we now return to our regularly scheduled blogging

Or at least I hope we do.
New York plans are grinding along. They are mostly a case of "hurry up and wait" because there is so much to do, and yet, a lot of things cant be done yet. I've packed what can be packed, but the rest is needed for living and, you know, making the house look nice for prospective buyers, we've chosen a neighborhood but not an apartment because we don't need one for another month or so, we've prepped the kids and made as many arrangements as we can and now we're just in a holding pattern.

Without anything concrete to focus on I find myself obsessing on the ridiculous, like, what is the perfect bag for walking around the city with kids or can I pull of skinny jeans since that is obviously the look in New York in general and around Columbia in particular or given the choice, would I rather have a dishwasher or a washer and dryer in our apartment? How long will it take for Evelyn to get it into her head that touching everything within reach on the subway and then licking her hands is not a great idea? And then on the flip side, how awesome is my city boy at making his way through the hustle and bustle with out batting an eye?
But other than those random thoughts that are constantly running through my heads, life is starting to get back to normal. Or normalish. We work, we play, we fix up the house. Projects that were on the back burner for a while there are reemerging.
Like knitting. I haven't' been knitting much lately but 12 hours on a train can give you some serious knitting time, or maybe it was getting to go wander through a mecca of knitting recently. Either way, the great Christmas slipper debacle is well on it's way to being rectified, Evelyn's sweater is finally coming to an end and a new one for me is in the works. I saw someone wearing something like this last week and had the overwhelming urge to knit one like it right now. Good thing I still had a ton of worsted yarn in my stash left over from this sweater. I've also got some chairs to paint, our dining room chairs are pretty much done for and we are neither taking them with us nor storing them so the school house chairs that we used for a while last summer are going to get some fresh paint and some cushions for their new home (but first, I have to figure out a table, somehow I doubt we'll find an apartment that can accommodate our huge table, not, that is, unless we want to fore go other things, like, um beds or a couch) and a few other sewing projects are sitting on my table (figuratively, everything is stowed away in preparation for house viewings) that I'm hoping to get done before the good weather really hits. If it ever does....

So what's on your to-do list this week? Anything fun?

so far

It's funny what a few short days can teach you. For example, on day two and a half in New York I have already learned that:



The amount of thing on the "to bring to New York" list needs to be cut waaaaaay down if the little studio we are staying in for the moment is anything to go by.

Flip flops are not appropriate April in New York footware.

But then again. There are shoe stores everywhere here. Darn it. I just had to buy sone shoes!

Google map transit is awesome. But not infallible . Sometimes there is a closer subway stop.

By the same token it's worth trying out a few directions when searching for something like a grocery store. Because the crowded and expensive shop might be five steps this way. But Trader Joes might be six the other way. (dang it!)


My kids could live in the natural history museum.

Or FAO Schwartz (Evie in the pink section was hilarious)


Being on the city with an architect is pretty funny too. Do we go see the landmark buildings that everyone knows? No we do not! We have to go find the curved structure in Columbus Circle that Brad someone or other designed and the triangulated articulated somethingated tower down the road. Of course.

The people at the Plaza understand that little girls who love pink MUST go look for Eloise. And are happy to help.

Not so little boys who were once city kids switch back into metro mode easily. Little girls who have spent most of their lives in a small town do not.

Thank goodness for digital cameras. Because Evie took pictures of Every single animal in the museum. And Briton has logged about 600 photos of things on the street so far.

You can find anything here. Even this. (weird,right?)


As much as I love my garden and my house andy small town. There is another side of me that love love loves being in a city. I didn't know how much I missed it.

Chinatown, SoHo and lots of playground time today. All on my own with the kids while will is up at Columbia. Let the real test begin.

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on the road (train) again

I've always been afflicted with wanderlust. Even as a kid I would daydream about travel everytime a bus or train or plane passed by. For some reason that wanderlust has led more to moving rather than just travel, Will says its because normal people have crazy dreams about going places and they either just keep dreaming or take a vacation. Being far from normal, we end up moving.



But I'll admit. The last few years have cooled my need for the new. Or at least I thought they had. I haven't had that crazy urge as much since moving to Virginia. I think having kids in school is part of it. And living in a great neighborhood helps too. Sure, last time we were in an airport it almost killed me to have to walk past the flights to London, Paris, and my beloved Dublin for the boring old flight home to DC. But I made it.

Whe this NewYork adventure sprang I us, my first instinct was to say no. I was happy. We were happy. But very quickly that wanderlust started to take over and the desire for adventure started seeping back into my veins. I see it in the kids to. The fascination with the new. The wonder over what else life has to offer. It must be genetic, they are definitely our children. Will, by the way,was not born with wanderlust but ice rubbed off on him and he's even more of a dreamer than I am. Crazy how it works like that.



