New York, NY: It's a Helluva Town Day 3

This post has been a loooong time in the making. It's been haunting my drafts folder for over a year. And we are coming up on the two year anniversary of the trip itself, which we took in October of 2013 to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary (belatedly, our anniversary is actually in September). (The first two days of our trip I already posted about here and here.) I am itching to go back so it's been fun to go through all the pictures again and think about returning and how things will be different this time with the little. We don't have anything on the books, but ya never know.

This was my favorite day of the trip, visiting the Met and Central Park. I could spend weeks in the Met. I always loved the book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and if I were going to run away, I would choose to go live here too.

I took so many pictures. If they need a volunteer to (re)photograph their entire collection, I think I'm the girl for the job.

In the morning we looked through several painting galleries until we reached masterpiece overload and had to go seek refreshment and fresh air.

We ate lunch in the court café then went for a stroll around Central Park.

The leaves throughout most of the park hadn't changed color yet, so the trees that had were really drawing crowds.

We saw one proposal go down (successfully), and though my memory has faded a little, I'm pretty sure we saw at least four or five wedding parties. Romance was in the air.

My favorite part of my favorite day in New York was cocktail hour at the Roof Garden Café back at the Met. When we were eating lunch, we just happened to notice a little sign on the table advertising the café (and Martini Bar, that's part of the name too). We hadn't really done a lot of research as far as drinking or eating options for this particular day, and with the mention of "panoramic views of Manhattan" we were sold. In checking the website it looks like now the café is open on the weekend from 10:00 to 8:15, but I believe when we visited they opened (or reopened) at 5:00. We were among the first there and in line for well, what else? martinis!   

The best part of it was the whole time, there were maybe only twenty five or thirty people there max, so you could walk around and take in the views freely at what felt more like a little private soirée than a major tourist destination. Of course, as mentioned above, this was nearly two years ago, so I can't speak to the popularity or atmosphere today. I have to admit that current me was pretty excited to see that kiddos are welcome today! :D 

After cocktails, we hit up the Classical galleries until closing time.

I remember meeting this gentleman in undergrad art history.

I just couldn't stop with the pictures even on the way out, and as it turns out, this was one of my faves I took all day.

And these (I thought I remembered them being Tiffany, and from his own place nonetheless), equally striking at night as during the day.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side (I think here), then headed back down for a nightcap at a speakeasy in the East Vilage (hard to find, but when that knock was successfully answered, boy did we feel cool) called Angel's Share.

One of the BEST DAYS EVER. I ♥ NYC!!!

Time Travel, Living Room Edition

So we are finally settling into our new house and figuring out the routine. It's starting to feel and function more and more like home and to even look kind of pretty in places. 

One of the main reasons I ever started blogging was because I wanted to share my home with the world. I love interior design and I love seeing images of what others have done with their spaces. And I've always wanted to be part of that community of diy decorators who put it out there to inspire others. But I have really only ever posted snippets here and there because I've never deemed a space "finished" enough for the world to see. Granted we have moved three times in five years which makes for a pretty tight timeline to come up with the finished product. 

But I've finally come to accept that there in lies the problem. It's not necessarily so much about the finished product as the fun along the way. Especially with this house. There are so many projects to do, so much furniture and everything  else to acquire. It's going to be a long time before even one room, let alone the whole house, is "done".

So starting here and now I'm getting over it and taking my blog in a new direction. There will be a lot more interior (and exterior) project and design posts. And because of the age of this house and all of the original surviving features and details it contains combined with its back story (that I have yet to tell here but will get to soon) and my experience in architectural history and historic preservation in the course of working in cultural resource management, we are going to be approaching every "permanent" renovation from a restoration stand point. So that means if it's original to the house and it can be saved, it will be. And if something needs to be replaced, we'll be researching appropriate materials and everything will be in keeping with the house's existing style. So Unknown Blackbird will be taking a bit of a this old house bent. 
We joked when we bought the place that it might have very well been the set of a John Hughes movie. It was last decorated circa 1988 and the living room (dining room too) had the drapes to prove it. 

