Date night

 When Jasper was a baby, and before we had Carys, Frank and I had a regular date night set up with our babysitter. We'd sit down with her, and pencil in every other Saturday night for months in advance on our calendars. Those dates were our time that we looked forward to as a couple to be out alone together, to remember who we were as two people and not just two parents! All of you parents know what I mean right? This night was so precious to us as a couple. Then our trusted babysitter moved away, and we had another baby, and well... date night fell to the wayside.
Now it has been a few years, and recently a woman at our church was looking for babysitting work, and it turns out that both of our kids loooove her. So, we've set up "date night" again, its all pencilled into the calendar and everything, through June. I can hardly believe it!
Last week was our first one, Frank and I just went down the street to the local cozy Pub on our corner,

where we grabbed a table, ordered food and chatted for hours.

The gift of time alone together was precious, and much needed, especially as it feels like we've been cooped up inside as a family for weeks with the winter weather. I'm so looking forward to all of the date nights that we have ahead of us on the calendar, where we can talk and dream together about all of the exciting changes and dreams that we are actualizing this year!

Through the Darkness

::Winter's breath blows cold and swift,
while we sit together,
waiting patiently for the sun's return,
the earth's rebirth,
through the darkness::

I'm sneaking up on the 200th sale in my shop, only two sales to go, I'll send a special surprise "something" to the person who is the 200th sale!

I've just added this wintry painting, Through the Darkness, to my shop for the first time, right here. Sending you wishes for a warm wonderful weekend!

xo

Snow, snow, snow

In all of my years here in New York I don't remember a winter like the one that we are having right now. The snow is pummeling us, again and again with weekly snowfalls, sometimes more often. Yesterday, the snow began again, that's our house half way down the block with the turquoise cornice,

Then this morning we opened our shutters to a winter wonderland, again,

It was a day to build blanket forts and stay in pajamas longer than usual,

 

I love the quiet after a huge snowfall, the snow absorbes the sound, and the whole world feels soft and powdery. After a huge snowfall the streets in New York become like sidewalks and there is a feeling of comradery as everyone is digging themselves out and taking a day off to sled and play.

Frank spent a good part of the afternoon building a snow fort in our backyard, staying out there building long after Jasper got cold and retreated inside,

From the looks of things we'll have this sweet fort around to add to and play with for a while, I don't think that the snow will be going away anytime soon!

Finally, here is a short time lapse video that I enjoyed of one of the blizzards that we've had here in NYC this January,

Time Lapse NYC Snow Blizzard from K Taro Hashimura on Vimeo.

Cleaning up

The other day I received a call from a woman that I met during our Open Studio Tour last October. She is a prop stylist for Seventeen Magazine, and she wanted to use some of my art in a bedroom photo shoot, the catch was that they needed the pieces by that afternoon so I only had a few hours to get everything ready. With all of my focus on getting our house fixed up I have been ignoring a huge problem, that my studio had gotten out of control. Here is how it looked,

And here was my desk,

Yikes! For me a certain amount of creative mess happens as I work, and that is just how I like it, but there is a fine line and I usually know that I've crossed it when I can't find things and the mess starts to hamper my ability to make my art. Then I've gone from creative mess to crazy mess, not good. As I was getting the pieces ready for the magazine shoot I had to face facts, a studio clean up was in order. Yesterday, was the "big dig", I was able to throw out a bunch of things (made easier by the fact that I've been going through a lot of our stuff lately, so now I'm becoming an old pro at letting go of things I don't use). I also moved a lot of the things that I don't use often, but still want access to, onto lower shelves or into boxes that I put in our closet where I can still grab them easily. Here is how things look after the clean up,

So much better, I feel like I can breathe again. I covered up the printer and the lower shelves with some pretty fabric, this simplifies things for me mentally and helps me to focus. Here is my desk after, with all of my supplies laid out where I can see them,

Here are the shelves that I organized with the supplies for printing and shipping my prints and cards for my shop, along with visual inspiration files that I turn to when I need a little visual or creative pep-up,

Here's the view out of my studio window today, it is snowing again. That stack of take-out trays on the window sill are my favorite painting palettes, they are ready and waiting next to my pad of paper where I jot down ideas as they come to me. Also on the window sill I keep a small altar of things that I've collected in nature or that have been given to me by dear friends that inspire me. Its so pretty I think I'll do it justice with a better picture in a different post,

Despite the mess, my pieces made it over to the Seventeen Magazine photo shoot in time. My contact there told me that they were featured in a bedroom shot and a desk shot. If all goes well (and they don't end up on the cutting room floor) then my work will be featured in the April issue of Seventeen, which will be in newstands at the end of March. I'll keep you posted with more details.

I must say that the kid in me is feeling giddy about being featured in Seventeen, even though I haven't read that magazine for over a decade, I was a faithful subscriber all through middle school and high school, getting excited every time my issue would arrive. I was even picked to model in a Seventeen Magazine runway show, when I was 17, but that's another story.

Scenes from our snow bound weekend

Sending you lot's of warm wishes, and some tea and hot cocoa by the fire.

