Update on the Nasty Surprise

We did it! Saved the rug that was infested by moths, that is. The moths are gone and the rug is in place, and it looks good. At least for the time being. Since the moths had eaten the fringe off of the ends, the rug tends to unravel like a broken sweater from where the fringes used to be. We'll keep the rug until it totally unravels, though..

Here is the rug on our deck while "demothing" is taking place. 

And here is the rug in our family room

Kitchen - Before and After

There are still some final touches needed in the kitchen, such as backsplash, installation of the range hood, touch up paint work, etc. However, the transformation is such that I can happily show before and after pictures at this point..

Before..

In the middle of the renovation, after the gut job...

And here is the transformation!

The Housewarming Party!!

We have been playing beat the clock with the baby and have been working like crazy to get the house ready (hence, there has not been much blogging going on). One important deadline was a housewarming party to a few of our friends on Saturday 8/28.

My au pair made this fabulous cake with white chocolate and raspberry filling. It was yummmyyyyy! 

And here is my party outfit - less than a month to go before my due date so outfit was pretty much whatever comfortable I could find that would cover my ever expanding self :-)

Yet another lesson learned...

And that is, if you snooze you lose..

I finally made it to CB2 today to pick up the rug I've been planning to use in the entrance, the super cool "Keep Calm and Carry On" rug. What a humongous disappointment to find out the rug has been discontinued, and there is none to be found in any CB2 location, anywhere, from Illinois to Florida (I know because my darling husband called each store to find out whether they would have had a random rug left - and the best advice he got was to try eBay, which also did not yield anything).

Not sure what to do with the entrance now. CB2 has a Hopscotch rug that I may consider as plan B. It would be fitting for a house full of girls. But I have not made up my mind about that yet.

Time Crunch + Renovation Status

I don't know if it is because I am highly pregnant but I just feel so inefficient and like I am not getting enough done in a day..every day is a time crunch! There are still boxes and piles of stuff everywhere. I am really getting the message in the saying "less is more". It really is! And I will truly try to remember that from now on and live by it.

I met my new neighbor the other day, who happens to have two kids same age as mine, and she told me that she still has unopened boxes in the basement and she's been here two years. She moved from City as well and is very nice!

Renovation-wise there are a few nagging things that just seem to take forever to get fixed, like the cooktop (which hasn't arrived yet!) and the vanity top in the children's bathroom. The vanity top was supposed to come in today, but now they told us it's coming on Friday. We shall see.. It would make life a lot easier if we had the top, sinks and faucets in the bathroom! Another nagging item is the washer and dryer which have not been installed yet. Laundry is piling up like crazy. Now I am happy that the kids have a ton of clothes so they at least can wear clean stuff.. But regardless, we need to have those machines hooked up sooner rather than later. The basement is still a complete disaster, we have not even been able to really decide what to do there. A full basement renovation will probably need to wait until next year. Right now we'll just make do by changing the carpet and painting the walls.

A Nasty Surprise!

I have never had problems with moths, in fact, I don't think I've ever even seen one, until today... We brought in an antique woolen rug from storage where it was stored for a couple of years, waiting to find a right place. We now finally have use for the rug, which is actually very beautiful, light colored, traditional rug. It was to go in our dining area. Anyhow, when we opened the rug it was infested with moths, and they had fully eaten the fringes off of both ends of the rug. Yuck!

We quickly removed the rug from the house to the deck where we broomed, vacuumed and sprayed with a pesticide. And then my other half jumped in a car to drive to the nearest Home Depot to buy some moth killer stuff.. Hopefully we can save this beautiful carpet. 

Entrance Evolves + more renovation status

The plans for the entrance have totally changed along the way. I had planned to make it really glamorous and put in black marble tile for the floor, full wall of mirror, a sleek and slim black high gloss desk, with a black chandelier hanging above for added oomph but that plan has been totally scrapped (maybe in the next home when kids have all grown up..). The floor is now bamboo, same as elsewhere in the house, for a nice continuous flow from the entrance to living room, kitchen and corridor. The entrance area is still evolving, but we recently reserved the Linea dresser from Crate and Barrell as our entrance storage piece. The piece does not look too much like a dresser, and is a perfect fit for our entrance. I guess it is a very popular piece as the estimated delivery date is on 9/18! However, it's made of solid teak and will probably last forever. Now we have to figure out whether to do a mirror on top of it, or a piece of art..probably art, something colorful and modern. I am still planning to use the "Stay Calm and Carry On"  rug from CB2, to give a bit of humor and flair as you enter the house. We also need to find the right light fixture to tie it all together..

