this has been a DOOZY of a week… heartbreaking, exhausting, terrifying and super hard to process. i am wishing you all peace, safety and health. here is the prettiest rainbow i have ever seen… i was with a girlfriend in steamboat springs and the whole town came to a halt on the streets to admire it. i am hoping we can all unite and heal with love and rainbows in our hearts. x0x0xx
(the lights from our old neighborhood)
one of my favorite things about our time living in amsterdam were all the lights decorating the city. strings of lights outlined the bridges arching over the canals and illuminated the water, lampposts that dated back hundreds of years lit the cobblestone streets and all the businesses had decorative lights in the evening… and this was all year round. during the holidays, each neighborhood had a signature lighting motif. when theo started talking he would point to all the pretty brightness and call out, “LIGHT STRIKE!” at christmas he loved an evening bike tour of the city circling through different neighborhoods to see all of the light installations.
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the best way i can describe the last three months is humbling… because i’d had such a slow spring work-wise, due to the pandemic, i decided to enroll in a few classes (three!) to bump up and fill in holes in my design knowledge. two of the courses were technical and between them i learned the adobe suite (illustrator, in design, photoshop), sketch up and autocad. i cannot emphasize enough how far out of my wheelhouse these programs are… i am probably the last person on the planet who still uses a paper agenda to keep track of my schedule and when we have daylight savings my car clock is an hour off for six months because i have no idea how to change it. a few times i have given my first husband a ride when the clock was wrong and he has modified it, which causes me to show up either an hour early or an hour late to places because i have taught myself to adjust for it.
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corona has completely upended christmas this year. we are not meant to travel or even celebrate locally with others outside of our immediate families. so this will be the first boulder christmas for my family… since we’ve returned to the states we have always gone to california. traditions i have taken for granted will have to wait: my mother’s christmas buns (i CANNOT replicate these - i tried when we were living in amsterdam and they came out like little rocks) or visiting the giant gingerbread house at the fairmont hotel with our dear friends, or going to see the nutcracker (the SF ballet does a terrific one!) or my very favorite - christmas dinner at my sister in law’s house in san francisco (this is a big affair - they also include several other families from various aspects of their lives. i only see these families at this dinner and it is so much fun to note how their children have grown and hear the stories of what has happened to them over the course of the year. plus the food is DELICIOUS - jedo makes a big roast with red pepper sauce, shanon brings a huge, creative, colorful salad, others bring all kinds of interesting side dishes and my mother shares a platter of frosted cookies, homemade caramels and chocolate peanut butter balls. when the kids were smaller, they would eat first while we grown ups hovered over them, cutting their roast beef and encouraging them to try the salad and refilling their milk. we generously let them have first dibs on the desserts and then they would be sequestered away with chocolate smeared faces and a movie. the grown ups would then enjoy a long, relaxing, yummy dinner. last year the kids were deemed competent enough to cut their own meat and we all ate at the same time, which was lovely. the whole evening is chaotic [especially during the opening of presents - one year all of the kids were given red adidas track suits like the royal tenenbaums, which was amazing] festive and exhausting. it is perfect. i can’t wait for next year when i really hope we can resume this special celebration.)
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here are the proper images of the gezellig article i wrote for the boulder county home + garden winter edition… wishing you all a super cozy holiday season! x0xx
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as we all struggle through this crazy global pandemic, we are missing the ability to travel and experience the customs and traditions of other cultures. i had so much fun writing this article for boulder county home+ garden about dutch “gezellig” (coziness) and remembering our time living as ex-pats in amsterdam. all three of my sweeties made it into this piece (hank and my darling children) as well as my living room! MANY THANKS (as always) to heather knierim of HBK photography for the lovely photos! wishing you all loads of gezellig as we all bunker down this winter… HAPPY, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! x0x0xx
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as if a global pandemic and quarantine and the whole country feeling like the apocalypse isn’t stressful enough, today i made my children pose for the holiday card… (our poppies are in FULL bloom and i couldn’t help myself.) they always look so forward to this photo shoot and were absolutely GRATEFUL that i suggested it (i’m a thoughtful, FUN mama like that.) i DID have to use the full force of my diminishing strength (since i can’t go to my bar method classes) to pull my son off the sofa and detach him from the Xbox and i didn’t even try to get him to change out of his corona comfort clothes (no one really knows how many days he’s been in them) - i just matched lucy’s outfit to his - but i could tell by the warm snarl on his face that he was thrilled. i ALSO had to promise them dunkin’ donuts AND frozen custard from the good times drive thru which is a much richer offer than i usually extend, but i really didn’t want to miss the poppies.
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when my grandmother died, my parents packed up all of her dishes, trinkets, costume jewelry, linens, letters and photos and put the boxes up in their attic where they sat for many years. one summer when i was home and my kids were in camp, my mother asked me to go through it all. i call it my “v.c. andrews summer” as i sat up there like a flower in the attic (minus the incestuous sibling relationships and arsenic laced cookies) sorting and organizing and labeling everything for weeks. i was allowed out each evening to join everyone for dinner, but after i dropped the kids at camp each day, i climbed the skinny wooden ladder and crawled through the small opening at the top (bonking my head most days) and continued my work. it was easy to focus because there was no cell reception and it was such a pain in the popper to come down that i just didn’t.
