Pretty Please??

Dear World,

Can I have these please?




One can be a belated birthday gift and one can be for Christmas. Mkaaaay? Mkay.

Thanking you,
xoxo
me

** Kitchen from House of Turquoise and that DREAM bedroom belongs to this lovely lady, whom I will now be obsessed with. Seriously, I love everything about it. I need that bed. AND the old door above it? Stop it right now. I need this.

Living Vicariously

So, living in a 650 square foot 1 bedroom apartment can make you really start to daydream about things. Things like a yard. A kitchen with more than 1.5 feet of counter space. Storage. Of any kind. A garage/shed so your bikes don't have to hang from a pole in your foyer. You know, things like that.

Now, there are zillions of design blogs out there and I frequent several of them. It's so fun to dream and see all the pretty-ness. Some examples of pictures that make me drool a little bit....

Can you tell why I would love a blog called House of Turquiose? Shocking. The next 3 rooms make me, as Alison says, *le sigh*. (please - i'm in absolute LOVE with this backsplash)


those chairs...


beadboard and an angled ceiling...


I'm a huge fan of Brooklyn Limestone. She chronicals her adventures in renovating one with her husband. They have done an inspiring job. And they also take amazing long weekends in fabulous foreign cities. *le sigh*, indeed. This was a door she loved in Notting Hill on their trip to London, I believe. (breaking news: I am loving gray almost as much as blue these days)


A loft that I would love to get my hands on from ...Little Green Notebook


I also go nuts for built-in bookshelves. Completely nuts. Hence my love of these I saw on Black White & Yellow


And White Kitchens? Forget about it. Possibly the ultimate *le sigh*, like these at The Inspired Room...



This is just a snippet of all the fun stuff I like to daydream about. I think I'm gonna go dream about it some more now. Might even work on my "dream" book that Geoff bought me at Michael's to put all my "inspirations" in for future reference.

*le sigh*

Consignment Heaven

Went to this great consignment shop in Chatham with my mom called At Home Again. It was awesome. They stage everything in super fun ways. And according to Mom there is really high turnover, so they always have new things. And if you'll notice in the above picture, in the upper left - that is a decorative ball made entirely from pieces of driftwood. I almost bought it.

I liked this hutch.


Seashell wreath. Very Cape Cod-y.


Teeny, toddler sized Adirondack chairs. Please.


These are so pretty. I love all things that are blue. Or blue-ish. No, I really do. It's weird.


I liked this birdcage because it is old looking. And cool looking. Even though I never want a bird.


In the entryway. More Blue for me.


A "Fresh Peas" sign atop an old school desk. I wanted to buy the sign for my kitchen until I remembered I hate peas.


Love how they set things up. Things that totally don't go together but go together.


I'm not usually fond of pillows that say things. Or any kind of decorative thing that says things. But I liked this.


And I liked this "create" sign for some reason. Maybe because it is blue?


OK, Things I actually bought:

These prints. I just loved them. There is French newspaper print inside the purse opening and on the sole of the shoe. No idea where I'll put them, but will find a place for them somewhere/someday.


Also got this basket on the chair. Liked it for maybe the lower shelf of my coffee table, where we've been wanting some baskets for organization of all my items. Geoff pointed out I could only really have room to organize pens in there. But I love it anyway. Also love the chair-basket-pillow on the floor-dresser-piece of old fireplace combo in this picture.


Things I wanted to buy, but had to cut myself off:

This amazing old-school shaving mirror for Geoff. Or at least to decorate the top of his dresser.


These blue mugs. Clearly. I love them. But I already have too many mugs and no one uses them but me.


This lamp, which I loved for it's kind of oblong shade (which you can't really tell from the picture) and cool twisty base. But, as you can see, some smart chick named Audrey already called dibs on this and is coming to pick up the two table lamp set plus matching floor lamp. Durn you Audrey!


This is a hat box. It is French. I therefore wanted to buy it for Alison.


These AMAZING ladder bookends. I love them. Possibly the most. I want them. I might call and see if they are still there.


