Catching Up

I've mentioned we've been swamped the last few months. I think it may calm down a bit once June rolls around. In the interim....here are things you've missed in our lives.

Since we have limited cabinet space in the kitchen (the ones you see here are the ONLY ones we have, which is why we also have a bakers rack), Geoff came up with the idea of using the top of our cabinets for both artistic, and functional purposes. This is the beginning of it. Food & wine storage are key. Those wine bottles cost between $5 and $7 each and we actually really like them. Economical AND Tasty. An excellent combo.



We went to see the Norman Conquests (very funny British comedy) and stumbled upon another Accidental Paparazzi moment. Who knows who the woman in the trench coat is? And again, we were really taking a picture of the crowds and the review quotes behind her.


We had lunch with our friends Rich & Kelly who were in town celebrating their anniversary. He's a photographer, she's a physical therapist. Geoff shot their wedding, and Rich taught a photography seminar that we went to back in March. Which I STILL haven't blogged about. Ugh. OK, someday....but how cute are they?


We met this (brand new, JUST home from the shelter) puppy. Please. Could you just die?



I've decided that when I become a dog photographer, this will be the picture on my business card.


We've had brunch whenever possible, as it is often our only time together in a given week. Geoff likes to take pictures of me at brunch.



I like to take pictures of brunch at brunch.



We are into purchasing cheap flowers and produce whenever we pass them on the street. Bought some flowers today in fact. $8 for two bunches of chrysanthemums & spider mums and they'll last at least 10 days. Yes please.


My sunglasses did this again. Does this happen to anyone else? I bought new ones and they have been featured in nearly all of these pictures, as I mostly like to wear them as a headband.

I got my hair cut. Finally! Mom, here's the picture you asked for. Sort of. Geoff snapped one of me squinting into the sun, so it wasn't really for purposes of seeing my hair. Can't really fully see the cut, but you get the idea.



We have gone on two excellent biking trips into Manhattan for the day. More on those in another post.

Other than that we've been working like crazy people. And it's Saturday and I'm heading into the office for more of it right now.

Mothers Day in The Connecticut

We spent Mother's Day out in CT with Geoff's family. Was sad not to see my mom on Mother's Day, but we had a lovely time with my in-laws. (Still weird for me to say I have in-laws, by the way. And yes, it has almost been a year. Clearly, I am slow to adjust to change. Even good ones.) It was a gorgeous day.

And just FYI, for those of you who were at our wedding, the picture above was a little closer to what I pictured the cocktail hour would look like.

Instead, it looked more like this.


Ah well, what can you do? It was still a great party.

We had great fun with the nieces & nephew, as always. A little catch with Uncle Geoff and some general hanging out and reading with Aunt Kate. Much conversation and food and completely being entertained by the kids.

Maya shows Uncle Geoff her painted toes. Yes, there are polka-dots.


Maya snuggles up to her dad


Kayla contemplates football, and likely, life, while wearing a tutu. Doesn't get much better than that.


Crawling away... I knew as soon as I took this shot that I was going to be obsessed with her tutu all day.


Seriously, this is the best outfit ever


Please.


Liz and the kids


I'd heard through Geoff that Khal had thought we should celebrate my birthday the entire month of May. I'm all for that. So this was even a partial birthday celebration for me. And there was a killer, super, mocha chocolate, crazy, amazing cake that was made. It was not to be believed!


Kayla made quick work of it.


I like how here she seems to be saying (and I hear it in my head as a sort of low, guttural almost gremlin-y voice)... "MMMMmmm, yes. Now, what else do you have for me?"


The aftermath...Cake was such serious business, she lost a shoe in the process.


Great fun as always. And I'm realizing....somehow we always manage to be in CT when there is cake available. I swear we don't even do that on purpose.

Happy Mother's Day!

My Birf'day

Happy Cinco de Mayo/Birthday to me! I had a great birthday this year. Hard to top two years ago when I turned 30 and got engaged, but I wasn't expecting to. I got gorgeous flowers from my wonderful husband at work, and another equally amazing bouquet from my brother. The office broke out a crazy chocolate Reece's PB cup cake from Coldstone Creamery, which was INSANE. INSANE, I tell you
Then I went to meet Geoff for a drink, just the two of us (as we've had NO time lately with our crazy work schedules) and he brought me ANOTHER bouquet of flowers, pink peonies (my latest favorite) and purple tulips. Gorgeous. We sat outside at Iguana and he fought the CRAZY crowds at the bar to get me a margarita & some chips & salsa while we waited for our friends to join us for dinner. Most of you know my love for Mexican food, and I'd want to have it on my birthday even if it WASN'T Cinco de Mayo. The only trick is that, everyone else in Manhattan wants it too. But my wonderful friend Marisa fought long and hard to get us a reservation, so we enjoyed a great dinner in the back corner away from the madness. I had an awesome time. And managed to completely forget the camera, so I have NO pictures. We stayed far later than we should of on a school night, but...life is short.

