Sea Glass Hunting

The summer is over but Anouk and I have still made a point to hit the beach at least once a week in September and October. I love the beach in autumn; beaches change with the seasons, too, and fall is especially pretty with the pines dropping needles and the goldenrod in the dunegrass coming into bloom. When we come home we're chilly and cozy and reinvigorated -- and we usually have a handful of sea glass to show off for our efforts.

Autumn is a great time of year for sea-glass hunting -- the weather is cooling down, the beaches are beginning to empty, and storms are churning up the coast, stirring everything up. Prime sea glass hunting weather. Some people chart the tides and the phases of the moon to find the best times for collecting sea glass, others bring special equipment to pan for glass in the shallows. Anne and I just walk and see what we see, which is usually a good enough tactic.

There is an art to looking for sea glass and A. has it. She can spot even the tiniest shards of color in the tide line. Of course, because sea glass is really just glass, it can be sharp, so she knows not to touch it until I've examined it and pronounced it OK. She just calls out the color and I come over to check out what she's found. If it's smooth enough and frosted enough, the glass goes into our bucket. If it's still sharp and only a little cloudy, we toss it back into the water. The waves will smooth it a little more and it will wash up for somebody else, sometime later. That's the Tao of sea glass hunting -- if it's not for you, it's not for you. Move on.



The beaches around Hampton Roads are great for sea glass, because of their proximity to shipping lanes, factories, and colonial-era settlements. So there is always another lovely frosted glass shard or smooth piece of pottery to find and bring home and display. There's a hierarchy of sea glass -- oranges, reds, yellows, and purples are rare. Black is almost impossible to find. The common blues and greens and browns are a dime a dozen -- a lot of "professional" sea glass collectors wouldn't even bother picking it up, but we like it.



I don't know exactly why I love sea glass so much but I think it has something to do with the idea of something ugly -- something that's basically just trash, junk -- that's transformed and smoothed into something beautiful. I read once that diamonds are made by nature and refined by man; sea glass is made by man and refined by nature. I think that's a really humbling thought.

Do you collect for sea glass? For those of you readers who live in landlocked places, don't forget about beach glass (found along rivers and lakes). For an interesting NYT article about the current state of sea glass collecting in the US, click here.

Have a great weekend!

Ocean View Station Museum

Sometimes, when Anouk and I visit the Pretlow Library in Norfolk, we stop in and visit the Ocean View Station Museum on the ground floor before we leave, if it's open. It's one of our favorite places to visit, so I can never quite believe that many people don't even know the little museum is there.

Which is kind of like Ocean View itself: a lot of people don't know that this quiet-but-colorful neighborhood in Norfolk used to be one of the most popular beach vacation destinations on the East Coast. In its heyday, Ocean View featured an amusement park, resort hotels, a bustling boardwalk and fishing pier.





When my mom was a little girl, her grandparents, my great-grandparents, Anouk's great-greats (!), lived in a little brick house right on the beach in Ocean View, and she and all of her siblings and cousins spent a lot of time there. So Ocean View has a special place in my heart, and it's fun to be able to peek in and take a look at how it used to be. A. and I like to take our time moving through the museum, looking at everything: the old ticket stubs and photographs, old Granby High yearbooks from the 1920s and '30s, and even the restored front car of the Rocket, the amusement park's most popular roller coaster (which was spectacularly demolished in a made-for-TV movie in the 1970s).

More information about the Ocean View Station Museum's hours and exhibits can be found here. Be sure to stop in the next time you return your library books and have a chat with one of the staff, most of whom remember Ocean View the way it used to be and are all too happy to tell you all about it.

Is there a place that means a lot to your family? Tell us about it. And have a great weekend!

Our New House

Just over a week ago, we closed on our new house -- a four-bedroom, two-bathroom (!) 1940s Cape Cod just a few streets away from the house we've been renting for the past year. Despite a few dubious design choices left over from the early 1970s (psychedelic wallpaper and linoleum, wood paneling everywhere), our new house is pretty much perfect in our eyes, full of light and charm and tons of possibilities.

Anouk's favorite things about it are the vintage light fixtures in the bedrooms and the seats under the dormer windows upstairs; James loves the yard and the fact that it's within walking distance to the beach; I still can't believe the sheer number of cabinets and drawers in the kitchen (well over thirty) and the neighborhood, which is shady and friendly and full of young families.

I think what's most exciting though is that this new house means that we're here in Norfolk to stay. We can start settling in and really putting down roots. It's exciting, seeing our city through this new perspective. I never really paid attention to the elementary school down the street before; now whenever I pass it I can't help but picture a little six- or seven-year-old Anouk there, knowing that it will be her school one day.

