Gotta say it again. People are nice. Thanks for all the supportive emails, orders and comments and all that over the past few months. It’s made ALL the difference in our lives, you have no idea. What can I say…it’s been a pleasure to meet such great people via this blog and if you haven’t done so before, please consider dropping a comment so I can know who you are (only if you want – I checked my stats for real over the weekend during our hosting fiasco to see what we were dealing with over on this end of things. Um, there are so many more of you than I thought).

I’ve received a few gifts over the last few months and want to share.

1. Stella, one of our favorite customers from 80%20 handed these cheerful, stripey bow flats over to Mark one day at the Flea to bring home to me. They are just happy shoes, aren’t they?

2. The mug is from my friend Rei Jin of Baily Doesn’t Bark. It’s one from her old series before she relaunched her line, so it’s “vintage” BDB. The girls freak out whenever they see the ants on the cup, hehe.

3. Lecia sent me this beautiful calendar of her photographs. It’s hanging in our office.

4. Jennifer gave me this lovely lovely necklace that I’m wearing right now. She is a blog reader living in Booklyn with a Hawaii connection who reached out to us and subsequently did some research for me and even babysat the girls. She taught them to properly do the hula and brought back grass skirts from her last trip home to Hawaii.

5. I’ve already mentioned the hats that were sent to us by Wiebke of Line and Liv in Germany. You can buy your own here.

6. Products from Amala! My friend Nichole sent me a generous care package in exchange for using a photograph of mine on their blog and now I’m in heaven. I was just thinking that day that I should maybe consider buying some eye cream because my beauty regimen had basically been reduced to nothing or whatever they have stocked at Costco (which isn’t bad – Cetaphil and Elizabeth Arden Night Cream). I was never a makeup and product junkie, but like any person really enjoyed splurging on a nice lipstick or some face cream when I had more disposable income. When we made the move to really cut things from our budget when we first had Mia, beauty products and facials went out. I started using drug store brands or nothing at all and I was fine with it. It was a far cry from the days when I worked in the beauty industry and basically had a steady supply of free products from every brand imaginable (I was using La Mer for awhile for God’s sakes). But the other day I really missed that special, nice smelling bottle of lotion. Then the package came. I piled a bit of everything on from every bottle and tube all at once. I was making up for lost time. Doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Oh, and I can’t forget Claudia from Brazil who sent the girls Havianas which I took a photo of back in August. Claudine clutched hers around for a week wherever she went like they were dolls. And Gregg from the Backdrop, one of our seasonal retailers. What other wholesale account sends YOU a thank you note when they receive your order (and ice cream over the summer, just because)? Good lord, you’re killing me with kindness.

Thank you.

I’ve played more monopoly the past few days than I care to count. And I don’t even like monopoly.

I love when Claudine asks for a nap, which she has done every afternoon we are home.

Mia saids she doesn’t want to go back to Brooklyn.

Brooklyn, indeed, does seem far away, but Claudine says she doesn’t want to live here. “I like Brooklyn. I saw a Chihuahua the other day”.

Finally, after years of wanting one, I snagged a vintage George Nelson lamp on eBay the other week. I know I could have bought a new reproduction but this one came with 20 feet of cord which means that we don’t have to hire an electrician to rewire and move our ceiling lights so that it can hang above our table. So what did the girls say when we first turned on the light? “We can see our food!!!”. Seriously. I don’t know how we lived without a light above our dining table all these years. Seems crazy now that we see the difference.

I’m in a bit of a frenzy because I have to make some decisions about the apartment quickly. We’re going away next Friday to our rented beach house (YAY!) and have decided to close our shops a few extra days after we come back to tackle the paint job and reassembly of the girls room and the new office. I’m totally undecided about a rug in our livingroom – something that can withstand kids and a cat – but I *think* I narrowed the gray paint choices down to BM’s Gray Owl or Silver Satin. I purchased a little bottle of Stonington Gray and decided that it was too dark, that I liked the room to still read as light, particularly when a friend of mine told me that her living room, which I’ve always admired as a gray I love, is painted with BM’s Sebring White which reads as so pale on a paint chip. I still have to decide on a color for the girls’ room but what I can’t get my head around is the logistics of painting and setting up the room while still trying to maintain normal bedtimes. Can anyone tell me how this is going to work?? Do we move Mia’s bed into Caludine’s room (tight fit!!) while we work on their room? Do we paint first before the bunk bed gets delivered? What? Help!

