He can install car seats in under 5 minutes…
And swaddle a baby in less than 30 seconds…
He is super dad!
I think we are ready!
Super Dad
Conversations with My Husband
Having second thoughts…
Is it too late to call this off and just get a puppy?
Happy National Cat Day
Did you know that today is national cat day?
And did you know that for one day only, Uber (the car service app) is letting you request a kitten on-demand. That’s right – for a donation of $30 to the ASPCA, you can get a kitten delivered to your office for 15 minutes of snuggle time!
As soon as I heard about this, I immediately logged into Uber to request my kitten. Sadly, this promotion seems to have spread like wildfire and there are no kittens available.
There is nothing worse than the offer of kitten snuggles and then not being able to take advantage of it. Here are a few of my favorite cat videos as a consolation prize.
Just a cat dressed as a shark riding a Roomba, while a baby, also dressed as a shark looks on.
How to Get to Sesame Street
A couple weeks ago, I did something I almost never do. I went to an exhibition… alone. Matt’s sister told me about an amazing exhibit that The New York Public Library was putting on all about Sesame Street. We both share a deep love for this show, its characters and the incredible amount of good that it has done for so many young kids and parents. So I knew this was definitely up my alley.
So after work, I made my way up to Lincoln Center and was immediately transported back to my childhood. The exhibit is full of interesting stories about the show, the performers and the incredible thought that goes into producing it. And of course, there were many muppets on display, including all of the big names: Elmo, Oscar, Bert, Ernie, Snuffy, Super Grover, Zoe, The Count, and Hoots the Owl. I walked around in awe, staring at the characters of my youth, amazed with how large the muppets were in person and how they looked just as they should.
After taking in the exhibit for a little, I made my way to the auditorium for a two hour program entitled “Making Learning a Funny Affair”. The panel featured an impressive line up of Sesame Street’s top individuals including the Executive Producer, a writer and the Senior Vice President of Global Educational Content. However, the two who stole the show were the two muppet performers.
As they walked on stage, one with Grover the other with Murray, the entire audience was transported back to age 5. I literally couldn’t stop myself from smiling and I even teared up a bit (let’s blame the baby for that display of emotions).
For the next 2 hours, SNL performer and Sesame Street die-hard fan, Bobby Moynihan moderated an interesting, and funny, discussion about the creative genius that is Sesame Street. After 60 minutes or so, Bert even made an appearance and engaged with a muppet that a young fan brought. It was amazing to see the spirit of Jim Henson live on through the performers and their willingness to support a young dreamer.
It was a truly great night – something that only the city of New York could deliver. The exhibit runs through January 31st so I definitely suggest you make a trip over at some point.
Friday Afternoon Round Up
Happy Friday!
This weekend, Matt and I are just laying low. We are officially beginning the waiting game… between 3 and 4 weeks left. I’m hoping to finish our Christmas cards this weekend (pause to give you time to be impressed), and put some finishing touches on the baby’s “nook” — we don’t have an official nursery as of yet, but don’t worry, it is cute and I will be posting pictures soon. Other than that, I don’t think we have a lot planned. Sorry Matt – welcome to your new life.
Here are some of my favorite links from the week:
Loving this Between Two Ferns episode.
This is truly amazing
*warning – contains profanities
Brady, a dog and Uggs. Need I say more?
I hope my kid is this smart.
Super cute vest for fall.
Sisters
I’m pretty sure our brains are connected…
Friday Afternoon Round Up
This weekend, Matt and I will be FINALLY heading to Ikea to buy a dresser for the baby. This will give us a little sanity as the baby’s things are just sprawled all over the guest room right now. Saturday night we will be glued to our tv as Notre Dame (#5) takes on Florida State (#2). Oh, and did I mentioned Matt’s favorite person in the whole wide word, Kinsella, is visiting this weekend? So that probably means no trip to Ikea and I will be back to being the third wheel… What about you? Up to anything fun?
