How was your weekend? It was a very social one for us. On Friday night I had dinner with a few of my talented photographer girlfriends in the East Village and the weekend was packed with day long outings and playdates with the girls, including a trip to New Jersey to visit Nichole and her family.

The photos taken here were from Park Here, an indoor installation in Soho that transforms a 5000 square foot windowless interior into an indoor popup park for the Winter.

 
I was joking on twitter that socializing is hard work! But I also know that I have a very intense work schedule coming up, so I tend to over-schedule social dates while I can when I have a window of time that is free before I need to crawl back into my hermit cave. I was proud of myself though. I could have worked this weekend and there are certainly plenty of things that I needed to do, but I didn’t. I took a true weekend off. No work, just play.

Friends, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. This is only the 3rd time in the history of this blog (that is nearly 4 years!) that we’ve gone out to dinner without the girls. The last time was on my 40th birthday nearly 2 years ago. Let’s not get into the why, but rather revel in the fact that we did it (and to think that I got totally chewed out by a blog reader last year who said that I treated the girls like burdens to our lifestyle when we handed the kids off to Mark’s mom as soon as we got to Seattle so that we could walk around Pike Place by ourselves, bwahahaha).

We’re so out of the whole restaurant scene at this point that it was hard for us to choose where to go, but after some deliberation, Mark chose The Modern for his 40th birthday meal, the fancy formal restaurant inside The Museum of Modern Art. Somewhere along the way over the past few years, fine dining with 3 or 4 course tasting menus has turned into dining experiences with many little extra dishes in between the courses that you do choose (we are not talking about the 8 course tasting menus which, sad to say, I’m unsure I can do anymore. Can’t eat like I used to in my old age). So even before your first appetizer comes out, you may have already been given a few amuse bouche dishes and a few extra sweets at the end of your meal. In our case, we had some kind of foamy carrot soup in a test tube-like glass vessel, a bit of raw fish and some kind of goat cheese tart served on spoons, and our personal favorite, a ceviche like dish with skate in a sauce that I could have licked straight from the bowl, with a single squid ink marshmallow cube. And after our dessert course? Your waiter comes around with this insane sweets cart filled with rows and piles of macarons, petite cookies, brittle, marshmallows, chocolates and truffles and you get to choose whatever you want. And while you are stuffing your face with all this sugar (after already having dessert), some other waiter comes and hands you mini cones filled with perfect domes of ice cream, and then as you are handed the check, you are presented with this fancy, shiny box of petite cakes filled with caramel to take home.

I gave it to the girls. Okay, there were 3 mini cakes inside. I ate one.

 
We don’t have any more big birthdays coming up in quite a while (oh thank god, because I didn’t have a problem with 40, but the next one is almost too much to bear), and that has been the only time that we’ve indulged in such fanciness because let’s face it, the bill at the end of the meal can be shocking, but we decided that we should go out to fancy dinners once a year, perhaps on our anniversary. We also decided that when Mia turns 10, we’d like to take her out to a lunch at one of these fancy restaurants. If there is any kid who has a sophisticated adventurous palette, it’s this kid. While looking over the menu trying to decide what to order, we couldn’t resist saying how much Mia would have enjoyed this meal.
 
PS. thank you all so much for the birthday wishes to Mark. So sweet.

I do believe that Film Biz Recycling might be one of Brooklyn’s best hidden secrets for treasure hunting. And that’s exactly what we did when I went on a field trip with Claudine’s kindergarten class last week to visit the business of one of her classmate’s parents. We walked over to the 11,000 square foot giant warehouse from school and we split into groups of 4 with a list in hand for a scavenger hunt!

Film Biz Recycling’s mission is simple: to create socially responsible and sustainable solutions from media industry waste. So what does this mean, exactly? Eva Radke, who used to work in the film industry, founded her non-profit business to divert the tons of materials from being discarded into dumpsters by the film and television industry. This includes furniture, props, books, clothes, glassware, signage, lighting – pretty much anything and everything you can think of that has been used on a set or a shoot. A good portion, about 60%, gets donated to charities. All the items remaining in the warehouse can be rented out as props for a shoot, or even for something like a party if you need extra dinnerware for a night. And everything that you see here? FOR SALE (and I just saw that everything is 50% off this weekend).

