friday- check
road trip- check
good company- check
holiday on monday- check
SUPER EXCITED- check, check

sometimes you try to prove a point...i decided it was kind of liberating to mow the grass...you know, in a "i'm a girl and i can totally do it" kind of way (and i thought it burned calories).  well, it bit me in the you know what, b/c i am now covered in poison ivy.  awesome.   yea, i think i'm done with you mr. lawn mower.  conquered and totally paying for it....right before labor day.

*images courtesy of pearls and peonies, phoebe howard, gardiner & larson, muse interiors

i hope y'all had a wonderful weekend....ours ended too quickly.  i have been cooking w/ pinterest again and we are officially back friends.....i'll do a post on some of the recipes i tried that didn't make me look bad later this week.

racing out the door for meetings today, but i wanted to leave you with some pretty things to help start your day....

wow.  so this is what silence sounds like.  it's officially the first day of school.  we managed to get two kiddos off to school...and no tears were shed by walker (a pure miracle), taylor, or me (i got them out last night).  while having the house to myself is nice (and much needed), i must say, i miss those little munchkins.  

Give Away: THREE Pairs of Shoes from Sole Society!

Here's a fun weekend give away! Sole Society is a great new members-only designer shoe site, where new designs are released every single day. Most shoes are just $49.95 with free shipping and free, no-hassle returns.

These flats have been my go-to date night shoes. They are incredibly comfortable and I get compliments every time I wear them! They're all business up front and party in back with blue snakeskin (see #13 below).

Here are some of my other favorites.

For a chance to win three pairs of shoes from Sole Society, go to www.solesociety.com and register to be a member (it's quick, I promise) and find your favorites. Then just leave a comment here. Contest ends next Saturday at midnight. Good luck! xx

PS For $15 off your first purchase, use the code LGN15. Expires September 30th (US only).

Serenity Now

Oh boy! Things are starting to look good around here! The painters/workers left for good yesterday and some mad unpacking happened. I feel bad for the recycling and trash pick up guys. There's about a million garbage bags and boxes and rolls of old carpeting waiting for them. :/ But the house is suddenly feeling bigger and brighter and more clean! A great feeling after living in a box cave for two weeks.

Monday I'll start sharing more befores of the new house. The projects have started and I feel better about sharing the ugly before shots when I know at least some progress photos are not too far behind.

Aren't this pictures from our loft shoot peaceful? I'm missing that settled, content feeling that happens when your home is clean and decently decorated. While I'm ripping out disgusting old carpet on the garden level in between coats of paint on the kitchen cabinet frames, I'll be thinking of the serenity that's hopefully headed my way soon. :)

Happy weekend!

(Photos of our old dining room by Nicole Franzen. Styling by Kendra Smoot - who says sunflowers are making a comeback! Love these black ones she used. And how cool are the figs?)

Dear Pinterest, i don't know how you do it but you make me cook stuff i would never even image doing before you came along.  and 85% of the time, mine turns out terrible.....this is what i decided to make last night for dinner: chik-fil-a bites and crispy edamame.  i was excited about it, really i was.  just an hour before i began, my friend and i had a huge conversation about recent pinterest recipes we had pinned.

 i wish i had taken a picture of what mine looked like.  it was pitiful.  first of all, i have never fried anything in my life (again, a perfect example of how pinterest gets me to do crazy things).  i usually eat pretty healthy and here i was with my dutch oven and lots of cooking oil, burning pitiful chicken that i had marinaded in pickle juice for 3 hrs.  then i pulled out my crispy edamame from the oven....oh, i wish i had taken a picture, it was awful.  they tasted horrible.  my husband asked what they were (and we had just eaten these this past weekend)...they were unrecognizable.

here's a picture of my cooking....for walker's b'day i decided i had to make these elmo cupcakes.  the picture below is mine and it says it all:

they tasted so awful i wanted to cry.  especially since it was for walker's b'day.  the red food coloring never mixed w/ the homemade icing i made.  and on top of that red food coloring taste awful.  

ending on a positive note, i made this on monday night (despite never eating korean beef in my life).  it was delicious!!  and it was easy and quick which is a total plus in my book.  of course, mine looked nothing like the picture!!

