House in progress

We've been living in the House Without Warning for nearly 3 weeks now! And we love, love, love it, even though we haven't unpacked everything, and still have piles of crap laying around, as you'll see.

Earlier this week we had an ailing pine tree and many an evergreen bush removed from the front yard, which got us one step closer to our master plan for growing. I also ordered blueberry bushes for the front of the house! Since then my dad and I have spent some time brainstorming how we might be arrange fruit trees and build an enclosed garden (deer, deer, everywhere!) without, um, bringing down the tone of the block. So to speak. I guess chicken wire in the front yard isn't hip these days.

At any rate, here are some pics now that we're 3 weeks in. None of the basement and basically none of the backyard. More eventually, I'm sure! Probably even better ones ;)

Ok, here's the newly bare front of the house. Re-painting the shutters, garage door diamonds, and front door (not shown here, because of the storm door in front) is on my to-do list as well, as soon as I choose a color or two.

Kitchen.

 Pantry!

More kitchen. Sadly small oven. Someday we might take out the oven and the range, and put an entire stove where the range is, and fill in the oven space with more cabinets. The cabinets are a rather boring color, but they are solid wood! Also, the counter desperately needs replacing (it's partially held on with TAPE), but now we're wondering if we shouldn't wait til we sort out our oven/stove issue first, since that would change the size of counter we need.

Kitchen table, covered in crap. And also flowers a lovely friend brought over.

Dining room, entering from kitchen, looking towards living room. Awesome room divider view 1.

Dining room as seen from living room. Plenty of crap on this table too.

Living room. Awesome room divider view 2.

Hall. That's our room at the end. The doors on the right are bathroom, linen closet, and extra closet (there's a whole 'nother coat closet!).

Zion's room. Obviously.

Our room. The door is to our half bath.

The closet. Because seeing our slightly organized clothes is a treat!

Liel's room. Far messier than usual. I pointed this out and she sighed and said in a put out voice, "I know, mommy. It's just hard! And I'm being kind of lazy."

Sunroom, with deck out the window.

Sunroom with backyard out the window.

Sunroom with more backyard.

And more backyard.

So, there you have it! At least for the moment :)

Pictures!

Our niece, Hayley, came to visit us in August. She is completely fabulous, and we had a great time with her! And what's more, she took family pictures for us, something we had neglected to do for, oh, 7 years. Last night we sorted through them and came up with our top contenders for prints. But there are too many, especially of me and Robert. It was much easier to narrow down the choices for the kids and whole family ones, because Zion tends to have sleepy eyes in pictures, and Liel hasn't learned to smile naturally on command (instead she does what Robert calls her "pirate grimace"). So honestly for those categories we pretty much went with the ones where most of the subjects looked halfway decent.

But, as I said, too many of me and Robert! Help us narrow it down :) What are you top 2 from among these?

(Don't my tattoos look amazing in black and white??)

Actually I have a few too many choices for pics of Zion and Liel, too. Thoughts?

Edit: for my mom...here are the other pics (so far) that are our favorites.

House updates

Today Robert and I spent the day working in the sunroom at the new house (which we have named "The House Without Warning").

When we bought THWW the sunroom had this sort of pinkish/reddish industrial carpet with flecks of blue, yellow, green and red sprinkled throughout. It wasn't terribly attractive. And worse, it smelled awful. It smelled so awful, in fact, that after we'd bought THWW and it was too late I started to fear we'd never be able to get the smell out.

Our first step was removing the carpet. That revealed an ancient underlay with what appear to be cat urine stains. We removed the underlay (which, incidentally, gave Robert a rash from carrying it out), and discovered that the cat piss had in fact soaked through not just the carpet, but also the underlay and into the plywood subfloor.

Oy. Also visible in these pictures is the original wood paneling on the walls. I point this out because I a little bit regret not taking a picture of the carpet when it was in. Our "before" pictures are rather lacking.