This morning we got on a train for New York. Not to move, obviously, just for a few days. Time to get acquainted with our new city a little. And when the train pulled I I got that flutter. The one I get when, for once, I'm the one boarding instead of the one sitting at the level crossing, watching the train pass me by. It's a good kind of day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

t-minus two months

I woke up this morning and realized that two months from today, Will will be starting his first day of grad school. Two months. In some ways it seems kind of far off. There is a part of me that's ready to just GO already. But most of me is still in the overwhelmed, too many things to do, holy crap how are we going to pull this off mode. All we Will and I have been finishing projects. Rain delayed the door installation till tomorrow, but we've been caulking seams, painting trim, touching up walls and finishing all those little boring things that need to be done to make the house"finished".
I spent most of one day this week thinning out the shelves and cabinets around the house, packing away things that we don't need but want to keep, loading up bins with things that we don't need and don't want to keep so that they can be hauled to Goodwill. It's amazing how much neater it looks, just because there is less "stuff" around. Will finished the built in in the kids room (at last!) and together we've been sorting, packing, and finishing a huge list of to-dos. And there is more to do. I woke up at three this morning panicked about how many things were on there, sure that we would never get it done, and ended up down on the couch watching Emma until I fell back asleep again sometime around when the sun came up. Of course in the morning my list didn't seem so daunting, and I know that I always get a little in a dither when we move. But really, what I would love to be doing this week is reading the book that I ordered the day before we got the letter and haven't had a chance to pick up yet. Or puttering outside. But I don't think my house has ever been this clean, so I've been taking pictures for postarity, so that when we're in the middle of unpacking I can look back at a clean, pretty house and go to my happy place ;).
Strangely I'm not panicked about New York at all. I've pretty much come to terms with what we'll be doing and am more excited by the day, which is probably why I wish we could just go and not have to deal with all of this selling the house, packing, sorting and cleaning. But really, who would want to do all that? That's the sucky part of moving, right?
So sorry I've been a little MIA this week. I'm really hoping thing will calm down a little over the next few weeks. Monday we're off for a quick trip to our new city to check things out before we really truly sign on the dotted line. Officially and all. So I may be a little absent next week too. But I'll try to pop in from the road! Happy Friday All! (Is it really Friday? Where did the week go?)

lessons learned

One weekend of on and off working and about $150 has resulted in an almost complete mudroom. At least on the inside. We still have the door to put in (Wednesday!) and the siding on the outside, but the inside is pretty much done. A few spots need paint touched up, furniture needs to be rearranged and I need to find a little rug for the floor so that the inevitable muddy shoes (it is a mudroom after all!) don't ruin the new flooring. The photo is a little dark due to the tarp covering the opening that will soon be a door, but you get the idea. I'll put up a real "finished" photo later this week after the door in is place (yay!)
I've learned two big lessons this weekend. Well, one of them is from this weekend, the other is sort of a realization that this weekend confirmed.

The first, is, do the mudroom first. OK, maybe not first. When we moved in we had so many essentials that needed to be done ASAP. Like a stove that you could turn on, countertops that weren't plywood, paint on all the dingy walls, put in an air conditioner (it was July in Virginia after all) etc, etc, etc. But somehow the mudroom got pushed to the very bottom of the list. And after a while we were just using it for storage anyway so we didn't really miss it. So this weekend, when we finally got around to painting the walls and the trim, ripping up the nasty carpet that has driven me crazy for almost two years and putting in new flooring I realized that all this time we have been ignoring almost 100 square feet of house.

It might be the fact that we are soon to be living in a situation where every inch will count, or just the fact that I have wanted the mudroom done for ages but Will hasn't really cared about that room, but I'm suddenly seeing so many opportunities for that space. All this winter when it was cold out and we were playroom-less, this could have been a playroom. Or it could have been the office (I do seem to remember suggesting that, but that was before the freezing cold leaky door was removed, so it was always pretty unpleasant in there) and the playroom could have stayed. Or it could have become Briton's room. Or, or, or... It could have just been an oh, so handy mudroom. So now I know. When space is at a premium, don't ignore perfectly good rooms just because there are other things to be done. Lesson learned.