Dreaming of My Garden

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Claire and Evie have always been easy eaters, but Grace was picky from the get-go. We've worked with her to the point where we can usually talk her into at least trying everything we put in front of her, but that happened not without effort!

This last year her class study at school was all about foods. For more than half of the year they took a weekly mini field trip just a couple stops down on the train to Battery Park. There is an Urban Garden in the park that overlooks the Statue of Liberty and the kids worked there for a few hours each trip. I started to notice over the year that Grace was getting more curious about veggies that she normally had zero interest in (basically anything green).

I started bringing Gracie and Claire with me to the farmers market in Union Square and I would let them pick the produce and sometimes cheeses. It was seriously amazing - if they helped me buy it, they would almost always be willing to eat it for dinner. It was like they were more invested in the meal. Also, it was just fun to have some alone time with my big girls each week.

Now that we're in Brooklyn, all I can think about is getting some raised garden beds in our little yard. I'm imagining planning the plots with the girls and letting them chose what we plant. Over the weekend I started moving the old flagstone pavers and relaying them in a better pattern. The plan is for the beds to go along the back wall, which gets a range of different light in the twenty-foot stretch. I can't wait to get this ready for next spring! Hopefully by this time next year we will be enjoying the fruits of our labor.

In the meantime, Grace has asked to take a cooking class as one of her after school activities. She loves to help me out when I cook or bake and I think it can only help her get more interested in trying new foods. I feel like if I can get her to eat swiss chard or kale without flinching, my work is done :) We're getting there!

Do you have picky eaters? What do you do to get your kids to try new foods? I'm also trying to get my kids to enjoy drinking water more. They usually don't mind drinking their water, but only after asking for juice (and getting turned down). :)  Ah, the joys of the battle!

in true darby fashion, we made a huge decision yesterday (basically 1 wk before school starts) to take tay out of her small, church school she has been in and send her to big school to start 5k.  i have realized that maybe i am the one who doesn't like change.  i want to keep her in a bubble (forever).  it's hard to let her grow up...i want to protect her from everything.....i feel like it's the right decision but it's still so hard, for me i guess.  it's going to be ok, no it's going to be good, and i'm not looking back.  done. wipe your tears away. she'll be fine, right?!!!

A Direction for the Kitchen

I'm not usually someone whose feathers get easily ruffled, but I'll admit that I've been a little flustered this week. Unpacking has been slow since the painters are still here. I feel like I live in a cave made of cardboard and superfluous sofas. Also work has been crazy, so when I do have a minute to start a project, I mostly sit here and stare wide-eyed at the chaos that is this new home. Where to even begin?

We're getting there though. I made a project timeline, and that is helping me feel like I have a little bit more control over the situation. The first focus will be on the backyard and the kitchen. These are probably the two spaces that need the most time and money, so I guess those are good places to start.

The kitchen is minuscule. We had a tiny kitchen in Cambridge, but this kitchen makes that one feel palatial. To make the space more usable, we're adding a huge wall of cabinets in the dining room (which is just around the corner) to store dishes, pots and pans, and even some pantry items. So the kitchen itself will be mostly just a cooking and washing dishes space. I can work with it.

The original plan was to replace the oak cabinet doors with new shaker style mdf doors. I found some online for about $30 a door, unpainted. Not bad, but it was still going to be around $600, so now the plan is to just trim out and paint the old doors myself. I saw a video tutorial online for how to fill heavy graining and I ordered the products to do that. And yesterday I pulled off all the cabinet doors, so we're on our way.

As far as colors go, my love affair with Farrow and Ball paint and colors continues. Inspired by this gorgeous kitchen, I'm going with a dark charcoal (Down Pipe) with brass pulls.

I really liked the look of the longer, more square bin pulls in this kitchen and thought something similar could work in mine. Thanks to twitter friends who alerted me to the price drop on these Martha Stewart pulls. They are less than $2 a pop, which is completely unbeatable, especially for unlacquered brass pulls.

I think they'll be perfect on the dark gray cabinets too.

Today I'm starting to paint the cabinet interiors and frames. Hopefully the grain filler comes tomorrow so that I can get these cabinets up and running this week! Then on to other kitchen projects: a new floor treatment, backsplash, shelving, appliances, lighting, sink/faucet, countertops... yikes!