week forty nine

Yes, I am a bit late again...This week I decided to go into hibernation, I have been going to bed basically right after getting home and in the morning after taking a shower I have been crawling back into bed to take another nap. Is there such a thing as hibernating humans? Anyways I feel like staying in bed all day and sleep, sleep, sleep. Anyone feel the same?

Last week I received my Black Friday and Cyber Monday online purchases and of course they are shoes. One can never own too many shoes and I really needed the duck boots for the slushy New York winter, also ordered a pair of shearling insoles to keep my feet warm. On Saturday we had about 30 people over for our Christmas party, we had German Christmas cookies and Stollen, all store bought though, as I did not get the chance to bake some myself and of course there was Gluehwein. We, actually P, made it for the first time from scratch and our guest must have liked it, all in all people drank 10 liters of it! Sunday we went to the Project Market here in Jersey City, which featured local shops and restaurants. Of course I didn't leave empty handed and bought two Jersey City prints for the next gallery wall project and two small porcelain numbers, of course together they form the number 40.

Well now it is already Thursday, hope you will enjoy the rest of the week, the weekend is near!

week forty six through forty eight

So many things happened in the past three weeks. The backyard was finally finished (yay!), we painted the fence in front of our house black (not so fun), although first it got a coat of brown rust inhibiting primer, I tried out a new gadget (mat cutter. love it!), hung a gallery wall (finally), sprained my foot (I still have two big bruises), had to walk on crutches (exhausting), made an advent calendar for P's birthday (last minute), made a cake and decorated a tree. I am still a bit flabbergasted that Christmas is around the corner, like every year it sneaks up on me but this year we have already decorated the tree, bought most of our presents and are hopefully not feeling stressed out by the holidays. What about you? Are you guys prepared for the upcoming holidays?

week forty three through forty five

Hello! Do you still remember me? The past two months I was so busy at work that I put my life on hold and only wrote this blog once in a blue moon but hopefully now that my workload is back to normal I will be able to ease back into blogging. Besides work other exciting things happened, I volunteered at Open House New York again, our backyard remake is almost finished etc. There will be posts on everything that happened very soon. Oh and there are a couple of things I want to cross off my to-do list before the end of the year, which will give me lots of material for posts as well. One thing that needs to be crossed off my list is creating a gallery wall in our living room, the frames have been piling up for years, now it's time to change that...Hope you had a great weekend and have a great week!

week forty two

Remember that last week I told you I wanted to catch up on sleep and be back with posts here this week, well of course I jinxed it, instead of the work getting a little slower we got a new deal in and the next two weeks will be pretty busy again. Lately I spend up to twelve hours a day at work and have not much time for anything else but I am not complaining because I really like my new job. On the other hand I feel guilty about not being able to blog and most of all reading yours. I miss you guys!

Last week we finally got our new driveway poured only to get it ripped up again this week. It was not looking too good and our contractor convinced us to have it redone. Progress in the backyard is pretty slow at the moment at least when it comes to the finishing touches. Today the footings for our new deck will be poured and after a couple days of curing we will get a new deck. On Saturday we started painting the chain link fence that sits to the right of our driveway. Not the best idea I had, the work is a bit time consuming, but it is looking so much better than the green and rusty mess we have right now. Oh, and the highlight of the week was that I finally received my Eames House Bird I bought myself as a belated birthday present. It's looking pretty good in front of our fireplace. 

Have a great week!

week forty one

Only eleven more weeks and we are starting a new year. I still cannot believe it and need to start cracking the whip on myself to finish one or two more of the projects that I had on the list for this year. Week forty one passed as quickly as the past weeks and because I finally need to catch up on sleep while I have the chance, I decided to take this week off from blogging again. I will be back with posts about my Open House New York impressions and the progress of the backyard. The site I volunteered at had amazing views (see below) and the rest was not too shabby either, actually it was a quite amazing apartment.

Hope to see you all back here next week!

week fourty

Good morning everyone! Another week flew by, I feel like Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner...On Wednesday the brick foundation of our extension got repointed, one corner looked very scary and some bricks were loose, you could just take them out. It was like playing Jenga, you would pray that the house would not cave in at that corner. Now everything looks great again. On Saturday we had planned to pour our driveway but because of the weather the concrete will now be poured on Thursday, fingers crossed. Friday a friend from Germany arrived and we took her shopping on Saturday and on Sunday we strolled around the city. Finally discovered Sockerbit, why did I not know about this Swedish candy store before? Of course I went crazy with licorice and all things I put in my bag were delicious.

