Salad Dressing, Darwin, and Nantucket

Happy Summer! The twins just turned 7 1/2!! They are out of school, all about camps (making me a taxi driver), and I just finished my latest spring/summer work project, so it’s back to the book research for me (and summer travel planning, next up: England!), managing our master bath reno (finally!), and solo parenting while S travels for work. Genealogy is so fascinating, it even makes inanimate objects more interesting. 

Pain du chocolat from our local farmers’ market bakery

I first fell in love with this china pattern, Nantucket Basket by Wedgwood (and the Island too of course), over 20 years ago when I babysat for years for a family outside Boston who used it as their everyday dishes (and in a house full of babies, three in less than three years, now all through Stanford, apparently carefree fortunes are made in salad dressing), so I bought a bunch when I found it a few years ago on clearance at HomeGoods (score!). Now come to find out that not only am I related to the Wedgwoods (via Charles Darwin, my 8th Cousin, both he and his wife Emma were grandchildren of founder Josiah Wedgwood) but I’m also related to one of the original founding families of Nantucket, the Swains. OMG! (which for the purposes of my book references stands for old money gone)

Speaking of salad dressing, Marielle was pretty proud of herself for coming up with her own “signature” mixture of ketchup and ranch for dipping some time ago. We should sell this stuff, she said. Turns out Heinz just started marketing something in the last two months they call “Kranch” (as someone who used to name consumer products, that might be one of the worst). After we send them a cease and desist (j/k), ours will be called Ranch Up. Do you think we watch too much Shark Tank? 😉

Paper shopping

To match our birth announcements for the twins from Erin Condren, I got lucky and found the personalized matching (and much more affordable) floral jacks thank you notes on Shutterfly... (she does lines for them and Tiny Prints)  Now if they only made her announcements in these colors at Shutterfly prices, oh well.

Which reminded me I'd made up, but never ordered up their Nantucket calling cards and note cards for myself.  Well, since I'm sitting on lots of Shutterfly credits (and haven't been without business cards in a dozen years), it was time to pull the trigger.

Love them! :)

15 weeks! (and other miscellany)

And we're going from lemons to apples and oranges! :)  I can not wait to see the babies again on Tuesday, I'm just dying of anticipation over here.  Then it's another long wait until our anatomy scan in late August, but it will be our last four week wait, as then we are onto OB appts. every other week after 20.  Yay!

Otherwise, our huge milestone is tonight is my very last PIO shot (hopefully forever).  I will not miss these.  The individual shots themselves are not really that bad (or not nearly as bad as I envisioned when I saw the huge needles), but cumulatively over three whole months (!), they do some serious damage to your backside.  

And with all the bruises, we are having more bleeders lately.  DH always does the shots, unless he is not around, and the other night after drawing back, doing the shot, holding the alcohol swab over the site for awhile, and applying the band-aid as he always does, we went on our merry way like we do every night.  It wasn't until later when we were in bed that I rolled over and he could see that I had actually bled through the band-aid and had a huge blood stain on the back of my panties.  Lovely.  So after tonight we'll be done with all hormone replacement, and only on baby aspirin for another five weeks. 

I think we had a growth spurt last night.  I got really tired and uncomfortable during dinner and then passed out on the couch for an hour and a half.  I woke up and was noticeably bigger.  Very weird and very cool.

I'm up about eight pounds from when we started and looking forward to packing on many more. :)

I haven't been sleeping very well. I'm up in the middle of the night and lay around like I have somewhere else to go.  Though I am eternally grateful we have another master (our main guest room) on the first floor of our house, as with this heat the upstairs and our bedroom can get quite warm.  If I had to sleep up there all the time, I just wouldn't be sleeping at all.  I am also so so happy that our subdivision has a wonderful outdoor (and partially shaded) pool for when sitting in the A/C just isn't enough.  I'm running so hot lately, that the pool feels just amazing.

Speaking of water relief, I'm dying for some ocean time.  We are planning to head out to NYC to visit my sister in August and spend some time in the Hamptons, in lieu of the Cape and Islands this year.  So of course I just got an unexpected invitation to a party on Nantucket (and directly on the ocean) in August.  I'm not gonna lie, I looked into buying a ticket to go.  But hopefully the lovely Jay's of Hallowell Lane and Greenwich will host another. :)

I start prenatal yoga again tomorrow and am really looking forward to starting that up again.  We are also finally getting our radon mitigation taken care of tomorrow after having to do some work to the sump pump system (N.B. don't ever buy a house with one of these) in preparation of having it done.  Yes, it's somehow been a full year since we discovered we needed to have this done.  I guess we haven't had anything else going on... ;)  We also have ADT coming on Monday to move our glass break to the soon to be enclosed living room and install a window sensor in the new nursery.  Baby steps...

