Category Archives: Likes

Clean Up Everybody!

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

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Brooms1Brooms2Broom3These are our favorite cleaning tools.  I had the large sets first and found matching smaller brooms when Ada was old enough to use them.  Josie loves to help with the sweeping and the girls often turn the large brooms into horses and run around the kitchen while I cook.  I especially love that little horsehair brush and the woven detail along the handle of the large broom.  Cleaning is less of a chore if you have pretty tools!

We got our brooms here:

*Large and Small Straw Brooms are from Moon River Chattel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Moon River has an amazing selection of home goods, both new and vintage.

*We got our Small Dustpan and Brush from the children’s store Pomme in Dumbo, Brooklyn but they seem not to carry them any longer.  You can find a similar the same German-made Gluckskafer set here for an amazing $7 each.

*The Large Dustpan and Horsehair Brush set is from Kiosk , one of my favorite places in Manhattan.  I coveted this Swedish set for a long time before purchasing, but it is worth every penny.

Happiest New Year!

31 Monday Dec 2012

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SwingAnnHamiltonCarouselHappy New Year’s Eve!  I hope you are spending the evening in your favorite way – be that at a party or in a quiet place away from the crowds.  We are off to spend the night with friends in a few hours.  Ada is planning her outfit and I am feeling just a little thankful to not have to clean up tomorrow morning.  Our New Year’s Eve party last year was a fun way to celebrate our first year in this new house.

We are celebrating our one year anniversary here at Domestic Space!  Thank you to all of you who follow along with our lives and projects.  We love your enthusiasm and ideas and comments.  We are excited to make the next year in this space even better and we’ve have been working on lots of new ideas.  We hope you enjoy!

We spent yesterday with friends doing some things that make me love living here in New York.  If you are in the area, be sure to visit Ann Hamilton’s installation at the Park Avenue Armory.  The Armory is amazing on its own, and the addition of huge swings and billowing sheets of silk has made the space magical.  We also made our first visit to Jane’s Carousel since it survived Hurricane Sandy.  (We discovered that our friend Jen used to ride the same horses as a child when they were housed at their original location in Ohio).  We were thrilled to find the horses in almost perfect shape above ground.  (The organ is being repaired and the live music has been replaced by cd’s until March).  The carousel’s protective box is warm and sunny on a winter day.

Cheers to 2013!

DIY Embroidered Jumper

29 Thursday Nov 2012

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This dress is a variation on Purl Bee’s lovely Embroidered Denim Jumper. I love the Purl Bee blog!  The Purl Soho store in Manhattan is an amazing place to visit- it looks like a bright candy store and is full of yarn and fabric and books and projects.  I used some vintage plaid to make this dress for Ada.  The jumper made up so quickly and easily I can’t wait to try the pattern out in other fabrics.  Etsy has some pretty plaid choices here.  The jumper requires very little machine sewing and it was fun to play around with new embroidery stitches.  This dress is the first of the sister dresses for this year.  (Here are last year’s).

Family Portrait Ornament from Child’s Drawing

28 Wednesday Nov 2012

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We have started a little yearly tradition here. When Ada drew her first family portrait last year it made me cry (in a proud and bittersweet she’s-so-grown-up sort of way). We liked the drawing so much we decided to have it made into a made into a ceramic ornament for our Christmas tree. (Which have cost about $15 each including shipping). It occurred to me that we should have the kids draw a family portrait for an ornament every year, then give them as gifts and save one for our tree. Josie is still too little to draw anything that resembles us, but when she’s old enough both girls can make a yearly ornament. I love how Ada’s drawing style has evolved in a year and I look forward to a tree full of these as the girls grow up. To have your own Family Portrait Ornament made you will need:

*White Paper Cut to Desired Ornament Shape (circle, oval, etc.)

*Markers, Crayons, Paint, Colored Pencils, etc. (Ada used marker last year and crayon this year)

*Camera or Scanner

*Ribbon for Hanging

*Internet Access to Transmit Image

*Photoshop or Other Photo Program (To perfect image)

1. Have the artist make the portrait. We found that bright contrasting colors worked best. Encourage child to use up the whole paper space and you will have to do less cropping.

2. Photograph or scan portrait. Be sure to photograph image straight on to avoid distortion. If you are scanning, use a high resolution. We used Photoshop to clean up, size and save our image as a jpeg.

3. Select your favorite custom photo site, choose a ceramic ornament style and follow their directions to crop and upload image. Be especially aware of crop areas so you don’t lose part of your image. If you use the same shape paper and finished ornament design you should be able to easily adjust the image to the template. We used Personalization Mall for this year’s ornament.

4. Wait for the mail to arrive. (The artist will be excited by the results!)

5. Change the ribbon and add text to the back of your ornament as desired. (We used a sticker on the back last year. Some ornament sites will let you order with text printed on the back).

6. Trim the tree!

We also used the drawings for our holiday cards. This year we worked with MOO and like the results. Happy Holiday planning!

Happy Birthday Lily!

