Home

Decor

You Need To Know About Lorena Canals’ Washable (!) Rugs

September 28, 2018

Relevant to yesterday's post, here is yet another example of why women (and moms, specifically) are set to just go ahead and run the world: Because we come up with genius inventions not just "because" (or just because our egos need a little stroking; ahem, Elon Musk, love you but dude, the "kid-sized" submarine?)...but because they are needed. 

You've heard me whine and whine and whine here for yearrrrrs about my simultaneous love of throw rugs and total rug-related phobias and/or catastrophes. I love the way rugs look; I love the way rugs feel. I do not love that they specialize in attracting dogs that want to pee on them and babies that want to throw up on them, because any rug that lives in my house must be pristine, or the aforementioned phobias come out and I have to sidestep around its borders like a weirdo.

I've bought cowhide rugs. Tossed them. Fluffy rugs. Sacrificed them on the altar of Virgil. Gorgeous woven rugs. Moved them to a "cleaner" spot, then to another, and then gave them away. And now I've landed on a semipermanent solution, using outdoor rugs indoors...except a) that seems wasteful, given that I have to replace them once a season, and b) that still does not solve my sidestepping-around-the-borders-after-a-pee-speck-touches-them problem.

Continue Reading
DIARY

Sitting In My Backyard, Thinking About Shutters

September 17, 2018

Fact: When life gets tough, kittens help.

Weirdly enough, I haven't been crying much about moving - the actual fact of leaving this house and going to another one. Don't get me wrong: I've been crying about other things - oh god, so much, to the point where I wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and have to mainline six glasses of water because my body is fresh out of fluid - but about the house itself, I've tried to be relatively all-business, all-the-time.

I mean, we're in escrow. I have solar panel lease transfers to sign. Boxes to pack. Schools to notify. Children to keep safeguarded from everything that's swirling around them. We have to be out of this house in three weeks.

Continue Reading
Recipes

Thank Goodness For Ice Cream Cake

August 28, 2018

You know those Dairy Queen ice cream cakes with, like, rainbow clowns or whatever on them? I always wanted one when I was a kid, but Dairy Queens are in short supply in Manhattan, and my mother has an angel food birthday cake tradition, and so poor, poor young me never had ice cream cake.

I know; it's tragic.

It has, however, been more than rectified, because I now have two children and oh god, so many birthday parties to go to, which means I also have oh god, so much access to ice cream cake. The latest iteration in the Get Ice Cream Cake For Jordan mission: Erin made the thing that you see pictured above, and yup yup yup, it is absolutely as good as it looks, to the point where I insisted she take the leftovers home lest I start thinking that ice cream cake for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) might be a good idea.

Continue Reading
Home

Everything I Know About Selling and Buying Houses

August 22, 2018

(Almost) ready to go.

Here is why I think I am at least marginally qualified to put up a post about everything you need to know in order to buy or sell a house: Because as home-selling and home-buying processes go, I have been through it.

We're talking transcontinental trips involving viral gastroenteritis, hospital trips, and 19-hour plane delays. Bidding wars that we lost, and lost again, and then lost again and again and again. Last-minute sale cancellations that took place in front of an extremely large group of colleagues and/or actual people who were paying me to be a professional-type human being, many of whom thought that I had actually died because of the sound I made. Total, I-cannot-do-this-anymore, full-body-and-brain paralysis.

Continue Reading
powered by chloédigital