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there are few things in this world as disgusting as raisins. they look like droppings, get stuck in your teeth (marring your smile and causing cavities) and are notorious for popping up in all kinds of baked goods (scones, muffins, cookies) that should only have chocolate chips. and unfortunately, because of their size and color, raisins sometimes appear to be chocolate, which is a terrible surprise for the unsuspecting consumer.
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i was so delighted to be invited to participate in architectural digest’s regional collection of interior designers in the november 2020 issue. x0x0x
interior photos: HBK photography
what’s better than a banana split? wishing you all a safe, corona halloween! x0x0x
to read about halloween in more “normal” times click here
now that lucy is back in school we have resumed our “i” street route where we always wave to the grandma we adore (mind you - we’ve never properly met her) who sits in the window. we were really concerned because she wasn't there on tuesday. on wednesday she didn’t see us, but today she waved back! BEST back to school gift ever! x0x0xx
i’m not going to lie… the last couple of weeks have been completely BANANAS and overwhelming. living through a pandemic alone is pretty unsettling what with the social distancing and the COOKING and the home schooling. then there is the election and all the news that logically i shouldn’t watch because it’s all so crazy but i am the worst kind of rubbernecker where i have it on all the time so i don’t miss anything but really i just want to miss ALL of it. then when we finally got into a home schooling rhythm (which wasn’t smooth by the way - lucy and i both cried over her fractions several times a week. sometimes i had to email her teacher that she was missing the google meet because we needed a minute to collect ourselves and wash our faces and eat some chocolate. PRAISE JESUS that unit is over!) our district announced that the kids are going back - lucy FULL time and theo one day a week. i know the people who manage the schools and these decisions are doing their very best but it felt like a BIG leap to go from nothing to four days a week for lu. of course, i am thrilled that they can do some live learning and i AM relieved that we got through so many months of online schooling and my children are still alive. that was a valid concern for me - EVERY time you read about a mother who drove her kids into a lake, she is ALWAYS a home schooler.
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it feels so GOOD to VOTE! (i actually have a huge smile on my face for this picture, but the anime can’t reflect that…)
the other day my son inadvertently changed my life forever. we were sitting around and he took a selfie of us, but when he showed it to me we were in “anime” like a japanese cartoon. i have to say… we looked AMAZING… especially me. my eyes were huge, i had no wrinkles, my neck was perfectly smooth, you couldn’t tell that my hair was frizzy or that i was in my jams and i was even a bit tan. i couldn’t believe it.
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i had so much fun writing this article on bringing natural elements into your home as fall decor. MANY THANKS to the super talented designers and photographers for letting me share their work: emily minton redfield photography, helly swenson duncan of design matters home, lindsay nichols photography, neelam gurm of neelam interiors, gena winter and aubriana kasper of marigold, chris nyce of nyceonephotography, kristin reisinger of spacecraft, heather knierim of HBK photography, kathy peden photography, susan kosonocky of restyle design, d’ann boal of smitten & swoon, lindy williams of westward foundry, rangefinder photography, vanessa empire interiors, nicholas gringold photography, garden studio design and nicole morell interiors. x0x
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hank just turned THREE years old (twenty-one in dog years.) we were feeling very remiss as last september we did not have a proper party so we wanted to make sure we celebrated even though we’re in the middle of a pandemic.
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(my father golfing in the 70’s)
even though i never played the game, golf was a major part of my childhood. my father was an avid player who frequently said, “golf is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.” as an economics professor, he had a pretty flexible schedule and i have clear memories of him preparing his bag (making sure there were plenty of clean white balls and colorful tees in the side pocket and all the wooden clubs were carefully covered in knit sleeves with pom poms on top to protect them from banging into each other) for a round several times a week. when he returned he would meticulously clean his clubs in the laundry room sink with a toothbrush (i am not sure if this was typical for other golfers or if he was particularly thorough.) he never strayed from this ritual so his clubs were always pristine. on those evenings he would take us through EVERY hole at dinner… how far his drives went, how many eagles or bogies or birdies he got, what his final score was and how he outplayed the other members of his foursome. (my grandmother always told him not to let anyone put a basket over his light and he let his light SHINE!)
Read More"say, say, oh playmate,
come out and play with me
and bring your dollies three
climb up my apple tree
slide down my rain barrel
into my cellar door
and we'll be jolly friends
forever more, 1-2-3-4"
when i was little, i was desperate for an apple tree like the one in my favorite hand clapping song. i also wanted a rain barrel, although i wasn’t really sure what that was. forty years later, i do have a great, big, sweeping apple tree in my backyard. my tree has a beautiful, twisted, architectural trunk with a hole the perfect size for hiding easter eggs, it makes lots of shade (crucial for a fair-skinned mama living in a town that bumps up against the sun,) in the winter, the way the snow lands on the branches is right out of fairy tale, it’s covered in lacy, white blossoms in the spring, and every other year or so, my tree grows apples in the late summer.
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