And so it is official. In addition to Marion's Pie shop, Upper Crust Pizza and plenty of deck time, a visit to At Home Again will become a tradition every time we're at The Cape.

Three Day Weekend

We were excited to have a full three days off together for the first time since....Christmas? Ridiculous, but true. We made the most of it.

Saturday started with a seven step process to get us to breakfast on a park bench (all within a couple blocks walk).

1) drop off laundry at Skillman Laundry
2) Geoff drops off shirts at Diamond's dry cleaning (named for the owners Maltese, who is always in the store. he's been there ever since I've lived here and is getting fat in his old age. which i love in a dog)
3) i go to Starbucks for my iced coffee
4) Geoff stops by Wendy's for iced tea (he doesn't really do coffee)
5) Geoff gets his bagel sandwich at NY Eats
6) I get my bagel & cream cheese from the bagel shop 2 blocks away
7) arrive park bench & enjoy (which we do)

I liked this guy. Green belt, suspenders and just his general demeanor won me over.


This guy..... just as fascinating, half as friendly.


After breakfast we wander home and come upon a street fair on Greenpoint Ave.


Inflatable castles & slides
tons of people
and really weird things for sale in tents.
Like this.


And Oscar. He's a Pug/Shitzu mix who belongs to the woman we met from Camp Bow Wow (the dog boarding place in our neighborhood). I love him. Clearly.



We were walking along, minding our own business when I was accosted by a small Asian woman who literally dragged me into her booth for a massage. Sort of hysterical. Not that great of a massage. But an experience. Can you see how she's digging her thumb into my arm?? She was strong!


After quickly popping into the eye doctor, (and we ended up having to go back again 'cause the contacts she gave me were not settling right in one eye. which ended up being because i had two lenses in that eye. which she says was not the case when i left the first time. no idea how that happened. how do i manage these things??) we headed home to get our bikes. Off we went over the Queensboro Bridge. We took a loop or two around the park and then headed to meet Megan & Jeremy O'Grady for dinner at Cilantro. We hadn't seen them since New Years. Which is NUTS. It was good to catch up. And then off we went, home on our bikes.

I'm loving biking. We both are. And riding from our house to Manhattan is such a great ride. Just the right amount/difficulty of hills. Heading into Manhattan there's a long slow incline until just past the middle of the bridge and heading back to Queens there's a steeper shorter incline on the first part of the Manhattan side of the bridge and then 2 smaller, slower incline hills when we're in the home stretch in Queens. I dig it.


Sunday dawned, a little humid but still nice. We hopped on our bikes and headed over to Long Island City for brunch. Found a great little spot called Masso with a 2 for 1 fruit infused mimosa special. Yay.

I loved this cute little container for the cream.


After brunch we just rode around LIC exploring. Such an odd/cool little neighborhood. Half hip/half commercial and some great waterfront apt buildings. We just tooled around for a while checking it all out. Really cool piers on the waterfront. We've talked about living there if prices continue to come down. Especially because they'll let us have a dog. And a big selling factor for me was that they've just put in a small Whole Foods-ish grocery store. Loved it.

Apartment shopping


Loved this cute lil' car



The view from our potential future front yard.


But also, we saw this. I don't even know what this is. Or how to understand it. But the top "car" seems to be cemented to the real car. No idea.


Geoff got some great bridge shots.




What is this place all about? I like to think about what it once was. Right at the base of the bridge, I bet it was an old waterfront mansion, since condemned and now closed up and surrounded by super scary barbed wire. I mean, it was probably a school or torture facility, but I like to think it was a fancy mansion with lots of history.


Requisite daily dog befriending obviously occurred. This is Max. I love a pug.


What a face!


Here's Max giving you "pensive"...


We headed home and spent the late afternoon in what I have now dubbed, our "cabana". Which is basically our room, with all the blinds open, breezes blowing, ceiling fan on and afternoon sun pouring in. Ahhhhhhhh. We had dinner that night at Cafe Boka. Aka our kitchen table. Wine, candlelight, good conversation and the random contents of our pantry/freezer. It was awesome. We've decided to dine there more often.