Whirlwind

Hello from Charleston,

We have been down here a week tomorrow, and this has been by far been one of the craziest weeks of our lives! Our house in Brooklyn was shown starting last Sunday, the day we left town, and by the end of that day we already had offers on our house. Then, starting last Monday we began looking at houses here in Charleston, and on Tuesday we met our dream house. We walked into it and absolutely fell in love, it is possibly even better than anything that we could have planned ourselves. Among many details that we love it even has bamboo and palm trees in the yard, two things that I have always dreamed of having! All of the above views are within a 5 minute drive of the house.

On Wednesday our offer was accepted on the house here, AND on the same day we accepted an offer on our house in Brooklyn, from a family who really loves the house there! Right now the contracts for both houses are being drawn up and ratified, inspections are being done on the houses and all of the wheels are in motion towards this huge move that we are making. Frank and I both feel so blessed and amazed at it all, the ease with which this is happening feels like such a sign and confirmation that we are headed in the right direction and with the right timing.

We are just amazed, and walking in faith with each step.

Heading towards a life that we really had only dreamed of!

Once we get back to Brooklyn next Friday I'm sure that I'll be able to reflect and share much more about our time here, and maybe more about our dream house!

For now, we are putting one foot in front of the other.

xo

P.S. My friend Arron, a choreographer, recently composed a dance piece based on my painting Awakening, about dreams coming true. You can read her thoughts about the piece and see a video of the performance here on her blog.

Before and After: our garden level

Today we are going two floors down from my last post about our bedroom on our top floor. We are going down to the garden level of our house, which has seen many incarnations since we moved in. On this floor we had to pretty much gut out everything and reconfigure it all, as you'll see in the before pictures it was dark, dingy and uncared for. After our initial renovation I used this floor as my studio (such a nice big space!) until we needed some extra income, so we started renting out the garden level as a separate apartment. Our house is a legal "two family" residence, as many brownstones are in Brooklyn, which has been really nice for us to be able to rent out our bottom floor and have an income from our house. It has a separate entrance, underneath our front brownstone steps, so it is fully separate from our top two floors of the house, but we do have a stairway that connects the two floors which we can open up if we choose. Here is a view of the entry way on the garden level when we bought the house,

and here is the same view today,

In preparation for selling the house we stopped renting out the garden level last December, and we have started using the whole building for ourselves again. You can see the stairs in the above picture that head up to our kitchen and parlor level. We converted the front room on the garden level into a playroom, which the kids are thrilled about. Here is the front room before,

and after,

another view, before,

and after,

and, since I think that the playroom is just about the cutest thing ever, here is another quick view...

At the back of the house on this floor we now have our guest room, which was another pretty scary looking kitchen when we bought the house, here it is before,

and here it is after, this is the part of the room that was the kitchen for our rental unit,

another before of the same space,

and after,

here is where we have our guest bed, on the other side of this large room,

and here is a before shot of the bathroom on this floor,

and after.

I'll be back with the before and after pictures of our new front door in my next post!

Before and After: the master bedroom

The "before" shots of our bedroom are confusing, because to create all of our bedrooms we gutted out all of the walls on the top floor of our house, and then reconfigured the whole space. In the top photo you are looking through to where the kids room now is, from my last post. Where that door way is we put a wall and added our walk-in closet (one of my favorite additions to the house!), and then behind that our bedroom. Here is Frank's recently finished painting of our bedroom, he posted about it on his blog here,

You can see the back wall of our bedroom with the closet beyond that, so the painting is a good "after" shot from the same view as the first picture. During the staging of our house as we've been getting it ready to go on the market, our realtor asked us to reconfigure our bedroom furniture, to make it feel like more of an "oasis"

Here's what the staged version looks like now,

One of the ideas that our realtor is really trying to use for our house is that you can live in a civilized way with kids (I really can't write that without smiling), and part of that was making the master bedroom feel really inviting, like you just want to fall into the bed. They asked us to get all white sheets, to make our bed feel "cloud like". Now, after having the all white sheets for a few weeks I am in love with it, it feels so clean and inviting, and makes the space feels more streamlined and relaxing. 

Next up in the before and after series, will be the playroom on the garden level of our house.

Before and After: the kid's room

It has been ages since I posted the before and after renovation tale of our Brooklyn home. Now, as we are preparing to sell it, I really wanted to finish the tale and let you see more of our renovation. This one is particularly shocking, as when we bought the house there was actually an old scary kitchen where the kid's room is now. Here it is before,

and after, 

another before,

and another after,

It is so different that it is hard for me to even remember it as it was before the renovation, even though I lived through it!

