Oh-No! Death by boredom.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, the photo at left might feel vaguely familiar... You may remember the last time you saw such photographs, when I was painting the checkerboard pattern onto the living room and dining room floors. Well-- the "adventure" has started again, and I spent the latter portion of yesterday afternoon penciling out, taping off, and painting the checkerboard pattern onto the hallway floor.

I may have mentioned this last time, but in case I didn't make it COM-PLETE-LY CLEAR, doing this is some of the most boring, mind-numbing, repetitive work I can think of... The penciling isn't so bad, but the taping-- my god the taping-- is just so wildly boring, so stupefyingly redundant-- it really is almost shocking. I felt like I might actually fall asleep, mid-project, sitting there on my hallway floor. John could have come to find me, tragically drowned in a tray of Valspar's "Oregon Coast".

However, complaints aside, round one is complete! The tape is down, the paint was applied, and now, I'll just have to see if it needs another coat when we get back to the city on Sunday night. Fingers crossed, we're in the clear, and I can just keep plugging on the touch-ups to the other two checkerboard floors...

We've GOT to get this apartment finished!!! 

I mean seriously people.

This is what I found when I came out of my beautiful bedroom this morning...

Yes, that is my 65 pound pitt bull, perched on my tiny Eames ottoman.
I mean, really. What's not to love about this picture?

(Aside from the daunting reminder that we have so much left to do in the living room before it's finished...) : )

Onwards! 

La chambre est terminée!

At long last, we have moved back into our bedroom! Sweet hay-zeus! It is so nice to NOT sleep in the dining room. We actually moved back in on Monday night, and have already enjoyed two restful nights in our wonderful chambre.

The room is truly transformed, almost entirely thanks to the removal of the old radiator enclosure, which occupied a small yet crucial amount of space in the room. (Some of you may remember that I actually spent many grueling hours stenciling said radiator enclosure...) And when I say it occupied a small amount of space, it was literally 4'0" wide X 1'0" deep, but somehow completely prevented us from configuring our room in what would be the most intuitive layout. Once upon a time, this box had housed a radiator, so at least it served of purpose of sorts, but the radiator had long since been removed, so now it was just a floor-to-ceiling empty box, taking up 4 precious square feet in our New York City apartment. To you suburbanites, 4 square feet isn't much, but in New York, you guard your square footage like a junk-yard pitt bull, and let me tell you-- I had latched on to that chunk of floor and I wasn't letting go!

What's particularly interesting is how clearly this room demonstrates the importance of the configuration of a room. The square footage is virtually the same (+ 4-ft.), the wall color is the same (repainted, but still the ever-lovely Healing Aloe by Benjamin Moore), the dressers and night stands are still present, the IKEA window treatments are the same, and the big brass headboard remains... and yet! This room feels completely different. All because of the way we've laid out the furniture. Fascinating! This lends major credibility to the idea that you don't necessarily need to buy new things or paint new colors in order to transform your home. Lay-out plays as important, if not the most important role in the way a room really feels.


Write that down in your D-I-Y journals people! I think we've come upon a revelation!

Another important improvement, not as noticeable but a vital change non-the-less, was the installation of a new ceiling fan with a built-in light. No more trying to put on makeup with the light from two vintage bedside lamps! Finally- for better or for worse- John and I will be able to see each other in this room!

The fan was another Craig's List victory... We'd been hunting around online, but were failing to find a fan that was a.) affordable b.) white c.) had a light d.) only 42" across. Most of the fans we were finding were 54" in diameter, which looked like we'd be mounting an airplane propeller onto our bedroom ceiling. Not a desirable look... I kept checking Craig's list on the off chance something showed up, and lo and behold! I found one of these Minka Aire "Concept I Ceiling Fan" in white, still in its original unopened packaging, listed for about $200.00. This fan usually sells for $259.00-$369.00 depending on where you buy it, plus you pay tax and shipping, so we jumped at the chance to buy the Craig's List version for about $75.00 less than retail, and call an end to our searching. Excellent all around!

So that's where things stand with our progress so far. We're hoping to start in on the living room tomorrow, but we're also signed up for a baby CPR class tomorrow night, so that might eclipse most of the evening...