We're going to be super busy over the next few weeks as we settle in and start some pretty extensive renovations so please forgive me if things are a little slow over here on the blog. I promise I'll make it up with some juicy DIY posts later for those of you who are into that.

Two whole bathrooms! I still can't believe it. Happy weekend, everyone!

12 in 12 (September 2013)

This month's 12 in 12 (on the 12th) project found us running all over, from sunup to sundown. Usually when we have a busy day like this I feel wrung out by the end of it, but this day, our travels all over town really came together to highlight to me how much our city has to offer. I feel like this post is a love letter to Norfolk just as much as it is a recording of our ordinary run-of-the-mill day.

Dear Norfolk -- we love living in you. And dear readers, don't forget to pop over and check out Darcy's and Rebecca's 12 in 12 projects at No Monsters in My Bed and Not-So-SAHM.

7:30 AM: Mornings make me feel like this too.



10:00 AM: Anouk and I venture down to Ghent for a couple of hours to run errands. We have a lot of presents to buy, as pretty much everyone we know had a baby or a birthday (or both!) in September. We bought one of the baby gifts, for my friend A.'s little girl, from Kitsch, which is such an awesome store full of handmade goodies. If you live in the area, you should definitely stop in.




11:30 AM: Coffee break at Fair Grounds. Anouk sings along to the Beatles Let it Be album and I read a poetry zine put out by high school students while I finish my drink. Why wasn't I this awesome in high school??

12:00 PM: High noon on Colley Ave.

12:30 PM: We stop by Lafayette Park on the way home to run off some steam before lunch. I just adore the gnarly old live oaks that grow there; they might be my all-time favorite trees.




2:00 PM: Naptime.

5:30 PM: Aunt Kristen is in town for the day on her way to a friend's wedding. Anouk is SO happy to see her and I think the feeling might be mutual.

6:00 PM: We walk down Granby Street to visit our favorite of the Norfolk mermaids (Miss Definitely Downtown) before Aunt Bonne's birthday dinner at Hokkaido. Happy birthday, Bon-Bon! P.S.: I swear sometimes we really do eat meals at home.

8:45 PM: A quick bath before bed.

How was your day?

Naa's Bakery

There's a little place, tucked inside a nondescript shopping center off of Tidewater Drive in Norfolk, where you can get some of the best pastries in the area. It's called Naa's Bakery, and Anouk and I met Miss Molly and Little A. there last week to get ourselves sugared up before a park playdate.

Naa's has been around for the better part of a century, and as soon as you walk in you realize why it's earned its place as a Norfolk landmark, alongside places like Doumars and Charlie's Cafe. There's a sweetly (no pun intended) old fashioned charm that you just can't find anyplace else that makes you think it probably hasn't changed very much over the years. The long bakery case houses dozens of delicacies, from thick slices of homemade cake to feathery fluffed doughnuts to whimsically iced cupcakes and cookies. We had a hard time deciding what to order because everything looked so good (and a hard time meeting the $5 credit card minimum despite the half-dozen or so goodies we ordered -- seriously, the prices are so reasonable). As we sat at our table in the front of the bakery and sampled bites of each others' desserts, we chatted with the friendly staff behind the counter and it was a little bit like stepping back to a simpler time and place. The ladies behind the counter made us promise to come back -- they didn't have to twist our arms.

Have you been to Naa's? What were your favorites? In case you were wondering, our top picks were the plain glazed doughnuts and the thickly iced black-and-white cookies. Although everything we sampled was delicious. So much yum in one small place!

Naa's Bakery brings the love, for real. 

Baby's First Movie

Last week, I took Anne to see her first actual in-the-theatres movie. We were very excited about it -- so excited that I ignored a little bad behavior the night before that I really shouldn't have just so that we would still be able to go. We were that excited. We looked up the showtimes to see what was playing, watched some trailers together, and finally decided that we'd go to a matinee showing of Planes, at Military Circle Mall.

Going to the theatre at Military Circle Mall was important to me. It's where I went to the movies when I was growing up, before MacArthur mall was built-- I have so many memories of being there with friends, and going to see scary movies with my Mammaw, who would smuggle in McDonald's hamburgers in her purse and even bring her own pillow (!) so that she could get extra-comfy in the seats.