But as fun as the Film Biz Recycling and Prop Shop looks – and it is, as you can see from the photos of our recent field trip – Eva is doing something extraordinary to give back to the community while saving all this treasure from going to waste. The space is also used for workshops, performances and as an art gallery. It’s mind-boggling when you look around to think of all this stuff in a landfill when it can be reused and recycled. Plus where else can you find a 4 foot diameter disco ball, sidewalk newspaper dispensers, vintage Hello Kitty Pez dispensers, and tiaras all in the same space?

Maybe it’s the mid-winter blues (though I have to say, we are having such a mild winter in New York after the past few insanely snowy and frigid winters, that I feel like I have no right to complain – temps near 60 again today!), but I’ve been daydreaming a lot about traveling. It’s so hard you know, with the business, school schedules, my unpredictable freelance schedule blah blah that the excuses loom large and become big hurdles that make it seem impossible outside of our yearly August trips to the Northwest. So instead, I start planning imaginary trips, browse hotels, search plane tickets in the hopes that something will click or that I’ll book something completely spontaneous.

What trips do you have planned this year? We have 2 big things happening in 2012: a big birthday for a certain member of our household and a big anniversary. I had fantasies of going to Hawaii to celebrate these 2 events as it’s been 10 years since we were last there and Mia is DYING to go because she has all these plans to live there when she’s a grown up, but airline tickets aren’t as cheap as they used to be (Mark and I once found $200 roundtrip tickets to Honolulu from NYC non-stop! Craziness) and now there are 4 airplane tickets to pay for. Traveling as a family has gotten very expensive. There was also talk of going to Disney World for Winter Break, but it was decided that it’s not affordable right now.
 
So there is the road trip option which worked fantastic for us last year when we went to the Outer Banks in May. I’d like to plan something for Spring Break which comes early this year in the beginning of April if my work schedule cooperates. The weather will still be cool unless we go south again, but I need a change of scenery. I want to look at something different, a different skyline, different buildings, different trees, walk different streets. Go somewhere unfamiliar. See something I’ve never seen before. Something to break out of our daily routine that for the most part is comforting, but sometimes can be stifling.

20 degree temperature drop today. But on New Years Eve and New Year’s Day it was warm and 50 and we decided to go to Coney Island. Are these people really swimming in the ocean? Yes! The Polar Bear Club does a New Year’s Day swim every year and since it wasn’t freezing outside, we decided to come watch.
 

You know how certain plans work out better in your mind than in real life? I’m glad we went. It was good to see the ocean, to see the horizon and see the sunlight sparkle on the water. It just so happens that there was a party going on around us so it wasn’t exactly peaceful as I imagined it, but it was festive!
 
I’ve done brief year end reviews in the past, mostly in pictures, but I think I’ll skip that this year. I want to look ahead. 2011 was definitely less drama filled than 2010. Let’s keep that up.

I thought I would have to work right on December 26th on a new project, but in fact I didn’t end up working the entire week. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t do much at all.
 
I went to sleep very late almost every night (3am!) but slept in till 9 or 10pm. The girls did not wake me up.
 

The Wall Street Journal picked up a story about our calendars online and in print over the weekend and I sold a bunch of calendars.
 
I finally bit the bullet and bought a new and bigger dining room table and chairs that I’ve been wanting to buy for the past 3 years. Sure, the table ended up being backordered, but after 3 years, what’s another 5 weeks?
 
I went and bought our plane tickets to our annual August Seattle trip because I found a good deal. I bought trip insurance for the first time because geez, that is more than half a year away.
 
TOY PURGE!
 
The weather stayed mild and sunny and it was a pleasure to walk around Central Park and climb big rocks and watch ice skaters at Wollman Rink (even though it’s now TRUMP Wollman Rink – when did this happen, have I been living under a rock) and watch tourists snap all sorts of pictures of themselves in front of…trees.
 