I swear we're going to get this renovation finished eventually!!! (Hopefully before August 18th, or this baby is going to be camping in the kitchen!) 

Egg-y Deliciousness: Summer Pasta 101

This past weekend's wedding was a resounding success! We slept soundly (and dust-free) in our cool, dark, king-sized-bed-equipped hotel room, and even found time to go swimming in the pool before the Sunday brunch! (Let's not even talk about what an 8-month pregnant me looks like in a bikini... I was a yellow-polka-dotted nightmare.) On our way home, we stopped at lots of little farm stands and picked up a bounty of beautiful summer fruits and veggies, determined that we were going to concoct some new and wonderful version of pasta primavera for our dinner last night. According to the people at google, we would be making pasta estate (apparently "estate" is Italian for summer, so there ya-go.)

This recipe was definitely a "by-the-seat-of-our-pants" affair, but with excellent end results...

Here's gist for our Delicious Egg-y Pasta Estate:

ingredients:

• 4 cloves of garlic (chop 2, quarter 2)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 20 cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered, depending on their size
• 3/4 cup of diced carrots
• 1/2 cup of fresh shelled peas
• LOTS of parmesan cheese
• 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk, whisked lightly together
• 2 1/2 cups of funny shaped pasta (we used strozzapreti and campanelle, which is a kind of trumpet-shaped pasta)

directions:

• Start by peeling up your 4 cloves of garlic. John chopped 2 cloves, and then quartering 2 cloves.
• Add your olive oil to a large skillet, and get it nice and hot. (Chef Greg says you're looking for the 'sound of success'. When you throw the garlic into the oil, it should make a good sizzle sound. That's the sound of success!) Next, throw in your carrots and stir the garlic, carrots, and olive oil together so everything is nicely coated. Add more oil as needed.
• Put a large pot of water onto boil (Don't forget to add a dash of salt to the water.)
• Cook your garlic/carrots for about 5 minutes, and then toss in your halved cherry tomatoes.
• Let cherry tomatoes cook for another 5 minutes, then toss in your fresh shelled peas.
• Spoon a little pasta water into the skillet, maybe 2-3 tablespoons, just to get everything nice and liquid-y. Crack salt and pepper into this concoction, and then lower the heat to the lowest setting.
• Hopefully, your water has boiled at this point, and you've added your pasta. Once the pasta is cooked (about 10 minutes for the campanelle) strain it and put it back in its big pot on the stove. Turn the burner back on medium-low, and then toss in the egg mixture (two whole eggs plus one egg yolk) and stir that into the cooked pasta. The heat from the noodles and the heat from the stove should start to cook the egg a little.
• At this point, grate in about 1 cup of parmesan cheese. Stir that all together, and then stir in the veggie mixture from the skillet.
• Everything should be pretty evenly distributed, with a fairly equal ratio of pasta to veggie. Add a little more salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese to taste, and then serve. Maybe grate another dash of parmesan cheese on top once plated, just to make it look nice.
• This recipe should serve 2-3 pretty hungry people ( or one normal person and one pregnant woman...)

Don't get me wrong-- this recipe isn't going to rock your universe or revolutionize your palette. It's just simple, good food, not too bad for you, lots of veggies represented, and easy as pie. And, it only takes about 15-20 minutes to make, which makes it a perfect week night dinner. Delish!

We made this again, for Julia, on Monday night (it's possible we went a little overboard at the farm stands) and she was equally satisfied and impressed. In fact, she even went so far as to recommend the dish to another friend, so that's saying something good!

Give it a shot!

Apartment Show-Down: We've Got Our Guns Drawn!

We've been getting up early to work on this renovation project so frequently that I might have to rename the blog "Before-Breakfast Design".... Oy.

John and I got up at the wee hours of this morning and primed the floors of the bedroom, hallway, and the baby's room. But of course, nothing is as simple as just anything. We didn't just get up and prime the floors. First we had to remove the last remaining vinyl tiles that had been stuck down in the hallway and baby's room. And of course, removing them isn't as simple as typing the word "removing". John had to use a hot iron and a variety of chisels to get them up, and then follow that up with a layer of the very toxic smelling "zip-strip" to remove the left-over adhesive once the tiles were up.

