Sexy, Cool Art

I discovered Polaroid transfer prints by She Hit Pause Studio on a fall trip to Brooklyn's flea market. Photographer Matt Schwartz's large scale polaroid transfers feature surf images and his version of pin-up girls.  I love the soft, hazy light in his images, they seem nostalgic yet still contemporary.

  

8x10 prints $75 or $150 framed and 11x17 prints $95 or $200 framed; shehitpausestudio.com

Girl Surfing 

One of the pinups.

Boy + Girl Surfing

Home Renovation Part 1- Parlor

When we bought this old house in April, we had some quick fix plans.  All it needed was some new paint,  cabinets, and floor refinishing.  Impressed by magazine articles featuring interior designers own tiny, once ramshackle homes, that are transformed via a coat of paint and nice throw pillows, I thought we could make it charming. 

Everything original to the house, which could have been redeemable, had been stripped over the years, and details like wood paneling, ceiling beams, wall-to-wall carpeting, and factory finished cherry floors were added in the 80s.  Instead of trying to recreate its colonial roots, we decided to embrace our love of  contemporary.

BEFORE

 AFTER

I still haven't decided whether to add window treatments.

The home lacks a proper foyer and the parlor acts as entrance and pass through to all of the other rooms on the main floor.

Light fixture from Shades of Light

An antique store purchase gives a nod to Red Riding Hood.

Chelsea Gray - I'm addicted!

We repaired, sanded, and stained the original Douglas Fir floors and painted the walls Benjamin Moore Chelsea Gray and paneling Wisp White (white with a hint of gray).

Unsure how to treat the wood ceiling beams, we eventually decided to paint them white.  Purists would likely disagree  with some of our choices, but I think it made our mid-century furniture feel more at home.

Looking like Laura Ingalls

Kids today look a lot different than we did.  Did tutus and princess costumes even exist in the 70s and 80s.  If they were available, then why I didn't I know?  All I know is that I wanted to look like Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie.  In fact, I had my mom and aunt sew me numerous prairie dresses and bonnets to achieve said look.  See below.  That's me looking like I'm an extra on the set of Big Love.

This is me at my fifth birthday party.  I cropped my little friends out of the image, but none of them were wearing bonnets, which is kind of hilarious, so I may have been the only kid reading the Little House books and watching the series in reruns.  I can't be sure.  I stuck to this look for quite a while.  Actually, I think I was still dressing like this until we moved to the only 'urban' neighborhood in a quite suburban town in 1985, and this look was no longer going to be tolerated.

Reproduction Junction

Larry, Sienna, and Sophie - Beth Israel Hospital, Boston

Now that our girls are three-years-old it seems we have a major life decision to make: will we try for another child?  No. 3?  Numero tres? 

Well-meaning people have been asking whether we would try for a third child pretty much since my twins were born.  I thought I'd hit the jackpot popping out two healthy babies at once, but others seem to think a masculine child would make my family complete.  I believe women are equal to men,  so having only girls seems completely acceptable, which is shocking to some.

Luckily my husband feels the same way.  He doesn't seem to need to recreate his childhood with a boy.  In fact, he realizes that we probably have our hands full with the two children we already have.

I don't want to say that there are definitely no more babies in our future (I've had to eat my words too many times to be that decisive about anything).  In fact I wonder what it would be like to have just one baby.  Would pregnancy be less uncomfortable?  What would it be like to cuddle one infant at a time, or to read with one baby?

For a little added pressure, my girls regularly ask for a baby sister.  They also ask for a big sister, which would be a little more complicated.  Surely we can't have another baby just to please them.  They already make too many decisions for us, and besides, I already gave away all of the baby stuff when they turned one, quite confident that there would definitely be no more babies in our future.

We're headed into good territory: the girls are in preschool, one's potty-trained, they're becoming more independent, and travel (with them) seems possible. I'm also looking forward to working again in the near future, and another baby would put that on hold.

I haven't come to any conclusions yet.  We still have time since my Implanon contraceptive implant (yes, I'm over sharing again) is good for a few more months.

Candy-striped Christmas

These 2010 Martha Stewart Living images struck a cord with me so I've been saving them to share for almost an entire year! Already a fan of a turquoise-Christmas (don't turn up your nose unless you've actually seen it), I love the easy mix of a turquoise and candy-stripes. 

Mis-matched stockings + simple hearth = too cute

Wreath with some fabric instead of a bow and a hook.

How easy is this centerpiece?

This combo manages to still look warm. 

Simple red & white ticking looks seasonal and classic.

How cool was your dad?

I was just reading Tina Fey's Bossypants because a book club I belong to, but have yet to attend, read it last month (I never finished it).  In it she refers to her dad as "bad ass" which I got a big kick from.  She also described his cool style sense (so stylish even black guys thought he looked cool). While I wouldn't call my own dad a "bad ass", I do think he was, and still is, pretty cool. 

Certainly very few folks can rock a moustache for decades and still look suave.

Eleazar "Chiqui" Romero's always had a keen sense of style, and pretty much always dresses to impress, and I love seeing 1970s photos of dad with friends, me, my mom, and his dogs.


Dad and his dogs Poco & Che in Honduras, early 70s.

Present day, Dad at Boston's Exchange Center sitting in front of a MassPort photo of himself.



Mamma Mia! & Red Riding Hood

I'm sure I've mentioned that my twins have a little obsession with the musical Mamma Mia!  I think it started in utero:  the movie was released when I was on bed rest while pregnant and my doctor vetoed my plan for an outing to see it in the theatre.  I really like ABBA.

Anyway, the girls watch the DVD and listen to real ABBA tirelessly.  They also do reenactments of the main character, Sophie (played by the lovely Amanda Seyfried) and her friends reuniting and singing "Honey, Honey" (this is very amusing). 

The girls also adore fairy tales particularly Little Red Riding Hood.  We've read at least a dozen versions (their favorite is my mom's from the 40s which has adorable illustrations, a particularly cute Red, and best of all shows the dead wolf at the end because three-year-olds are a little morbid).

Somehow they saw a trailer of their favorite actress in a red riding hood, and now all they want is for me to let them watch the movie.  This simply can't happen since the film Red Riding Hood looks too scary even for me, but they still ask regularly thanks to Verizon Fios on demand ads that play on a loop while I'm looking for episodes of Caillou.