DC

I went to DC and only took 5 photos. Here are 4 of them:

I went on a Maryland/DC trip a couple weekends ago with Grace. She’s from the area, her whole family is still there. We did some great thrifting outside of Baltimore on Saturday, and did stuff around DC on Sunday. Like hug a huge bulldog, go to a couple museums, walk around and eat popsicles. I’m not really into contemporary conceptual art (if something doesn’t make sense and doesn’t make the world more beautiful, I don’t see the point) but the sea of blue rubber hanging string by Jesús Rafael Soto at the Hirshhorn was fun.

Montauk

We spent three days in Montauk (the tippy-top of Long Island) earlier this week to celebrate Dylan’s birthday. I don’t think I even need to say it, but it was beautiful. These photos were taken at Navy beach, a rocky beach on the Long Island Sound coast of the island. We’re both so obsessed with finding cool rocks and shells so this was a nice place to spend an afternoon. There were little fish in the water too!

Later we headed to Duryea’s Lobster Deck for lunch and hours of sitting on the deck in the sun.

This came out blurry, sorry, but it’s the only photo of the backyard at Ruschmeyer’s where we stayed. Everyone I know said to avoid Ruschmeyer’s at all costs, that it’s “a shit show”, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the weekend bar scene. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were all very quiet. It felt like camping, but with a TV to watch the Olympics on and a wonderful breakfast to eat on the picnic tables in the sun.

Last beach day on the other coast. Fewer rocks, just as nice.

Tuesday was rainy. We rented a car to drive home, and stopped at the lighthouse on the way back.

Summer Produce

We’ve been steadily harvesting from our fire escape garden over the past month: tomatoes every week, a handful of strawberries, a big bunch of chard. It’s not exactly satiable amounts, but freshly-picked produce that we grew ourselves just tastes better than store-bought, or even what we get from the CSA.

My mom was also a DREAM mom this week and shipped us plums from California. We have a tree in our backyard there that I eat off of all summer. This is the first summer I won’t be going home, so it was so nice to get a shoebox filled with them.

Phone photo of the tree via mom (who knows how to take phone pix and text now!)

Moses

Moses is growing up. He was lounging on the rug and even though it was getting really dark, the light was interesting so I snapped a couple glamour shots of our handsome friend.

If you can’t get enough of him check out baby-moses.tumblr.com for Baby Mo’s very own all GIF blog.

Studio Additions

It’s been almost 3 months since I installed the shelves and transformed the studio into an actual appropriate workspace. So, we decided it was high time to give you an update on what’s been going on around here.

First of all, FLATFILES. Check that off the list. We scored a pretty good deal on two sets of five-drawer flatfiles on Craigslist from this nice man in Long Island who actually delivered them to me and helped me get them up the stairs. After moving them all around, we decided on putting them perpendicular to the wall allowing for the sewing table to butt up against them. Even though they stick out into the room a bit, it actually creates more space and makes it feel like a real office (plus you can put magnets and cool stuff on the side of them).

Now enter the Eames Hang-It-All. Yes, I know everyone’s got one but so what. We have a pretty great primary color/strong graphic thing happening on that wall with our prints by Damien Correll, paintings by Tuesday Bassen and Mia Christopher, and the poster by Chris Silas Neal. Come on, the Hang-It-All was practically a necessity. Plus, now we can hang stuff on it.

With the addition of the flatfiles, the love seat was forced between our desks. At first I was opposed to this, but it has since become a perfect place to watch YouTube videos with Baby Moses.

Also, the flatfiles allowed us to empty out and get rid of the shabby black cabinet and the red Ikea locker (if any one in Brooklyn wants to take them from us, by all means we need to get rid of them, there’s pictures here)

Some other additions include a new laptop, a subscription to rdio and a little FM Radio my mom got me for emergencies (now we pretty much just listen to Drake and Hot97′s “Throwback at Noon”).

I almost forgot the best part – We bought a used AC from a friend and it makes our studio THE PLACE TO BE in the summer. We only venture from our cool little box to get soft-serve cones with rainbow sprinkles when we hear the ice cream truck coming down our street.

Farm Breakfast

I have to say my first Spring and Summer in New York has been amazing so far. Everything is green and alive (quite unlike Southern California). Sure, this week was HOT (in the 90s with thick humidity) but then the rain came and everything sort of reset. The thunderstorm yesterday was the biggest I’d ever witnessed. I bet our tomatoes and chard on the fire escape garden loved it.

Recently, we signed up for the Bushwick Food Co-op CSA and now, each week, we get to pick up farm fresh eggs, veggies, fruit and flowers. Our first share was overflowing with strawberries so we had to put them to quick use. We ate kale and eggs on toast with fresh strawberries on the side for a couple breakfasts in a row. Leah also baked a really tasty Strawberry Rhubarb crisp to finish off the berries before they could go bad.

Summertime

Liz dip-dying & Emma with her fantastic tie-dyed tank. For Bushwick Open Studios, we spent the past two days in our friend Megan’s Bushwick backyard, sitting in the sun and making things.

I gardened, Diwa laughed, Tuesday and Dylan wore aqua and drank beer.

Fire Escape Garden

Dylan moved to New York with most of his stuff in old wooden crates, and while we made a bookshelf out of most of them, there was one left over. We hung onto it for 6 months, thinking we’d eventually turn it into a planter. It took Dylan leaving for a 10-day California trip for my mom and I to decide to finally plant a little garden. We headed to the Union Square Greenmarket this morning for seedlings. Clockwise from the top, strawberries, swiss chard, and eggplant.

Moses soon interfered.

I couldn’t resist buying a few types of heirloom tomatoes, even though I had already grown two tomato plants at home from seeds. There are going to be so many tomatoes now! We also picked up two more planters because the one wood crate just wouldn’t fit all of these plants. So excited to see everything grow.

Mia Christopher

My friend Mia Christopher recently sent me an amazing package full of all sorts of things she makes — stickers, postcards, cat earrings, and this beautiful wood panel painting. I’ve been wearing the earrings nonstop, and they can be found in her Etsy shop along with an assortment of other handmade earrings.

Moses approves.

The little people have found a temporary home over the love seat in the office. Eventually I’ll move the painting somewhere smaller where it fits better and is easier to look at. We’ve updated this corner a bit more since we first posted about the studio last month. We have few new plants (including one in this Geo Planter I’ve been wanting forever), and the Modkat litter box for Moses (that yellow thing in the bottom left, so pretty you probably didn’t know it was a litter box).

Baby Moses

Meet Baby Moses, the newest and littlest member to our household! He’s a 10-week-old Devon Rex and I already love him so much.

Believe it or not, despite a lot of cat-centric work I’ve done, I’ve never lived with a cat before. I’m allergic to pretty much everything, and so I grew up with poodles. Somehow, miraculously, I’m not allergic to Baby Moses (or, as we’ve taken to calling him, Baby Mo, Baby, Momo, Little Chief, Prince of Egypt, Prince of Bushwick). He has short wavy hair, much like poodles, and really acts like one too, but much quieter. He craves attention: always wants to play, won’t leave Dylan’s lap, and jumps on our faces to wake us up in the morning.

Baby Moses will probably be the star of our lives from now on, so please excuse my Instagram feed if all you see from now on are these big ears and blue eyes.