Here are my favorite links from the week:
I hope Matt makes this for me on Sunday ;)
Why don’t all of my closets look like this?
I don’t need more giraffes in my life, but if I did, this is pretty cute.
Do you think the baby will appreciate if I line their drawers? I do :)
Such a cute idea for a rustic wedding/rehearsal dinner.
Not going to lie, I am super excited for this movie to come out.
Pantry Purge
So yesterday I wrote about the 31 day purge that my mom, sister and I are participating in. Our first activity was to purge our pantries. While none of us have full-blown walk-in pantries, we all have a cupboard or two that we store our food in.
My mom recently renovated her kitchen and put in drawers that pull out into her pantry, something she has wanted for years! She didn’t think that she needed to do a pantry purge since she literally just did a similar activity… However, when I was home this weekend, I was disappointed that these beautiful new drawers weren’t quite as organized as I thought they could/should be. So after berating my mother on the phone for a solid 10 minutes, she decided she would tackle this challenge. I don’t know about you, but I definitely see a difference! That being said, I still think she can use a couple more bins/baskets and of course, more labels.
Abby has the smallest kitchen of the three of us, and as a result, is very limited on her storage space. She has two small cupboards that she stores her food in. Unfortunately, she forgot to take before photos but hopefully you get a sense of her purging abilities. I told her that not knowing what is in the fabric bins is killing me – get some labels on those!
Of course I took this activity pretty seriously. What could have been a 15 minute event turned into an hour-long ordeal. And as you will see from my before photos, I didn’t really have all that much work to do. Since Matt and I have been doing Blue Apron on a fairly regular basis, we don’t keep nearly as much good in our house as we used to. That being said, my baking supplies rival that of a small cake bakery. You can never have too much sugar, flour and chocolate chips. It really has gotten a bit out of hand…
I didn’t take before pictures of my two other cupboards because I didn’t do a whole lot to them. Why this activity took me an hour is beyond me…
So there you have it. Three purged pantries!
The Purge
(via)
A few of the blogs that I read on a regular basis are currently doing a 31 Day Purge.
To help readers clear their homes of clutter, these blogs are breaking down de-cluttering into 31 steps. Every day a new task is posted, many of which take no more than 15-30 minutes to completed. The purpose of this series is to purge your home, a little at a time. It can be overwhelming to purge all at once. By allocating a few minutes to your schedule each day, you should see a huge difference by day 31.
While Matt and I keep our apartment relatively clutter-free and more organized than most, we are in the process of trying to make room for ‘baby g’ so a good purging is in the cards. Like most challenges, they are more fun to do as a group, so I recruited my mom and sister.
Starting today, for the next 31 days, we will be taking on one task at a time. I probably won’t post all 31 to this blog – mostly because not every task applies to our home (for example, anything about a garage…) but hopefully once in a while, you will get to see how it is coming along!
Tune in tomorrow to see my pantry purge (and maybe I will share Abby’s and my mom’s if they do a good job!)
A Fall Tradition
A couple of weekends ago, Matt and I made our annual trip out to the apple capital of the world, Warwick, NY (read about our other trips here and here).
This year we invited our friends Lucy and Smeets along for the adventure. Lucy grew up in Massachusetts, and as such, it is apple picking pro. I was shocked/mortified to hear that Smeets, who grew up in Westchester, NY had never been apple picking. Talk about a deprived childhood. So, we all piled into our car on Sunday morning and drove out to the country to partake in one of fall’s greatest traditions.
We decided to go to Och’s Farm again, followed up with a stop at the Warwick Valley Winery and Distillery. – why mess with a good thing. The weather was picture perfect and there were plenty of apples to choose from. I always love hanging out with Lucy and Smeets, not only are they fun people who are up for anything, but they have a really nice camera and get into taking pictures. So our apple picking trip turned into a mini photo session – perfect for the blog!
The day was a success, capped off with some laughs when Smeets read this article to us on our drive home…
The Little Things 