Thanks to everyone who came to dinner -- The Hunts, the Mills(s) - no idea how to pluralize them when their name ends in an "s", Marisa, Mike Minarik (all aglow from his show's Tony nominations that morning), the amazing Sarah Lilley and the lovely Joanna, who was wearing awesome shoes. Thanks to family & friends who sent cards, care packages, gifts and much love in my general direction. I had a great day! And I'm glad all of Mexico and most of Manhattan was celebrating with me!

My Shiny new bike!!

OK, not really. These are not our new bikes. However, these bikes are always locked up on our block somewhere. Always together....aw, how cute. :-) They were not the entire inspiration for the bike purchase, clearly....but kind of a constant reminder of what we were missing out on.

And so, after visits to multiple other bike shops, we landed at Spokesman Cycles, with three locations in NYC. Super helpful sales guys who REALLY know what they are talking about. Here I am with my new bike! I love it! It has baskets!


Now for fun detail shots that tell you more about my bike:
That's right, Bike, I CAN ride you 'cross town. And anywhere else I feel like.


My bike is a little cocky. Which I dig.


Pretty trees. Unrelated to bikes except that we passed them on our block on the way to the car on the day we bought the bikes. We call them "fish trees". Because, while beautiful to look at, that is what they smell like.


Check out these amazing COLLAPSIBLE baskets I got. I love that they collapse. LOVE. And of course, my safety tail light for night time riding. As I think my friend Michelle always used to say in college, "Safety first, never last, have a future, not a past." I can't wait for her to say that to her son someday, as he will inevitably roll his eyes. :-)


Queens Boulevard & cityscapes at sunset while driving home with my new bike in the back of the car.


In our neighborhood...


So, we got bikes. And have already been on several amazing rides. But more on those later. And OK, so we bought these almost a month ago, but hey, what can you do....

PS, look at the bad-ass way they hang in our foyer (as we clearly have no garage like you fancy suburban people). Geoff, ever the engineer, rigged that sucker up. Impressive right? And dare I say, bordering on...art installation-ish? OK, that may be a bit of a stretch, but while I didn't originally want bikes hanging in the foyer, there's no place else for them. And they do actually look pretty cool.

Geoff's day of Art

So its about time that I posted on here. Kate gets all the fun. I just had to share about a cool day I had yesterday when I joined up with my friends Robert Norman and Rich Esposito along with their friend Tony Fiorini to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a place.



This painting has a hauntingly lifelike look to it. Its of Joan of Arc and the spirits that surrounded her before her destiny was made known. Just captivatingly beautiful.



This museum has literally acres of exhibits of works of art like this. Just gorgeous.



What I love about this museum is the architecture of the building itself. I mean how often can you see beautiful arches like this? These are inspiring in and of themselves.



Robert depicting his "post wedding season" expression.



the modern art wing



One of the most inspiring of the day. An acrylic painting roughly 8'x10'.



A self portrait in pointilism. like a sophisticated dot matrix color printer. incredible.



This is the new exhibit on the roof of the Met. Its GIGANTIC. Its their most ambitious piece of art to date. Stainless steel welded together to resemble the organic root structure of a tree. Polished to a glimmering shine. We couldn't stop staring at it and walking around it. Bravo to the artist just for pulling this off. I mean how the heck did they get that one up there?



Bafflingly impressive.



What was interesting was some of the forms the "root" system took on. Organic looking but yet in a very Matrix alien brain cell neuron kind of way. Whatever this artist was on was pretty potent. Definitely impressive.



Oh yeah, and there was a spring time roof top view of Central Park.



And of course there were the classics. These marble statues are just mindblowing in their beauty. I happen to love this atrium area of the museum. I could sit there for hours.



This woman agrees with me. I wish I could have her job. You know, just sitting around sketching gorgeous and impressive works of art in a grand cathedral art museum. Not too shabby. Seriously, where do I sign up for that?



