“When you’re a grown up, all there is to do is talk and work, drink coffee, eat spicy food and watch kids. Booooring!”

“Do you know how to relax?” – she asked me this one day.

“Look, a plump! A plump up in the sky!!” – referring to a blimp (but I like plump better, don’t you?)

“Some farts are bumpy.”

“I wish I was twenteen so I could live by myself and do what I want. It’s also my best number”.

“Nice boobs” – says she as she walks by me.

“Can you tie my booby traps on?” – referring to her shell bikini top that came with her hula costume.

“I wish for a baby mermaid with a rainbow tail that swims in our bathtub that’s short, not humongous, so I can watch her better.”

Related: Overheard in Seattle, random quotes 1

If you ever were planning a visit to New York, I’d suggest Fall, specifically late October, early November. Maybe you’d get lucky with the kind of unbelievable weather we’re having lately, but regardless, you should definitely make a trip to Central Park. We don’t get up there too often as a family, but Mark has spent the better part of his last 8 years working as a chef at the Boathouse (you can see the restaurant on the lake above – maybe you’ve seen it in movies?) and this is where he goes do to his late night baking shift before his 1 day a week consulting gig. Even though it’s a longish commute from where we live in Brooklyn, Mark has always said it’s nice to work inside the park when he was going here every day.

We were there on Sunday, walking around, taking in all the leaves at its peak. It was the kind of day that immediately put you in a good mood, despite whatever mood you were in previously, where you saw everyone strolling around with silly grins on their faces, starry eyes upward towards the trees. The kind of day where tourists would stop, breathe and say, “OH! It’s so beautiful here! It reminds me of England with that castle behind the lake!”. And you’d ask where they’re from and you’d chat with them when you’d normally not make small talk with strangers. The kind of day where you felt neither cold, nor warm, just nothing but comfortable bathed in light through golden leaves that made everything glow.

The girls climbed rocks and statues, played hide and seek behind trees and got a lesson about John Lennon from the “mayor” of Strawberry Fields. There is no better New York weekend than this.

…are finally here, but in limited quantities for the holidays. I’ll be printing more, but I’m having timing issues with my supplier and they might not arrive in time for holiday shipping.

And thanks to all who have spread the word on the sweetfineday shop! I’ve shipped a lot of posters and have other designs in the works so stay tuned in a few months. We just have to get through the holidays first!

It’s that time of year. The time when my dad hands me about a dozen persimmons off of his tree and we scoop it up and eat it like pudding. As I mentioned last year, rumor had it there was a second variety of persimmon tree in the side yard. I noticed it for the first time this year as I saw tons of fruit hanging from the small tree, this time with the smaller squatter variety that you can peel and eat like an apple. We didn’t get any from the crop as we were told they weren’t particularly sweet this year. Maybe next year. And my dad’s newest fruit tree experiment? Yuzu…from the seeds of a friends tree.

The vegetable and flower gardens are done for this year, but here are photos of the last of the flowers. Winter is coming.

It’s weird, you know? Because in a lot of ways I still feel like my younger self. An indeterminate age, but not my age, not 40. No, just my generically vague numbered younger self. Do you know what I mean when I say I feel “ageless”? All evidence points to the fact that I am, indeed, an adult. I have kids, a mortgage, I go to parent-teacher school conferences, I sign report cards, I pay my life insurance bills, I get my HVAC maintained twice a year. These are things adults do. And yet, in my mind, I’m not any different than I was 20 years ago – ok, scratch that, there are some differences, like I don’t think I can hitchhike my way through New England on 20 dollars anymore – but I basically feel like the same person. Tastes and trends and clothes may have shifted slightly over the years, but I still wear a lot of black and a lot of stripes, and I still can’t resist making a beeline towards anything shiny, beaded, studded, or sequined hanging on a rack (was I a drag queen in a former life? Step away from the sequins!). I don’t hold up an item of clothing and ask the saleswoman if this is age-appropriate. I have enough common sense judgment to know what I should and shouldn’t be wearing, but I don’t at all think about whether something is age appropriate.

So how does one wake up one day and find yourself old? I feel like most times we’re just too busy living life and trying to get through the day to really notice that time is passing. Days, months, years. It’s not until you look at the mirror one day that you start noticing stuff. Things like dark under eye circles. Or skin that’s not as clear looking as it once was. And gray hair. Oh my, the gray hair. It’s like I never knew how bad it was until I pulled my hair away from my face the other day and saw lots and lots and LOTS of gray hair that I never knew was there before. I’ve been dyeing my hair different colors since I was in my teens, so it’s a bit of a shock to see the roots come in so gray. It makes me wonder how much of my hair is gray if I let it go. It also reminds me to go to the drug store immediately to get that box of hair dye (and don’t even talk to me about letting my hair gray naturally – it’s not happening).

