Great Gourds

Cassola Farms
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

I do love autumn even if it means summer is gone,

diamonds are a girl's best friend

Silver Ball Museum
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

I love the colors and designs of this old pinball machine

Silver Ball Museum

Silver Ball Museum
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

Photos from the Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park. Such a fun place to go, hang out, play pin ball! Yes, you can play.

1st kiss

1st kiss
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

Baby and me

plum

plum
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

sweet summer plums.

Another beautiful day in Asbury Park

Another beautiful day in Asbury
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

A gorgeous day on the beach in Asbury Park, NJ. It has become one of my very favorite beaches on the shore between the beach, the shops, the food, and the diversity of people it is an amazing place.

Kitten Time

It has been a busy, busy week. Last week we had dinner with old friends and family we haven't seen in awhile. We also found a great ice cream parlor on the Asbury Park boardwalk that sells soy ice cream, it is called Confetti's and is in the 1st ave pavilion. They sell all different types of ice cream it was just a bonus that they happened to have soy as well for us vegans!




Our cousins were kind enough to lend us their cradle for Sprout. I didn't get a picture yet but Domemick and his dad put it together over the weekend. While they worked on that Joy and I cleaned, scrubbed and organized the nursery. It is a clean and simple set up.


Even more exciting than the nursery being in order is the newest 4 legged addition to our household. She doesn't have a name yet and is only about 5 weeks old. Her mom and brother is still in our yard and I am trying to bring them inside as well. She adapted really quickly to indoor life even though I know she misses her mom very much. Within an hour of being inside she was eating out of my hand. She is so sweet and well behaved that the vet could not believe she was feral. Her brother is a little more tricky than she is and now we can't catch a glimpse of him for more than a second. Her mother keeps coming to our door for meals and they communicate through the window. It really breaks my heart but the kitten seems very content inside and she is 100% healthy - not even a flea.

This week brings more work on the nursery we still have shelves to paint. But hopefully it will bring some much needed relaxation for us.

nesting

So here I am making things nice around the home for baby, DJM and myself. Those who know me know I spend a lot of time making sure my home is clean and nice but now we can actually do stuff when it needs to get done because it is our home :).

I have been putting a lot of energy into our Sprout's nursery. I put together this mural. My problem with it is the squirrel on his little hill. I think the hill looks out of place but my other option would have been for him to be floating. It wasn't all planned out exactly... Anyway I can't figure out if I should just paint in the hill back to the wall color or leave him on his little hill. So your suggestions are really welcome at this point since my mind seems to puttered out on this one.

Here is the mural on the other side of the room.


Other accomplishments in the nursery this week...
My in-laws- Grandma and Grandpa came over to assemble the crib! It is lovely and beautiful.

They also helped to install a rod in the closet which didn't really have one before, and did some other projects around the house that needed to get done. It is so nice when people come to help and so appreciated!

We have been converting the crawl space into actual usable storage space. It is a bit harder than we first thought. I am not sure if it is hard so much as the guy at lowes and I were not communicating so the wood we bought needs to be cut more and my circular saw still scares me a bit. I am taking pictures as we go along and we hope to have it completed tomorrow.

Baby Steps

The nursery is coming together slowly but surely. Unfortunately and to add a bit more stress on my already way overwhelmed self we discovered there is a leak in the skylight. My dad who is handy and knows a thing or two about roofs, since he was a roofer for many years, said it was probably just the flashing and it could be repaired easily. But then there is me and all this rain so I am a bit stressed out by it and the waiting and the drip-drip-dripping during these summer storms.


I have been working on a little mural for our Nico, yes it looks like we may have a name.... Nicolette Regina (pronounced nicoletta) and we will call her Nico. Of course nothing is set in stone right now but I am really liking the name so far... other names on our short list
Celeste
Audrey
Sasha
Colette
Sienna
Celena
Briana

I still love these but they look like they are out due to extreme popularity or disagreements between DJM and myself
Sofia
Isabella
Olivia
Zoe
Mackenzie
Roxana

I never realized how difficult picking out a name could be.

Back to the nursery, we put in the floors a few weeks ago

This is the before shot


Here is the after shot


I also put together a cover for the radiator.


And finally here is the mural that I began using a combination of vinyl wall stickers. It is a work in progress. The tree came from Nico's Nanna, she found it at the Pottery Barn on clearance but the bunny and hedgehog came from the wonderful Graphic Spaces on Etsy. I really think we need the squirrel from her shop too! They are great quality and she had very fast shipping. Gina ordered them on Thursday and I had them by Saturday. I still have lots more to add and I think I need to paint some grass in as well.

I am thinking in addition we will paint the one small storage area door with this colored chalkboard paint that I found today from Hudson Paint. And I have a whole set of flower wall decals that I may put up on the other side of the room by the window.

We have one other somewhat big project to do in there and that is to finish off the storage area so we can put toys and stuff in there and have it be safe but that has to happen after we fix the sky light. So I go back to waiting and hoping the rain stays away today.

Hoity Toity Baby

I am loving the baby clothes on this site! Such cute things.

Adorable! And great prices.
I can totally picture our Nico wearing this.

NYC MTA

NYC MTA
Originally uploaded by jakrandomart

The Magical Coney Island USA ©2009 jennifer marmorato