Here’s another question…I’ve suddenly got into my head that instead of painting the kitchen backsplash I might want to wallpaper it with something like Ferm Living’s Forest Flower. Is this a crazy idea? I’ve ordered samples and the site saids the wallpaper is washable….but…is this crazy?

By the way, you can see more details of our home over on my guest post at Decor8 which is up today. I also forgot to mention a fun interview that we did last month on Heart Handmade called the “Other Half” which interviews the significant other of an artist/business owner, but since Mark and I co-own our biz, Marichelle interviewed both of us. I’ll hopefully have some other exciting press mentions for the fall that I’m working on lately. Happy Friday!

It started before Claudine was born when Mia and I found 2 medium size My Little Ponies in a freebox in the neighborhood. I never played with My Little Ponies when I was a kid and never had a horse obsession like some girls that age, so it never occurred to me that she may like them. A few months later at a visit to the toy store, I admit to being enticed by the saturated colors and miniature models of sweet cakes and desserts in this over-the-top ice cream shoppe (I am a complete sucker for play food). It was the first “girly” toy purchase I ever made. Mia wasn’t into dolls or dressing up at that point, so I thought it was interesting that she chose this as her special toy. By the time Claudine came along and was old enough to play with the ponies, we had amassed a little village of saccharin sweet houses and accessories with more ponies and play food. They’ve named them all, going by the little tattoo images on their butts and they both narrate the ponies’ adventures in high-pitched “falsetto” voices. When a friend of mine came over and revealed that he knew everything there was to know about the ponies, including proper names and personalities because he worked on the Hasbro account at R/GA, Mia flipped and developed a funny little girl-crush on him.

The girls play with the ponies every single day, sometimes for hours, so despite all the annoying little pieces that get spread around everywhere, it is money well spent. This, however, also means that there is a lot of fighting, hoarding, screaming, stealing and miserableness for everyone. This kind of sibling fighting is new to me, folks. My brother and I are 6 years apart so he could care less about my limited edition collectible Cher doll (yes! I didn’t have a Barbie, but I had Cher). The only thing we remotely fought over was the Atari or Commodore 64, but you know, we’d just compete against each other so it was all good. But 2 little girls fighting over plastic, technicolor ponies? Kill me now.

I’m not a super fan of mushrooms unless they are morels, oyster or porcinis (ok. I guess I do like mushrooms), but I do love marveling at the intricate, complicated formations of fungi. The delicate underside of these shitake mushrooms that we had with our salmon recently were spectacular – so fragile and soft, but with a most beautiful coloring. Some of the photos (I know, I got carried away) were suggestive of peony petals and fabric pleats.

I love seeing the reaction of kids whenever they see balloons. Their faces light up, arms and fingers point upward with big smiles, and then there’s that irresistible urge to run clutching strings, balloons in tow. Every. Single. Time.

We went to a really lovely dinner party/playdate on the upper west side over the weekend and found these personalized mini pumpkins as table settings at each plate, all drawn by hand by my friend’s 6 year old daughter. Such a cute idea, and now they are sitting on our table (yeah, who needs to go pumpkin picking?). It’s a really rainy day here in NYC. Not so great if you have to be out and about, but sorta nice to watch it from the inside. Can you believe I still haven’t made Mia’s batwings? it’s getting down to the wire and it might have to be a hackjob since I have many deadlines and I’m sick on top of that. What are your kids going as for Halloween?

Kids have a knack for playing with toys in unexpected ways. We lost the body to these weird, latex princess ghost dresses, but the girls still play with them. And why not, when you can put a rubber monster finger puppet on top?

(and no, Lara, you can’t guess because I think you know what this is).