the haystack needle

a farewell

I'm awful at goodbyes. When Dan and I reconnected, we were long-distance for almost a year (he was still in Chicago then) and it never got any easier to say goodbye to him. I was that girl making a scene at the airport every time, and Sunday turned into my least favorite day of the week. I've come to think that farewell has a better ring than goodbye — it feels less final somehow.

This weekend, we're saying farewell to two of our dearest friends here. We're losing the amazing Scott and Kelly to Los Angeles (and we're also losing the best dinner party hosts — they've certainly kept us well-fed with their culinary skills!). While I'm terribly sad to see them leave, I'm so excited for the big adventures waiting for them on the West Coast. So after chowing down on some meat pies, I will bid them farewell with this card and look forward to many visits ahead. 

This amazing watercolor handlettering is by Samantha Hahn — one of my favorite artists.

more moving announcements

I made more of my moving postcards yesterday (Dan has a big family) — and needed to pick up another roll of Tapeswell envelope wraparound tape. I really love this pattern and the monochromatic look of these postcards. And it's not everyday you see fancy swirly designs put on a piece of cardboard box, but I think it works. For more details on how I made these moving announcements, check here.

moving announcements

Our move was anything but easy: Dan and I waited 21 days to move in our new apartment (thanks to a slow-moving inspection process), living out of a duffel bag at friends' places and my brother's apartment through the month of June. But it was worth the wait, and we're slowly turning the new loft space into our home. First things first, letting everyone know we FINALLY moved in! I recycled our moving boxes and turned them into cardboard postcards, like I did with our last moving postcards. One tweak to the design — I used Tapeswell packaging labels to add some pattern to the cardboard. Because of the long wait, I also slashed "just" in the "just moved" stamp — "finally" seemed more fitting.

The recipient's address will go inside the label (above) and I'm writing our new address below the stamped "check out the new address." Most of our moving boxes came from our local liquor store to save on supplies (and wine boxes are sturdy!), so many of the boxes I cut up are white on one side, making the type stand out even more.

 

I love any project where I can use my collection of rubber stamps. The supplies used to make these moving postcards: recycled moving boxes (cut into postcard-size pieces), Tapeswell label tape, ink pad and rubber stamps (my stamps are a mix from Impress Rubber Stamps, the Ink Pad, and Casey Rubber Stamps.) I'm excited to put these moving postcards in the mail. One more to-do checked off the list!

timeout to say thanks

I just wanted to take a quick break to share this personal thank you, since you guys have been with me since the start of our apartment move. (And then I promise to hush about this move of all moves.) This week has been tough: we experienced a succession of bad news.

+ The movers lost our sofa cushions (not the decorative ones, the ones you sit on) — oh and Room & Board has discontinued our sofa's fabric so you'll be seeing another before + after sometime soon.
+ Our stinky landlord won't give us back our security deposit. We're fighting it.
+ I jinxed myself earlier in the week by saying the wait to move in to the new apartment was finally over. It's not. We have to wait at least another two weeks. That makes our grand total of living out of a duffel bag at friends' apartments = one month.

I've learned a lot about myself in the last week. Things like: I'm more attached to my stuff than I'd like to admit, and I have a hard time functioning without a home base. And I'm persistent, in a good way, when it comes to scoring money back from bad movers who lost our sofa cushions. So rather than continue to wallow in how hard this month is turning out to be, I want to channel that feeling I had in the photo above (right before I walked down a grassy path in Maine to marry Dan.) That feeling that I have a home wherever Dan is. And I'm really thankful for that and this as well:

+ thank you to our friends Scott + Kelly and Ali + Kevin who have been so incredibly sweet in letting us crash with them during our nomadic month. You guys are amazing and generous and we've been having so much fun being roomies with you. I think apartment sharing with couples should be the new trend. And thank you to friends and family for offering up their homes to us. We feel really lucky and loved.

+ I also received some serious blog love this week. Thanks to Alyson of Unruly Things for naming me blog of the week! A big thanks to Apartment Therapy's the Kitchn — I feel so honored to be a delicious link on a site I admire. I got a Lemonade Stand award thanks to Alek (who knew I had enough lemons this week to make lemonade!)  And thanks to my super cute friend Susan at Lucky Magazine for the sweet shoutout — you made my day! (Susan and I used to have offices across from one another, and I swear she wears a cute outfit everyday.)

+ thank you for coming here and sharing your thoughts, support, and sweet comments. I've really loved reading everyone's comments and emails, and during this tough move, they've been such a pick-me-up.

+ and finally, I wanted to say a special thank you to my super husband, because I have been undeniably cranky through this ordeal. In true Dan style, he's managed to sail through this mess without a meltdown. Whereas I've sometimes caught myself thinking that this can't be happening this month because this is the only June we'll have in our first year of marriage, like I'm being robbed of the time because things aren't falling into place perfectly. But what I've come to realize: this is what our June is supposed to be. And the imperfections make it all deliciously real and make us stronger. I would have cracked a hundred times over if it weren't for you, Dan. And in a weird way, I love how we always have the worst historic moves — I guess that's our special thing. And it makes for a good laugh once we've made it through.