Don't worry, I was already in the shower at this point, so hopefully our baby has dodged the three-arms-three-eyes-toxic-exposure bullet this time. Sadly, the same cannot be said for John's brain, which had only the benefit of open windows, a ceiling fan, and a pretty tame face mask. I suggested John write a guest-posting describing the horrors of this early morning trauma, which he refused to do, but he did come up with an excellent title for his never-to-be-posting: "Somebody shoot me. Oh wait. I'm already slowly dying." 

After the "zip-strip" was applied, scraped up, and the floors were mopped down, I jumped in to do the priming while John got ready for work and walked the dog. It was a serious double-teaming effort this morning, but we came away victorious with all three floors prepped, primed, and ready for painting when we return from this weekend's wedding festivities. Pictured at left is the baby's room, in all of its Appleton finery, along with new baseboards and primed floors. It's actually starting to look like a room in there!

For tonight, I'm going to bask in the refreshing clean smell of the country air up at Fox Ridge, finally dust-and-wretched-toxin-free, and then tomorrow we're going to take a winding leisurely drive to up-up-upstate New York, hopefully finding all sorts of fun yard sales and flea markets on our route. Should be good...

We definitely deserve a break! : )

The stench of IKEA has wafted into our home...

Well, it's either IKEA, or it's just the smell of NYC in the summer...

Way back when, when John and I decided to turn "the room we walk through" into a nursery and a hallway, we agreed that additional storage solutions were going to be a major necessity. We've lost one closet to the baby's room, but we've also eliminated the captain's bed that used to be in the guest room section of "the room we walk through". Stored (hidden) within the captain's bed was a veritable treasure trove of hoarder's delights-- lots of clothes from the early 2000's (just in case they came back in style), weird sentimental objects from both of our childhoods, John's first student film (in full, captured on film...) There was a wide array of must-keeps hidden inside that bed frame. However, the bed had to go, so we had to figure out where we were going to hide all of the stuff we were embarrassed about keeping.

Of course, my first instinct was to search Craig's List. I thought, "Surely we can find some giant, vintage piece that will solve all our storage woes." And this wasn't entirely mistaken. I found this huge almost-antique beautiful wood armoire (4-doors, 72" wide X 84" tall) that was apparently semi-collapsible, easy to transport, and a mere $900.00. I was so serious about this piece that after an intense budget meeting with John, I contacted the seller and said I could offer him $600.00 in cash and next day pick up if he'd accept my offer. He, very graciously I should note, declined my bid--sadly, though understandably-- and we were back to square one.

In the back of my mind, I knew IKEA was the obvious place to look for these closets, but I was trying so hard to resist the cheery allure of those Build-It-Yourself Scandinavians... Going to IKEA brings out the nastiest in me. I become impatient, hyper-critical, closed-minded, and generally unpleasant to be around. (Luckily John finds this tendency all very funny, or I'd be stuck shopping alone.) Friends of ours had purchased IKEA's Botne Storage system, pictured above, and I had to confess, I didn't hate it. However, the friend who bought and then built it did hate it, which wasn't exactly the glowing review I was seeking. His primary complaint was that the whole bloody thing was falling apart, admittedly due in large part to his half-hearted assembly in the first place. He emphasized the need to properly level and anchor the whole affair, or it would slowly jiggle itself into a heap of particle board. Good to know, I thought. Noted!

After more scouring of Craig's List with little return, things were getting dire. The trigger had to be pulled or we were going to end up eating dinner with John's student film and my leather jacket from high school sitting with us at the table for the foreseeable future. Very un-parent-like it seemed to me...

With hate in my heart, we paid not one, not two, but three visits to IKEA to look at these f--ing cabinets. (I have IKEA hate to spare, so three visits didn't even spread me thin...) The first time was just to browse, the second time, we were supposed to be shopping, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, and the third time, we came home with a Volkswagen station wagon full of cheerful swedish instructions and many large cardboard boxes.

(May I just say, to emphasize my point, that when I googled "IKEA is Swedish" to make sure I wasn't muddling my Scandinavian furniture companies, the first two google suggestions were "IKEA is Swedish for crap" and "IKEA is Swedish for divorce." Evidently I am not alone in my opinion on their products...)

