Lakewood Park

I've been meaning to post about Lakewood Park for a long time now, but haven't because until recently, I never had the opportunity to take photos to go along with it -- every time I would whip my camera out, Anouk would try to strangle herself on the monkey bars or eat a handful of mulch. But with the challenges of Two also come a few added benefits, one being that she is now much more confident and sensible about appropriate park behavior, and I don't have to hover like a hawk like I used to.

So, finally, here is Lakewood Park. It's across the street from a nice library and also around the corner from Naa's Bakery, hooray! After our trip there a few weeks ago, Anne and I met up with our friends for a playdate under the twisted live oaks, to give the kids a chance to run off some sugar. There are some seriously old trees at Lakewood, gnarled and twisted and providing copious amounts of shade, which means that there is always a cool spot to sit, even on hot and humid summer days. Add in a picnic area and some age-appropriate playground equipment and you've got yourself a practically perfect park.

Did you know that Lakewood Park is also home to Norfolk's Dance and Music Center? Anouk has been asking for dance lessons a lot lately, so we're going to look into the Creative Movement classes for toddlers this winter and spring. If you've ever taken a class at Lakewood I would love to know -- or if you have a recommendation for elsewhere in the #HRVA area that offers toddler tap or ballet.

Hope you had a good weekend. Now get out there and enjoy this gorgeous weather before it's gone!

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!

Fall Fun List

Since summer is officially over, I thought it would be a good time to share some of our favorite fall places, crafts, and treats from last year. If you have any suggestions you'd like to share, from your own blog or around the web, please link in the comments! Also, if you do any of these, please write and let us know how you enjoyed it. :)

I'm cuddled up under a wool blanket as I type this and I love love it. Welcome, fall!

GO:

-Bergey's Breadbasket: Quite possibly the best petting zoo in the area, with a PYO pumpkin patch and a delectable bakery attached. Bergey's inspired our apple dumpling recipe (below).

-Hunt Club Farm: The photos at the bottom of this post is from our visit last October (look how small my Nou was!). Their fall harvest fair runs through Nov. 1 this year and you can bet we'll be there again.

-Apple Picking at Martin Vineyard & Orchard: A recent trip that's going to become a family tradition. Apple season ends in November, but I would call ahead to make sure they're still open (their website doesn't seem to be updated frequently).

-New Earth Farm: A beautiful farmer's market in Virginia Beach, with probably the most interesting and delicious organic and seasonal produce in the area.

-First Landing State Park: So gorgeous this time of year. Try the Bald Cypress Trail, an easy hike for little legs.

-Big Woods State Forest: Some "real wilderness" hiking just about an hour away in Sussex County.

-Bennett's Creek Farm Market: Bennett's Creek is a treat in any season but fall makes us hungry and when the weather turns cool, we crave their she-crab soup.


MAKE: 

-Pumpkin pie playdough: Adding pumpkin-pie spice makes everything feel more festive.

-Gravestone rubbing: A spooky craft to get older kids interested in family history.

-Pinecone prints: This is a great time of year for nature painting.


COOK:

-Maple cinnamon marshmallows: Dresses up hot cocoa; a lot easier than you'd think.

-Apple dumplings: A quick and easy version of the famous ones at Bergey's Breadbasket.

-Pumpkin quinoa: The perfect breakfast for fall mornings.

-Sugar cookies: Not our recipe, but one we use constantly. These cookies are tasty and don't spread!

Pumpkin Quinoa Porridge

• I like the idea of oatmeal but in all honesty, I'm not much of an oatmeal person. There's just something about the texture that I find kind of gloppy and unappealing. But curling up with a warm bowl on a cool morning is, and so I'm always on the lookout for breakfast cereal substitutions that will give that cozy effect. In the past, we've really enjoyed a hot cereal made from almond meal, but lately, our go-to is a kind of quinoa porridge that we adapted from this recipe. The texture is amazing, it doesn't get soggy or mushy, and it's packed with protein which is a nice start to your day. 

• Quinoa is also very adaptable to all different kinds of flavors, so we've been experimenting with peanut butter porridge and a version with apples, but with fall in the air, it's all about pumpkin so that's what we've been using most frequently. 

Ingredients: 

1 cup uncooked quinoa

1 Tbsp butter

1.5 cups water

1/2 cup pumpkin (or up to 2/3 cup, if you want a little more oomph)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cups milk (we used soy)

• Directions: 

Soak the quinoa in a bowl of water for 5-10 minutes, rinse, and drain. Transfer the quinoa to a saucepan with 1.5 cups cold water. Bring to a boil for one minute, cover, reduce heat and simmer until the quinoa is done (about 10 minutes, or when a little "tail" appears on the quinoa). 

Remove from heat, add the butter, pumpkin, spices, vanilla, and sugar. Stir in milk until you reach your desired level of creaminess. Serve warm, with caramelized apples and more cinnamon on the top or a drizzle of maple syrup. Yum. 

