Merry Christmas!
and Happy, gulp, thirtieth Birthday to me. Molly made me a peanut butter mousse pie with chocolate sauce to celebrate/ chase away feelings of sadness.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Friday, December 6, 2013
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thanksgiving in Santa Barbara, pt 1
Whole Foods, Santa Barbara. Two carts full!
Mamma Melisa brandishes the receipt. Yes, it was that long.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Home.
Nine months before she met me, my wife bought an apartment. She was moving to Brooklyn after three years in Chicago and what she wanted almost more than anything was a nest, her own little slice of the world. She says she fell in love with the apartment the moment she saw it, that she immediately felt at home. The same way she felt, she later told me, when she saw me sitting at the bar at Brooklyn Social the first time we met.
The apartment was small but beautiful. Ten foot high ceilings with original tin, eastern light, pumpkin-stained pine floors. Nevermind that her queen-sized bed touched three walls in the pint-sized bedroom, or that the minuscule kitchen could accommodate no more than a bar sink, a 20' stove, and a mini fridge. The space felt right. It felt like hers, she said.
I've always loved and admired Kate's aesthetic, and also her attention to artistic detail. The way she notices and finds beauty in the ridges and spirals around our rigatoni, the details in paintings and carvings that I usually miss for the forest, her exacting eye and her uncompromising need for beauty, light, and cheer. And by uncompromising, I really do mean uncompromising--much as I admire it in some ways, this trait of hers can be hard to live with in a city where almost every piece of real estate requires compromises, especially at our budget.
And just like nearly every other home in the city, all its beauty aside, the apartment had its obvious limitations. Especially once her bachelorette pad, so to speak, became my home too. Now she was sharing what little closet space there was, finding room for an armoire, another collection of books, and my extensive collection of cookware. But the beauty, light, and homeyness outweighed the space constraints for both of us, at least for a while.
But then, post-move-in-organization, the papers started to accumulate, the dust started to resettle, and we were constantly tripping over the cats' food bowls. I'm embarrassed to say this now, but we spent much of the time we were living there complaining about these limitations, being overwhelmed by them, and looking for a way out.
Something arbitrary snapped after we were married, and in some rash sort of jailbreak (if a beautiful apartment in a gorgeous Brooklyn neighborhood can be considered a jail, which obviously it can't, so let's forget I said that), rented a slightly larger but infinitely less beautiful apartment in an infinitely less pleasant neighborhood. Looking back, I see that we were incredibly overwhelmed by the mess--we'd been in the throes of wedding planning and other life events for a couple of months and barely had, or didn't make, time to sweep, let alone stay organized. Our wedding gifts were being piled higher and higher on the back of the couch in an increasingly unstable tower.
So on September 8th, one week to the day after our wedding, we looked at four apartments, chose one, and signed a lease two days later. Two weeks after that, we moved everything, save the upright piano (which required a crane) and the dining room table and chairs (which were meant to provide some semblance of staging) into our new fourth floor walk-up in an up and coming neighborhood. We planned to rent there for a while, see if we enjoyed living there, and then eventually buy an apartment that we could grow into--more books, more glasses, more art.
We only lasted two months before we both admitted to ourselves, and then to each other, how much we missed the feeling of home we had at our old apartment, and how much we longed to be back in our old neighborhood, vibrant with cafes, restaurants, bookstores and more.
So we're cutting our losses--all the wedding money spent on broker's fees and moving expenses--and moving back. We're embarrassed, but not enough to stop us from doing what we know is right for us. We'll pare down, throw out some shoes, store some pots that, let's be honest, I don't really need every day access to. We'll implement a ten-minute-per-day tidying-up policy and see how that goes (update 4/4/13: not so well). But most of all, we'll be so grateful, and we'll be home.
-Molly
The apartment was small but beautiful. Ten foot high ceilings with original tin, eastern light, pumpkin-stained pine floors. Nevermind that her queen-sized bed touched three walls in the pint-sized bedroom, or that the minuscule kitchen could accommodate no more than a bar sink, a 20' stove, and a mini fridge. The space felt right. It felt like hers, she said.
I've always loved and admired Kate's aesthetic, and also her attention to artistic detail. The way she notices and finds beauty in the ridges and spirals around our rigatoni, the details in paintings and carvings that I usually miss for the forest, her exacting eye and her uncompromising need for beauty, light, and cheer. And by uncompromising, I really do mean uncompromising--much as I admire it in some ways, this trait of hers can be hard to live with in a city where almost every piece of real estate requires compromises, especially at our budget.
And just like nearly every other home in the city, all its beauty aside, the apartment had its obvious limitations. Especially once her bachelorette pad, so to speak, became my home too. Now she was sharing what little closet space there was, finding room for an armoire, another collection of books, and my extensive collection of cookware. But the beauty, light, and homeyness outweighed the space constraints for both of us, at least for a while.
But then, post-move-in-organization, the papers started to accumulate, the dust started to resettle, and we were constantly tripping over the cats' food bowls. I'm embarrassed to say this now, but we spent much of the time we were living there complaining about these limitations, being overwhelmed by them, and looking for a way out.
