01.10.12
2011 in 50 pictures
{Click on any photo to see the full image}
10.17.11
Benjamin Lee is here!
Allons enfants de la patrie… a new révolutionnaire has arrived! Benjamin Lee was born on Bastille Day, July 14, weighing in at 8 pounds even. He is named after my grandfather, Lealon, who married my grandmother on Bastille Day in 1950.
06.02.11
Rice Curry Salad
Greetings from summer!
The season of picnics and barbecues is upon us. I thought I’d share my mom’s recipe for a delicious rice curry salad, which is a perfect addition to the summer side salad rotation. It’s vegetarian and gluten-free and the perfect accompaniment to summer grilling or as itself for a picnic.
What you need:
2 boxes of a rice side (we use Near East’s Long Grain and Wild Rice, Original) You can also just use 2 cups of wild rice and adjust seasonings to your taste.
15 oz. bottled artichoke hearts
1.5 cups mayonaise
2 tablespoons + curry powder
5 scallions
1 small green pepper
1/2-3/4 cup raisins
1 cup green olives with pimentos
What to do:
Prepare the rice and let cool, covered (make the rice in the morning and the rest in the afternoon, for example).
Chop the artichoke hearts, scallions, and green pepper and combine in a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine mayonaise, curry powder, and about 1/2 the juice from the jar of artichokes.
Add the cooled rice to the large bowl and pour the mayonaise mixture over the top. Mix.
Next, mix in raisins first and then carefully fold in the olives.
That’s it! Remember to keep refrigerated. How about a close-up?
Happy summer!
05.31.11
Kids’ Closet Re-do: in progress
One of the busiest semesters ever is over, and now I’m in this interim period when Jax is still in preschool (have I mentioned how much he loves school by the way?) and I am awaiting the arrival of our second baby boy (due July 21). I believe they call this phase nesting?
We’re going to have the baby in a porta crib in our room for at least the first 6 months to 1 year, but all kid things are going to be combined into what is now Jax’s room. Eventually they’ll share the bunk beds, but in the immediate future, the boys’ stuff will be sharing a closet. By today’s standards it’s not an enormous closet, but it can be a walk-in if organized properly.
Before:
I should have taken a true before picture, complete with 1950s wallpaper, carpet, and the huge mess of storage I had in there. It is embarrassing, really. We could only use about half of the clothes bar because the back of the closet was jam-packed with no less than a full-size crib and mattress, a porta crib and mattress, a jumperoo, a bouncy seat, endless stroller parts (bassinet, travel bag, etc.) and boxes and boxes of clothes Jax has grown out of (and some that are anticipating his next growth spurt).
After clearing everything out this is what we were dealing with:
What a mess! But the awesome thing about decades-old wallpaper is that it comes right off. It was the easiest part of the job, and then revealed this old flakey pink paint and some cracks that required serious spackling. The light fixture in there had also developed a problem with the switch, so what you see above is actually the new fixture awaiting final installation by Seth, the engineer turned blogger who still gets recruited for all things wired in the house.
First I used spackle to fill in the major cracks and let that dry. A professional with a sander would sand this down, but since this is really a $50 fix-up project and will be out of sight, I was probably more sloppy than recommended.
I also took a scraper to the pink paint and tried to get off as many flakes as possible.
The first part I painted was the trim: you can see the difference one coat is already making on the right. Once two coats of the trim and the ceiling were dry (I waited a day), I taped it off and tackled the walls.
Starting to look much better!
While waiting for the paint to dry (each coat took a day of drying, and I didn’t want to be doing this while Jax was home, adding to the wait time) I organized all of the old clothes into air-tight boxes with size labels and moved a lot of them downstairs to our newly organized laundry room. We picked up a dresser on craigslist that I plan to refinish to match and then put along the back wall. For now, this is the progress, so I’ll post more in a few days with the final (or finished-enough) result!