And, talking about light fixtures, we found yet another funnel pendant lamp for our kitchen, and I was finally able to arrange for a delivery from the Greenwich store, yay. I was not looking forward to a day trip to Greenwich in the middle of everything now, although it is a lovely place and holds a lot of memories for me..

We now have a working dishwasher, fridge and the chandelier hung in the dining room. All the electric outlets work and the central air conditioning ducts have been cleaned so that we can breathe clean air :-)

Here is a picture of the piece that will go to the entrance:

Renovation Status & Lamp Trouble

The electricians came again yesterday, and did their magic - we now have working outlets in the kitchen, and the beautiful Samsung fridge is cold and good. I just love the look of the french doors and it is wonderful not having to bend down for the veggie box. And now we can get rid of our temporary white monster - it is going to be banished to the basement where it can serve as the back-up fridge.

The electricians are coming back today to hook up our double wall oven and the dish washer, yay. They are also finished with their work up in the attic running wires, putting up new boxes or circuits or whathever they needed to do, which means that we can finally really clean up the attic and use the space for storage purposes.

No word of the cooktop yet, though, I think I had mentioned that the Bosch Induction cooktop arrived with the ceramic top all smashed up, and we have been waiting for the replacement for a few weeks now... We have been eating a lot of take-out! Anyway, last weekend my husband bought a giant barbeque grill, the Weber S-670, which the company calls their "top-of-the-line grilling masterpiece" :-) And we already tested this masterpiece when we had our first BBQ on Sunday night, with first guests coming to check out our new place. There will be losts of firsts :-) I don't know about masterpiece, but the corn on the cob came out perfect, as did the hot dogs and chicken wings..

There was bad news last night too - and it was the gorgeous funnel pendant that was supposed to hang on top of the kitchen island. The electrician installed it but it did not work. The wire was live, the bulb was ok, but there was something wrong with the lamp itself.. I was so disappointed because it really looked amazing hanging there.. Not sure what to do now, try to get another one or just return this (and the one we did not even pick up from Greenwich yet) and look for another suitable pendant light. Well, the price was too good to be true anyway.

The Funnel Pendant

We recently purchased two pendant lamps to hang on top of our kitchen island. The Funnel pendant is made of aluminium and goes well with our kitchen with its stainless steel appliances and aluminum trim of the glass cabinet doors. We got so lucky with these as they were on sale, more than 50% off. Apparently the store won't carry them anymore so they heavily discounted last stock. The only thing is that our local store only had one, and we needed two. Luckily the Greenwich store had another one, so now we have to take a trip to Greenwich to pick that one up - the store does not arrange for delivery on these floor sale items!! Despite the lack of the delivery service, it's still my favorite store, Design Within Reach. I just love that store and its amazing collection of new and old design classics.

Book of the Month

As an avid reader, I totally dig Kate Spade's new clutches! They are so cute and adorable I may have to get one..although it is doubtful that I will have a chance to wear it in the few upcoming months, given my impending maternity leave and ever expanding state in which I have seem to give up all hope of ever looking stylish or cute again. I am pinning all my style hopes, dreams and wishes to January 2011 when life will return to a more normal state bodywise (hopefully).

Moving = So NOT Fun

I had totally forgotten how horrible moving is. Or maybe I did not even know how bad it could be, since the last time I moved in 1998 I hardly had any furniture or much of anything other than some personal items, clothes, etc. There were no movers required, just a borrowed van and a husband to carry my stuff in.. Fast forward to 2010 ---> ---> ---> it took 6 guys, 2 16-foot long trucks and 12 hours to move our stuff. And we took a lot to the house little by little on our own...