Something arbitrary snapped after we were married, and in some rash sort of jailbreak (if a beautiful apartment in a gorgeous Brooklyn neighborhood can be considered a jail, which obviously it can't, so let's forget I said that), rented a slightly larger but infinitely less beautiful apartment in an infinitely less pleasant neighborhood. Looking back, I see that we were incredibly overwhelmed by the mess--we'd been in the throes of wedding planning and other life events for a couple of months and barely had, or didn't make, time to sweep, let alone stay organized. Our wedding gifts were being piled higher and higher on the back of the couch in an increasingly unstable tower.
So on September 8th, one week to the day after our wedding, we looked at four apartments, chose one, and signed a lease two days later. Two weeks after that, we moved everything, save the upright piano (which required a crane) and the dining room table and chairs (which were meant to provide some semblance of staging) into our new fourth floor walk-up in an up and coming neighborhood. We planned to rent there for a while, see if we enjoyed living there, and then eventually buy an apartment that we could grow into--more books, more glasses, more art.
We only lasted two months before we both admitted to ourselves, and then to each other, how much we missed the feeling of home we had at our old apartment, and how much we longed to be back in our old neighborhood, vibrant with cafes, restaurants, bookstores and more.
So we're cutting our losses--all the wedding money spent on broker's fees and moving expenses--and moving back. We're embarrassed, but not enough to stop us from doing what we know is right for us. We'll pare down, throw out some shoes, store some pots that, let's be honest, I don't really need every day access to. We'll implement a ten-minute-per-day tidying-up policy and see how that goes (update 4/4/13: not so well). But most of all, we'll be so grateful, and we'll be home.
-Molly
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Beach-walk
Sammy's Beach with Molly, Sara, and Hank.
Taking a walk on the beach of both of our childhood summers.
Happy Birthday, Sara!
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Call me a Frankophile
Last summer, when we were in East Hampton for the annual ARF house tours, Sara took us to brunch (excruciatingly. slow. brunch) at the old Maidstone Arms. You may get cold eggs (so I suggest a cocktail instead), but it's worth stopping in to see the design re-vamp from Swedish hotelier Jenny Ljungberg. The whole hotel is a bright homage to Swedish design and Swedes. Molly and I were struck, in particular, by the Josef Frank textiles. I love the energy and color and composition! Wouldn't it be fun to have a throw pillow in one of his fabrics or even a chair, or wallpaper in a small powder room? One of the push and pulls of our relationship is I tend to like a lot more, er, calm, in my design palette than Molly, but call me a convert!
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| Perhaps my favorite, the lovely Ankreon fabric in "white." |
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Happy Halloween...
from your 1950s Cowboy and Indian!
I found my costume in a vintage shop on our honeymoon. It was made by a girl scout sometime in the 1960s. And naturally, you need someone in this relationship to try and lay down the law. ;)
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Ain't no mountain high enough
Calistoga! Our beautiful morning coffee views. #honeymoon #finally #nofilter #chateaudevie
Monday, October 21, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Project Bed Frame!
We also spent the weekend working on a house project, a new (old) bed-frame to celebrate our new, non-postage-stamp-sized bedroom! Whereas having a bed-frame of any kind would have been an impossibility at St. Marks (the length of our bed was the width of the room itself), the spacious bedroom at Hancock St. allowed us to realize our dream of having a real live headboard like a pair of adults! We had both fallen for the Jenny Lind style bed, a beautiful spooled bed named for the opera singer Jenny Lind, during a JL-naming craze sometime in the 1850s! The problem was antique (and reproduction) JL beds are mad expensive, and the antiques tend to be too small, as apparently everbody in ye olde times slept in a double bed.
After much searching, Molly located a chippy JL bed frame (only an inch too short on each side, nothing short of a miracle!) in Westfield, NJ for only 65 dollars! As soon as her workday allowed, we zoomed off to NJ and retrieved a very dusty head and footboard from a man’s garage. Back at home, we sipped rose and cleaned the grimy pieces from head to toe. At the moment, we like the shabby chic aspect of the weathered white paint, but at some point in the future, we may strip it and enjoy the beautiful (not-too) cherry wood underneath.
A history of the spool bed:
Mini-trip to Adamstown, PA
We had high hopes for this mini-trip to the supposed "antiques capital" of Pennsylvania. While it is true there were more antiques stores per square inch than we knew what to do with, there were mostly of the my-grandmother's-dusty-tchotchkes-variety and no great steal either. We had hoped to find a charmingly-beat-up (possibly drafting) desk that could accommodate Kate's art, as well as a coffee table or a trunk-cum-coffee-table, but returned, after one night in an odd inn, a terrible breakfast at a diner where under-boiled potatoes and onions constituted "hash browns," six hours roundtrip in the car, and countless tolls, empty-handed. While the town and surrounded area were not especially scenic, seeming like the example of the ruined rural area or depressed exurbia (I had a strong sense of rural Ohio deja vu), we made the best of things by experiencing it together, and going to a Mennonite-run farm and orchard on our way home (www.brecknockorchard.com) and vegetable/apple picking. We also visited a hill-top goat farm and took photos from the car window of some of the prettier things we passed. When we got home, Molly made a delicious ratatouille with all our Lancaster county produce!
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