Shifting

So, for the past two weeks Frank and I have been working on our house almost daily. There are so many little details to take care of before we put it on the market next month. Much of the work has looked a lot like this,

Frank has been hard at work on the details, but, as he calls it in the decorative painting industry we have finally come to the "visual" part, where many of the details have been completed and now we can see our progress.
I feel so fortunate that our real estate agents are old friends of ours, a couple that I feel super comfortable with and love their sense of decor in their own home. In preparation for selling our home, they did a walk through with us and talked about how we should setup or "stage" our home to show it at its best. Little things like painting, plastering, decluttering, shifting furniture.
The process of staging the house for a sale is really about the psychology of the sale, which was fascinating to talk about with our realtor friends. As they walked through our home they helped us to see little details that we should change, things that we should move around to shift the energy and usefulness of the space, they also saw things that we had thought we should change but they actually liked (like the old painted wooden staircase going downstairs that bends a bit and we thought we'd carpet over, but they loved the original quirky detail).
The first room the we've really set up in it's staged state is our living room which, along with our kitchen, is the heart of our home. I snapped this picture the other day so you can see what things generally look like around here daily after some serious playing,

Now here is the after, the "staged" version,

One of their focuses with staging our house is that they want it to show that you can have kids and still live in a civilized way (heh heh), so most of the toys were moved downstairs to our new playroom, that I'll show you in the next post!

They had us move our couch and television cabinet over by the windows, to create a cozy section there, notice the fluffy white rug that I am now obsessed with. They also had us get a beautiful modern white desk that we placed between our bookshelves, to create a useful spot for doing homework or working on the computer. I love the new desk and I think that it will end up in my new studio after our move.

On the wall opposite the desk and book shelves they had us move our Ikea storage shelf, which is one of handiest things for toy storage. I just bought some simple neutral canvas bins to go with the straw ones that we already had,

Now, after the daily serious playing happens, its easy to just throw all the toys back in the bins and have a clean space again.

This is just the beginning, there's lots more staging to go. The really fun thing about staging the house for me so far has been that I like the way their ideas have freshened up our space, I feel like I am learning things that I'll be able to take with us and use when we go on to live in a new space.

The Museum of Natural History

Every few months we hop on the subway and make the half hour trip to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where there is a building that is so magical that there are even dinosaurs crawling up the walls in the subway station.

The Museum of Natural History is one of those gems, those places that you can visit over and over again and always find something new.

 From the grand entrance hall, where dinosaur bones dance....

To the room after room of animal dioramas, there is something entrancing in every direction. The first time I brought Jasper to the museum was when he was less than two. My boy has always loved animals, and he spent that first visit running from display to display wide-eyed. Now, at 6, he knows the museum so well that last week he asked to lead us on a tour for our visit, leading us first to the hall of African animals,

Where he walked us from window to window explaining the name and habitat of each animal. His knowledge is extensive, and growing, I see how much he has learned and memorized from Frank and I reading to him about animals. It was such a proud moment for this mama, and I am thrilled to watch his interest growing. When I asked Jasper what he will miss when we move, he said "The natural history museum." I think that really shows his priorities!

Behind each glass there is a far off land, each diorama is really a work of art, and I have always thought that those paintings in the background are stunning!

Next we were off to the Butterfly exhibit, where we walked into a tropical-hot room full of fluttering butterflies. So beautiful! We wanted them to land on us, but were not so lucky, they preferred the bowls of fruit scattered around the room. Right outside, I spotted my favorite part of this visit, which was a case full of all types of Blue Morpho Butterflies, glowing like jewels....

Then we moved on to the Hall of Biodiversity, another of our favorites, it shows examples of all of the amazingly diverse types of creatures on our planet, that room always knocks my socks off,

From there we like to visit the actual size Blue Whale in the Hall of Ocean Life, with more amazing dioramas featuring the sea and its creatures.

When we visit I try to limit our time there to around two hours, as there is so much to take in that it can become overwhelming in its magnificence. So, after lunch we headed out, back down into the magical subway station where a coral reef was awaiting us,

Starting our ride home with some subway silliness.

New Postcard Sets

Thank you so much for all of your wonderfully supportive comments on my last two posts about our planned move! Your affirmations and responses are so special to me! Amidst all the goings on here I managed to list a few new things in my shop...

I'm crazy about these new postcard sets, they are the same great quality as my original postcard sets, but this time I thought I'd shake things up and offer them in themes, all in sets of six. There is the Deer Set that you see above (with a few wild horses thrown in!). And the Lotus Set,

and the Bird Set,

I don't think I can pick a favorite set, as I had so much fun choosing which images to use in each one, but all are perfect for saving, framing or sharing.

Did you all enjoy 1/11/11 yesterday? There was a moment when I looked at the digital clock in our bathroom and it read 11:11, and that felt very special.

Also, if you have not seen this short documentary about the man behind the amazing blog The Sartorialist, you must go watch it now, it is fantastic and inspiring!

