bits of my weekend- volume 1

Welcome to the first edition of Bits of My Weekend!
If you have photos to share from your weekend, please use the Mr. Linky below.
For more information on Bits of My Weekend. Go here.

Feel free to grab the button on the sidebar, too!

coming soon! and I think you should come along!

On Monday, I will start a new series here on Six in the City.
It will be called Bits of My Weekend.
Here's the thing, I don't want to do it alone.
I'd love it if you joined me!

Here's the assignment:

Grab your camera and take pics all weekend of what you do.
It doesn't have to be exciting.
It could be laundry.
It could be making dinner.
But if you end up having dinner with Brangelina, we'd like to see a pic of that too!

On Monday, post your pictures on your own blog with the title, "Bits of my Weekend."
No text required. Only if you want to elaborate on your pics.
Then come back to this blog and put your blog link so we can share your life.

I realize it might take a while to get this going.
But I think it would be a great way to reach across the world and get a peek into each other's lives.

So, what are you waiting for?
Grab your camera!
Get creative!
And post on Monday morning!

UPDATE: Feel free to grab the button on my sidebar and be part of the Bits of My Weekend community!

it's snowing in manhattan right now

I just thought I'd tell you that. But that's not what this post is about.

I'm a big fan of neutral colors. They are calming - especially in the city. But I have to admit, that I always need a little color somewhere in my home to break it all up. I decided the hallway would be the perfect place to do this. Which hallway, you ask? THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE. It leads from the den to the master bedroom and the boys room.

Normally, Rod is the painter in our home. I don't pick up a paintbrush. I'm not allowed to. I am a rather impatient and messy painter. Imagine a monkey, who is also ADD, trying to paint his habitat. With his feet. That's what it looks like when I paint a room. It's not pretty, people.

But at the store the other day, I found this:



It looks amazing, right? Paint a room in under an hour? No more messy tape and lines? It makes painting look like a breeze. I bought it and tried it out.

THEY LIE.

Rod had to repaint the whole thing after my failed attempt.

The end result looks great. I love the color. It's moroccan spice from Benjamin Moore. And it matches the silk pendant I brought with us from our Colorado home.





The hall is filled with black and white pictures.



I would now like to take this moment to ask the universe when boys begin putting down the toilet lid?

Let me know what you think of the hallway. Do you add a punch of color somewhere in your home, too?

my tiny new york kitchen

Two weeks after moving in, I posted pictures of our NYC apartment. I've made a few minor changes since then and thought I'd show them to you over the next couple days. If you're like me, you enjoy seeing how other people live. Maybe you're not like me. If that's the case, feel free to go watch the Olympics. I will not judge.

We added some color to our kitchen. Or as my sister says, "the tiny square footage New Yorkers try and call a kitchen." I admit it is small. When we moved in, one of my children paused and looked at the kitchen with a frown. He asked me if I was still planning to cook for them while we lived here. I assured him I would, and then promptly ordered take-out for 2 straight weeks. It took me some time to try and figure out how to do it.

Here's a before picture of the kitchen:



And after:



It's Davenport Tan from Benjamin Moore.



You want to know where those double doors lead?



Yes, to her room. Even though we have those doors partially blocked from her side, she is able to squeeze her little body through to get to the kitchen. Remember in college when you thought it was cool to have a mini-fridge in your room? Well my daughter thinks it's cool that she has her own secret passage way to an endless supply of food. She thinks it's better than the secret wardrobe in Narnia.

If you're confused as to why apartment builders would put a bedroom with access to the kitchen. They didn't. We did. Her room is actually a dining room that we converted to a bedroom. It's very common in New York, but not so common in suburbia, which is what I used to speak before we moved here.

I love having a window in my kitchen. Care to know what it looks like in New York today?



It is a lovely shade of gray. Dear Spring, where are you? I'm anxiously awaiting your arrival and will celebrate you with a dance when you arrive. It will be similar to Tenley's dance of love, as seen on this season of The Bachelor.

The main entrance to the kitchen is right off the living room.



So close it takes .1 seconds to get up off the couch during a commercial and get a snack. Well, actually, you could walk to any room in our whole apartment in .1 seconds. But I really like living in a smaller space - even with a family of 6. One of the perks is being able to clean my whole place in under an hour. Which gives me more time to sit on the couch.

