Halloween 2013

We've had a trying week -- not going to lie, it's been one of the hardest weeks I've experienced in a long time. On top of moving and getting our old house ready for inspection by the rental company, we had some burst pipes at the new house (which meant raw sewage all over our freshly sanded floors). Worst of all, our sweet little tabby cat managed to slip out during the moving process and is now unaccounted for (if you're a local reader, please pass this along to help us find him! Especially if you are in Norfolk.)

The good news is that we are officially settled into our new house and got to spend our first Halloween enjoying our neighborhood and getting to know our neighbors. Our new neighborhood really DOES Halloween: a trip down our street led us past three haunted houses, a punk-rock garage concert, and a tent where they were giving away antique books! (A friend of mine got a complete 1950s set of the Anne of Green Gables series -- I dithered between Lives of the Saints and a 1915 copy of Robert's Rules of Order and finally went for the latter). Nearly every house was decked out with lights and cobwebs and very ambitiously carved pumpkins and the kids were running to and fro like madcaps. It was a far cry from our old neighborhood in Northern Virginia, where we were lucky if we got one trick-or-treater all night. In short, I think we're going to like it here.

So without further ado, here are some photos from around the house and from last night's Halloween spree! Happy weekend -- here's to a wonderful week to come for all of us. x

^^ Pinata for our playgroup party & our newly refinished (and cleaned) floors ^^

^^ So much bigger than last year! (and sulky because Mama won't let her eat all the candy) ^^

^^ Everybody who went by -- adults and kids both -- had to try our neighbors' hopscotch ^^

^^ Reminds me of being stuck in traffic on I-95 ^^

^^ Dada on candy duty ^^

Fall Cleaning the Craft Box

I used the excuse of moving to get rid of a lot of stuff, including in the craft box. All of our on-its-last-legs art supplies -- worn down crayons, half-empty paints, semi-dry dot markers, glue dregs, foam sheet scraps -- came out for one last hurrah before I threw them in the trash. I put everything on the table in front of Anouk with a stack of junk mail (catalogs that won't stop coming no matter how many times I cancel are my pet peeve) and let her get to work.



The result were these mixed media collages that I think are very colorful and fun. It was hilarious and really interesting to sit back and watch A. make them, exploring her newfound creative freedom over what was basically the whole craft box. Trying to get in there and experiment with everything all at once is basically her life's mission right now. This was her chance and she took it with gusto.





Now I have some art for the fridge at the new house and my craft bins are about 5 pounds lighter. I don't think of it as throwing stuff away, I think of it as Strunk-and-White-ing my art supplies (Omit needless pom-poms).

Happy Monday! Have you been fall cleaning this year? Any creative ways of getting rid of excess junk?

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!

More Fun at Bergey's Breadbasket

We made our annual fall pilgrimage to Bergey's Breadbasket a few weeks ago to pick a peck of perfect pumpkins. Click over to My Active Child to read more!

Talking to Kids about Moving

Anne is generally over the moon about the new house, but in the past week or so, she's started to get a little resistant when we talk about the prospect of leaving our old house. "I like the new house the best," she'll say, "But sometimes I'm going to sleep at the old house, too." When we tell her that that won't be possible because someone else will be living here, she gives us a resounding NO.

It makes sense that she would be a little anxious to leave. James and I love this little old house and the time we've spent here. But to us, it's just a quick drop in the memory bucket, a place among all the other places we've lived, a place where we spent just a little over a year. But to Anne, it is the only home she's ever really known. She was too little to remember our Arlington condo. This house is the setting for the only Christmas she remembers, the only birthday she remembers having, the place where she's played with her friends, all the little moments in between.

We've been trying to do what we can to make the move easier on her. The main thing is that we've tried to move everything else before packing her room. That way, she has a sort of sanctuary amid the chaos of packing that's taken over the rest of the house. We're planning on unpacking and setting up her room at the new house first thing before anything else, for the same reasons.



We've taken a lot of photos of/in the old house during the months we've been here but are trying to snap some shots of the little things about it that we'll want to remember in the future: the plants and trees in the yard, the crystal knobs on the pretty ladderback doors (each one is unique), the funny black-and-white retro tile in the bathroom.

It helps a lot that we've been spending a lot of time at the new house, usually making at least one trip every day for renovation purposes. It's also convenient that the layout of the new house is very similar to the one we're leaving. Thank you, mid-century architects! A.'s new room is coming together, and she's already made friends in the new neighborhood, which has been great for helping to distract from the fact that our time at the old house is coming to an end. But I still find myself crossing my fingers, hoping it all goes smoothly.

Have you moved with your kids? How did you make the transition a little easier? Any strategies you could share would be most appreciated.