Despite swearing we’ll never go to midtown during the month of December if we can avoid it, we found ourselves doing just that very thing because we forget that it’s special kind of hell reserved only for the holidays, but this year, not only do we survive the crowds and walking against a wall of people coming at you down Fifth avenue, it’s bearable because of the nice weather.
 
Continuing on with the “why are we doing this” line of holiday activities, we ducked into Trump Towers (what) for a little ice cream break in the cafe. Sure, Claudine had a mini tantrum when she realized that what she really wanted was lime sorbet and not coconut (grrr), but other than that, it was almost pleasant to sit there, stare at the Christmas tree and listen to holiday music even though I was asking myself “why are we here” pretty much the whole time.
 
The tree at Rockefeller Center, which in past years has always been a bit of a let down when we go see it in person, looked more enchanting this year. Maybe because as we were walking away towards the Subway Station the tree started *twinkling*.
 
By the way, doesn’t Claudine look fancy in her shiny new silver coat? She looks like a little lady.
 
Happy new year.

I have to set aside these leisure days in the city every so often. It’s important. Walking around by myself aimlessly in Manhattan or sometimes with a friend – in this case, my sister-in-law. It’s easy to get caught up in your own head, your own community, your own world, when you work from home. Usually, my daily excursions include the 3 block walk to the kids’ school, nothing more. But nothing beats getting out into the world every so often to look, to taste, to smell. It makes you realize that you are just 1 small piece of the puzzle. It helps remind you why you live here, to appreciate the city which we sometimes forget to do. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a glorious 65 degrees on a late November/ early December morning.
 
Btw, I’m sort of obsessed with beans on toast after having had it here at Pastis in the Meat Packing District last Monday. I had it again when I took the girls out to dinner at a local English restaurant in our neighborhood, but I am craving this version again, with fried eggs and a savory roasted tomato. Yum!

Oh, this weather! We broke some temp records Thanksgiving weekend and just when I thought it would turn around and start getting cold for good, we get another golden weekend of sunny, 60 degree days. This weather’s been super awesome. This is the High Line in Fall. I don’t remember if I’ve been up there during this time of year. Despite the warm temperatures, the trees are all shedding their leaves and starting to look wintery against the sky.
 
So far Holiday!Cookie!Madness! has been manageable, partly due to the fact that I’m not working on any big freelance projects right now which is enabling me to jump into the week of tedious tasks without any sort of pressing time crunch pulled in different directions. How civilized. I remember last year I had a big deadline right in the middle of our string of 9 Brooklyn Flea dates. We struggled to keep the table stocked as well as man the booth so I ended up having to sit behind the table while working on my laptop trying to get these designs done for a client, bundled in my big down sleeping bag coat and fingerless gloves. It was freezing in the section where we were at. We dubbed it the “Meat Locker”. Good times. Sorta.
 
I know it’s early in the season yet, but maybe we’ll get by this month without any break downs or crying?

I know when the trees are bare and the weather turns cold for good (and the today did indeed feel like the season had finally taken its turn to more wintry temperatures) I’m going to miss these blissfully mild Fall days with its golden leaves. As dark as it gets early now (pitch black by 5pm, how dreadful!) the days seem to filled with more light, maybe because the trees are shedding leaves and allowing more sun to filter through. Let’s burn these days into our minds, shall we? We might need it for the cold days ahead…

Such a lovely night for trick or treating, especially after all that freakish snow. The weather was perfect and the neighborhood was lively and festive. Our friend who visited over the weekend from Southern California said that she couldn’t believe how many adults dressed up for Halloween in NY. I guess people take this holiday very seriously here! I mean look at the 2nd and 3rd photo. A neighbor who builds a haunted house in the yard of his brownstone builds these elaborate facades in front of his building every year. This year’s was the best by far. It’s cool to walk past the build out every day on our way to school, but see the finished structure on Halloween night where people line up to enter his haunted yard. And the dude that was sitting lifeless in a box in the middle of the yard dressed as Elvis or Evel Knievel – I don’t even know – jumped out and totally scared us. I mean screaming type of scared. I love this neighborhood. The free candy ain’t bad either.