The first project we tackled, prior to moving in (because we made that mistake before) was to refinish the hardwood floors. Or rather have the hardwood floors refinished (because along with the mistake of living in the house while doing it, we also made the mistake of doing it ourselves. They turned out great, but upon wrapping it up 3 or 4 weeks after we started and only after my dad came to the rescue to help finally get it done, we had two words: NEVER AGAIN.) 

We thought for sure that a house built in 1923 would have to have hardwoods under all the carpets (parquet in the case of the foyer, hall and back entry). And upstairs sure enough there was one and a half inch oak strip everywhere. But on the first floor, much to our shock, the only thing we found was the tongue and groove, unfinished, pine subfloor. We finally deemed that the baseboard, though surprisingly short for the height of the ceilings, was original. It's the same throughout the house and in every room the texture on the walls (and we have some heavily textured walls) comes down on top of it with no sign it's ever been filled in after a taller base was removed. On the first floor it sat somewhere between an eight and a quarter inch off the subfloor and had holes from quarter round (shoe mold) being nailed to it previously. The height of the baseboard above the subfloor and the height the shoe mould sat at led us to the conclusion that the living and dining room and the foyer, hall and back entry had originally been carpeted, with something thinner than the modern stuff, more akin to a wall to wall oriental rug, to start with. Eventually this was swapped out for the more thickly padded wall to wall we all know and despise in the living and dining rooms and the quarter round removed. And the parquet was put in the high traffic zone.

I will admit that for going on somewhere around twenty years old, the carpet was not in that bad of shape, but the carpet was going on twenty years old. No matter what it might look like, ewwwww. We are not carpet people. Babies and pets and people who drink red wine and are clean freaks don't mix with carpet. So we decided to invest in hardwoods for the previously carpeted and parqueted areas of the first floor. Every house we looked at when we were house hunting was 50 plus years old and if there were original hardwoods, they were the almost invariably one and a half inch oak.  And as that was what was upstairs here as well, that's what we went with. In my experience, two inch seems to have been more common, so I am guessing the preponderance of one and a half in the greater Toledo area is due perhaps to regional availability. Maybe a local mill was cranking out the one and a half? Just a guess.

Before the new floors were installed we had the living room painted. I love to paint and if I do say so myself, I'm quite good at it, one thoroughly painted apartment and four houses later. But the size of the room, the ceiling height, the existing terra cotta color of the ceiling, the timeline of the floor project, the taking care of an infant, and our desire to just have this space done when it was time to move in, all combined to make it just make more sense to call in a pro. We used Sattler Painting and they did a very nice job. I am a Benjamin Moore devotee and that's what they use, so that helped solidify the choice. To make the darker floors and woodwork pop out and free me up to use color more liberally when it comes to furniture and accessories I've decided to make all the walls throughout the house Swiss Coffee. It's my favorite Benjamin Moore white. Totally neutral, no undertones, but still nice and warm.

We used Floorcraft Designs for the floors throughout and they did a fantastic job and were easy to work with too. 

So as it stands now, here's the living room. As I mentioned, we went with a darker stain for the floors (I am not sure of the brand and am forgetting the name of the color at the moment), something that falls in the middle of the various shades of the existing woodwork (all original, unpainted oak) throughout the house.

In thinking about how to make the floors on the first floor feel like they belonged, like they'd always been here, beyond just using the inch and a half strip, and in light of some of the high end design choices that were made when the house was built, I started to think maybe doing a little something special was called for. There was of course a budget for this project and there wasn't much extra for the something special. At first I had in mind some kind of border all the way around both the living and dining rooms and maybe a transition of some sort between the dining and foyer, but Michael of Floorcraft steered me towards picture framing the fireplace with the combination of walnut and two and a quarter inch (I believe it is) oak bands, and doing a matching area rug detail in the center of the dining room (I won't try to explain what that is exactly, will do a post on the dining room eventually). And it turned out to be just the thing. 

While we may still need more and bigger furniture, art, window treatments, (interesting that there is no trim around any of the windows in the house except the sill, they were always meant to be "dressed"), etc, etc, etc, I am pretty proud of how far we've come. So there it is, my first before and after!