We bought a slightly different system than the Botne-- something called the PAX-- which was gigantic in all the right ways-- except for getting it into our apartment, which required a visit from John's dad and brother, because even I was a little skeptical about carrying it, pregnant, up our stairs. I'm no wussy, but those buggars were heavy!

I never thought I'd say this, but the photo above really doesn't do them justice. They're rather slick looking in person, but with more charisma that the tall white box shown in the photo, and they have a ridiculous amount of storage space.

Here's where things get a little better... Because Fernando, the whirlwind of wonder contractor who has been helping us with this project, was still working in our apartment, I asked him if he and his guy would assemble, level, and anchor the closets, so that we wouldn't be faced with the same heap of rubble currently afflicting my friends with the Botne system. Fernando kindly (sainthood?) obliged me, and they finished constructing them yesterday. They are now officially the only thing is this building that is standing at a perfect 90 degree angle with the earth, and in the event of an earthquake, will probably be the only thing remaining of this building. Watching them assemble these closets was a furniture building art form-- incredibly organized and systematic-- with none of the profanity or strewn screws typically associated with IKEA assembly. They should consider making a series of how-to-assemble videos to be sold for an extra fee along with the PAX system. It would be money well spent for the buyer and they'd make a fortune!

So-- the end result: We made it out of IKEA without a violent incident, we managed to buy these closets but escape the task of building them, and now we've got our very straight new closets installed into our newly renovated hallway. Next up: I've just got to tackle the grueling task of going through our other closets and organizing everything so that everything is in its place and there is a place for everything....

Easy-peasy, right? Ha.

Only Horses Sweat...

A wise English woman I know (Mummy...) once told me, "Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glow." Believe it or not, I actually had the opportunity to repeat this quote to someone yesterday, when they remarked about my not-sweating in the midst of a blistering 98 degree afternoon. I felt quite witty for pulling this quote out of a hat, though I think my charm may have been lost on the person, as he was distracted by the river of sweat running down his face and into his eyes.



I'm not sure if you've heard, but we're having a heat wave in New York City...

Because of the unbearable heat and my ever-growing gigantic belly, I thought it would be best to begin painting our bedroom as soon as I had a spare moment. I readied my supplies (Benjamin Moore's Healing Aloe for the walls, BM's Decorator's White for the ceilings and trim), brought along the radio, and entered the desert wasteland that was once our lovely bedroom. For reasons not fully understood, our bedroom is currently about 15 degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment, which added an extra-special twist to this particular project. The dog walked in there, panted three times, and then headed back for the cool comfort of our living room.


(It should be noted that we don't actually have an air conditioner installed right now. I don't know why-- it's sitting down in the basement of our building-- but the heat hasn't really disturbed us much.)

Until I started painting that room today. I literally soaked through the t-shirt I was wearing... My legs were "glowing" so much that I could have used a slip-n-slide without a hose... Call me a horse! I was sweating buckets! The good news, aside from sweating out every last drop of pregnancy water retention, is that the bedroom is now fully painted (above), and we can move onto the next horrible task at hand: priming, painting, and sealing the floors! Just because I love a good, late-night panic attack, let's review what is left to be completed on the apartment renovation list:

• Prime and paint bedroom floors
• Prime and paint checkerboard pattern on hallway floor
• Touch up checkerboard pattern in living room and dining room
• Seal painted floors w/ water based polyurethane to prolong the life of my arduous checkerboard patterned paint job
• Paint living room and dining room walls
• Install Sputnik chandelier ( I can't wait for it to arrive!)
• Furnish nursery
• Reassemble our bedroom
• Organize /reorganize our closets now that the IKEA cabinets are installed
• The minutia list almost makes me more anxious than the rest of the list combined...! Buy self-adhesive frosted glass paper to make it so you can't see into the baby's closet (to be explained), buy magnets and hardware for all of the doors, put up window hardware in the baby's room, do the kitchen touch-ups, paint the baby's closet, build a rolling clothes hamper for the bathroom to free up space in the laundry closet for the stroller... (And let's not even talk about cleaning! Our apartment is dustier than The South during the depression, and I think I've cultivated a special Claritin-resistant strain of allergies from sleeping here every night.)
• Also to-do: Possibly flee the city, leaving our apartment in shambles and our bed in the dining room, and changing my name to something anonymous, like Jane Smith.