The long story

OK, so here is the long version of how and why, after almost 15 years in New York City we find ourselves getting ready to move to Charleston, South Carolina this year. It is a long story, but I think it will give you insight into my family and what is important to us, plus we've got so many exciting plans for what we will do in Charleston...but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start at the beginning.

 

 Here Frank and I are, enjoying ourselves during our first trip to Charleston last June. We love how wide open the sky is there!

Both Frank and I moved to New York City after graduating from college in the late 90's, in fact next August it will be 15 years since I moved here, so it is the place where we have both lived our adult lives up to this point. But, even though New York has been a very thrilling place to live, it was never my intention to live here for the rest of my life, or even for as long as I have! I really moved here on a whim after college, to try and explore the art scene. I had a bunch of friends who were moving here and it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. If someone had told my 22 year old self that I would be raising children in this city I would have laughed at them! But, our lives developed here, Frank and I met here, our art connections were here, and our friends were here, so we stayed, and really our life here in Brooklyn is rich and deep and wonderful. This is the place that I have needed to be, but it is also a hard place to live. Very slowly the little and big annoyances of life in such a huge city began to wear on Frank and I, we started to long for more space and time to pursue our art and raise our family.

In turn both of us came to a place in which inside us there was a shift and we both knew that our time here was drawing to a close. My shift came around the time that Jasper was two and I was pregnant with Carys, then I began to really evaluate the environment that I wanted my children to grow up in. Frank's shift came later and has evolved more closely for him with the cost of his time that he spends supporting our family here, and the time that he spent away from his kids because he was working so much when he was running his own decorative painting company for years. New York City is a very expensive place to live, and at some point we both began evaluating it against the fact that we were stretching our selves financially to live here. "Is it worth it?", was our constant refrain. Finally we made the decision that it was time to look into other places that might better suit our ideal lifestyle more, we love to be outdoors, we love the beach, we also love vibrant city life but with more close access to nature. We visited and seriously considered many places specifically focusing on small cities.... including the east bay area of San Francisco; Portland, Oregon; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; Miami, Florida.

This was over the past 3 years, and as you can imagine was an exhausting (while exciting) process, and this is where I come to the muddle that we were in at the start of 2010 that I mentioned in my last post. Through searching for our new place, we were really knee deep in hammering out who we are as a family. This whole process led Frank and I on a journey of discovery about who we are way deep down, and what that means about the choices that we are making while raising our children, making our art, and of course what we want in a lifestyle and place to live. One huge thing that come up for us was that we really did not want to live too far from our families, who are all on the east coast of the US (and my brother in England). So, with sadness we decided that anything on the west coast would have to be eliminated. Then we also know that we are not big fans of winter, so we eliminated anything north of New York City, and began focusing our search on the warmer climates of the south. At this same time, in January 2010, Frank's sister and her family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a city that I had loved when I visited on a road trip when I was 23, but had not even thought of since then.

Early last year, shortly after their move, Frank's sister began raving about Charleston to us, everything from the weather to the beaches to the easy lifestyle to the art scene and historic downtown, she made it all sound so beautiful and livable. We were very excited to see it, and I really didn't know what to expect. When we visited them there in June, we were blown away by the city. It is a small coastal city, about 800 miles south of New York and one of the oldest cities in the US, with a very old downtown area that reminds us of Europe with a tropical twist, small winding streets, crumbly buildings dripping with history, spanish moss and palms,

and the life style that we found there was so laid back and easy, the beach is part of the day-to-day, children playing outside everywhere, riding bikes, swimming in lakes. The people are so nice and  friendly.

We also found an exciting and growing art scene in the downtown area of the city, that we could see ourselves being a part of. We were thrilled to find that many old warehouse areas are being renovated into artist spaces, and there is big market for that. Something that Frank and I have always talked and dreamed of doing is to renovate an old warehouse into artists spaces, with a small gallery space, and then rent to other artists, creating an arts community. When we saw that this would be doable there, we began to really get excited.

Another thing that completely sold us on Charleston were the farmers markets, we went to two of the best farmers markets that I have ever been to, anywhere. There is a huge farming community right outside of the city and those farmers bring their goods in twice a week for huge tented markets. There are also artists and crafters selling their art, you can get lunch and wander around. There is even a bouncy castle for the kids that is inflated at the farmers market. The living really felt easy there.

So, we kept looking at each other while we were there, and we could see it in each other's eyes, we just knew that this was the place for us. We did not really talk about it until we were in the car driving away, after our time there. We turned to each other and said let's move here. It all felt so right, clear and peaceful, which was a real sign for me after feeling muddled and confused. So far, with each step, everything is falling into place in just the right ways. We keep talking with people who mention that they know someone there, and everything that we hear about Charleston confirms what we found.

It is also a four hour drive from my family's farm in the mountains in Asheville, North Carolina, which is really special to us, and we'll be able to go there so easily.

Now, the story continues with our actual plans for the move, which right now involves me going through lots of boxes and seriously culling and purging things that we don't use (and don't want to move) getting rid of things has never felt so good! Now I'm off to sort through a few bins of ancient art supplies...