Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Painting is progressing nicely, even with the six or so minutes that Emerson contributed. After painting his signature E (to his left), he rolled for a few minutes and was off to watch Elmo.

Sharpie Love

You can personalize a license plate, your Starbucks cash card, and now Sharpie permanent markers! Who knew? I certainly didn't. But Claudia (and this is why she's in the nearest and dearest category) did and knew I would love them.

When TiVo Dies...

...and Emerson is at school, Daddy is at work and mommy has the day off...I become the next, soon-to-be-identified star of DIY-TV.

Now, let the record reflect that I am not a home improver. In fact, we bought this house because of it's move-in-readiness. And it was move in ready, despite some painting (that of course we would hire out) and then we found out about the flooring issue and then the car accident, and well basically everything stopped. Everything, including this past weekend, our TiVo. What on earth could I do on a day off without TiVo? I could take control.

You see, I keep being reminded that there are only so many things (and actually it's really very few things) that we can control in life. So as things for the latter part of 3 months have been spinning out of control, I realized I could control the appearance of my walls. In particular, two walls that are a faux-finish shade of rust that I just don't care for. Today, that all changed. Well, 80 percent of it changed and once my hubby can move our china cabinet for me the remaining 20 percent can change.

Here's the said ugly wall (on right side), upon immediate move in and mess:


Here's the wall now, one afternoon later, sporting a much nicer color!


Now even though this wall will soon hold some bookshelves and much of this nice color will no longer be visible, the important thing is that the nasty color is gone and the wall is just calling for books!

Happy Christmas

Luminaries Line our Lane

On Saturday afternoon, our homeowner's association supplied us and all the houses in our subdivision with bags and candles with the instruction to place and light the luminaries along our sidewalk by dusk on Christmas Eve. This is an annual holiday tradition for Moonlight Cove and one in which we enjoyed partaking (as did the number of drivers and passersby this evening).

The Last Several Weeks

It's been a whirlwind of a good time this past month or so. With birthday parties to attend (Aidan and Lauren's), a Christmas dinner and recital for school, play dates at the park (with Jason), the Zoo (with Lauren), our favorite friends from Connecticut (Alix, Tim and Owen), the city light parade, a visit to the fire station to drop of toys and measure up against a tire, there's barely been time to rest and recoup. Hoping there's some time for that before the year's end!