Happy Monday!

Mini-Pumpkin Monsters

I feel a little guilty about Halloween this year -- it's the first year that Anouk really understands what's going on, but with the big move in progress, I haven't decorated a bit. All of our Halloween decorations are boxed up and are waiting to be unpacked in the new house.

A. has been looking at all of the decorations in our neighbors' yards, and the pumpkins sitting on their stoops, and asking, "Where's our Halloween stuff, mama?" So on a trip to the grocery store the other day, I picked up a few mini-pumpkins and brought them home to scatter around the house.

But that wasn't enough for Miss A. She rummaged in the craft box for supplies and declared, "We have to paint them." She also pulled out some unopened packages of googly eyes and that was our inspiration for our mini-pumpkin monsters. We used whatever caught our attention to monsterfy our pumpkins -- paints, pom-poms, pushpins for antennae.



I love the way they turned out. These monsters are definitely of the cute rather than scary variety. And now our mantle has some Halloween spirit. Everybody's happy!

Have you decorated for Halloween yet? What's your favorite Halloween swag? (I'm definitely a fan of those fake gravestones with the funny names on them. Al B. Bach, indeed!)

Sweet Potato and Apple Hash

This recipe is one of our fall go-tos -- it's hearty and colorful and spicy and cozy, a real crowd pleaser. It's easy enough so that Anouk can help me assemble and "cook" it, and there's something about eating apples in a savory dish that I find really intriguing. Best of all, this dish is sort of a chameleon dish -- it's good with everything, from sausages to pork to roast chicken or turkey to breakfast-as-dinner, and, if you replace the sage with cinnamon and add a dollop of whipped cream, it even makes a super dessert.

Ingredients:

3 medium sweet potatoes

1 large apple

1 small onion

1 tablespoon coconut oil (or butter)

pinch sage

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork and pre-cook in the microwave, for about five minutes, or until soft but not mushy. Remove, let cool, and remove skins. Dice sweet potatoes, apple, and onion and add apple and onion to a pan with the coconut oil. Cook on medium high heat until the apple is tender and the onion translucent. Add diced sweet potato, salt, pepper, and sage, and cook until the onion starts to caramelize.

Happy Monday!

House update: Three weeks in

So far we've been homeowners for three weeks and in those three weeks, a LOT has happened. We've been working on the new house so much -- I'm over there all day cleaning and sanding and priming and painting and when James is done with work in the evenings, he runs over to get the places I can't reach finish up. The result of all of this labor is that our old house is starting to really look and feel like home. Here's a list of what we've been up to since we closed last month.

1. Basking in the cold air.

Air-conditioning! We has it. Our first order of business was to have a team come in and install an HVAC system -- before, the only heating in the house was from a floor grate in the living room and ONE wall AC unit in the den. I think it says a lot about the house that we loved it so much when we first saw it even though it was July and it was literally 110 degrees inside. The process of putting in the new unit involved all sorts of complicated things like building ductwork and digging up part of the yard to install a natural gas line for a backup heat pump but now that everything's in place, it seems so simple. Flip a switch and ahhh. We were so grateful for our new AC during that stretch of super-hot days last week.


Look at the size of that thing! You can't really tell from the (horrible, rainy) picture, but when I'm standing next to it, it comes up to my chest. But believe it or not, it's so quiet when it's on that you can barely tell it's running.

2. Painting paneling. Lots and lots of paneling.

This is by far how we've been spending the most of our of time. The two large upstairs bedrooms (destined to be my craft room and James's office) and the den are completely paneled, walls and ceiling both, so there is a lot of space to cover. In some ways, the hardest part was choosing a paint color. We knew we wanted a soft white but without too much yellow or green in it (I've heard yellow undertones can make white walls look dingy in low light and green tends to make everybody look sick).

The color we ultimately went with, after looking at about a million swatches, was Benjamin Moore's Capitol White, from their Colonial Williamsburg collection, color matched to a Behr flat interior paint because it's way cheaper and we've had good luck with it in the past. I love the way it turned out -- the just off-white color is so soft and pure and seems to glow when the light hits it. But there's also enough contrast so that the Ultra Pure White we used for the trim really pops against it. In fact, we like the color so much that I think we're going to use it in places throughout the rest of the house.

3. Excavating a kitchen floor.

Our big kitchen used to be separate smaller kitchen and dining areas but sometime over the last sixty-odd years, the wall between the two was knocked out and the rooms were combined into one. And then the whole floor was carpeted (!). We had a suspicion that underneath, at least in the old dining area, we'd find the same hardwood floors that run through the living room and front hallway to the bedrooms. And after peeling back three layers of carpet and scraping through a weird black layer of grime (we think it was part of the carpet adhesive that molded to the floors over the years), we found it.