Hope you had a great weekend as well? What were you guys up to?

week thirty five through week thirty nine

Good morning October! Bye bye September! The last month was a blur, right after Labor Day worked picked up to a crazy level and with my family in town for two weeks I had no time for the blog. But now I am back and it looks like the new month will be under the motto backyard renovation. Last Saturday, the day after my parents left, we had a crew of guys demoing the concrete in our driveway and the backyard. You can't image how much better it already looks, even though we are left with dirt for now. Today they are digging a trench for the drainage and tomorrow our foundation will be getting re-pointed. If all goes to plan the new driveway will be poured on Saturday. I will be writing some posts with backyard updates this month and hopefully be able to show you the finished project as well. If the weather is kind to us, we might even fire up the grill one last time to christen our new deck...

Have a great week! It's so good to be back, now I will have some catching up to do what you guys were up to in September...

week thirty four

Good morning week thirty five, good bye week thirty four! Today I am still recovering from the rafting trip we took on Saturday. Even though it was just a lazy river, paddling in the sun all day left me exhausted in the evening. We started our trip near the picturesque town of Frenchtown, NJ, where we stopped afterwards for food, drinks and a little bit of chair shopping. When you see the photos of the river below you might think we were the only ones floating around but it was actually quite busy on the river. We have done similar trips at a different location twice before but this time they were already booked so we chose this one instead. What a fun day, I can highly recommend it if you live near a river to explore your area from the water. Our tour took us around 4 hours, with a little pit stop at the floating hot dog stand and some lounging on a deserted  island. Last night I rewired an old table lamp that I purchased at an estate sale a while back, a post about its transformation will follow soon. What were you up to this weekend? Any plans for the upcoming week? I am still working on getting the house ready for our visitors in September. And on Thursday I will see The Book of Mormon, I received it as a gift from P today and am looking forward to finally see the show.

week thirty three

Week thirty was a busy one, almost every evening after work I worked on the dresser for the living room and this weekend is was finally ready. I even polished the old brass hardware. Love the brass in contrast with the dark wood. We moved the dresser into the living room on Saturday, still need to take good pictures for the blog though. It is standing on the right side of the fireplace and now it is super obvious that the other side of the fireplace needs some attention as well. Another project for my ever growing to-do list ;) Saturday we managed to go to the last day of summer streets in New York: On three Saturdays in August, 7 miles of streets were closed for traffic, and you could bike or walk uninterrupted from Brooklyn Bridge to 72nd street. We walked from 32nd street to 72nd street and back. After our  1.5 hours walk I was pretty pooped, not sure how many miles we walked but it felt like a lot. The Voice Tunnel was part of the summer streets but I took so many photos it'll deserve its own post at the end of the week. Of course a weekend is nothing without some good cake and on Sunday I stopped by the Old German Bakery in Hoboken with my friend Ms. K. I hat a super delicious cheese crumb cake and a Quarkball, thinking about it makes me hungry again...How was your week/weekend? Have a great week thirty four!

week thirty two

Another week has flown by, so fast that I totally forgot to post on Friday. Ooops! Saturday we went to relax at the beach with a group of friends and had dinner on the boardwalk in Asbury Park. I washed down the food with a delicious cucumber and gin concoction, so good. On Sunday I got a little closer to my goal to finishing the dresser for the living room before mid September. The body, as well as the legs got another round of sanding and by the end of the day I was able to stain all the pieces. Now I only have to oil the whole shebang and I will be done.Trying to knock that out this week while watching tv in the evenings, so I can start the next project on my list. Talking about my to-do list this weekend I added another project to it, as if I don't have enough already. I found a little stool at an estate sale. Originally I just stopped by the sale because I needed an old pot to use for stripping the hardware of the old door I am still working on. I want to give the crockpot method I found on This Old House a try. Will definitely let you know if it works or not. This past weekend was the perfect mixture of work and play but next time I should work on Saturday and relax on Sunday, my arms are still sore from sanding like a maniac and I could have used the extra day to recuperate. What was your weekend like? In any case here is to another great week and crossing projects off to-do lists!

week thirty one

Judging from my Instagram photos the past week was dominated by work and food. So on Friday I had organized Cronuts to be delivered to a client. Unfortunately we didn't get the amount we had hoped for and all Cronuts were delivered to the client. They looked and smelled delicious, apparently this months flavor is coconut, I had a hard time not to bite into one. On Saturday I sanded the door and it is now ready to get a coat of matte polyurethane finish, next is getting the hinges stripped off all the paint so I can rehang the door. I also started working on a dresser again, which we got through Craig's List two years ago. Cannot believe that I took a break that long. Two years ago I already stripped most paint of it and gave it a good sanding. Two more rounds of sanding this weekend and I was able to stain the drawers. Hopefully I will be able to work on the dresser again next weekend, maybe even finish it. The dresser will become our new TV stand in the living room, the old one is a rickety old thing from IKEA that has been past its prime for years but we did not want to buy anything new because we still had a humungous old TV sitting on it. Now the TV has been replaced with a modern flat screen one and it's finally time to upgrade the whole setting. All the hard work was compensated by a delicious bowl of pasta at Vapiano and a backyard bbq at a friend's place. Have you noticed the plates and napkins straight from the 80ies? How was your weekend like?

