and POOF! just like that theo is EIGHTEEN! x00xx

January 27, 2024 in family

(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.

aloha! x0x

January 23, 2024 in family, holiday

since 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.

our BIRTHDAY QUEEN! x0x0x

January 17, 2024 in family, pet

miss 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

PRAISE JESUS we made it to january! x0xx

January 09, 2024 in family, holiday

(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

HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR! x0xx

January 01, 2024 in family, holiday

wishing you all peace, happiness and beautiful experiences in 2024. x0x0xx

REPOST: the monkey

December 25, 2023 in family, holiday

(even at 15 my grandmother seemed to know exactly what she wanted)

my paternal grandmother was fierce. she lived the way she wanted and you pretty much just went along. she liked things a certain way and if something wasn’t to her choosing she would wave her hand, say, “oh FISH!” and carry on as she deemed appropriate. you didn’t really want to get in her way.

HAPPY, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my darling parents! x00xx

December 22, 2023 in family

this year marks the FIFTY-EIGHTH (i think) year that my parents have been married. that is longer than my whole life and while i recognize that that is the typical way of things (“first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage”) i still find it absolutely staggering. CONGRATULATIONS my beautiful parents on lives well lived and finding and sharing the love, support and humor to reach this wonderful milestone. x0x0xx

REPOST: gingerbread houses

December 19, 2023 in holiday, family

* i am feeling really SAPPY and a bit gutted because this is the last year theo will be home to help with the gingerbread houses before he goes to college… i have no idea where the time went and i kind of can’t wait to be a grandma so i can share this tradtion with littles again… x0x

my birthday twin! x0x0x

December 12, 2023 in holiday

(anne marie and me on our fiftieth birthday! )

today is my FIFTY-FIFTH birthday! i am stunned and quite horrified to be associated with this GIANT number that is odd to boot (i really prefer even numbers.) i am not sure how to process this milestone and realize i need to start thinking of myself as SIXTY because that’s what happens when you round up and time seems to be moving at warp speed (theo is GRADUATING this spring and hopefully going to college in the fall - HOW did that happen??) so i need to be prepared.

HAPPY SINT! x0x

December 05, 2023

* today is SINTERKLAAS the dutch winter holiday. it actually starts in early november when sint arrives in amsterdam on a yacht from spain. there is a big parade after he debarks and he rides through the canals on his giant white horse, trident. this parade is the only time you can catch a glimpse of sint… unlike american santa he does not ring bells on street corners for the salvation army or sit in photo booths taking christmas present orders or show up at holiday parties. he is tall and lean (like most dutch people) and chic. he wears long robes and a pointy hat like a bishop. for me, this holiday marks the beginning of the holiday madness… from sint we will move on to hanukkah, christmas and finally new years. i LOVE celebrating all the holidays but am always grateful for the quiet of january. x0x

the "baby" pine street cottage! x0x

November 28, 2023 in dining room, hank, living room, pet, residential interior, sofa

(the baby guest house of my pine street project)

in the spring of 2021 my pine street cottage project was featured on the cover of 5280Home. it was so EXCITING! this darling house has a calm, neutral palette with lots of texture and dimension in the textiles, pillows, throws and wall art. at that time, the family was remodeling the guest house, which i was so happy to furnish. so now there is a baby cottage!

REPOST: raisin-free cranberry sauce

November 21, 2023 in holiday, family

* something really interesting happened to me a few weeks ago… i tried eating blueberries and i LIKED them! previously, i have only enjoyed them in eggos and i’m pretty sure those aren’t real blueberries. hank really likes them too so we have just been scarfing them down. my kids were wondering if i might give raisins another try… of course that is just ABSURD! which is why i am reposting my favorite raisin-free cranberry sauce recipe in anticipation of thanksgiving… ENJOY! x0x

* theo went to a “friendsgiving” the other night and brought my cranberries and they were a bit HIT with the teen crowd! x0x

braces!

November 14, 2023 in family

(8th grade was the epitome of awkward for me!)

i got braces the summer of 1982, right before my 8th grade year started. for some reason, i also chopped off all of my hair. this was a super unfortunate combination. my children are both delighted and horrified by my school photo that year. my daughter also got braces during the summer before 8th grade. she has them on the top and the bottom. i don’t really understand why she needed them at all because her teeth were perfectly straight before (unlike mine, which were seriously wonky on the top AND the bottom, although the ortho only braced the top.) i think it has something to do with her bite and how her teeth will work in the future. anyway - she is pulling them off far better than i did (to be fair, she did NOT cut off all of her hair) but no one will ever even see her braces because she has perfected the closed mouth mona lisa smile and we don’t have any photographic proof that she has braces at all. despite my best interests, i am incapable of smiling without showing every single tooth i’ve got, braced or crooked. lucy’s generation has been practicing their angles and learning about their “good sides” with selfies for years so you will not catch them in an unflattering photo.