 After many many nights of scraping and sanding and using every degreaser we could find, we decided that we're going to need professional help to whip these floors in shape. We scheduled a refinisher to come and deal with the hardwood (and to go over the wood floors in the rest of the house) and are currently in the process of picking a tile for the kitchen area.


4. Drywalling over wallpaper.



A lot of you were fans of the wavy wallpaper in the stairwell and suggested we should keep it, but that choice wasn't really on the table because of how torn and ragged it was in places. J. and I both took turns trying to remove this incredibly persistent wallpaper with a few different methods/products, but in about a week's worth of working on it, we only managed to remove about a two-foot by three-foot section each. And when the paper was gone, we found the plaster underneath was just crumbling. Instead of removing all of the paper and then replastering, we decided to start from scratch and just cover the wallpaper with drywall (thanks to a lot of help from some very very wonderful family members and friends).



I love the smell of fresh drywall (smells like victory!)

5. Bidding farewell to a tree.

A neighbor told me that the huge tree in the front of the house was the only one of the old oaks that used to line the street that managed to survive Hurricane Isabel when it rolled through 10 years ago. We felt kind of bad having to cut it down after it had been such a survivor, but the roots were threatening the foundation of the house and most of the tree was dead and hollow inside, meaning that another storm could bring it crashing down on the roof (and our power lines -- parts of the tree were intertwined with them). One morning last week some intrepid tree guys came and removed all traces of it.

I love the way our house looks without the tree -- you can see the lines of it a lot more clearly, and our small yard definitely looks bigger without it. Bonus: our tree guys left me a chunk of trunk, which I plan to turn into a side table like one of these at West Elm sometime in the future.

6. More painting...

...because we're trying to get as much up on the walls as we can before the floor guy come later this week. For Anne's room (top), I went to Home Depot, chose all the swatches I thought would work with her existing decor and let her pick the one she liked best. She chose this muted, pale lilac with a tinge of gray 3 out of 5 times, so that's what we went with. It's Martha Stewart's Seed Pearl, which we again color matched to a Behr flat, since I've heard M.Stew. paints can tend to be runny and have poor coverage.

The bottom photo is mine and James's room (Glidden's Natural Wicker, color-matched to Behr, &etc). It's a very light cappucino color that is just so restful to me. It's a good thing that I like them because I've been spending a lot of time with these colors -- our plaster walls are so old that they're sucking the paint right up, and multiple (3+) coats have been required to cover certain places, even with primer.

In my spare hours (what little of them there are), I've been making inspiration boards for each room on Pinterest (follow me!) You would think it would be overload, but actually I find it rather soothing. What house projects are you working on lately? Let's share stories from the trenches.

Apple-Printed Wrapping Paper

As I mentioned before, we had a lot of birthdays in September. And as you know, we like to get creative with our wrapping paper for gifts. So when Anouk and I pulled out some supplies to do a quick apple-printing craft a few weeks ago, I got an idea. Why not use our apples to print some cute and seasonal DIY wrapping paper?

We had a lot of fun with this simple craft, so much so that after we'd done a few sheets of wrapping, Anouk and I kept going and made a whole slew of apple prints to hang around the house. The wrapping paper project was more about being precise, so it was fun to have the opportunity to let loose and see where our imaginations took us.

So fun! And the birthday boy really liked his book, so it was a success all around.

Have you tried apple printing? Do you decorate with your prints?

Trail Center and Bald Cypress Trail at First Landing State Park

Fall is one of my favorite times to get outdoors, so it's been a bummer that so many of the HRVA area national parks and sites are closed due to the government shutdown. Luckily, First Landing is a state park and is still open! And it's at its absolute prettiest right now.

Our playgroup met up there last week for the express purpose of visiting the new Discovery Room at the Trail Center. Unfortunately, the room was off-limits while staff cleaned and fed the animals, but luckily again, the trail center features some other great stuff to hold the little ones' attention, including a cool little exhibit on local flora and fauna, complete with a "please touch" area where we could stroke fur pelts and listen to seashells.



After we'd done a few turns around the exhibit, we went back outside to set off down the Bald Cypress trail, a mile-and-a-half-long boardwalk trail through a marshy wooded area. We didn't make it through the whole loop -- the kids stopped several times, to peer at a frog, climb a hill, and eat some trail mix. And pose for lots of pictures.

First Landing is beautiful in every season, but it really shines in late summer/fall, so much so that I'm adding it to our Fall Fun List as a must-see autumnal destination. What are your favorite spots/trails in the park? Have you made it to the Discovery Room? I'm determined to check it out, so I know we'll be back soon.