Anne told everybody she met that she was going to her first movie: the people in line with us, the ticket-taker, the cashier at the concession stand. But as soon as we walked into the dark theatre, she faltered a little. When the previews came on, she covered her ears and said, "It's too loud! It's too BIG." I managed to convince her to give it a try by plying her with M&Ms (and covering her eyes during the Dinosaurs 3D preview OMG). There were a few hairy moments and we had to take a break during a battle scene with lots of gunfire and mean-looking planes but she did manage to make it all the way through. By the end she was dancing in the aisle and clapping "Go Dusty!" with all of the other little kids in the audience.

As for me, I thought the movie was adorable. Of course I cried when Skipper, the rusty WWII Corsair, found his wings again and took off tremulously into the sky. I'm lucky that A. is still young enough that this wasn't awful and embarrassing for her. If my mom had cried like that in front of other people I would have died.

We're already planning to head back in November to see Frozen (the preview with the melting snowman looked too cute). Have you taken your little ones to the movies lately? What did you see?

Chrysler Museum Glass Studio

I love creative playdates! A week or so ago, Anouk and I joined friends to go and see visiting artist Gianni Toso work live in the Chrysler Museum's glass studio. And it was probably my favorite of our adventures around town to date -- such an inspiring, educational, and colorful experience. I've never seen anything like it before (not even in all my poking around for things to do).

I'm not sure what I expected -- maybe something like the glassblowers at Jamestown? Sort of campy and fun? While this was definitely fun, there was far less of a boisterous vibe. Things were quieter, more focused, as the artist worked and the people sitting in rows of chairs around the workspace watched intently. Occasionally, a staffer with a microphone would step up to narrate what Toso was doing as he switched tools, or melded two different colored glass rods and stretched them into a delicately twisting ribbon. Classical music was playing while he worked and there were also large monitors hanging around the room so that even the people in the back could see. Toso comes from a family line of glass makers spanning back 700 years (that's not a typo), and he himself has been doing this for six decades, so you really want to be able to watch him closely, and luckily, you can.

Anne and her friend C. really enjoyed strolling around the perimeter of the room and looking at all of the work done by glass studio resident and visiting artists -- the more colorful or intricate it was, the better. To be completely honest, though, this was probably one of those outings that was more exciting the parents than the kids, at least in our case. S. and I were fascinated by the whole experience, but I think they were just too young to appreciate it fully. However, there were many older children in the audience -- ages 6 to 8 or so and then some older tweens and teens -- who seemed as into it as we were. So that's probably the best age group for this event.

The next nearest museum-affiliated glass studio in the U.S. is in Toledo, Ohio (there are only five in the whole country), so we are very lucky to have this one so close to home. And there are many opportunities to visit. The Chrysler's glass studio presents free daily demonstrations at noon, every Wednesday through Saturday, and regularly offer classes, workshops, and Third Wednesday parties with booze, music, and glass art demonstrations. You can find out more on the studio's website, and you can see more of what these remarkably talented artists do on the studio's YouTube channel.

Tides are In

 A couple of weekends ago, my sister came into town from DC, and my uncle noticed that the Norfolk Tides, our local minor baseball league team, were offering a deal for Buy 5 tickets, Get 5 tickets free. Put them together and what do you have? Family baseball night. Hooray!

We set out to Harbor Park on a drizzly Saturday night hoping that the rain would hold off so that we could see the Tides play the Rochester Red Wings. It also happened to be Navy Appreciation Night, which meant that we got to listen to the Navy band, see a group of young men and women be inducted into the service, and cheer for a few military men and women (and military spouses) who were being recognized that evening. I feel like nothing says Norfolk like the Navy, and so I was extra proud of my hometown when I saw the crowd that had turned out that night.

Our seats were fantastic -- right behind home plate, which meant that A. got to see most of the action unfold only a few feet away. She was entranced by everything that was going on -- she kept up a pretty steady stream of commentary that could give the official Tides announcer a run for his money ("That man goes up there. He hits the ball. He running! Wow, he run!") For all that, I still think that she was more into the games in-between innings than she was the actual baseball game -- she cheered harder for the teams racing to build a giant hamburger than she did any time one of our players got a hit. (Although the hamburger race was very exciting that night, with one team running the wrong way and another forgetting the cheese).

We also introduced Anouk to cotton candy while we were at Harbor Park that fateful Saturday. She was definitely a fan of that, eating almost one whole bag by herself and then crashing hard from the sugar high. This coincided with the point at which the rain started in earnest, so we left at the top of the 7th inning. But we still felt like we got a good amount of excitement out of the evening -- we couldn't have asked for more.*

*Except maybe the Tides to not get shut out, but that's a small thing, right?

Go team! Have you ever been to a Tides game? What's your local minor league team called? (I still think Richmond has the best with the Flying Squirrels).