I went up the Arlington Design Center (which I didn't even know existed, a mini Merch Mart in my hood :)) the other night for a Ben Moore color event.  I got to roaming around Kravet/Lee Jofa and found another cute fabric that has my colors (blue and golden yellow).  Can't decide whether I love it enough/more than my Uzbek or not.

Halometer by Kravet

This would go wonderfully with the wool rug I had bought from Garnet Hill for our smaller nursery, though I think I've found a new rug from Dash & Albert to go with Uzbek for the new/bigger one.  Ah, decisions, decisions...

Oh and we finally got our headboard from CSN (well, I finally ordered it and it came very promptly from IN).  It's gorgeous and much nicer than you'd think was possible for $290 for a king ($250 after my voucher).  Love it!  Don't mind all the wrinkles...

Happy Friday!

Good stuff

We stopped in Boston on the way to the Cape (in a successful attempt to time the weekend traffic). And since it was a sales tax holiday weekend, we went to Newbury Street. Who am I kidding? We probably would have gone there regardless, since it was too nice out to go to the ICA. I heart Massachusetts for not having sales tax on clothes. ;)

So I finally got to go to Sweet for a (mini) carrot cake cupcake (my fav). Heaven.


In Chatham, there's a seasonal shop called Shelter Island Home, which is ALL John Robshaw. OMG, love.

He's the new hot guy, I saw his textiles all over the Cape and Islands' cutest shops.

In another adorable little design shop in Chatham, I found this Dash & Albert tile rug and just had to have it for my bedside.

I have the unique (or maybe not so unique) ability to walk into any store and fall in love with the most expensive thing, without even trying, of course. I don't usually shop at the Gap, they lost me as a regular long ago. But S wanted to stop in, and of course I had to have this Band blazer. To me, it yells "back to school", which I am on Wednesday...


On the stroll back from lunch at Sayles Seafood between the Great Harbor and Nantucket Yacht Clubs, we happened upon Parchment.


Parchment profile on Wooster & Prince

I just had to have all of these...


The three papers are by Rossi Italian paper, and I'm planning on covering a large cork board with them to fill with inspiration pictures.

As for the rest...


French labels/stickers from Chronicle Books
Wooster & Prince Hither Creek trio list pad.

Getting ready

I'm pretty sure the doxycycline was the cause of my extreme nausea on Monday, which I now have under control with the help of acid reducer. Only two more doses to go...

We are excitedly preparing for our trip to the Cape. I CAN'T WAIT! (can you tell?) It has been super hot here for what seems like forever, so we are very excited to be trading in our 90's+ for some 70's and sea breezes next week, and getting the hell out of dodge, and meeting some new friends, Niki and Steph, while we are out East.

Some last minute trip prep to do...
Just done:
-Car to shop for check-up. Worst case scenario we have two different free road side assistance services (through Hyundai and our insurance).
-Re-engage lapsed XM radio (5 mos. for $20 deal). Even with an Ipod, on a long road trip, this is a must.
-Stop mail and papers (I love that you can do all of this online now)

Still to do:
-Load up Ipod with new CDs (yes, I still buy CDs)
-Get recent Cape/Islands guidebook from library
-Clean the house, water plants, etc. (I still need to find us a new housekeeper)

Pack must-haves:
-Portable Nav (in case we venture too far off of I-90, which takes us 90% of the way)
-Portable DVD player (w/movies and three seasons of MAD MEN)
-Noise-cancelling headphones (to tune out tone deaf husband who likes to sing ;))
-IPass (works all the way there now, yay!)
-Books (haven't made the jump to Kindle/Ipad yet)
-myriad phones, crack berries, cameras, camcorders...

I'm debating whether I can manage going 10 days w/o a computer... hmmm...?

The house will be painted while we are gone. We'll return from Cape Cod and it'll be Cape Cod Gray... It's getting power washed today! Yay! :)

And my new bag arrived just in the nick of time... :)