Would love to know what you think!

a day at the courthouse

Jackson (age 11) had a school field trip to the courthouse. Here's what he had to say about it:

Jackson, how was the courthouse?

It was big and fancy, with lots of rooms not used for anything....like Grandma's house.

parade part two or a few things you may or may not find amusing

The chinese new year parade was attended by thousands or millions of people yesterday. Either way it was a lot. We were fortunate to find a good spot to see all the action and the dragons. Who wants to go to a parade where you can't see anything? Not me. I would rather be at home watching the confusing curling competition of the Olympics. By the way, is it just me or are you totally confused how they score that game? Apparently there is some strategy involved, too. At least it looks that way judging by the competitors strained faces.

Anyway, the streets were barricaded by these metal gates so the crowd could not get in the street.



But do you know who jumped the barricade so she could get good pictures? Me. I am a rebel. But that is about has far as my rebel behavior will take me. I am a low-grade rebel.

Hold on. Did you see that handsome guy behind the barricade?



I know him. I am the mother to his 4 children.

Lily loved the parade except when this came towards her and pretended he was going to eat her.



She quickly regained her composure when she realized the parade people were also passing out free loot.




The girl knows when something good is going on. She wanted EVERYTHING they were passing out. As a result we now have too many fortune cookies, Chinese calendars, and some interesting literature from the Chinese gay and lesbian group.

The only confusing part of the parade was when a Hispanic group hijacked the end of the parade with some Latin music and dancing.




They were actually quite good. But their appearance made me think it was Cinqo de Mayo. Which caused me to crave a pinata. And a margarita. Fortunately, Lily was not bothered by another culture invading her Chinese parade. She just wanted to know why girls would want to show their panties when they danced. I'm praying she feels the same way about that when she is 16.

It's the eye of the tiger......I mean the Year of the Tiger

A few subway stops away exists a whole other world. Chinatown. This is one of the things I love about New York. One minute I can be in Chinatown enjoying the Chinese New Year parade and the next minute I can be up to my eyeballs in cannolis in Little Italy.

Each section is so authentic. So true to their own culture. So true that my daughter is convinced the subway car went under the ocean and we were actually IN China.

Here's a few pictures of the parade:















Happy Chinese New Year!

i burn a lot of calories when i sleep

My husband and I have been married 20 years. And throughout those years we have bought a variety of beds to sleep in. I can't tell you how many times I had to rewrite that sentence so it didn't sound like something else.

The oddest bed was a water bed in the early 90's when we lived in Peru. Let's face it, anyone using a water bed after the 70's is a little strange, right? It should really only be in a room with a lava lamp and an orange shag carpet. But at that time it was difficult to get a real bed in Peru that was not filled with straw, so we shipped a water bed down there and used it for almost 2 years. I was also pregnant with our first child at that time and I'm sure you can visualize a very fat, pregnant woman trying to get out of a water bed each morning. I'll give you a moment to imagine that....It was not a pretty site and I usually had to get some waves going to propel me out. Needless to say, when we moved back to the states, we left the water bed in Peru.

We had a queen sized bed until we had more than 2 kids. When our kids were little they liked to pile in at wee hours of the morning. The more than frequent elbow to the face or knee to stomach prompted us to have the genius idea of LETS GET A KING SIZE BED!

We were quite happy with our king size bed, but then we decided to move to New York. Most apartments are not large enough for king size beds so we downsized once again to a queen. It was traumatic and took some time to adjust to. Apparently, I move around quite a bit when I sleep. Rod relayed the stories in the morning as to how I ran circles around the entire mattress. I had no recollection. What? I don't sleep like a little angel?

And then I noticed an email in my inbox one morning from Rod. What was it? A love email? A email invite to a lovely dinner out? Then I read the message line: THIS IS TOTALLY WHAT YOU HAVE. I opened it and clicked on the link. Apparently the nights are so rough he felt the need to assign a medical diagnosis to me. I had restless leg syndrome. I scanned the article and it said there is no known cure. Unfortunately, that means Rod is going to have to keep sleeping with someone who exercises while sleeping.