And in 1

Happy Day 64
I didn't take weekly or even monthly belly pictures during my pregnancy nor did I have a maternity photo shoot. Not because I didn't like both ideas, but because turning up on a regular basis in the same place, at the same time of day, in a similar outfit each time with cutely printed "Week __" sign and Greg to take the picture was just not in the cards, and I never made finding a professional photographer and scheduling a session a priority. There were just too many other things to take care of first. So while I have pictures of me "with" Peanut, I don't have the thorough documentation I thought I might.

I took this picture of my 39 week 4 day tummy just in the nick of time as my water broke (sort of) at 4am the next morning and about 23 hours after that I was holding little Ida. And I'm so glad I took it as I think its the only bare bump shot I have. Now when I look at it I feel proud of my body for growing the healthy, vibrant little human it did and thankful for the opportunity to experience pregnancy, birth and motherhood. 

Four months before I found out I was pregnant with Ida, I had a miscarriage at six weeks. Greg and I had been not not trying to have a baby for over two years. Nothing was wrong. It just wasn't happening. And then suddenly it did. Suddenly I was staring at a positive test, feeling the joy and fear of the unknown that are probably standard issue. Are we ready? Will we be any good at this? Exactly what do we do? Now? Eight months from now? After that? Another unknown, maybe no less common source of fear than the others, which quickly became a nagging obsession for me, was how my body would change during pregnancy. I was terrified of baby weight, stretch marks and loose skin. I spent hours googling images of postpartum bellies, searching desperately for reassurance that my stomach wouldn't be "ruined" and trying to find consensus as to the best method or magic potion to prevent it.  Then, before I had fully wrapped my head around the tiny little person-to-be inside that stomach I was so worried about the appearance of, but not before I had integrated him or her into every thought about the future, I started spotting. We went to the doctor. We saw a tiny heart beating. A couple of days later the spotting became heavier bleeding. We went back to the doctor. Baby was gone. No more tiny heart beating. As suddenly as it had happened, it was over. As my hormone levels plunged over the following couple of days, trying again seemed completely off the table. It just wasn't worth the agonizing worry followed by the heartbreaking emptiness should the same thing happen again. On top of that, into that emptiness had rushed a hatred of all mothers, mothers-to-be, and their perfect, healthy, living babies with hearts thumping away in their little chests. How could I want something I now despised? It just didn't make any sense. And then the fog lifted. Things leveled out. And I wanted nothing more than to try again, to be healed by the sight of another positive test, the renewed dream of a future with a child. 

Four months later, I was holding that positive test and once again imagining how it would all go, trying to see past the long shadow of doubt to the other side. It was impossible to keep the fear that something would once again go wrong properly tempered with hope and positivity while simultaneously keeping hope and positivity properly tempered with the reality that something may very well once again go wrong. Balance was impossible for long, with fear often winning out and consuming my thoughts with worse case scenarios. Despite everything, despite losing my first baby, despite the fear of losing the one I was now carrying, despite my immense gratitude for getting pregnant again and so quickly, fear about the "toll" of pregnancy on my body soon crept right back in to mingle with all the others. After recovering from the miscarriage I had thrown myself into running and yoga and had gotten into perhaps the best shape I'd ever been in. I couldn't wait for my bump to appear but at the same time I was acutely grieving the figure I thought I'd likely never see again, the six pack I had foolishly thought I might be headed towards that would now certainly never be. And then spotting again. I honestly don't remember if we saw the heartbeat that first time at the doctor. Still some spotting. I'm sure we must have seen it the second. Still spotting, but nothing heavier. A waiting game. And then it went away and never came back and I went on to have a normal, healthy pregnancy. 

