family
* this is the first year we will be in california for easter since i was really young… i am not sure who is going to make the buns and the quiche - me or mom - but i am so happy to be able to celebrate with my family. unfortunately, TT will be back at school but i have a direct line to the easter bunny so i know that theo will still get his basket in the dorm. HAPPY, HAPPY EASTER everyone! x0x0xx
Read MoreHAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dearest babela bu! this will be the FIFTEENTH time we’ve celebrated you and that feels like a LOT but also like it happened in a blink. i LOVE you so my beautiful, hilarious, SPICY girl… you keep me (and most everyone else) on my toes delighting and surprising me with your fierceness, your out of the box thinking, your creativity and your absolutely GIANT heart! wishing you a year full of love and peace and good books and early bedtimes (just what every teenager wants!) i love you higher than the sky is high and deeper than the ocean is deep! x0x0xx
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* this is the first seder we will be celebrating in california. i am just beside myself that my darling boy will be home from college for a few days and will be able to celebrate with us. of course, we will also have my sweetie girl in attendance. i will not actually be hosting this year as we have been invited to the home of one of my dearest, oldest friends. i might have to stay late and vacuum HER house at the end of the night because vacuuming up the matzo crumbs is an essential part of the seder “order” for me! HAPPY, HAPPY PASSOVER all! x0x0xx
Read Morei am so thrilled to share that my denver project is featured in this month’s denver life magazine! this remodel was such a joy because we assembled such a terrific team: architect anne marie kaufman of AMPk architecure, sanctuary kitchen and bath design, builders DT construct, artist sarah kinn, photographer heather burns of HBK photography and of course, my wonderful clients. THANK YOU to sahale greenwood of denver life for including this project in april’s edition. here is a link to the article and here is a link to view the full project! x0x0x
Read More(this quilt has been hanging in my bedroom for over twenty years… i LOVE it! x0x0)
one of the BEST things about moving back to california is being near my parents. it is so easy to pop over to their house and see what they are up to. most of the time, my mother is in her studio working on a quilt or three. i love to watch her process and i also love having her work hanging throughout my house. her quilts are more like fabric paintings in her use of color and the way she upends traditional patterns and reconfigures them or creates original blocks. her quilts add warmth, texture, color and dimension to my house and now you could have one in your home as well! i will be featuring a different quilt each month. contact me if you are interested in more information: jennifer@jenniferrhode.com the full collection is on view here.
Read More(i LOVE these fun dishes… even the box is adorable!)
i am just beside myself today because my rainbow heller plates and cups and bowls arrived. i grew up in the 70’s with these guys - we had large yellow plates, small orange plates and both yellow and orange cups and bowls. i was a pretty simple eater (i still have the palette of a five year old) so my mom would cut up veggies and fruit and cheese and meat and i would make “faces” out of everything on the orange plates before i ate it. i have big memories of cheerios or mint chip ice cream in the bowls. and i loved laying my fingers against the curved cup handles when drinking my milk. at some point after we got older, my mom replaced the plastic set with ceramic plates (still yellow!) but i always thought the heller ones were more fun. and now i have my own collection just in time for outdoor dinners on the deck. how many of you grew up with these too? x0x
Read More(sunset on the beach with TT at iberostar last year)
last night we picked up my darling boy from the oakland airport. he survived (and reveled in) FIVE nights of mardi gras in new orleans, culminating in an all night “tequila sunrise” that rang in fat tuesday. now he is in his bed and i think he might remain there for the remainder of his spring break.
Read More(back in days when all of my loves would end up in the same bed by morning…)
i LOVE being a mama… especially when my kids are asleep! they look like little angels (even now that they are teenagers and hank is technically middle aged.) their rhythmic, peaceful breathing (hank’s sounds more like a train) is really soothing and makes me feel like everthing is right in the world. i do not have a consistent meditation practice, but when i do it, i always crawl back in bed with my sweeties and lay one hand on someone’s chest so i can feel it going up and down. these days that sweetie is usually hank because my other babies sometimes tell me they need “space” and sometimes they even lock their doors! luckily hank never needs space. when they wake up we never know what will happen. sometimes they are delightful and sometimes they are less so. even when they are less so, my love for them feels so BIG it’s almost painful. i am so GRATEFUL to be the mother of these lovey darlings. loads of LOVE to all of the mothers and those who mother. x0x0x0x
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* this is the last seder i will be hosting in our boulder house… i have so many wonderful memories of passover celebrations around this table and i am so grateful for all of the lovely friends who shared in them! HAPPY, HAPPY PASSOVER! x0x0x
seder means “order.” there is an order to every aspect of the passover celebration from the way the seder plate is prepared to which course is served first and second and third to what prayer is said, what song is sung, what question is asked and when. even though i am not jewish, i have been hosting passover dinners for nearly twenty years. inevitably i mix up at least one aspect of the order. sometimes i even schedule the seder for the wrong evening - the jewish calendar is confusing and i am not always sure if “begins at sundown” means the dinner should take place that night or the next. i give myself a pass on this as a shiksa mama raising jewish children. i have enough trouble with simple time telling (my mom thinks that’s because i had the chicken pox the week i was meant to learn it in first grade) and adjusting to different time zones and daylight savings.