But aside from all that vanity stuff and how I feel inside, there is the body and this is where I can no longer deny that I’m fumbling towards middle age. It’s painful to stand on my feet all day. I feel it at night when I need to resort to laying on the couch to recover from back pain. Also walking? Yeah, I feel it in my lower back and the sciatic pain down my legs if I’ve walked too much. My mom always say that mentally she still feels really young, but it’s her body that’s getting old and is starting to fail her, that her mind doesn’t match her body. I know what she means. I have a few friends my age who are pregnant or who have just had babies and man! I know I’m done with kids, but seeing these tiny little baby faces and these tiny baby bodies (I’m looking at you, Annie from Seattle) just kills my heart. I love the whole baby phase so much. “So, why don’t you have another?”, they say. “Women have babies at 40 all the time now, it’s not too late”. Sure, that may be true, but I know that being pregnant and carrying another baby would be too hard on my back and my body. I knew this in my early 30s, which is why I wanted to be done having kids by my mid-30s. I know that I can’t survive pushing another stroller with a 25 pound baby all around the neighborhood – I have problems now if I carry anything more than 7 pounds. This is why Claudine walks her long walks to school everyday. I recognize that my body has limits now.

Ironically the thing that’s making me feel old these days is the fact that I have an almost 7 year old kid. It’s one thing to be a mom to a newborn or even a toddler, but when you sit there and watch your 1st grader doing her homework or accessorizing her outfit or talking about the things her friends gabbed about at recess, I don’t know. Something about that makes me snap back from my little bubble of “oh hey, I’m not old! I don’t have mom hair and I don’t wear mom jeans, and look! I’m listening to the Pixies and the Beastie Boys and they’re not old…oh wait.” The truth is, I don’t want to be that older person desperate to hang on to their youth trying to be relevant and hip either. That’s tragic. There’s a reason why I don’t really know or care about new bands that are popular today or why I get insanely and giddily nostalgic about old TV show sitcoms and music that is 20 or 30 years old. I don’t know at what point you stop caring about popular culture and you end up being that guy. You know, the one who still listens to music from their youth (for my generation, that would be that guy who gets all hazy eyed with a far away look, listening to the Eagles or Free Bird or something). I remember thinking at age 16 that I would never be that uncool when I got old. I have to laugh. I guess it just happens whether we know it or not.

I love how I’ll come across a random stray rose that has hung on despite the fact that it’s dead in the middle of Fall and it’s getting seasonably cooler. This is super cheesy, but it reminds me that if we just hang on, we’ll get through whatever crap the universe decides to throw at us. You know, just for fun, because its not like we have enough to deal with.

Today started out kind of crappy, but by the end, some problems got worked out and it turned out to be not such a crappy day after all. Things aren’t perfect, but it’s good enough and that’s going to have to do for now. I think I can live with that.

Some other things I reconfirmed today:
Almost any problem can be worked out if you remain calm and think it through. Coffee helps. Sometimes alcohol too.

Getting together with a friend, and especially one in a similar business, really helps to remind you that you’re sane – or maybe you’re both insane for deciding to run a small business, but at least you’re not alone.

Sometimes it’s better to just let it go.

I’m old. And I’m starting to feel it.

Leftover birthday cake is a nice surprise when you forget you have it, but find it in the fridge.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and spend money on your business.

It always freaks me out when one of the kids wake up in the middle of the night while I’m in the living room working and all of a sudden out of the corner of my eye I see a small figure emerge in the darkness out of nowhere and then suddenly they are standing next to you. Their little bodies remind me of Close Encounter aliens anyway (which apparently scared the shit out of Mark when he saw that as a kid, btw), but this? Makes me jump every time. I think they do this on purpose to age us even more. And Claudine’s reason for getting up this time?

Her: “Will you make sure to get me back up water if I run out”.
Me: Are you out of water? Do you want a drink?”
Her: “No. But I just wanted to tell you to get me back up water if I run out”.

Okaaaaay.

Note: Our sites and emails have been down for the past 2 days. Something about our server failing and needing a reboot which apparently takes a really REALLY long time. In any case, the blog and our emails are finally up, but this post got lost so I’m reposting it thanks to Shilo who still had it in her google reader before the site came down (but if you left a comment, I’m sorry, it’s lost). Our Whimsy & Spice site is very wonky still. Things are not where it should be. If you or someone you know is a Zen Cart programmer, please send them my way. Thanks.

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Just like the weekend before with Halloween stretching over 2 days, Claudine’s birthday stretched over the entire weekend. A drive to the burbs on Friday to visit with my parents, then mega birthday party shopping on Saturday morning, a dance party for a friend’s birthday in Tribeca in the afternoon (on her actual birthday), and then finally…her own celebration. This year we decided to have a brunch on NYC Marathon Sunday. It runs right past the end of our block so it’s always been tradition to watch and cheer the runners. We thought it would be fun to set up a table outside and hand out hot chocolate to our friends and neighbors. We also had kids pick number tags and we had our own races down the block. The day turned out to be gorgeous weather for the runners and as usual, there was a party atmosphere in the neighborhood. There was even a band playing on our corner, so it was extra festive.

Once inside, we served brunch and let the kids decorate cupcakes.