At this point we didn't even know what we were going to do for a floor in the sunroom, but we obviously had to do something about the subfloor. We considered just sealing it all with something that would allegedly seal in the smell, which, in the absence of the carpet and underlay, was much fainter. But in the end we decided we couldn't risk that. I'm a super sniffer, and damn do I hate cat pee!

So we bravely began removing the subfloor. And we went to Home Depot and bought more plywood. Like big kids!

Happily, we discovered that the cat pee hadn't soaked all the way through the subfloor. Puzzlingly, we discovered that there was a subfloor under the subfloor. We briefly considered just removing the top layer of subfloor and calling it a day (and I must admit I was a fan of this seemingly easier approach) but our friend Stan, who was a carpenter for many years, advised against it. And since we're total home improvement greenhorns, we take the advice of those more knowledgeable than we pretty seriously.

So we prepared to lay a new top subfloor.

Bonus: in this picture you can see how the wood paneling is now covered in primer! You can also see the blinds that we aren't keeping.

It took a few more trips to Home Depot, but by 11am this morning we had the new top subfloor installed, and were ready to start putting down actual floor. At this point my enthusiasm for more floor work was so keen that I suggested we just coat the plywood in deck paint and call it a day.

But instead we pressed onward, and by 5pm our sunroom floor looked like this:

Not too bad, huh? Of course when we got home we pretty much collapsed, but rest assured that tomorrow we'll be back at it. Except that the "it" in this case is packing, because this is what our living room in our current house looks like.

Sadly, the rest of the house is far less boxy, and needs to straighten up, fly right, and start resembling the living room. Wish us luck!

Oh, August.

This month has been insane. Some of the insanity has been fantastic, some of it...less so.

On the fantastic side: we bought a house! I'm super excited about it. It's on 1/2 acre, it has a lovely sunroom, 3 bedrooms, and some fantastic period details (it's a mid-century modern ranch).

In the mixed bag file we have the fact that the house needed some work. Nothing major, but hardwood floors needed to be refinished, entire house needed paint...those are nearly done, and very nicely too.

In the slightly stressful file are the things that remain undone: the floors in the sunroom need replacing (we've torn out the carpet and pad, and found that the plywood subfloor had cat urine damage. We've removed 1/2 of the damaged plywood, but the other half remains, and of course we haven't put down new plywood yet, nor the floor. Hell, we haven't bought the floor), the counters in the kitchen need replacing (not sure yet how that'll get done, it's well beyond our capability), both bathroom sinks need parts replaced, and we have packed about 1/8th of our possessions and the move day is Friday.

Quite honestly, I have no idea how this is all going to get done. And that's somewhat terrifying.

Additionally, I need to finish converting my syllabuses to the new class timeframe. And our car needs its annual inspection. That's this week too! Furthermore, I've got a bit of knitting work that needs done (contract and gift work, so there's a timeline), and Zion has been having some health problems, which (it appears) are going to require a fair bit of time and brainpower to unravel.

I just...yeah. I don't like to use the blog to complain, so I'll try not to! And with a bit of luck a lot of this will be cleared up in a week or so. Please say a prayer for me/send me good energy/come help me pack!

Bustle

Some of my friends in India recently introduced me to the blog 108 Ways to Wear a Sari, and I've been having so much fun looking at all the different drapes and styles! There are traditional and modern wraps from all parts of India and pop culture.

But you know what's even more fun then browsing new drapes and styles? Trying new drapes and styles!

Since I'm a pretty crappy pleater, as you may recall, I decided to start simple, and went with a drape that turns the sari into a skirt...and not just any skirt...a skirt with a bustle! It's like a steampunk sari.

Let me just pause here and say that I began regretting how few saris I own pretty much since the first day we were back in New York. And now I regret it even more! I need more cotton saris! Need them! Send help!

