rearranging the living room

as you may or may not know, we recently had a leak in our living room that damaged the floors. this necessitated a move, plumbers, hvac technicians, and finally, new maple planks. after weeks (unbearably long when you are already very pregnant and wanting to hang nursery prints rather than deal with stripped concrete floors), we are finally moving everything back this week. hhh and i contemplated a new arrangement for the living room, but i'm not totally sold on it. here are some photos: 

just as a reminder, this is what it used to look like: 

what do you think? should we stick with the tried-and-true or embrace the change? 

a new year

between the autumns of 2012 and 2013, i lived in china. although I've been back for a long time now, i still think about time in relation to that year i spent away from new york. i think that i thought that i would have accomplished a lot more than I have during the year+ that i have been home, but maybe i am being too hard on myself. or maybe not. (it's a common complaint among those writing dissertations, no doubt.) at any rate, it's now 2015, and time again to think about the expectations that i want to set for myself. i'm going to be teaching and writing, and also thinking about whether or not this scholarly life is one that i will pursue. after all, i have a lot of other interests that have nothing to do with academia or ngos, as this blog so clearly shows.

anyone who knows me knows that tidying is one of these interests. i was always very particular about keeping a clean house, but this book really took it to the next level for me. i've already made it the topic of far too many conversations. but it seems like an apt topic for the threshold of a new year, doesn't it?

yesterday, i packed up the holiday decorations and tucked them back under the stairs. the living room feels tidier without them, but i am itching to cull away a bit more. maybe it's sarah's influence, or all those minimalist rooms i've been seeing on remodelista. god knows hhh and i love our tchotchkes, but i'm hoping somehow that 2015 will be the year we decluttered our lives. we're off to a good start, i think - hhh spent the better part of our holiday break in california sorting through the debris of his childhood (although i think he would say "treasures"). have you ever sorted through an entire lifetime's worth of mementos? i wouldn't recommend it. (i have never seen such so many pez dispensers in one place before. nor snapple caps from the 1990s.) to prevent this fate, i'm going to be more deliberate and mindful of the things i buy and keep. the housing works up the street should also expect to see me hauling bags to their door with increasing frequency.

some of the holiday trimmings.

but hhh's great purge also unearthed some delights. among them: pencil sketches by his grandfather (including this incredible likeness of queen elizabeth), his first book (written when he was 13 in 1990, about a father who goes off to war in iraq), and a misshapen wooden carving of his adolescent hand made in shop class, which i insisted on bringing back. after all, home wouldn't be home without the things that remind us of those we love.

so, with that in mind, it's back to decluttering - but remembering that there is room for the most precious of tokens. (but you really gotta be careful here.)

have a wonderful 2015! xoxo

away in poughkeepsie

it got to be too much for hhh to commute back and forth to work (it's about 85 miles each way), so we decided to get a place on campus. we now have a cozy little one-bedroom where we can all stay. willa is super happy about that, since her love of vassar grass knows no bounds. this love is communicated through howling and incessant barking anytime we are within poughkeepsie city limits ("why can't we be outside ALL THE TIME?" she wants to know), which has probably (definitely) made us the bane of our neighbor's existence. 

a view towards the back of the room. the sofa came from our home office and faces a really lovely but non-working fireplace.

we moved up a few weeks ago, and the place is coming together. i'm of the belief that one should unpack ASAP, i.e., on the day you move. (boxes are the worst.)  we were able to bring a lot of the furniture from carroll street, and got a couple things from a friend's moving sale. that plus a trip to the poughkeepsie target (leaps beyond than the one at atlantic terminal...it's like they aren't even the same store) has us pretty much set up. the only thing left to do is to hang the photos! 

i am incredibly excited about this conran console, which came from a clearance sale at jcpenny's. 

i was actually going for a minimalist look, but have had to resign myself to being just an aspiring minimalist (as long as i live with hhh anyway. he loves his clutter.).

a little black pig, some books, a projector (aka tv!), a philodendron. 

this is phil the philodendron. we got him at the greenhouse at adam's fairacre farms.

these cast iron windows are beautiful but don't really keep out the bugs. it's still a lovely view of trees and the lake.

art, which has yet to go up. and the fireplace! grafitti by jon naar, "despair" by yuji yamada.

willa is sulking because i am taking photos of the apartment instead of romping through the great outdoors with her.

that's it for now. i'll be back eventually with the bedroom and kitchen. xoxo

a gallery wall

this wall's been up a while, but since i'm thinking of changing it around, i thought i'd document it first. the light in the living room isn't the greatest, but here we go.

clockwise from the dog portrait: willa by nicole chen, library by the sea by jeremy miranda, swirling planes by kristin endsley, a french banlieue by jr, one year performance by hsieh tehching, ariba familia by leah giberson, abstract landscape by yang yang; baby giraffe by sharon montrose, boys playing soccer (found at the ps321 brooklyn flea). 

the two-tone peach vase came from culture + commerce project in hudson, ny; the blue vase is an "antique" from panjiayuan market in beijing; the felted stones are from the art institute of chicago's gift shop.

the orb lamp is from ikea, and the neon orange crinkle planter is from cb2. 

the whole point of the gallery wall is to camouflage the tv. did it work? the stack of books holds the cable box and masks the cables, which drop down behind the fireplace. 

another view, with one of our pair of danish modern chairs in the foreground. the geometric pillow is linen and made in hong kong.

a wider shot of the gallery wall plus the furniture. this photo is from a while back, so there are different plants in the photo. :) 

what do you think? let me tell you, i thought about this wall a lot. mostly it happened last year, while i was watching castle on hulu on those cold beijing winter nights, dreaming about going home to brooklyn. it was the first project i tackled after getting home, although to be fair, hhh had already gotten it started by putting together that a-mazing electric fireplace i got on overstock. that thing has an incredible hologram-ish logs and flame display. it flickers. it dims. it produces a totally adequate amount of heat. i love it. 

so the fireplace and the tv were the two things that i had to include on the wall, and i was dead set on not centering the tv over the fireplace. most people thought this was crazy, but i think that it turned out nicely. (you better agree, because i hung that damn tv myself and am not moving it. ever.) anyway, i think went with two other similarly-sized pieces along the same sight line in order to balance it out. the organic shape of the gallery wall is nice for now, although i think it could probably be filled in down the line with new pieces. maybe something sculptural, or something with an air plant in it! 

anyhow, that's the gallery tv wall. xoxo