Have a great start into week 32!

week thirty

The past workweek was pretty uneventful, except for Tuesday were I needed to get some forms for the office signed by a city agency. When I got there first thing in the morning I was second in line and hoped to be in an out. When it was my turn the lady at the counter told me I needed to get another signature before she would sign and seal it and I would have to get it from an agency in the Bronx. So I hopped on the subway and trekked from the southern tip of Manhattan to the Bronx. I had to get off right at Yankee Stadium, an area I have never been before, so it was a little bit like sightseeing. In the end I got all my paperwork in order and made it to the office at around 2pm. My weekend was a slow and relaxing one, on Saturday we met friends for lunch at a new Mexican restaurant and the rest of the weekend was spent in a mixture of being lazy and working on the door. I stripped both sides of the door for a second time and one side now is mostly raw wood but the other side still has layers of paint on it. The layers of old paint look actually pretty good and I am thinking we might leave it like that and honestly I don't feel like stripping that door any more. So far I am pretty happy with the outcome of the door project but next step would be sanding the side that I stripped down to raw wood. Not my favorite part of the project because of the inset panels. Hope to be able to work on it some more next weekend. I want to be finished with this project when my parents visit in September and I have another project on my list that I want to finish by then. Sometimes I need the pressure to get things crossed of my list, especially when they are not really fun projects. What were you guys up to last week?

Have a great week 31!

week twenty nine

Week twenty nine flew by in an instant. I guess I had too much fun. Started the week with a picnic in Central Park, listening to the NY Philharmonic play. Wednesday night P and I saw OMD in concert. On Friday I had to rush home after work because we met with our architect, who is finalizing the drawings for the backyard. Yay, I cannot wait for the backyard project to get started. After we finished the meeting we visited a friend, who helped me to recover my SD card, which I stupidly stuck into my CD drive. Funny enough when I googled my predicament I saw that I wasn't the only one who would do such a stupid thing. After the crazy busy week I needed a mellow weekend and what better way to relax than to snuggle and nap on the couch with the dog visiting you. This was my past week in short...How was your week/weekend?

week twenty eight

Good morning week 29! Can you believe we passed the halfway mark of this year already? Didn't this year just start and I had all these dreams of finishing projects around the house or refinishing my street and estate sale finds? Oh well life happened and things did not necessarily turn out the way I hoped but there are still 24 weeks left to work on said projects. Actually I already started one of the projects on Sunday on a whim and immediately started to regret my decision. Originally we had planned to have the door stripped by somebody else and I would be refinishing it myself but yesterday I thought it would be a good idea to do it myself. Argh, it is not fun to scrape off old paint goo that has the consistency of a roasted marshmallow but I am sure that the effort will be worth it once the door is finished. Unfortunately it will take a while because I haven't even finished stripping one side if the door. On Saturday I had a pretty relaxed day, first hanging out with a friend in Dumbo and then taking the ferry up the East River to meet with P and another friend in Williamsburg, were we walked around but mostly hung out at the Spritzenhaus to play some Jenga and drink a beer. Hope you had a great weekend. Was your weekend more like my relaxed Saturday or work filled like my Sunday? Or something in between?

week twenty seven

Hope you all had a great long holiday weekend! How did you guys spend it? Mine started off pretty busy on Thursday when P and I cleaned the house and then went to a BBQ at a friends place. We tried to see the fireworks on the Hudson from our friends roof. Unfortunately the view was blocked by some high rise buildings but the view was pretty nice as is. Friday I had to work, planned was a short day but I ended up working until 7:30pm because we had to meet a deadline. On Saturday we tried to escape the heat with a trip to the beach, which was nice but didn't bring the relief we had hoped for. In the afternoon we had to cool off in a nearby mall. Of course we didn't leave empty handed. The heat usually does not bother me so much, this year it makes me feel like a zombie. Because we do not have air conditioners in the whole house, only in our bedroom, we escaped to the movies on Sunday and watched Monsters University in 3D. So much fun, I can highly recommend it. Sulley looks even fuzzier in 3D and he already looked pretty fuzzy in the first movie. Speaking of no air conditioners, the ac at my office broke yesterday and they might not be able to fix it before Wednesday or Thursday. On my way home I couldn't even cool down on the bus home because the ac was not working either. Argh! If this week continues like that I might not have to go to a sauna ever again ;) How do you guys stay cool when it gets hot outside?

