A day at the orchard

Our first activity to kick off the Fall season...apple picking!  

Last Trip of the Summer

Maryland Renaissance Festival

 

First Day of Kindergarten

Industrial Shelf

Remember wayyyy back when, when I blogged about this being my dream pantry?

Well, I "shelved" that dream for a while, because I had no idea how I was going to build something like that.  Until a couple of months ago, I visited Red Apron for lunch, and saw this:

I totally fell in love with the simplicity of it.  I could look at it and easily tell how it was constructed.  Plus, I loved the industrial look of the shelves!  I took many pics of the shelves in the store (garnering puzzled looks from other customers) and took copious mental notes on its construction.

Back home, this was how the wall in my kitchen started out, many, many years ago....I had a long console there, and some decorations, but it wasn't very functional.

So, we recently had our home repainted, and I asked the painters to extend the chalkboard wall to cover the entire wall of the kitchen.  I loved the matte black background.  The rest of the house went from khaki color (bleh!) to a true white.  Then, I sourced the materials for the shelves from Home Depot.  The shelves themselves were 2x12x9ft boards (reclaimed lumber was prohibitively expensive!), and they were supported by cast iron plumbing.  I also had L-shaped brackets attaching the shelves to the studs in the wall.  Here's our Contractor assembling the shelves.

I'm sure he thought my idea was crazy, but it turned out exactly as I envisioned!  The shelves are almost 9 feet tall, and they really bring your eye up to the high ceiling.

And here is Sophie modeling in front of them.  I'm still working on rearranging the contents, but it's mostly done.  Hope you all like it!

Growing up too fast

California Dreaming

I found my camera!!  I thought it was stolen, but it was just very well-hidden in my dirty laundry bag!  I am so relieved...the thought of shelling out more money for another DSLR really depressed me.  The best part is that I took some great pictures while I was out in LA a couple of weeks ago.  Here you go...

My favorite ramen place in LA, Daikokuya...

Gracie and Sophie with my cousins: Jenny, Charles, and Richard

Us and Jenny in Little Tokyo

And then my favorite place to hang out in all of LA, Back to the Beach in Santa Monica...

What's up?

I haven't blogged in a long time for so many reasons....one of which is that I think I got my camera stolen at the airport when we went to LA last week.  I took some great photos of the kids in Santa Monica, and am more sad about losing the photos than the actual camera!  Anyway, I've been using my camera phone a lot these days, which means it's pretty onerous to transfer pics from my phone, to my computer, to this blog.  Here are some recent pics...if you want to see more, come follow me on Instagram: novamama or click on this:

    

See you on the other side of the interwebs!

Zoo Day

We took our annual trip to the zoo today, and brought along one of Sophie's best friends. It was really tiring walking the entire zoo, but the girls were so sweet!

Busy, busy lives...

My loves!

Ombre Wall

image and concept via P.S. - I made this

I found this amazing tutorial on how to give your walls on ombre effect...I'm so gonna give this a try in Sophie and Grace's room!

Soccer

Sophie started playing on a soccer league this year and she's been having a blast!  We signed her up hoping that she could learn about all the good things that come with team sports: confidence, sportsmanship, teamwork...and so far, so good!  She even scored a goal today!  (That's a big deal considering her parents were each born with two left feet).

Soccer skillzzzz

Sophie and one of her BFFs

These girls are so cute together!

2-4-6-8..Who do we appreciate?

Good game!