Look at this one for instance. Just look at the flowing drapery of the robe as it hangs loosely over the woman's knees and body. How this artist was able to capture that through carved marble just blows the fuse in my brain. I don't get it but I sure can appreciate it. We all could actually.



And yet another amazing work of sculpture. Such intricacy. And on a small scale too. I just wander around places like this with a stunned awe sometimes. What a great privilege to have this kind of art just a few minutes from our house. So great.

Lately - in Brief

We are still both really swamped with work, so there's NO time for blogging, which makes me sad. There's also no time for laundry, eye appointments or grocery shopping. We have been living on tomato basil mozzeralla salads, protein shakes, taco salads from wendys and amys organic frozen burritos. Yes, i am quite the homemaker these days.

Other things that have happened:
-we bought bikes. Geoff's had to be ordered cause he's so dang tall and he's picking it up today. As it is planning to be in the 80s on Sat, we are counting on a fun day of adventure on our bikes.
- i got caught in a torrential downpour on Monday on the way home from work when the train when out of service 5 stops from my house. I was left to walk & find a cab or bus, was completely soaked and halfway in between being angry enough to kick something, but somehow having the urge to laugh at it all. i finally got home and we drank wine and had a frozen pizza and talked for HOURS on the couch. Which was lovely.
-we saw THE NORMAN CONQUESTS last Saturday. A british comedy & a trilogy. Three plays in one day all about the same thing but from different perspectives. VERY funny. Am hoping to post about that separately. Cause there were some fun pictures.
-I'm in the middle of casting the Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie and my desk is constantly covered in teenagers headshots. We've found some really talented kids. So even though its hectic, the auditions are fun.
-all of my socks seem to have dissappeared. Perhaps this is linked to the laundry issue.
-I've officially gained back the 20 pounds I lost for the wedding. Which is just awesome. While on the bright side, this supports the idea that we are, in fact, living in marital bliss, the not so bright side is that none of my spring clothes fit. Hoping the bike purchase will assist in this new issue.
-I am obsessed with The Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo. Patti drops truth bombs all day long and does not play around. I love her.
-I've switched back to my yellow bag that i carried all around Italy, as it is spring now. Even though i have been slightly too optimistic in my clothing choices this week. Sandals, i have learned, are not quite appropriate for the upper 50s, even if its sunny.

That's about all for now. More tidbits as we are able. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Rainy Saturday = Joy

Its Saturday. I finally have a full 2 days off with Geoff, and I'm loving it. Here's how its been amazing so far:
1) It's been raining since we woke up. I cannot begin to tell you how happy that makes me. I am a lover of a rainy Saturday morning. Breakfast, coffee and being in my bathrobe with the whole weekend before us. It gives me so much joy.
2) Photo shoots. Of our newly revived basil plants. It had gotten sick a few months back, had bugs and the weekend mom was here in February, we gave it some pruning, some medicine and some TLC and now it is SO green and lush and healthier than it has ever been. So I had to have a photo shoot.


They reach towards the sun so much that I have to turn the pot every morning to make them grow straight.



A little mushroom who has grown with the basil. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, but he's cute, so we'll keep him.


3) Learning a new trick or two. Geoff taught me a new element of photo editing and I got so excited about it I had to hold myself back from standing up. This is me, shyly hiding my over-excitement (pardon the pre-shower hair).


These next two are the same picture....just with some different editing effects. Which make me happy




and
4) Finally having a moment to blog, be it ever so briefly. YAY for that.

Future Ways this weekend will give me joy:
1) We are investigating buying bikes this weekend.
2) We will have Panera for lunch
3) I will go to the little corner market and buy tomatoes and fresh mozzarella to make a caprese salad with our newly amazing basil
4) I will buy fresh tulips because they look so amazing in the white pitcher.

Off we go for bikes and Panera. But not in that order. Leaving our rainy fire escape behind us....

Geoff is toying with doing a video for his business!

So what do you guys think? Geoff is thinking of making a video promoting his business. Something like this. Thoughts?

M.I.A.

Just wanted everyone to know we're still alive. Work has been crazy for both of us. No weekend for me this past weekend, and only half of one the weekend before, which totally resulted in a meltdown on Sunday night. Definately still haven't done my taxes yet either,(awesome), but am finding a spare moment to breathe here and there and wanted everyone to know we were still in the land of the living. And will post when we can.

In the meantime, this is what I did on Saturday. Over 1300 kids wrapped around a city block as of 830am. Whew!