week twenty six

Goodbye week twenty six, hello short holiday week! We spent the last weekend in Connecticut in an area with no cell phone reception, at least my phone could not pick up any signal. It is unnerving but on the other hand it was great to not be cellphone free for two days, although I used the WiFi at the hotel. The reason for a weekend in CT was the wedding of two great friends. They married in the garden of her family, beautiful setting. I will have to upload some photos to Instagram soon. When roaming around the grounds I found this red shed with a pitchfork leaning against it, recognizing its potential for a photo op. We tried to recreate American Gothic but because I always confuse left and right I am standing on the wrong side. Oh, well you get the idea...Hope you had a great weekend too! What was your weekend like?

week twenty five

Another week flew by. I cannot believe that we are nearing the halfway mark of this year already. Where does the time go? Thank you all for the warm welcome, it is good to be back but I am still fighting to get back into the blogging groove.

On Saturday P and I hopped on our bike to explore Liberty State Park where I wanted to take photo of the CRRNJ Terminal for my NJoy series. Since the train station is just a quick ferry ride away from Ellis Island most immigrants passing through there would continue their journey aboard one of the trains leaving that station. Unfortunately the station was closed due to the damage it sustained during Sandy. Yesterday I met the lovely Ana from Fluxi On Tour who is in town from San Francisco. First we had some breakfast at Egg and after filling up on yummy eggs and grits we hit the Renegade Craft Fair. It was way too hot for me yesterday so even though I brought my camera I was too lazy to take any photos although there were lots of great things to see. In the end we needed to rehydrate in a backyard of a cute cafe. After meeting Ana I met with P to grab dinner at one of our favorite German restaurants in NYC. This about sums up my weekend. Hope you had an equally great one! What were you guys up to?

weeks sixteen through twenty four

Hello there!

Is anybody still reading this blog after my absence for a couple of months? I apologize for being MIA for such a long period. Life caught up with me and I needed a time out. Sometime we end up in situations that are bad for us and we are not doing anything to change it ot get out of it. This is what happened to me, honestly I do not even know how I was able to endure the situation as long as I did but in the end it was too much to take and I was forced to make some changes in my life. I still cannot believe the things I was confronted with but in the end I came out ok, stronger even. Without friends, family and the best husband ever I don't think I would have been able to come out ahead. Thank you all for being there for me! 

I have missed you all so much and am happy to be back!

Big hug,

Nina 

week fifteen

Whoa, week fifteen passed by as quickly as the weeks before. Can't it just slow down a little because like this I always feel as if I am two steps behind everything. On Monday evening the klutz in me came out and I burned myself pretty badly on my wrist while boiling water for a cup of tea. I never had a 2nd degree burn before and got worried when a huge blister formed on my arm but when I had my doctor check it out it wasn't as bad as I though and now I can already see that it started to heal. The weekend was a lazy one again, on Saturday P and I walked over to an estate sale around the corner from where we live. Of course I didn't leave empty handed and ended up buying a metal cabinet. The house where the sale was at was amazing, at least at one point in time it was pretty grand. It had amazing details like woodwork and tin ceilings. From what I understand it will be for sale soon. Too bad I can't fix it up...Sunday we had brunch with a group of friends and because the weather was so nice we ended up on a roof bar after to catch some rays. I could do that more often...What was your week/weekend like? Lazy like mine or did you get all worked up on a diy project or something like that?

Happy week sixteen! Let's what you will bring us...

week fourteen

I cannot believe we are entering week fifteen already. Time is flying by too fast and I currently feel that I am always three steps behind. P was on a business trip all week and I thought I would have a lot of time catching up on everything but I have to admit I didn't get much done all week besides working on my latest Saarinen chair like a maniac. Wednesday night I scraped off all the remaining foam bits and pieces from the seat and the backrest so I could glue on the new foam in my upholstery class on Thursday. Since there is only one class left to finish the chair I needed to get busy cutting and sewing the fabric for the new chair cover. It took me almost five hours Friday night to cut everything because I had barely enough fabric and laying the old fabric out onto the new in the best way possible took forever. It might not have helped that I watched a movie while doing this. On Saturday the mother of a friend helped me sew, actually this time she sewed everything for me as I couldn't get the whole piping thing to work. I could have never done it by myself and am so grateful for her help. Next thing on my list is definitely a sewing class, there are another 4-5 chairs that need upholstery work in our basement and I want to be able to do all the work by myself. Because Friday and Saturday were pretty busy I needed a lazy Sunday, first I slept in until 10am, which rarely happens and from there I only changed into my sweatpants and spent most of the day on the couch reading or watching tv. Although the weather looked pretty nice yesterday I didn't even set a foot out of the door all day. Oh, well once in a while we all deserve a day like that! Hopefully your weekend was equally relaxing! After the day on the sofa I am ready to tackle week fifteen, let's see what it will bring...