Read More(the sun porch of the cottage)
i am so excited that my pine street guest house project has been featured in an article on houzz by becky harris. this charming cottage was redesigned by architect lisa laursen of lisa laursen design and photographed by heather knierim of HBK photography… hank, of course, served as the primary model. it was so much fun to work with my superstar clients, jess and zach zeldner, after having collaborated with them on their primary residence a few years prior… (that project ended up on the cover of 5280Home and was also really fun and rewarding!) MANY THANKS to all involved and especially to becky harris of houzz! x0x0x
Read Morei am flabbergasted to share that my dearest, darling baby girl is FOURTEEN years old today. i honestly can’t believe it. maybe because she is my youngest, i never anticipated that she would actually grow up. but in her powerful, spicy, hilarious, cheeky way she has marched ahead and become a full-on teenager, a YOUNG WOMAN even (i can’t say “lady” - she burps and swears like a sailor!) this last year has been a doozy with loads of changes and milestones both for lucy and for our whole family: her bat mitzvah, theo preparing to leave home for college, ALL of us planning a move to california this summer, lucy’s grammy worthy lashes, theo’s mustache, the sale of both of our boulder homes, the purchase of our new berkeley house and lu preparing to attend my old high school… JUICE THE JACKETS! i have already pulled out my old cheer uniform for her - maybe she will wear it for halloween?
Read Moreour family has made the decision to move to berkeley, california (my home town) this summer. we are feeling EVERYTHING: excitement, sadness, fear, hope and loads of gratitude both for the amazing friends and experiences we’ve had in boulder and for the opportunity to return to california and all the places and people we love there. things have been pretty hectic with the selling and purchasing of homes, planning and packing and paring down and trying to squeeze in extra time with special friends. we also have two pending graduations: theo from boulder high school and lucy from casey middle. but i wanted to officially share the news… AND let you know that as part of the paring down i am selling off the following items:
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my whole life there have been two essential easter recipes served at our brunch: my mother’s mushroom crust quiche and her easter buns. they are both a little trashy… the quiche has smashed up saltines in the crust and the buns are made with the dough that comes in a can you bang on the counter to pop open. but they are both delicious. the quiche (or KWEE-CHEE as theo used to call it) LOOKS a little more elegant, but the buns are never pretty. the filling always squirts out and the jam slides around so they are just a mess. i have tried and tried to clean them up to no avail. when new people come for easter, they usually bypass them on the buffet and i have to force them to try one… no one has ever been disappointed. AND they are both still yummy, cold, the next morning as leftovers. happy, happy easter all! x0xx
Read More(how PRETTY is this hotel nestled into mountains?)
there are few places i like to visit as much as the broadmoor. my heart just soars when i am there and i feel kind of giddy. set against some group of colorado mountains and centered around a big, beautiful lake, it is unbelievably scenic. the interior spaces are so detailed and intricate and layered you are always discovering something new. on this visit, i really started noticing all the swans. aside from the actual swans who live on the lake, there are swans throughout the resort painted on the walls, tiled into floor mosaics, featured in oil paintings and even edible meringue swans available at the little patisserie. i HAVE been watching “the feud” featuring truman capote and his swans obsessively, so maybe that’s why i was so drawn to them.
Read Morewe’re sending you all so much LOVE on this valentine’s day! x0x0x
photo: heather knierim of HBK photography
(the photo we used on theo’s baby announcement… he was only six weeks old)
theo was born january 27, 2006 in amsterdam, the netherlands. overnight i was transformed from a regular person into a MOTHER, which is something else entirely. i am so grateful for that (despite the fact that i have never really slept properly since, my belly feels like memory foam, i am always at least a little bit worried [will he fall into a canal? will someone convince him to get into a white van? will he join a weird cult? will he start eating raisins? - which are DISGUSTING, of course! will he be a good husband? WHAT will he tell his therapist about me in his forties?] i am frequently exhausted and i have been dreading this birthday since the day he arrived.) it felt like he was a baby for a LONG time - maybe because he was not a good napper and we spent A LOT of time together.
Read Moresince theo is a SENIOR this year (honestly, it is HARD for me to even write that as i am already torturing myself with anticipatory grief when i should probably just be enjoying him) we are trying to do all “the things” before he goes to college. so we went to hawaii over the holidays. i have not been in at least thirty years and the kids and first have never been so it was pretty exciting.
Read Moremiss rosie is SIX YEARS OLD today! i cannot emphasize enough how much JOY she has brought to all of our lives. we just cannot imagine our days without her. HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY darling rosie! wishing you a year full of sunny walks, steak snacks, cuddles and naps… we LOVE you so! x0x0x
Read More(artwork: lesik aleksandr)
i DO love the holidays and thank goodness because we do them ALL: thankgiving, sinterklaas, hanukkah, my birthday (i DON’T love this one as much!), christmas and new years. i love baking the cookies, making the gingerbreads, lighting the candles, driving around to see the lights, putting out our clogs, decorating the tree, hanging the stockings, eating the latkes (i DON’T like making them - too messy!), hiding the shelf elves and their reindeer friend, going to the parties, delivering the cookies, sending the holiday cards (although this is always a loaded task!) receiving the holiday cards (much more FUN!), giving the gifts, enjoying my mother’s sticky buns, finding out who got the monkey and spending time with family. but i am always EXHAUSTED by the time we get to january and so grateful to bunker down and have a super quiet month (after i have VACUUMED up all the pine needles, which is my absolute favorite post-christmas task.) wishing you all a quiet, restful month with lots of sleep and TV! (my recent favorites: lessons in chemistry, black cake and the gilded age.) x0x0xx
Read Morewishing you all peace, happiness and beautiful experiences in 2024. x0x0xx