So, yeah... There's a lot left to do before we can call this project "completed". However, we're gratefully on the hook to attend a wedding in far-upstate-western New York this weekend, so we're going to blow this sweaty, dusty popsicle stand in favor of cooler climates with all the comforts of The Holiday Inn, including a pool and aggressive AC accessibility. William the dog CANNOT wait. Another day of these temperatures wearing that fur coat, and he might well have worn out his ability to tongue-pant-sweat.

Check back tomorrow and I will post the whole story behind our 
new IKEA closets, why I'm not a sell-out or an idiot for buying them,

and why Fernando is the best contractor in NYC...

Baby Bowl Blue & The Real Thing...

You already know what inspired the color for the nursery, so now you can see the fruits of our labor (and my obsessive hunting for just the right paint color...) We're beyond pleased with the "Appleton" color by California Paints, and were actually pleasantly surprised by the finish as well. It has an interesting, slightly chalky quality that is rather nice-- John even said he "sort of likes how it goes on" which is a big compliment coming from an ardent Benjamin Moore supporter.

Believe it or not, I woke up this morning and primed our bedroom before I had to leave for work, so hopefully, we're going to tackle that room tonight. Sadly, we can't move back into our bedroom (and out of the dining room!) until we paint the floors in the bedroom, nursery, and hallway; but at least painting the walls will bring us one step closer to completion. 

Ooooohhhh--weeeee.... Our patience is being tested here. The to-be-completed-before-the-baby-arrives list is a long one, which seems to be getting longer, not shorter almost everyday. Good thing we have such a strong motivation to stay on task.... 

(Fear.) 


Check back soon for updates on our progress... Hopefully we'll have lots to report. : ) 

Colors! Colors! And more colors!

Moving onto the fun stuff, John and I have started the painting portion of this project! After some hemming and hawing, and putting some seriously bright, dark, and boring samples up on the walls, we narrowed in on Benjamin Moore's Marlboro Blue for the hallway. The inspiration for this color was drawn from the IKAT pattern of my recently recovered Eames lounge chair-- in the hopes that it would fluidly draw the eye from the more subtle blue tones in the living room into the bold blue of the hallway... but I should also give credit where credit is due... John chose this color, so props to John. He's got a keen eye! It should be said that I am a firm believer that small transitional spaces like hallways and bathrooms are the perfect opportunity to "Go Bold", so this seemed like just such a place to choose a slightly darker color.  

Initially I was a little nervous about the decision, but now that it's all up, we're both thrilled with the color, and I'm especially taken with the crisp contrast of the blue against the Benjamin Moore Decorator's White (Semi-Gloss) molding of the baseboards, french doors, and transom window; as well as the Decorator's White (Flat) Ceiling. Looking into our new hallway, you'd never know it used to be the lack-luster "room-we-walked-through" just a few short weeks ago. The addition of the snazzy vintage ceiling lights (found on Craig's List almost a year ago!) add a polished air to the whole affair, and there is rumor that the dreaded IKEA closets we've purchased for the hallway will be assembled and installed tomorrow, thus bringing the construction to a close. HURRAY!

(I promise we'll talk about the IKEA cabinets at a later date-- they're a sore subject and I simply don't have the stamina at the moment. Know this in the meantime: They really were the best solution given our budgetary limitations. And I hated every minute of buying something at IKEA. It goes against my very being...)

The hunt is... over?

You're never going to believe this, but I think the hunt for our sputnik chandelier may finally have come to a close. While prowling Craig's List at 3:00 a.m. on Friday morning (one of the perks of pregnancy is my complete inability to sleep) I found a sputnik chandelier that was being sold for $250.00 by a woman in Fairfield, Connecticut! 

Don't judge too harshly based on the photograph at left-- once it's spruced up with some snazzy frosted glass globe bulbs and it's hanging from my living room ceiling, you'll see why I was so excited to find one of these babies listed for $250.00, even if it was in Connecticut. 

