It's my friend Jada's brithday. Happy Birthday Jada!! It's fun to pick out presents for people - and it's very fun to find paper and cards to go along with the gift. I love this card - it pretty much sums eveyrthing up. It's by Orange Beautiful. They have some beautiful things.
The past couple days have been really lovely in New York. Cool evenings with breezes coming into the bedroom. It's lovely to wake up to that and keeps me thinking of falls eventual arrival. With the thoughts of fall in my mind, I think of all my favorite things - boots being one thing. The only problem is storing them. The boot rack above from Martha Stewart seems like a great option and pretty easy to do. Project time.
There are numerous blogs that are resources for recipes and inspiration. Above are two of my favorites - Smitten Kitchen and 101cookbooks. They are favorites because of the delicious recipes using fresh ingredients but also for the wonderful photography. Heidi Swanson of 101cookbooks has also put out two cookbooks with her amazing photographs.
(phots from Smitten Kitchen and 101cookbooks)
Heath Ceramics has beautiful things. Based in Sausilto, California, their focus is their incredible line of tableware. Besides it's amazing line of ceramics, shown on top, Heath also does tiles. We've been discussing how (when the downstairs is eventually done) we would want our floors, tiles keep coming up as an option. Heath while likely out of our price range, certainly has some great ideas to draw inspiration from.
I love anthropologie. Way too much, I visit the site at least once a week, it's an addiction. It's also a great place for ideas.
I love this chair that's in the corner - but for $1400 that's just way out of my price range. But I am totally into the idea of refurbishing a chair and using the anthropolgie chair as inspiration.
So it's been a bit quiet at Chalet New York. Quiet on the house front because everything else was so busy. I won't bore you with what's been so busy, just focus on the fact we're back.
After a few months talking to contractors and really deciding whether or not we were going to even fix the house up, we've decided to move forward on getting the bottom floor fixed. We're currently getting drawings done by an architect which will then be submitted to the DOB. This process takes a few weeks and involves us handing over a lot of checks. It isn't cheap to get the permits in New York. And there was some debate about if we should even do it. At the end of the day, it came down to the fact our neighbors had gotten a stop work order.
Here's a basic list of what's getting done:
1. Build out bathroom, set it up for washer/dryer
2 Move boiler
3. Redo foundation and floors
There's a lot more to the above list and I'll be sure to post it all as we go! So stay tuned for updates and plans, etc.
Recent photos of the basement:
Boiler in fire place in kitchen
Kitchen looking into the dining room, curved wall to come down
Rest of kitchen overlooking backyard
View from kitchen into dining room
This past weekend was full of adventures. The first one started on Saturday - bright and early - at 5 am. We started off on our 3 1/2 hour road trip to Endicott to go to the DMV. Let me repeat the key details in case you missed them: Saturday, 5 am, 3 1/2 hours, DMV. Oh and the weather sucked most of the way. Example of road flooding below.
Needless to say the day was exhausting, but there are brand new New York state license plates on the car now. Next project - take care of three year old expired license. The following day was a bright sunny day, polar opposite from Saturday.
We walked across the Williamsburg bridge.
And stopped to have Whiskey Sours.
Paul pointed out to me that I have officially reached my mid-30s. The best way to digest hearing that was to throw a dinner party for 17 people! Dinner was Spanish food - tapas to start, Pork Tenderloin, Mashed potatoes with Manchego, Cumin-marinated Cauliflower and then cheese and fruit for dessert. It turned out infinitely better than expected. I couldn't of done it without some serious help.
To see more blurry pictures of the night's festivities, please see go here. Just be aware, photos blurry.
As with most people, the time leading up to the holidays has been frantic with work and with getting the house ready for guests. Getting the house ready naturally caused a degree of anxiety - I started out with ambition, my list was long but necessary - things like, painting the bathroom, finding newer linoleum to cover peeling linoleum in kitchen were naturally a priority. As the holidays and my mom's arrival grew closer, the list quickly gave way to: find bed, make bed, try and sweep floor. So here we are safely arrived at the holidays - it's sunny and 45 in New York, so sunny I had to move the Lindt Santa away from the window.
The gifts are wrapped:
The menus have been decided upon. 
Hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season!