I'm so sorry, honey. But I would like to remind you of the time in Peru when I awoke in the middle of the night to find you grasping my head like a basketball, dribbling it back and forth across the bed. You were sound asleep and told me the next morning you dreamed you were actually playing basketball.

This just shows you and I are the most athletic when we are fast asleep.

fashion week's newest designer

It's fashion week in NYC. And there is a budding designer on the scene.
She likes to take other people's designs and remake them into something "much more beautiful." Her words exactly.
All she needs is a handy pair of kitchen shears.

I was privy enough to attend the preview of her most recent collection. I even sat on the FRONT ROW.

I thought I would share it with you.



Beautiful, right? There was an amazing response from the crowd as the dress went down the runway. Remarks like, "How chic." "How fresh." were whispered amongst the front row.

Then...the model turned around.



And the front row fell out of their chairs because they were laughing so hard.

hello? is this thing on?

That nasty cold/sinus infection hijacked my body for another week, which explains my blogging absence. Not that I would need to explain my absence, but I am a first born child. Which means I continually feel like I've failed someone around me at any given time. It's called the perfection gene. Have you heard of it? It's loads of fun.

My bedside table looked like a small pharmacy for about 2 weeks straight. I was going to take a picture of it but lacked the cognitive skills to operate both my camera and the TV remote control at the same time. Thanks to the Internet, I found one that was similar.



I had several more prescription bottles on mine, but you get the idea. This portable pharmacy beside my bed served as a handy visual to remind my family that I was indeed sick. Now that it is clear again, I am happy to report that I am back in full mother-please-wait-on-me-hand-and-foot mode.

Unfortunately, since we're in a tiny apartment, the sick germs have tried their best to inhabit the bodies of the other family members here. Currently, my 14 year old sounds like he is coughing up a lung. I make my husband follow him around with a can of Lysol. I do fear that this might be affecting his self esteem. My son's, not my husband's.

The sick bed was not a total loss though, as I did make a few important discoveries during that time. I thought I would share them with you. The first one is that there is such a thing as too many Wedding reality TV shows. Two, Kelly Ripa's hair is the most gorgeous shade of blond. It's like butter. And three, given a heavy dose of NyQuil I can easily convince myself that The Bachelor is good TV.

As you can see, it was a productive 2 weeks.

the postman may always ring twice, but he also makes an amazing meal

Last week was restaurant week in NYC which means restaurants across Manhattan were offering special prices so common folk like me could have a chance to dine there. New York really does have unbelievable restaurants even though my favorite restaurant might just be the little bagel shop that delivers fresh bagels to my door every Sunday morning. I can be low-maintenance if I try.

Rod and I had a great time pouring over the list of participating restaurants, trying to figure out where to make a reservation. We wanted to pick a place we knew we would never normally be able to go on a date night due to the menu prices. So we settled on Del Posto. It's a chic upscale Italian restaurant owned by this guy.

Mario Batali

Anyway, we were so excited for the night to arrive. We knew the food was going to be great. I get rather excited about good food. Almost as excited as I do when Bravo comes out with a new reality show. But this night was going to be about food and I was recording Bravo, so the excitement was HIGH.

The restaurant is gorgeous. Very fancy, but without being stuffy. There is also a piano playing in the background which makes it rather romantic. It's one of those places where glasses are clinking, and you feel you are somewhere pretty special. It's not the Olive Garden.







We were seated at a lovely table in the balcony, which gave us a great view of the whole restaurant. The hostess gave us our menu and I told her we were there for restaurant week, so could we please have the special menu. Then she said it. It was like a movie in slow motion and in one of those utterly deep, dark voices.

"I'm sorry. We only offer the restaurant week menu for lunch. Not dinner."

Our hearts sank but we decided to just go for it anyway. A once in a lifetime opportunity. It's been a tough few weeks and we really needed a nice evening out.

Let me just say, we were not disappointed. The food. AMAZING. The service. UNBELIEVABLE. I lost count as to how many people served our table. Plus, they brought new silverware for every single course. And we ordered a five course meal. Here's a few pics taken with our camera phone.






My mouth is watering just looking at these pictures again. It was one of the best meals of my life. Thanks Rod! Totally worth the price- even though I refused to look at the final bill when it came. I let my date pay for it. I'm an old fashioned girl.

If you are ever in NY and have a special occasion to celebrate- you must check this place out!