By sheer coincidence, John's aunt Irene, an enthusiastic Craig's List-er herself, was driving from Boston to New York that very day, literally driving right past Fairfield on her way down. I emailed the seller, eagerly called Irene, and after a little bit of back-and-forth-coordinating, it was agreed that Irene would swing by and pick up the chandelier on the way back up to Boston, and then she is going to bring it back down to Brooklyn at the beginning of July, when she's returning to New York for our baby shower. 

Of course, when Irene arrived in Connecticut, she and the seller hit it off like a house on fire, and now I'm pretty sure I've got a friend in Fairfield if I ever need one. Leave it to Irene! : ) 

The verdict on the chandelier is out until the beginning of July, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be the perfect addition to our living room. Needless to say, I'm pretty impatient waiting for its ETA. 

I'll report back soon! 

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Not to be forgotten!

In more pressing news, it should also be mentioned...

Happy Father's Day!

...to all the awesome fathers in my life, and of course, to my very terrific John who is now a father in the making, I wish you all a very wonderful Father's Day. I hope you're doing something especially pleasant today, like taking a nap, having a beer, watching a soccer game, or playing a round of golf (except for John, who I hope is going to keep helping me paint the apartment) and throughout the day, your ears should itch knowing that we're thinking really great things about you and wishing we were there to celebrate your greatness in person!

Way to be, guys! You're the best! 

The fun part-- PAINT!

The construction phase of our nursery is coming to a close this week, and John and I are planning to stay in the city for two days of rigorous painting. There's a lot of ground to cover, and lots of paint colors to pick, which is all very exciting!

For the baby's room, we were on the hunt for a very particular color. Our friends Malik and Martina (our Parisian soul-mates, if you remember rightly...) gave us the beautiful children's bowl (shown at left) as a colorful inspiration for the baby's nursery. I was totally smitten with the color because it was the perfect shade of blue-green-grey that I love... not too baby-blue, not too grown-up grey, just the right balance to soothe both mother and child alike. : ) Unfortunately, I couldn't find quite the right shade from the people at Benjamin Moore. My intention was to literally bring the bowl to the paint store and get them to do a color match for me, but when I got there, I stumbled upon a California Paint color that matched PERFECTLY!

I know, I know... I'm a turn-coat and a fiend! I have long professed a die-hard allegiance to Benjamin Moore (and I maintain that they make the highest quality, best-covering paint) but sometimes, you've just got to go with your heart, and buy the paint that is the best color match to your little french bowl which reminds you of wonderful friends and is the perfect color for a baby's room. 

I know. My praise can be bought for a song. : (

If you're interested and don't mind carrying the mark of a traitor, the color is called "Appleton" (California Paints Color: HIST41) We've already started edging this color out, and I'm pleased as punch with how it's coming together.

Check back in later this weekend and I should have updates on our progress, and maybe a photo or two of the actual rooms... Remember, we've got a lot of painting to do at this point: the baby's room, the hallway, our bedroom, and then we've masochistically added the living room and dining room to our list, so we'll be posting all about choosing those paint colors, and our progress as we chip away at the list.

Yay! 


Did someone say, "Yay?"  

Swoon!

While hunting for exciting antiquated accents for a client, I bumped into these gorgeous model staircases...

Be still my beating heart!  

Aren't they just utterly fabulous? If only I had a spare $6,500.00 to spend, I'd pick these lovelies up in a heart beat. (Okay, I guess you could buy in moderation, but even at $2,150.00 a pop, they're awfully steep.) They'd look so terrific all together, along the top of a bookcase or displayed together on a shelf.

Ah well-- I'll have to content myself with the beautiful version I bought for myself in Paris, which is currently under about an inch of dust in our living room/bedroom, as the construction continues in Brooklyn...  : )

And for those of you with neither $6,500.00 in your pocket, nor a trip to Paris in your future, Ballard Design's is still selling this knock-off version which is a pretty close second!

Mmmmm.... SCALLOPS!

Another recipe night with the grill upstate, but I'm pretty sure this meal can translate into an urban kitchen as well. It was a simple salad, but awesome and well-worthy of a summer dinner-- but especially--SO simple! 