The next time we have 30 people over (17 of them kids) over can you guys remind me why in the hell I feel compelled to clean the house spotless before hand? C’mon now, seriously. Why did I think it was a good idea staying up till midnight dusting the house and cleaning the hell out of the bathroom floor tile with an old toothbrush when I could be, oh..I don’t know…SLEEPING? (btw, I don’t know how your kids fared with daylight savings time, but mine woke up at the heavenly hour of 7am, which really was 8am, instead of the dreaded 5am wakeup call I thought we were going to get considering they’ve been getting up early at 6). By the time the kids were done with their cupcakes, there were millions of little sprinkles that stuck to your socks all over the floor because some kids (Mia) preferred to decorate their cupcakes by dumping as many kinds of sprinkles on top as possible.

And the cake…oh, how I loved the cake. A 3 layer chocolate cake with white chocolate filling, caramel buttercream and crushed chocolate cookie crumbs on the side. It is a known fact that whenever we host parties, all of the older neighborhood siblings make sure to come over because they want to eat Mark’s food, so we had a big range of ages at the table. When it was time to sing her a happy birthday, Claudine face planted herself down until it was over, maybe because she was overwhelmed, or maybe she suddenly got shy. But I loved this reaction to her on-sale-for $7 grocery store birthday cake that my dad picked up for her Friday night. It was mostly whipped cream frosting with gummy fish stuck to the sides. Which is probably every kid’s dream cake.

This little lady is four today. I will never get tired of pinching those cheeks.

Mia’s got a new friend. A little girl who is not new to New York, but new to our neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her family returned to the city just a few weeks before the start of the school year after living in South America for 3 years. Mia and her new friend found each other at the playground the weekend after the first day of school and discovered they were in the same class. Despite their short history together, they have declared they are best friends forever and forever.

Now, it doesn’t always work out where you end up being friends with your kids’ friends’ parents, but this means that we also have new friends in the neighborhood. We’ve been getting to know the family every weekend, bound by weekly Saturday soccer classes, playdates, brunches, parties and Halloween. Megan is a former TV host for the show Globe trekker and can currently be seen in Sea Nation, a self funded, self produced TV series, documenting their adventures living at sea on a boat for 6 months. Which all sounds terribly interesting, right? But for whatever reason, Megan has decided that this non-traveler (ok, I may have traveled like that across country when I was younger, but I did not make a TV show out of it), computer staring couch potato, insomniac, blogger/designer is interesting. I’ve also become one of her go-to people for things pertaining to Brooklyn living as she readjusts to living back in the states. Things like playdate etiquette and yes…birthday parties.

I’ve posted about the last few fabulous parties we’ve been to recently, but this party based on Alice’s tea party? Unreal. The table spread, the mismatched vintage tea cups, the little sandwiches cut into bunny shapes, the cupcake toppers with hand illustrated playing cards, the mask and hat making, the organized games, and the aunt dressed as the Queen who stayed in character all party long. The party was stuff little girls’ dreams are made of. This coming from a woman who asked me what birthday parties were like in the states having only experienced Argentinian birthday parties, who asked me all kinds of questions about birthday party etiquette, who planned all of this last minute and ran around the city the day before to gather the perfect little trinkets for goodie bags. It really truly was a lovely party, but this may have very well raised the bar on what all birthday parties should be like, according to our girls. Hmm…thanks Megan.

When Ez of Creature Comforts asked us waaaay back this summer if we’d contribute to her online holiday magazine, we said sure. We got back from Seattle, baked some cookies and took some pictures. What we didn’t know was that Ez had this super brilliant idea and was hard at work coming up with the most incredible online magazine! You all need to click on this link RIGHT NOW and feast your eyes on this work of beauty. It rivals any commercial magazine holiday issue out there and it blows me away every time I look at it because Ez is only 1 person. Chock full of holiday ideas, articles, crafts, interviews, a comprehensive gift guide and more more more (the pages are endless), I know I’ll be going back and referring to it all holiday season long.

See those cute ginger guys right there? The recipe for our GingerSPice Shortbread Men are inside. They are time consuming to decorate and Mark grumbles every time he has to pipe a smile. I say, “they’re so festive, let’s sell them!”, and he’s all like “oh hell naw!”, while throwing me a dirty look. So you make them (pg 125).

In more holiday news, we finally changed the banner of our website to this. I’m in love with this image (and not because I took it, well maybe a little), but it’s just so full of yummy gooeyness. We’re going to bring all of that to the Brooklyn Flea’s Gifted Market for 9 straight days starting December 15th at that marvelous 1 Hanson building. We’ve never done a market for these many consecutive days. I’m not really sure how we’re going to pull it off. If you don’t see us at our table, look down. We might be passed out on the floor from exhaustion of holiday and work stuff (because no matter how much I try and finagle my schedule, I am always slammed with design work this time of year). We may not see the kids very much that month. We may curse Christmas 30 times a day and want to die. But we’ll be there.

Here’s another look at the gooey marshmallows. I didn’t know which photo I preferred so you get a bonus angle.