{photographs, from our Maine wedding, by the fantastic Charlotte Jenks Lewis}

camping out

It's Friday, almost a week since our move, and we're still camping out with friends (who have been so sweet to let us crash at their place), while our apartment building awaits certification from apparently the slowest-moving city officials ever. The situation is trying my patience, and I'm finding it hard not to dwell on all the unpacking, organizing, and creating new systems for our stuff still ahead. (I need to come up with a solution for our silverware, kitchen tools, and teatowels + napkins as our kitchen cabinets have no drawers! That's going to be tough.) Here's my ode to camping out in style:

+ nestle under a kissing rabbits sleeping bag

+ hide in an adorable teepee (spotted on you are my fave)

+ lie down on the coolest cot (by hable construction, of course)

+ spend a magical evening under a tent: photograph by jennifer squires, available in her etsy shop.

+ bring a luau lantern for lighting the way in the dark. I love this rechargeable LED lantern by OXO — it has a pretty glow that lasts 10 hours and it's an easy, practical alternative to candlelight. Perfect for blackouts, too!

{photograph by Claire L. Evans}

So for at least a few more days, I'm working on letting go of my strong desire to get settled. We are staying in a fun Brooklyn neighborhood (Park Slope), so it is a dream fort to hide out in for the weekend.

sweet ending

Thanks for all of your support for our big move! Lesson learned: a move can be just as stressful with movers. I had visions of the move finishing by early afternoon and going for a fun celebratory lunch in the new neighborhood. Instead this is how it went down: the move took twice as long as we expected (lovely, as we're paying by the hour), one of the movers knocked a glass table at the top of the staircase of our old place — sending pieces of glass everywhere, Dan and I spent the next hour sweeping up the puddles of broken glass on the stairs, I got lost returning our Zipcar which charges you if you're not right on time, oh and our new apartment building doesn't have its city certification so we're crashing with friends for a few days (the big unpack will have to wait a few days.) But on the bright side, our stuff is all moved in (done!) and we're seeing this time as a treat to get to stay with friends we never get to see enough. Our friend Ali made cheeseburger sliders last night and she baked a chocolate raspberry cake that was so good (and is dangerously in the refrigerator right now!). Amazing how a great dinner at the end of a bad day can turn all the stress into a memory. We sure enjoyed a sweet ending to a tough move.

And as another treat, I was so excited to see the new Print + Press collaboration. This month, Abby paired with Tricia, who designed this fantastic strawberry creamsicle print. I love this month's pretty pair! And it's hard to dwell in the yuck of moving with visions of summer like fresh lilacs and melty popsicles. I'll be sharing Tricia's organizing ways for Lost + Found up next.

{photographs by abby}

give pause

I'm someone who always likes to skip ahead to what's next. When I order dinner at a restaurant, I already have my plan for dessert. I really love when my favorite TV shows give you a sneak preview of next week's episode. So it's not surprising that my mind has been skipping over plans, ideas, and utter excitement for the new apartment where we're moving this weekend — and I even started a mental countdown of days till the big move. We turned sour on our current apartment months ago, when space became too tight, our landlord became more eccentric, and the everyday struggle of getting laundry to a laundromat and cooking in a crazy cramped kitchen started to wear on us. But it's only just hit me, a few days away from saying goodbye to our little second-story brownstone abode, that this apartment is much more than any old one-bedroom.

This is the first place Dan and I called our apartment. It's the kitchen where I first really stretched my love of cooking and where I randomly discovered the amazing taco recipe that is our special dish. It's the first space where I entertained as a grownup and found out quickly that simple dishes are best when you're hosting a dinner party. It's where Dan and I were exposed to the art of compromise in everything related to decorating. It's the apartment that houses my first brand-new sofa. It's the bedroom that is so small, our bed fills the space from wall-to-wall, yet it feels super cozy in its painted deep blue color (inspired by a Paris hotel where we stayed.) It's the apartment where I welcomed in the big 3-0 and where I surprised Dan with 30 notes strung from the ceiling when he passed that birthday milestone. It's the place where the love of my life proposed one fateful Christmas evening. And it's the living room floor where I crafted away for months before our Maine wedding, stamping tea towels and lining envelopes and hoarding blue mason jars for a day filled with homemade magic.

So I'm realizing why I've been reluctant to do the last big to-do before our move — paint our Moroccan blue bedroom back to boring white for the new tenants. With all of its flaws, this 650 square feet of space has been our home and it's packed with many, many wonderful memories. I think it's time I give pause to what the apartment has given us. 

p.s. the top photograph with handdrawn text is from a new Etsy shop, for me, for you. I'm loving this print in particular. And the artist Kate has a blog as well, which I follow.