Ingredients: (for two)
-6 or 8 fresh scallops
-1/2 ripe avocado 
-1/2 pink grapefruit 
-2 or 3 cups of arugula or mache or whatever yummy leafy greens you fancy
-1 T. lemon juice
-2 T. white wine vinegar
-1/2 T. dijon mustard
-4 T. olive oil (2 T. olive oil to toss the scallops in, 2 T. for the dressing)
-salt & pepper


Directions: (As relayed by John)
Start by prepping your salad, so that once your scallops are cooked, you're ready to serve everything right away. Remarkably, I found instructions online for an almost identical salad, and they detail cutting a pink grapefruit with far more precision than I could possibly provide, so let's defer to that source for the first part of this recipe: 


Rinse and dry your mache - set aside.

Take your grapefruit, and using a serrated knife, slice off each end so that just a little pink is showing. Set the grapefruit on a flat side and begin slicing off the skin vertically - you should be going around the grapefruit and removing the skin and membrane to show nice juicy grapefruit segments.

Once you have all the skin and pith removed - segment each grapefruit slice by taking your serrated knife and cutting into the grapefruit just between the fruit and the membrane separating the segments. You will have a nice membrane free segment of grapefruit. Do this until all the fruit is freed. Squeeze the juice out of the remaining membrane into a small bowl.

Remove the pit from your avocado half, then cut the avocado into 1/8 inch thick slices, and use a large spoon to delicately remove the slices from the skin. Sprinkle the slices with reserved grapefruit juice to keep from browning.

Assemble your salad before you start cooking... Plate greens, add your slices of avocado, grape fruit segments, and now, to make your vinaigrette:


Whisk together the mustard, lemon juice, white wine vinegar,  any remaining grapefruit juice, salt & pepper, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a small bowl. Set this aside, and turn your attention to the scallops... 


John started by rinsing the scallops, patting them dry, tossing the scallops in olive oil and a crack of salt & pepper, and then let them sit in the fridge for about 15 minutes. Once he had them sitting in the fridge, he started up the grill, put our grill pan onto the BBQ, and got it nice and hot-- "as hot as it can possibly get". If you were cooking this without access to a grill, John recommends using a cast iron skillet, and getting it "crazy hot" on the stove top. Place your scallops flat side down on the pan. Watch them carefully - when they start to turn opaque about half way up their sides - test one to see if it is nicely golden (this should take about 3-5 minutes). If it looks nice and golden, flip them all over and brown them on the other side. Once both sides are nicely browned, and the inside is thoroughly opaque, remove from the pan and place them right onto the salad. Drizzle with your vinaigrette and  you're ready to go! 


Dinner is served! 

Oooo-La-La! Gliding On!

This weekend, the monkey-fabric glider covers that Mummy has been so diligently working on arrived in the post! Of course, I eagerly slipped them onto the denim-blue cushions that the glider originally came with, and whoa! The transformation!

Yow! Zow! Ooo-La-La! 

This was a particularly successful D-I-Y project! Let's review the details:

-Glider purchased for $50.00 at a local yard sale

-Pomegranate Copacabana Monkey fabric for about $62.00 

-Lots of free labor from my loving mother!

So, for $112.00, and not a whole lot of Doing-It-Myself, we have an awesome, completely revitalized glider that fits perfectly into our living room in the country. Now that is some spectacularly budget-friendly home design. And now we're one step closer to being baby-ready up at Fox Ridge... Yee-haw! 

Orange you glad to see me? In more ways than one.

So-- I've found tons of cute orange things, and just can't wait to incorporate them into this nursery. In fact, there are so many cute orange things available, I'm going to have to severely edit in order to keep things from getting a bit too twee.

Let's start with a definite winner: The Star Egg Nightlight!  Admit it-- that's ridiculously cute. I've got grand plans for this illuminated egg to perch on a little recessed shelf in the nursery, perfect to send the baby off to sleep with. We may not have anything practical on our registry yet, but this bad boy made it right near the top of the list. And yes. My priorities are skewed.