it's THAT DAY! x0x

November 07, 2023

HAPPY, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! x00x

October 31, 2023 in hank, holiday, pet

(halloween hank as a turkey! i think he’s worried that we’ll throw him on the thanksgiving table…)

there are two things i love about halloween: dog costumes and candy. all the scary, bloody, gruesome stuff i could really do without. also the WORRY about whether my kids will make it home alive. this year hank is going as a ROASTED TURKEY! i am beside myself because i think his back legs already look like drumsticks.

the postives of being positive! x0x

October 24, 2023 in family

at the beginning of the month i had another bout with covid. this time felt very different than when i had it two years ago…rather than being almost delirious with a horrendous sore throat and feeling like i might die for well over a week, i was headachey, nauseous and had a bit of a sore throat for a day and a half. i thought maybe it was the twenty-nine hour flu. at first i was flat - the kind where you contemplate getting a glass of water for like half an hour before you actually make it to the sink. and then i felt MUCH better. this was super exciting because i couldn’t go out, i couldn’t take meetings, i couldn’t run errands but i was actually pretty functional. you can get out of ANYTHING when you have covid. my first husband was making market and pharmacy runs, my meetings were all pushed and i didn’t have to cook because no one wanted to eat any food i prepared, including me. i only had lucy (and hank) with me because she’d had covid recently and we thought she’d still be full of antibodies. so i was in this funny little time cocoon where i was stuck in my house but i could do whatever i wanted. and to top it off, people were dropping off lovely get well treats! it was kind of awesome.

UPDATE on BIG MAMA

October 17, 2023 in family

BIG MAMA is getting ever more brutal. she had a guest arrive a few days ago… i thought she might be a niece or a younger cousin (she was quite a bit smaller than BIG MAMA) who came to check out CU and our darling coach prime - did you see how he squeaked past arizona state just when you thought he wouldn’t? I LOVE HIM!! anyway, the niece or cousin was mostly hanging out on the upper deck sunning herself as college age kids are apt to do and then all of sudden she was wrapped up in a ball of BIG MAMA’s web, sucked DRY! i’m pretty sure this is cannibalism… familial cannibalism even, which feels worse. i am really disturbed by BIG MAMA now. i don’t do well when creatures eat their guests or roommates. years ago, we had two goldfish: nemo and blemo. one day i saw that blemo was just floating on the top and his fins looked all tatty and frayed. i tried to convince myself that he had gotten caught up in the filter, even though he did look a little eaten. after the funeral in the backyard, i procured a new roommate for nemo. and a few days later that blemo was floating at the top as well. at that point i figured nemo had had plenty to eat so i just stopped sprinkling fish flakes in the tank. eventually he was a floater too and that was the end of our goldfish. nemo was unceremoniously flushed down the toilet, NOT buried properly like the two blemos he ate.

PLEASE VOTE if you enjoyed our winter park project! x0x0xx

October 11, 2023

please VOTE for our winter park project to win 5280 TOP HOME OF THE YEAR! we were so excited to be included in the magazine but it would be AMAZING to be the reader’s choice. click here to vote! thank you so much! x00xx

here is a link to see the full project!

tune up

October 10, 2023 in family, hank

(here is my mother checking under the hood of her friend’s car in college)

periodically, everything needs a tune-up… your car needs the oil changed, the filters need to be replaced on your HVAC, the dryer vents need to be flushed out, you are due for a bikini wax… our nervous systems also need check ups and repair. the summer after my divorce i went to a retreat at the chopra center to work on restoring my psyche, which was pretty much a mess. i learned LOTS of helpful things like how to meditate (who is better equipped to teach that than deepak?), the benefits of green smoothies, yoga and gratitude and how detrimental refined sugar is, possibly worse than crack!

BIG MAMA is back!

October 03, 2023 in residential interior

(BIG MAMA a few years ago with a big dragonfly she caught!)

it is the beginning of october and there are now witches and skeletons and ghouls and black cats and gravestones all over boulder. it is startling to walk around my neighborhood… hank and i are constantly getting surprised (and frightened) by all the decorations so we are hanging out in the park now to avoid the grotesque. one lady we can’t avoid, however, is BIG MAMA. she the humongous spider who takes up residence under the corner drainpipe of my house each fall. we can see her perfectly because of the giant window in my stairwell. as much as i try to avert my eyes each time i go up or down the stairs, i am inexplicably drawn to her presence and almost always peek, risking TERRIBLE dreams.