Anyway, back to my bustle-sari-skirt. I did it! And it looks really pretty awesome, I must say. And it's comfortable. My only real gripe is one I have with every drape I've tried, which is that the bulk of the sari (from tucking it in at the waist band mostly) gives me an extra bit of padding on my stomach and makes it protrude in a rather odd way. That look is even more pronounced in these pictures, because I unwisely tied my petticoat in front. I have no idea what I was thinking, and in fact only realized it when I started typing this here complaint. Onwards to the crappy self portraits taken with an iPhone in the bathroom!

From the front, it looks like a pretty simple (but super cute) layered skirt, right? (and see what I mean about the extra padding?)

But then: the side view!

And the awkward "take a picture of your own back in the mirror"! Personally I think the awesome bustle is well worth it. But still. Awkward.

So there you have it...my current sari love. What do you think, can I rock this look at work? 

Bun

One of my kids' favorite cuisines is Vietnamese. And (to borrow a phrase from Zion), I can't blame them! It's delicious. Actually, the very first place we took Liel out of the house after she was born was our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Lower Manhattan.

I was going to put a picture of that event up, but I can't find it. And I looked for upwards of two minutes! So you'll just have to imagine it-- it was terribly cute. And delicious.

Anyway, when we moved up here to Rockland County we knew we had to find a good Vietnamese restaurant. And boy did we get lucky, cause at the time, there was exactly one Vietnamese restaurant in the entire county! The lucky bit was that it was also delicious...and that the people who run and own it are so, so nice. We've gone there frequently over the years, and they always give us great food, and remember that we don't want peanuts on anything, even though we, responsible parents of allergy kids that we are, usually forget to remind them.

But sometimes you want Vietnamese food, and you don't want to drive to Spring Valley. And that's where this post comes in, because a year or so ago I started making bun, Vietnamese rice noodle salad, at home. It's easy, super fantastically delicious, and as Liel says, the best part is that it is FULL of fresh vegetables (I know, I'm as surprised as you are. My little carnivore, singing the praises of fresh veggies? Awesome!).

The recipe is based on one from Cook's Illustrated.

Here's what you need:

--rice vermicelli (8oz will feed the 4 of us, with no leftovers, but everyone full)
--lettuce
--fresh mint
--carrots
--cucumber
--fresh basil
--fresh cilantro
--boneless, skinless chicken thighs
--brown sugar
--white sugar
--lime juice
--fish sauce
--grapeseed oil
--garlic
--almonds

Here's what you do:

--Slice the chicken thighs into thin, smallish bits
--Mix equal parts fish sauce and brown sugar, plus 1.5x's as much grapeseed oil, in a bowl (for about 8oz of chicken I use 1T each of fish sauce and brown sugar and 1.5 T oil)
--Put the chicken in the sauce you just made and let it marinate a while. Doesn't need to be super long...I think I left mine for 30 min today.

--Cut the carrot into matchsticks, or something that vaguely resembles a matchstick. Seed the cucumbers and cut them into matschstick-ish bits too.
--Mix 1/3 c warm water, 2 T sugar, 4T lime juice, and about 1/4 c (or a bit more) fish sauce in a bowl. Add a crushed clove of garlic or two, and if you're not cooking for my daughter, a chopped, seeded jalepeno (or part of one).
--Pour a bit of this sauce on the cukes and carrots. Add a few tablespoons of chopped almonds, stir, and set aside.

--Boil water.
--Add rice vermicelli, and turn of the flame and put the lid on. Let it sit about 8 min, until the noodles are tender.
--Drain the noodles and rinse in cool water.

--Heat a little oil in a big skillet. Cook the chicken.

Here's how you assemble it:

--Put some lettuce in a bowl. You can make one big bowl or several small ones.
--Top the lettuce with the marinated veggies, and lots of fresh, chopped basil, cilantro, and mint.
--Put the rice noodles on top of the veggies.
--Put the chicken on top of the noodles
--Pour the remaining lime sauce on everything.

Then, eat!

It's really quite easy, and as an added summer bonus, requires very little time with the flame on. And Liel likes to help chop the veggies, and everyone likes to eat it. It's full of win!