I'm planning to focus on only the cute, charming aspects of babies until this baby arrives and all hell breaks loose. Does this sound like a fool proof plan to anyone else? If not, please feel free to contribute suggestions about "must-have" baby goods, so we can actually put something useful on that registry!

I have actually found a bunch of other, slightly more pragmatic orangey accents as well... fitted sheets, changing pad covers... These serve a more obvious purpose than the illuminated egg, it's true, though without contest, the egg wins in the Charming Competition.

I figure between those odds and ends, and my star-burst orange glider cushions, I'm probably dangerously close to orange-capacity, and can/should probably start focusing my attention on the other colors in our palette, like the "pale-aqua-grey", often referred to online as "Robin's Egg". Certainly a more poetic name, though I feel like mine seems far more accurate. Ah well, Robin's Egg it is...

Blind optimism!

In the midst of all of the dust and debris, I've decided to focus my attention on more pleasant matters, and have been working on the design of the city nursery with even more enthusiasm. We've already got the color scheme covered: navy, orange, pale-aqua-grey (a color, I swear), all of which were inspired by our Parisian Forest Scene mobile. Now I'm just figuring out how each color will be manifested. So far I've got navy accents in the rug, navy accents in the polka dot curtains... I'm thinking pale-aqua-grey for the wall color (specifics to be determined) and now for the fun part-- how and where will the orange appear?

First things first, I was on the hunt for a glider fabric. We happen to have this cool white metal bouncy lounge chair, which we formerly used out on the patio in the country. I was sitting in it a couple of weeks ago when I declared, "This is one comfortable chair!" With my save-money-wheels spinning, I asked a couple of seasoned experts (John's mom and dad) to take it for a test-drive, and after receiving their parenting seal of approval, decided this would be a perfect glider/rocker/bouncer/bopper for the city nursery. With a cool cushion, of course. So, now I was hunting for the glider fabric that would make just such a cool cushion.

Lucky for me, it was a brief hunt. After almost no searching, I found this awesome kravet outdoor fabric: Pattern # 31105-12. It's such a fun, playful way to bring orange into the room, works wonderfully with the retro feel of the rocking chair, and is a terrific complement to the orange accents throughout the rest of the apartment. And at $39.50 per yard (the trade price!) the material is going to cost a total of $134.19. It's been sent directly to my lovely mother, who will hopefully begin making another glider cover ASAP, and then we'll really be in business! All very exciting!

Make no mistake. I've found many other fun ways to incorporate the navy, orange, and pale aqua... Check back later this week to see what else is in store for this ever-evolving nursery! 

Urban Camping 101

John and I wanted to find out if we really are the two most masochistic people on earth, so we decided to move our bedroom furniture into our dining room and living room, cordon off our bedroom and "the room we walk through", and start our next big construction project, transforming "the room we walk through" into a hallway and the new nursery. We thought this would be particularly fun given my 7-plus months pregnant state of affairs. : ) 

Yep-- that's our bed in the dining room down below. Luxury quarters, I assure you... Though it's great fun to whine, to be totally honest, it actually hasn't been that bad. Granted, things are a tad dusty, but nothing unmanageable, and we are actually kind of having fun with the change of scenery... except when we have to get dressed when we have to dig everything out from under the drop cloths. It's our version of urban camping!

Now-- before we go taking all of the credit for the dust and chaos that has consumed our apartment-- I have a MAJOR CONFESSION to make. John and I aren't doing this renovation all by ourselves. In fact, for the first time ever, we aren't doing the majority of the heavy-lifting ourselves. A contractor that I regularly work with, the very talented Fernando, was so horrified by the prospect of "pregnant-me" drilling away at drywall on a ladder, that he generously, incredibly, offered his help and expertise, and now we're well underway, building our lovely little nursery. And thank goodness for Fernando, because he's really transforming this operation from a D-I-Y misadventure to a genuine PRO-LOOKING endeavor. Once the basics are up, I'll post photos and details, but for the time being, picture me sitting on my bed, in my dining room, clicking away on my lap top, pining for the moment when I can start working on the fun stuff-- hanging up polka-dot curtains, rolling out our fabulous Serena & Lily area rug, and of course, one of my favorite milestones in home renovation, obsessing about paint colors! 

So much to look forward to in the coming weeks!