kitchen island chairs

Another small project got crossed of the list this past weekend. Yay! It only took me about three months to finish which is kind of ridiculous because it was such a small task. I started out pretty motivated and primed the unfinished chairs right when we purchased them but then nothing happened for a while...Finally I painted the chairs banana yellow by Benjamin Moore on Saturday.

On the last picture you can see one of our next projects - a cover panel for our kitchen island.

snow day

We woke up to I don't know how many inches of snow this morning. I took the first picture around 6.15am right before we started to clear a path on the sidewalk. It's unbelievable how much snow can fall in one night...

When I got back inside my boss had already texted me to stay home today. Enjoyed the sunny afternoon with a walk through the neighborhood. We saw a lot of cars that were abandoned in the middle of the street. Their drivers must have gotten stuck and just left the cars wherever they got stuck.

And of course I had to make a snow angel!

christmas lights

We went to see a movie in Manhattan on Saturday and after the show was over we strolled down 5th Avenue to check out the Christmas decorations and lights. The star above the intersection of 5th Ave and 57th street is my favourite.

christmas presents

The summer of 2009 we visited Chicago for a weekend. Of course we had to go to the Skydeck of Willis Tower (Sears Tower) to check out the view. They were selling Lego models at the gift store and of course I was to cheap to spend $20 on it. But guess what Santa brought me this year? Yes, the Lego model! It took about 5 minutes to build because it only has 69 pieces.

For whatever reasons I didn't take a picture of the tower itself but here you can enjoy the view from the glass ledge 1,353 feet above the ground. So scary!

o tannenbaum

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!

This year we decided not to fly to Germany to spend the holidays with our family so we got our very first christmas tree. Most of our decoration we bought on our last trip to IKEA but we also had a bunch of ornaments from our first attempt to decorate a tree which got foiled after we both came down with the flu. We still need more ornaments maybe even in a bright color but our collection will hopefully grow over the years.

Yes, I do love my hometown...

fireplace mantel update

We had a friend who is also a contractor built a fireplace mantel for us and put the marble mosaic down. I used the long Thanksgiving weekend to paint it and all the other moulding in the living room. I like the crisp white against the brick. Now I have to finish working on the cast iron fireplace door, will post an update on the progress on that soon...It is starting to come together and we started with this mess which doesn't look as bad in pictures as it was in real life.

happy thanksgiving!

Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!

Although I'm more than a week late I still want to show you some pictures of our table. We were a total of nine people and had to put an extra table next to our dining table to fit everone. That's why I didn't have a table cloth that fits. Not that I have a lot of table cloths to choose from, I own 3. So off we went to Ikea to get a matching one for one that we already have. But we found out that they didn't carry that one anymore. Bummer! Waiting in line to pay for the other stuff we bought we passed the christmas wrapping paper and I just bought three rolls of brown packing paper to use it as my table cloth. To add some color I used colored paper as my placemats with a little Happy Thanksgiving stamp in one corner. I'm no Martha Stewart but I still like the outcome of my first Thanksgiving table.

dining room

The dining room is almost finished. On the other hand will anything ever be finished? At least everything is painted and all the random pieces that were floating around are stowed away. Just in time to host our first Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.

We still have to hang some artwork and I would like to change the glass in the cabinet doors to clear glass so you can see my china collection.

small progress

Phew...I feel like we didn't finish any of the projects we started so far. There is progress but everything gets finished in baby steps even though we work on the house each weekend. It's probably just my impatient self and working on a hundred things at once.

One of the projects we started is working on our living room fireplace which was bricked up and also had a raised stone hearth. We already thought it would look nice to open it up when we looked at the house for the second time. The first time it was covered under bags, furniture and all kinds of other stuff so we didn't really see what it looked like and assumed it is open like the one in the dining room. The brick and the stone was removed and surprise! we found some kind of vent (?) for our heating system in it. That was probably the reason why it was bricked up in the first place. Bummer! We also discovered the original marble plate underneath the raised stone but unfortunately it was not in the best condition and it is too small as well. It even showed the floorplan of the old mantel. Immediately we thought about what we could do to make it look nice and somewhat original to the house...I found a cast iron fireplace door/summer cover on ebay for 30$. And the best part of it was that the seller was local and we were able to pick it up. We also picked out this black and white marble mosaic to go on top of the old marble piece. The fireplace will hopefully finished over Thanksgiving weekend.

On the pictures you can also see that we got rid of the door opening on the left side of the fireplace. The opening didn't make sense to us and led to a small hallway from which you enter the guest bathroom and bedroom. You can still access the small hallway from the main hallway which is sufficient for us.

flood

It's fall again, it started two weeks ago with heavy rains which let to a little flood in our basement because our sump pump was broken. It was actually worse in the morning. I took the pictures after work when I brought home the new pump and a lot of water already disappeared. We have propped up the washer and dryer on bricks to keep them dry. Of course this is not a permanent solution, more on that later...Look how clean and shiny the new pump looks compared to the old one, which looks kind of yucky.

Put the pump in by myself so I deserve a pat on my shoulder ;)

openhousenewyork 2010

Last weekend was the annual openhousenewyork weekend, the event was held for the 8th time. It was my 4th year attending and 2nd year volunteering. For more information on openhousenewyork go to www.ohny.org. This year my site assignment was not actually a site but a walking tour of Lower Manhattan. Starting at the Customs House we slowly made our way up to the Woolworth Building. The special treat of the tour was supposed to be a tour of the Woolworth Building lobby which unfortunately didn't happen even though the organizers of the tour had confirmed it the day before but I was able to sneak a quick picture of the beautiful mosaic ceiling...

I also saw great private residences and an architectural office but don't want to publish the photos I took for privacy reasons...As every year the weekend was great fun!