We had so much bad luck with the move; it is going to be material for stories for years to come. But let's not dwell on the negative - all our belongings have been moved to Long Island, and we are now living amidst a chaos of boxes, and all kinds of stuff piles here and there.

The most important thing is that I love, love, love the new house. Why did I resist the move so many years?

Renovation status and a little break..

Here's bit of an update of what's going on.

The window installation is still going on today and the house is full of old windows (help!). We are replacing 36 windows all together, so the amount of garbage is staggering. If you've seen the picture of our garage full of garbage, now imagine that pile in our living room!

The kitchen is also still not finished, basement bathroom is getting there but not fully done.. The kid's bathroom has no vanity.. The master bathroom has Nothing, but that is the least of our worries now. But thank God we do have one fully working bathroom upstairs, even though it too may still be missing some finishing touches like the vanity mirror and back splash.

We feel overwhelmed and a little panicked..so yesterday we had some therapy..retail therapy that is. We bought some art, a chandelier, a king size bed (for lounging around with our girls on those lazy mornings that we may have had at some point and are looking forward to eventually having again), a mirrored cocktail table, and a sideboard / kitchen table (the original plan of the kitchen counter extending to the table had to be scrapped and I have been scouring the net for a table that fits both sizewise and lookwise. The one we found yesterday is nothing like the modern metal leg, white tabletop table I had planned, and is a major risk, but I loved it anyway and bought it in the spirit of 9 by Design. We shall see how it looks...  I will post pictures at some point).

We are moving this week and I probably won't have time for posting anything here for a little while.

I will come up for air in a couple of weeks. Wish me luck!

Countertop Composting

Here I go again about composting! Yesterday I made a rare shopping spree to Marshall's. I went to check if they would have had Le Creuset pots as I had seen a large selection there a while back. Of course there was none left now that I wanted to buy a couple (I have to change most of my cooking pots because of the induction cooktop). But, I did find an Oggi countertop composter. It's stainless steel and promises to be odor free with a charcoal filter. And it was only $24.95 - almost half of the price it sells on Amazon.com. I have been looking for a dish to collect cooking scraps, banana peels and other such bio waste and this Oggi countertop composter is perfect. It looks good and is actually designed to do what I want it to do. Now I just have to find the actual outside composter to which the scraps will be emptied into daily.

Bamboo floor close up

The bamboo floor is now installed and ready. I absolutely love the look. It is very organic and modern, light and airy, with a bit of an eastern flavor. I am very happy with this environmentally friendly choice.

Masquerade

While dreaming about a trip to New Orleans, the girls found some carnival supplies at Pier One..

Three Weddings and a ... not one but two babies coming up

We have been to three weddings this summer. From the last one, which was the wedding of our former nanny, I finally got a picture of "la familia" in our wedding finery and a picture of the beautiful and radiant bride in her gorgeous Greek Goddess gown, no baby bump in sight yet..  In NY weddings are usually adult affairs and my older daughter was super excited to participate in this wedding celebration which was her first.

And the Winner is...

Natural stone Quartz. For the kitchen countertop that is. Natural stone quartz is a very hard stone, with extreme durability and stain resistancy (hurray) and is not to be mixed up with the man made quartz countertops that are very popular these days. We love the look of white marble with gray veining, such as a traditional carrera marble, and wanted a natural stone countertop, but since marble is a very porous material and stains really easily it's not the best choice for a house full of children and red wine drinkers. The other natural stone choices were granite, limestone and quartz, of which quartz is said to be the most easy to maintain. We picked two slabs that have a white base color and interesting gray veining. The fabricator will come and measure our countertops later this week and they will then cut them and install, hopefully within days.

Best Laid Plans

Here are the drawings for our kitchen.. and a picture of the dark bamboo cabinets from the showroom. But how is it going to look when it's done? I am anxious, nervous and excited, all at the same time. The installation continues today - and I hope they can fix all those little problems that we noticed on Friday..