Here is a view of the opposite wall, before,

We covered up that doorway (looking into what is now our bedroom) making it into one of the walls in the kid's room, that I have decorated with special photos, art and keepsakes. Here it is after,

Next up will be the tale of our master bedroom renovation!

Thaw

Yesterday we had the pleasure of being outside without our heavy coats (or even any coat at all!) with the temperature reaching a very spring like and unseasonable 65 degrees Fahrenheit! The park was so crowded and everyone seemed to have a smile on their face, we enjoyed the playground for what felt like the first time in months,

Watching the huge piles of snow, that have slowly turned into dirty gray heaps, melt away to almost nothing was pure joy!

I have been hit hard with the flu this week, spending a few days in bed with a fever and generally feeling awful, so yesterday felt extra special to me as it was my first outing. I think I over did it a bit as we stayed out too long to enjoy the day, and today I don't feel myself again. But we had such fun.

With something like the flu I am re-learning the lessons of taking extra care of my body, because I really need it to work for me! Something as simple as being able to breathe through my nose, or having the energy to sit up for more than a few minutes, has taken on a whole new importance.
Between naps and many cups of tea I am regaining my strength, which I need desperately as we are heading off tomorrow for 10 days in Charleston, where we will look at houses, schools and generally begin to set up our life there. We are excited, Frank is very excited and I am vibing off of his excitement....but I also feel trepidatious, I'm just feeling a little scared by the enormity of the fact that we are selling our house and planning to move to a place that I have only been to once! I feel like this is one of the boldest decisions that we have ever made, and I am walking in trust right now, in that decision based on all of our intuition and reasons from last summer.
I know that right when we arrive tomorrow, I will again know how I feel about Charleston, and I am so excited to GET excited about making our move.
While we are there I will be poping in to share thoughts and pictures from our visit, I'll give you peaks into the neighborhood that we think we want to live in, and scenes from our journeys around the area. Maybe I'll even have some big news to share about finding a house that we love, my fingers are crossed about that!
This week we also had another big occasion, the finishing of our house here in Brooklyn, yes, our renovation is finally completed down to the tiniest detail. It will be shown while we are away, and right now it really looks as good as we could possibly make it look, both Frank and I are extremely proud of a job well done. In honor of finishing off our Brooklyn house renovation project I will post the final installments of the Before and After Renovation Tale of our home. I know that you will be blown away by some of the before and after pictures that I have to share!
xo

Dreaming Owl Treasure Boxes

I recently found some heart shaped paper mache boxes from Germany at our local craft store, something about their sweet shape and blank outside were begging me to paint them. So I bought three, and had so much fun!

The dreaming owls were inspired by this adorable book, Owl Babies, that my kids have been wanting to read a lot in the evenings. I gave Jasper and Carys each one of these boxes, filled with candy hearts on Valentine's day morning. I know they'll find lots of little treasures to put in them.

As I worked on these I was also thinking about this frozen world that is my reality this winter, with huge snow drifts, and ice patches, everything feels like it is hibernating, but soon (yes, please soon!) everything will begin waking up to springtime....so that is filling these little paintings too.

I've added this last one to my shop. I just want to hug that little dreaming owl snuggled in his tree. 

On the back of each one I added a heart with a branch in the middle, growing. Then Frank finished them off for me by applying a layer of Lacquer to each. These really make me feel that spring can't be that far off now,

and they feel like the perfect spot for storing precious things.

Happy Valentines Day!

::Celebrating the beauty and gifts of love of all kinds::

On Valentines Day we were invited to the most magical Valentine's Party, you must go see the pictures over on my friend Kirsten's blog. She whipped up some beautiful themed party decorations, the children exchanged valentines, made heart cookies and played dress up for hours while the moms talked and ate yummy homemade soup! Perfect!

Future memory log

Going to the studio

Our house officially went on the market this past Thursday evening, and some how with that I feel like our planned move is all the more real. Now, as I walk around all of my familiar places, I find that I am trying to make myself remember the details of our day to day. So, I'm starting a new feature here on my blog, my future memory log, I will include pictures of places that resonate with me deeply here in New York as well as places that I see often that I want to remember.

We have had our studio space for nine years, it is in an old warehouse underneath an elevated subway track, in a gritty area of Brooklyn called Gowanus, only a 5 minute drive from our house. Even though I work at home now, I still love going over to our old studio space, where both Frank and I have years of work stored and Frank's paintings in progress are so exciting to see. Last night we went there with friends we are also moving away, and wanted to buy some of our paintings before they left. So we did one of my favorite things with them, a studio visit where Frank and I pulled pieces out for them to look at over glasses of wine, until they chose their absolute favorite ones...one of Frank's and two small ones of mine.