Somewhere in there I came to terms with the almost complete lack of control I had over most aspects of my journey towards and hopefully into motherhood. This left me to take comfort in a concept I had learned in my yoga practice, the concept of Ahimsa, literally "non-violence", but as explained to me by a teacher, more accurately described as "loving kindness towards all living things, including and beginning with oneself." I stopped looking for pictures of postpartum bellies that I deemed flat enough to be worthy of admiration. I started looking for ways to accept the changes that would come if I stayed pregnant. In my searching I found one particularly sane voice, Jennifer of Mama Lion Strong that I've been following ever since. In March she helped to found a fantastic (closed, you just have to ask to join) Facebook group, Healthy Habits for Happy Moms. Mama Lion Strong and the group are both all about health, both physical and emotional, balance in nutrition and exercise, and cultivating healthy body image for a sustainably happy life. No particular programs or diets are endorsed, and their promotion isn't allowed in the group. The group is just a great safe place to ask questions, share the good and the bad, and connect with other women. And in the few months I've belonged I've learned a ton about myself and how to approach my own journey into motherhood and beyond. Above all, I really, really want to be a good role model for Ida. I don't want her to grow up watching her mother struggle with a dysfunctional relationship with food and/or exercise, swinging back and forth from feast to famine in regards to either. Nor do I want her to grow up listening to me berate my body or the bodies of other women for not conforming to the "ideal" depicted by glossy pictures in magazines (or on a computer screen). Because before she starts reading those magazines or surfing the web, before she's in school or on social media,  she'll begin to learn how she should think and talk about her body from me, studies prove girls learn the most from their moms on this one. And I don't want her to grow up thinking that as a woman she will always have to strive to "fix" what's wrong, I want her to love herself always, to be healthy always and to be happy always. So, little by little as we settle back into a normal routine in our new city in our new home I'm building the foundation to show her the way. And maybe some day when it's her turn to become a mommy, she'll be free to just plain revel in it.

In 7,(6,5,4,)3...

Happy Days 62 and 63
I WILL reach 100 here. (I am not a quitter!) I think this is about when I stopped tagging pics on Instagram with #100happydays, but the hashtag or lack thereof doesn't really matter. Like I said when I began, it was the meditation on gratitude that made the project so appealing to me. And that sentiment is stronger than ever now, almost a year (!) later, reminiscing on the days just before and the weeks after I became a mommy as I finish up the project.

I believe the first pic was exactly a week before Ida arrived and the second two just a couple of days. It was the height of beautiful weather in Seattle, so it would have been criminal not to get out and enjoy even though by this time the stroll down the street and back left me huffing and puffing and ready for a bowl of ice cream.

You Will Do Better in Toledo

Our new city's slogan, it also describes how one far one's dollar will go in the real estate market here versus say, Seattle. This is our new home, a 1923 tudor with a colorful past (or rather, one set of previous owners were particularly colorful characters, I will tell that story soon). It is so big, a bigger house than we ever imagined we'd call home. But it's history, combined with my dream of owning and restoring an older home with original details intact, combined with a surprising lack of options on the market at the time we were hunting, made it the one.

These are just a few shots I took right after we took possession.

Thoughtful gifts from the previous owners. 

Dining room chandelier detail. 

We've been in the house for I'm not even sure how long now, and it's just within the last week or so finally starting to resemble a home, at least in spots.

I haven't given up on my little blog. Hopefully back again before another two months is out, but I probably shouldn't make any more promises at this point in my blogging career as they obviously don't really guarantee my consistency. :/

Spring, Take One

Where to begin? February, March and most of April have flown by during which we: got our house ready to go on the market, lost our beloved doggy, spent two weeks desperately searching for a house in Toledo, sold our house, went on vacation, packed up all of our belongings, flew across the country (with a seven month old and an agoraphobic kitty), finally closed the deal on our new home, and our now renovating it before we will at last get to move in a week and a half from now. That's about it. 

But it's all good. A little on the stressful side, but really good. Little Ida is doing awesome. The house that we bought is well, pretty crazy. But more on that later.

We left Seattle two weeks ago and have been staying in a hotel while we work on the new place. These were some photos I took in our yard and around the neighborhood in our last few weeks in the PNW. Spring was in full swing there when we left and when we arrived in Ohio, it had barely begun. As of today, the weather still isn't on board (snow flurries!?), though things are starting to get greener and bloom.

Hoping that the most hectic part of this transition is almost over and more posts will follow shortly!