My Dolls

My older daughter looooves her American Girl dolls. She has been playing with them a lot lately since we've been staying home sorting out stuff and packing. She has Kit Kettridge, Mia (doll of the year 2008), and a Just-like-me doll that she has named Selena. The American Girl dolls have become an amazing phenomena among young girls, partly perhaps because mothers love them too :-).  Each of the character dolls comes with a full story line, books, movies, costumes, furniture, etc. Many are based on historical characters and are educational as children learn about the doll's time period, and what life was like then, while enjoying the back story of the doll. The store itself, on Fifth Avenue, is a tourist destination, and a heaven for all doll-lovers. It has a restaurant where girls can enjoy tea, lunch or dinner with their dolls, a hair salon and a hospital for damaged dolls, a theater and of course beautiful displays of the dolls.

When I first heard about the American Girl doll from my daughter (who was whining to get one at age 5) I dismissed it as just another marketing ploy for children. But since then I have actually become a fan. I much prefer my daughter to play with these wholesome dolls rather than barbies with their super skimpy outfits. Of course, the American Girl dolls are masterfully marketed, and insanely expensive, but I have to admit that compared to many other toys, these dolls are superb quality and have returned countless hours of playtime pleasure. My daughter continues to play with her dolls, now with her younger sister in tow.

Renovation Status - Master Bedroom

The master bedroom has been painted and the floor has been sanded and refinished! Here are the before and after pics:

This is the original floor, just refinished. The paint colors are very subtle, the lighter blue/gray is called French blue and the darker shade is called Reflecting pool.

Too many goodies in one day

I feel sorry for the mailman.. On Thursday I received four magazines - Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, InStyle and Marie Claire.

All four mags have lots of fall preview, although the August number is always a bit light, given that all the efforts are focused for the massive September issues. Anyway, what I gather from these, the list for fall goes something like this:

Bag: Lady like, cross body, strawstring, leopard print
Coat: Camel color classic
Dress: is back
Suit: Man style tailoring
Shoes: surprisingly, Biker boots, kitten heels
Color: Red/orange, neutrals
Other big things: Fur, and dare I say it --> the 90's (as in Carolyn Besset-Kennedy references)

Renovation Status - Kitchen Cabinets

Our kitchen cabinets arrived yesterday, and the installation began immediately. But of course there are a couple of small problems.. The island is a bit shorter than it was supposed to be, which may actually turn out to be ok; however, there is no support for the table that makes the other end of the L-shaped island. The cabinet on top of the window is too short but the cabinet guy came up with a good idea of how to make it work --> add an extra shelf in the middle. The garbage cabinet was supposed to be a pull-out drawer, instead they sent us a regular cabinet door model. That needs to be changed. But all in all, even though installation is not finished yet, I am pretty happy with the way that the cabinets look. The color is right on the money and the style is exactly what I had wanted. Can't wait to see the kitchen finished. 

Moves

Since moving is in my mind, I have been thinking about all my moves lately. Throughout my childhood I lived in one apartment, but a few years after I moved out on my own, my parents sold the apartment and moved to a different city. Oddly, I did not feel too much nostalgia for the childhood apartment. I guess I had really grown out of it.. Then there was a time when I was a young adult when I moved 11 times within three years - the moves were within two countries and two cities. I got to know a lot of different neighborhoods, but I did not get too attached to any of the apartments because they were all for short term, temporary. Now I have been living in the same apartment for about 11 years, and when I think about the upcoming move, I feel (oddly, again) nothing but happiness and relief to get out of this apartment. I thought that I would be at least little bit sad and nostalgic because this is where I really established myself, it is where I started my marriage, had two children, a dog, a cat, lots of happy times and many many parties, some challenging times as well including a marital crisis, health problems and a space crisis due to shopping gone wild. This apartment has served us well, but it is now time to go, and let go, and embrace the new.

Who doesn't love Pillows?

Everyone I know loves pillows.. Or should I say, all my girlfriends love pillows - guys don't really care, and some seem to think that there is such a thing as too many pillows :-)

Anyway, I have been looking for cute pillows, although have been resisting buying until we move. I already have tabs at pillows at West Elm, Pottery Barn, etc. But once I saw this very cute pillow from Dwell Studio on sale at One Kings Lane, I had to order.. I am not sure where the pillow will go yet, maybe to one of the girls' rooms, maybe the guest room..