03.29.11
Sunday at the Botanical Gardens’ Orchid Show
We’ve been up to a lot of traveling and work, and looking forward to more free time this summer! I’ll eventually post updates about trips to California and Florida, as well as life in general, but for now, how about some photos from Jax’s first trip to the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx?
A chance to splash around in water is always the highlight.
Jax stared at this spout for the longest time – and stuck his hand under the water, too. He thought it was an impressive attraction.
A chandelier of orchids.
This orchid walk was inspired by the New Amsterdam Theater in Manhattan. You can see Jax getting a closer look on top of Seth’s shoulders.
The stars of the show.
A cool scene from the second level of the rain forest.
10.31.10
Halloween Festivities & Kid Crafts
We’re getting excited for trick-or-treating tonight! But the festivities have been going on for a couple of weeks. Highlights:
Halloween fun at friend Vivian’s second birthday.
Pumpkin-carving party last Saturday
A ghost craft Jax and I did last night:
I asked if he wanted to glue black “eyes” on, and he enthusiastically asked for several, attaching them to the bottom.
Jax made this cute spiderweb at preschool.
The two of us made this bat last night. Tracing around his hands is something Jax loves to do, and he practiced cutting to make the border.
10.06.10
It’s Beginning to Look Like Halloween
This past Sunday we finally checked out the hugely popular Jack-o-Lantern Blaze, just minutes from our house. It was packed! I think Jax wasn’t too keen on staying in the stroller because it looked like so much fun to wander around the pumpkins. Unfortunately he wasn’t allowed to have free reign and patience was running low. Better luck next year! We did grab a couple of pictures, though.
Jack-o-Lantern Madness! Quite a spectacular show.
Sunflowers – all carved out of pumpkins.
It was really sweet how into the candles Jax was.
As we prepare for Halloween crafting and the like, I am reminded of the stuff I threw together last-minute for Halloween 2009. Jax will be able to participate much more in these projects, so more fun to come!
09.20.10
Cock-a-doodle-TWO!
We had a wonderful time celebrating Jax’s second birthday at Muscoot Farm. Over a dozen other kids along with their parents joined in the fun. Since my talented sister, Monica, was in town, as well as my mom, the baker extraordinaire, we went a little crazy with the crafts and decor. Some people go to the gym or watch movies. Us? we stay up until midnight gluing felt to make a farm scene and devising ways of creating frosting of varying shades of brown “dirt.” Poor Jax.
Here are the craftastic highlights!
The invitation (created in minutes on kodakgallery.com using a July 4th template):
First, we had a craft table set up where the kids glued fuzzy balls of various colors to sheep silhouettes cut out of cereal boxes. We also had paper glasses to embellish with feathers.
Then it was time for the pre-lunch hayride!
We kept lunch simple by ordering party heros from the local Italian deli. Twelve feet of sandwich, three feet each of four kinds. Even 40 people couldn’t get through half of the sandwich slices. Now we know.
{Sources: animal plates, recycled plastic plates, wooden silverware, recycled napkins}
The cake:
Yes, there is a huge problem of scale here. Where you see the little tractor was supposed to be a wooden “2″ in place of a candle. I forgot the number and we had to improvise. Cake Wrecks here we come!
We tried to have many activity options for all the kids. In addition to the craft table, I made a farm scene out of felt, with removable animals the kids could rearrange.
Of course, we also had a mini farmer’s market. It turned out to be a hit with the kids to grab a market bag and “shop”:
I made the canvas market bags out of a drop-cloth I bought at the hardware store and some ribbon from the craft store. I made 16 in all, but with one drop cloth probably could have made another 16. They are really, really easy to make using these instructions. The most time-consuming part was attaching the handles, and I think that was because I went overboard reinforcing them. I would estimate they took about 8-10 minutes each.
Inside each favor bag was a little wooden tractor from Etsy seller TnTWoods, which is based in Wisconsin and wonderful to work with (we created a custom order of 16 toy tractors.)
Highlights from the festivities:
…and a very happy birthday boy!