The other thing I've realized is that next time we renovate a house (and there will be a next time. Because even if we are tired of it now, by the end of a year away from it we'll be dying to get at it again) I need to take better before pictures. Or maybe just more before pictures.
When we moved in here I took photos of the main rooms because, although they were dingy and plain, they weren't horrible. The really awful spots - the bathrooms and the mudroom - I didn't really take good pictures of. Mostly because they were so awful that I didn't want anyone to see them. I didn't want to see them. This is the closest thing I have to a real before photo of the mudroom, and it's not great.
This is after I tried to make it slightly better with some white paint which turned out to look like primer instead of paint. (Yuck! Now we have the white that is in the rest of the house on the walls - much better) I forgot about my green ceiling. I still like it, although I like the beam better in white. Oh well, inky blue is pretty too, and probably better for selling...(sigh)

But I've realized that part of the fun of renovating is being able to look back at the before and see the after. The coolest part of that Better Homes and Gardens article for me is to look at that before (which, by the way, was before we moved in) and compare it with the after. So from now on, more pictures. Even of the grimy, stained floors and the nasty peeling walls and the horrible toilets. That way, when I'm frustrated with progress, and I sometimes am because I just want it done (split personalities there I guess), I can look at what has come so far already.

Now I don't expect that there will be any renovating going on in New York. For one thing, we'll be renting. Plus we're there only a year. Plus there is the whole grad student budget situation (good thing the kids like Top Ramen!) But I'm sure there will be some decorating. Because I can't help it. And hopefully there will be some creative uses of space. Because I'm sure I'll need to use every small space living trick I've ever learned or have ever seen and then some. So. Don't let me forget. Before pictures. Lots of Before pictures.

Have you ever had any "left it till last" projects that you really wish you had started earlier? What were they?

well hello stranger

I feel like I've seen a banister, just like this, in just this spot before.

Oh right. That's why it looks so familiar.
That's what you looked like before we did this.

Sometimes our renovations don't have a fixed endpoint. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it allows us the flexibility of change as we find we need it. Like when we were putting in the kitchen cabinets and the wobblyness of the old floors meant that the far end cabinet was a good inch lower than the rest. Instead of having to rip out the cabinets and the floor and do who knows what to make it right, we adjusted- a thicker piece of concrete for that section of countertop. Now it looks like a cool detail. And then there is the whole reason for the butcherblock section which, well, thank goodness we made that mistake, beacasue that section is where I do most of my cooking. I love it.

When we pulled the banister off of the stairs we knew that at some point we'd have to put something back in. For safety. But what? Well, we weren't sure. It opened up the room to have nothing there and it's the first thing that you see when you open the door, so it would have been a nice place to make a statement. But after a year and a half of trying to decide what should go there, and with that, how the bookshelf should finish off, we are running low on time, and so we built a new banister that looks very much like the old one, except painted this time, which I like much better. So yeah, we could have just saved ourselves a lot of time by leaving it, but again, I think that's ok. Sometimes renovations don't go as planned and you just go back to the origional. It's fate, I guess, the will of the DIY gods. And now that it's back, I'll admit, I really like the sweet simplicity of it.

Plus, one more thing checked off the list.

Have you had a renovation or project end up like that? Back where you started?

a case of over-purging

I'd say about 99% of the time I'm perfectly happy about what I've gotten rid of when I do my occasional mini purges, and even through the years, the larger ones that come before (or sometimes just after) moving. Sure, there's that pair of pants that I wish I hadn't been so quick to hand over or a toy here and there that the kids really did miss. But really, most of the time it's been just peachy.
But yesterday, while walking Evelyn to school, and by walking I mean carrying her the four short blocks between our house and her school ("my legs are so tired!") I realized I may have over purged a few months ago when I ditched our stroller.

We haven't used a stroller in ages. It had been sitting in our basement for months, gathering dust, taking up room, so off it went. And normally that wouldn't be a problem except I'm thinking that short legs + long New York blocks is going to equal the need for a stroller once again. Ugg.

I know, I'm not going to want a stroller on the subway and for those big trips around town, we did without on those trips in Dublin as well. It's the walk to the park and the grocery store and other neighborhood spots that I have a sneaking suspicion that a stroller will be handy for. At least until my little walking wimp gets her city legs.

We could, of course, just buy one of those cheap umbrella strollers. The thing is, we did that when we moved to Dublin with Briton (who was two years younger than Evie, but about the same weight) and about a week in the thing collapsed on us, on him to be precise, a few miles from home. It still gives me a little bit of a twitch to remember trying to get him out of the thing (and get him and our groceries home while dragging a disintegrating stroller). So I have a little bit of a phobia about crappy strollers. The one we got rid of was the same stroller that replaces the ill fated Dublin stroller. A Maclaren that cost far more than I ever thought I'd spend on a stroller but nevertheless turned out to be well worth it, it was still going strong when I took it to Salvation Army a few weeks ago. Bad timing I guess.

I would like to say lesson learned, but since I had not a single thought in my head a mere three weeks ago that we would ever go visit New York much less move there, I can't say that I could have predicted this, even if I'd thought long and hard about it.

So the purging will go on, and at the same time I'll be cruising Craigslist for a replacement stroller. C'est la vie. Have you ever thrown out something and then really needed it almost immediately after?