Installing Bamboo Floors

 Here's a short clip of the new bamboo floor in our living room. Love, love, love it! And once we get the new windows, it will look more modern. Can't wait to actually see the house. I have had to stay away because of floor sanding, refinishing, and painting fumes.. My hubby made the video so I could at least get an idea of how the floor looks like!

Dry Spell

It has been so hot and dry in New York that our beautiful yard is getting all burnt and brown. I have to get an encyclopedia of garden plants, because I have no idea what half the plants in my yard are called, or what type of care they require. Because of the renovation, water has been shut off, and the sprinklers are not working their schedule, and these beautiful flowers are dying...

Underwear is underwear!

I never got the underwear as clothes trend.. It just keeps coming back in one incarnation or the other. To me, underwear is underwear. Women's Wear Daily and Elle UK posted some pictures of the Paris Couture Fashion Week Dior show front row. Here are the best and the worst.. Jessica Alba is so cute in the summery dress, but did Nora Arnezeder forget something - like to put on a dress? And of course, the man behind the show, John Galliano, was as eccentric as ever..which is why we love him so much :-)  The Dior show itself was full of amazing garden flower inspired dresses. Very extravagant, very beautiful.

Work of Art

I have watched a couple of episodes of Bravo's new reality TV show "Work of Art". Although I am interested in art and the artists creating it, I don't know that much about the art world, and especially not much about current, contemporary artists. It is definitely an area where I would like to educate myself more, which is one reason I was interested in watching the show. Given that art has been commercialized more and more lately, with ever increasing prices being paid at art auctions, and museum shops getting bigger and bigger with more online presence, I was not so surprised to see a reality TV show, and a competition at that, about art and artists. 

It is fascinating to see the process of creating art, although I am sure that the actual process of creating art is quite different than allowed at the show due to time constraints and the forced topic or challenge. Still, it's really interesting how each artist approaches the challenge in a different way. Some are much more conservative in their thinking than others, and produce more predictable work. And some (especially Miles) seem to have a unique brain that comes up with very unexpected ideas.

So far my artist favorites are Abdi, Miles and Jaime Lynn, who are all very different and very talented.

My absolute favorite in the show is Simon De Pury who is the Tim-Gunn-like mentor to the artists. I cannot help but compare Tim and Simon. Both are very old school type gentlemen, impeccably dressed with beautiful manners and a very soothing air about them. So far Sarah Jessica Parker, who is the executive producer of the show, has put in only one short appearance (I think I've seen three episodes), and was clearly a bit taken back because of a bad joke by Miles, who pretended not to know who she is!

All in all, an interesting show and definitely a nice addition to my DVR recording schedule!

Renovation Status Report

The garbage is gone!!

The great room is waiting for a new floor, paint and new windows - and of course, everything that goes in the kitchen.

The living room is waiting for the new floor, paint, new windows.

The floor guys are coming on Thursday, the kitchen cabinets will be ordered today - and it is all bamboo! I am happy that we ended up choosing this most renewable resource and eco-friendly material for both the floor and the kitchen. A tree takes about 50 years or more to grow, bamboo grows in 3 years; a vast difference which makes bamboo a lot more attractive. In addition it looks beautiful, wears well and is more water resistant than traditional woods.

American Woman at Outnet

I happened to take a look at theOutnet.com shop (Net-a-porter.com outlet) and saw that they have a campaign called the American Woman. The selection is amazing, classic, wearable, grown-up business clothing, full of pencil skirts, jackets, shift dresses, trench coats... All with great discounts. And lots from my boyfriend, MK. The Outnet is quickly becoming my big favorite. (Hardly a surprise given my weakness for outlets..) Although it is wonderful to be expecting a child, seeing that fabulous outlet selection almost makes me resent this baby bump that makes it impossible to wear that stuff. I can't wait to put on a pencil skirt, slim cardigan, or a nice tailored jacket and slim pants.. The pieces here are very simple, well tailored pieces, exactly how I like them. I have never been into clothes that are loud or weird, because I like to wear my clothes, not have my clothes wear me :-)