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

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Happy Birthday to my beautiful, brave, friendly, inquisitive, funny, crazy friend Lily.  Thanks for the adventures- from traveling the world to chasing Monita around Manhattan to searching for secret subway tunnels with the double stroller…We are so happy you are in our lives! XOXO

Thrift Store Sweater Update

13 Tuesday Nov 2012

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Some of my favorite clothes for the girls are vintage finds from thrift and resale shops.  Clementine Consignment in Manhattan and LuLu’s Then and Now in Brooklyn are frequent stops for us.  These resale shops also buy gently used clothing and will donate items they can’t resell, so they are a great resource for moving your kids’ outgrown items.  We got this sweater at LuLu’s for under $10, changed out boring buttons for pretty vintage ones and added black lace over the pockets.  Flea markets, Ebay and Etsy always have great stashes of vintage trims and buttons.  We keep ours in these big glass storage jars.  Our little white sweater is now as Josie would say: “fancy”.

H Mart Love

22 Monday Oct 2012

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I am a sucker for good packaging.  Leslie told me about an Asian grocery called H Mart on an excursion with the kids this weekend and we were excited to check it out.   We stocked up on noodles and rice and dumplings among other things.  The Korean pears we found were the best we have ever tasted and the acorn pudding was an unexpected savory flavor, (which Ada declared delicious – a small miracle coming from the girl who lives on cereal and PB&J).  The girls had fun spotting things they had never seen before and eating rice and noodles at the food counter.  I dragged the family down every aisle and found lots of new groceries to try.  (OK, maybe I got a few just because they had pretty packaging).  The market carries products from Japan, China and Korea.  You can order online, but it is more fun to go wander around the store if you can.  Our favorite finds are these:

*Dried Noodles

*Little Animal Forks for Lunchboxes (I am saving these to use for a future party, despite Ada’s pleading to open them right now)

*Aid Helper Emergency Plasters

*Knife Sharpening Stone (Which technically we need, and how could I say no to that box?)

Vintage Treasure

08 Monday Oct 2012

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Finds from a recent visit to Tinsel Trading Company in Manhattan.  Tinsel Trading is a magical place that has been run and owned by the same family for generations.  Their story can be found here.  They have the most amazing selection of vintage millinery flowers, trims, buttons…I designed many projects around Tinsel Trading finds when I was in fashion school and I used to visit often for inspiration when I worked in the city.  There is a huge set of drawers in the back of the store filled with an ever-changing array.  This visit it housed unused paper labels, cardboard animals and new old stock of red paintbrushes among other things.  I love wandering in without a specific project and letting the treasure speak to me.  I have yet to bring Ada, but Tinsel Trading is pretty much a crafty four-year-old’s dream.  Here is what I found:

* Reproduction French sticker labels.  (We will use them for jams and gift labeling).

* Vintage silver ribbon.  (Waiting to trim a package).

* Vintage gold stacking beads.  (I am thinking these would make a pretty necklace mixed with seashells we found this summer for Ada’s mermaid Halloween costume that I have been knitting).

Rain Boots

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

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Autumn means the rainy season in these parts.  Thus begins the yearly search for the perfect rain boots for the girls.  I found these on Ebay last week.  They are from Korea and were on sale for $10 with free shipping(!)  Korean designs are so cute!  I love this smart use of gingham fabric stretched under the waterproof rubber.  Why didn’t I think of that when I was designing shoes?

Flea Market Finds

01 Monday Oct 2012

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Happy October!

My friend Leslie and I spent a kid-free morning yesterday at The Elephant’s Trunk Flea Market.  (Thanks Dads!)  It was a beautiful fall day, despite a few sprinkles, and the leaves had just started changing colors in Connecticut.  We both found some great stuff and had a lovely lazy morning wandering around.  I am still jealous of the bright blue and red umbrella Leslie scored!  Flea markets are my favorite way to spend a morning.  I love nothing more than wandering around and getting ideas, thinking of new ways to use old things, and finding inspiration.  Here are my finds:

Ironstone butter pats – also great for holding small jewelry or marbles, spices when cooking, or for mixing watercolors.  Ebay has some here.  (The opal glass is for Ada’s collection).

Glass drawer pulls in various sizes.  You never know when you will need the perfect set!  I am putting the small set on Ada’s dresser today.  The rest will be saved for future projects.  Etsy has some here.

Balsa hat form.  I went specifically to the flea for this and found the perfect one for $25.  I love it when that magically happens!  I am using it to photograph my headband crowns for my opening-soon Etsy store.

Giant wicker basket.  I love this thing!  I bargained it down to $35, and had no idea what I would do with it.  I was thinking of maybe using it for a laundry basket, or blanket storage, or towels, or maybe a future baby bed…It seemed to grow when it got into the trunk of our car and by the time I got it home it seemed really big.  Ada and Josie saw it and begged to put it in their room as a ‘nest’.  They have been reading books and snuggling bears in there.  I am still not sure where it will end up, but it is good in the corner of their room for now.  This figuring out the perfect use for something that was once loved by someone else is exactly why I love the flea market.