sleeper. it was hard to find something that doesn't look terrible as an actual chair. 
above it is this really beautiful and fun bird mobile that turns and sways with the tiniest of breeze. already it's been loads of entertainment for the little one.

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B R A N D N E W

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if it seems we've been off line lately, it's because of our sweet baby Madelyn...born November 18th!

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N O V E M B E R Y A R D

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A R T F O U N D

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a few weeks ago we went to the Gowanus Open Studios which is just a  few blocks from our house....one of my favorite fall events. Being 8 months pregnant kind of put a limit on how much walking around we could do but we still got to see a ton of art. AND buy something we both truly fell in love with too...not an easy task!

tucked behind another kind of boring artists studio we had seen in years past, we found Amy Weil  who creates these magical paintings using 'encaustic' technichs... from the artist herself  "my work embodies abstractions that parallel the cycles of nature by a process of scraping, adding, and fusing wax"... plus she was super nice and really great to talk to.

here's some shots of her tiny studio and the piece we bought hanging in our living room.

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T O O C U T E T U E S D A Y

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N E W E N G L A N D C O L O R

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we went to rhode island and maine right before labor day...and i keep forgetting to post some pics. i was really inspired by some of the historic homes in providence rhode island and their paint color combinations between the house and the front door (since at the time, we had just finished our front door painting project).
more on maine to come...

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N I C E F I N I S H

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well the floor finish is lovely...while it's not exactly the look we were going for. there seemed to be such slim pickins for stain colors and then throw in the wrench of our wood being so old and yellow (110 year old southern yellow pine) that any color aside from dark brown would be tricky. It changes in different light but it goes from gray to blue to green...all pretty cool.

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T O O C U T E T H U R S D A Y

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E N O U G H A L R E A D Y

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i never thought i'd be sick of tomatoes but this is the 5th or 6th major harvest of cherry tomatoes this year....i can't even think of anything else to use them in!

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P R E T T Y C L O S E

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its been a tough few days around the living/dining room...the floors have been sanded, stain samples applied labored over and chosen (all while i live at a hotel with our 2 cats for 4 nights!), and final coating applied. 
here's a pic of the stain without it's finish coat of water based poly. the stain's been tough. we always had a vision of a gray wood floor...but the selection of gray stain is shockingly limited. hello? we really only had one gray to choose from but looked at some naturals and browns as well. so we took a chance on the one and only gray...it looks quite different in different light...blue in the evening, greenish at night and slightly more gray during the day. i guess the 'southern yellow pine-ness' is really showing through. plus our floors are so old (over 100 years) and the grain and knots so dense that it's not really taking the color as much as we'd like. i think under normal circumstances we'd be flipping out, but i guess this being kind of a rush job (because of a baby on the way and 30 people in my house for the shower in a month) makes for a more accommodating and relaxed perspective.
stay tuned for more....

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O N T O T H E N E X T

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now that the door's done and we'll have a little one crawling around soon enough, we're getting a jump on having our living room floors redone. basically the living room is our last project...on the list is to have the walls redone (pulling all the plaster down and re-sheetrocking), all the decorative mouldings redone, the floors, built-ins and bookcases built around the fireplace bump out, and finally all the windows replaced on the front of the house. this is really the hold-up since the windows will probably cost about 12,000. but they really need to be replaced before having all the molding done around them (and the current windows are garbage).
currently the floors are an absolute disaster..with entire strips of coating peeling up, boards missing, damage where walls were removed but the floors were never fixed under them, and just the general look of them is pretty horrible. we're hoping to go with a gray stain which i think is pretty unique...actually there aren't even many gray stains even available. fingers crossed!

BEFORE: horrible, embarrassing, disgusting

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N E W A D D I T I O N

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while away on our vacation we stopped in this cute shop in providence...and picked up this awesome yellow squirrel. he's diggin' his new home in the yard!

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F R O N T D O O R . . . . D O N E !

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well the project that ate the summer of 2013 is finally done! what an ordeal! a bit of an anticlimactic finale but glad to be done with this project. it turned out to be way more than we bargained for even with the 'help' of a way overpriced carpenter...who really didn't do much expect talk and spend too much time making excuses. it's done!!

 

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