When people have dinner at our house, they always wonder why there's no salt or pepper in our shakers. This is why. 

Happy Monday!

Thrifted Thursday

I do a lot of thrifting but so far haven't blogged too much about it. It feels weird not to talk about it -- it's like having a secret identity. V. lonely :( And because part of the fun of thrifting is sharing the treasures that you find with others, I thought I would start up a regular feature to do just that. Here are my latest, favoritest thrift store finds, in no particular order of awesomeness.



The day I realized that most thrift stores sell fabric was one of the happiest days of my life. It really cuts down on cost of sewing clothes, which means I can try more ambitious designs than I would with pricier stuff. The red and white fabric is a gorgeous heavy knit that's going to become a comfy dress for A. some time in the next few months. I think the dark blue flowered fabric might become this blouse for me.



I found this bowl at my fave thrift store of all time, the Goodwill in my old neighborhood in south Arlington, VA, when we were in town for a wedding back in July. It was in the window, tucked almost out of sight, but its gold rim glinting in the sun caught my eye as I was checking out. There's just something about it --  the shiny gold, the matte olive green. I'm not sure if I really like it, but I love it. (Does that make sense to anybody but me?)



These books are from the early 1950s, and feature all sorts of Christmas poems and comics and hilariously heartfelt essays comparing Communist Russia to the inns that turned the Holy Family away. There's an order form in the back to subscribe to the whole series; I am almost tempted to fill it out and send it in because 10c an issue is a great bargain. These two cost me a dollar apiece.



I recognized these toys from my own childhood -- they lived at my grandparents' house and I was fascinated by them for far longer than I should have been. Now that A. has a set of her own, she loves them, too. The premise is that you can combine all of the pieces to make a giraffe, elephant and dog (not pictured). Or you can combine them in new, odd ways to make creatures we affectionately refer to as the girephant and dograffe.

A good basket is hard to find. This one holds our cuddle-up blankets (and sometimes a cat or two).

What was your most recent thrift-store score?

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?

Making Murals

Ever since our Norfolk murals post -- and since we got to see some of AlchemyNFK's amazing artists working at First Friday a few weeks ago -- Anouk and I have been really into murals and thinking we'd like to try to make one of our own. So we asked our playgroup if they would like to pitch in. Molly generously offered her house to get all paintified -- we taped craft paper to the wall -- then we poured water-soluble paint into trays and let the kids get to it. The results were kind of awesome.

I think one of my favorite things was seeing how the kids worked together to build on each others' handiwork. One would use markers to scatter dots across the paper, then the next would come through and draw a line of finger paint between them. It was truly a collaborative process. I especially like how little Z. saw the other kids making handprints and then decided to add a border of his own all along the top of the mural.

This project is perfect for a group because you can pool your craft supplies -- the more types of paints/markers/brushes/stamps/crayons you have, the more you can put the little ones' creativity to work.

I think it looks so so cool. I'm really proud of our guys and I think they had a lot of fun. Plus, the finished product makes an awesome photo backdrop.

Apple Picking at Martin Vineyards

The weekend after Labor Day, just as the first tinges of fall were beginning to show themselves in the trees and on the air, James and Anne and I drove down to Knotts Island, North Carolina, to do some apple picking. Martin Vineyards & Orchard has been open for apple-picking since July, but we really wanted to wait until it was almost autumn to go -- it just isn't the same, picking apples without that little crispness in the air.

Knotts Island in late summer is beautiful, with the green and gold fields and the tall brown marsh reeds against all that blue sea and blue sky. We stopped for lunch at Pearl's Bay Villa, the town's one restaurant, and then we drove on to the little vineyard and orchard on the shores of the bay, just across the water from the far northern North Carolina Outer Banks. As we bumped down the grassy road we could already see tons of ripe apples dotting the trees. We paid for our bushel bag, and then we got to picking.

The Granny Smiths were in season, so that was mostly what we got, but there were a few Pink Ladys and Galas dotting the very top branches, where most of the pickers couldn't reach. Luckily, we had a secret weapon

Anouk had an absolute blast -- she's an apple fiend, so she was pretty much in heaven. She swiped several apples from low-hanging branches and ate them as quick as she could. We had to stop her from sampling the ones that had fallen to the ground. The orchard echoed with her little cries of "yum, yum, yum, YUM!"





Once we'd filled our bags, we went to look out at the water for a while and then wandered around the shady paths. By the time we headed home, just as the sun was starting to get low in the sky, we felt like we'd gotten our fill of both apples and of pure coastal North Carolina beauty. I already want to go back -- I have a feeling a September visit to Martin's Vineyard is going to become an annual family tradition.

For more information on apple picking in the Hampton Roads area, check out My Active Child's post.

What are your favorite apples? More importantly, what are your favorite apple-based recipes? Send 'em over -- we could use them.