Our friends Brendan, Paul and Tiare joined us at our house for dinner on Friday night. Lucky us, Paul and Brendan did all the cooking. It was delicious! Lima Bean puree, Stuffed Pork Chops, Roasted Beet Salad, and Fresh Corn Polenta. For desert, vanilla ice cream and fresh plum compote. YUM!  

"Uncle Mike" with our favorite niece, Margaret (aka Maggie) at a recent Dunn family gathering. Isn't she just the cutest? 

sidewalk cleaning

Here is something that is so neat about our South Philadelphia neighborhood, and our group of neighbors. A sidewalk cleaning guy happens to live on our block, so when he goes on his tour of the neighborhood on his cleaning machine, he runs the machine down our sidewalks, so basically they get cleaned of debris every Monday and Thursday. On other days, neighbors are out sweeping. How cool is that? Such a change from Belmont (our Charlottesville Virginia neighborhood), where no one seemed to pick up trash, ever.

The latest "Before" and "After photos

Check out the Before and After Photos of the first floor of our South Philly homestead.

Before and After of Living Room

"BEFORE" (top photos) and "AFTER" (bottom photos) in the new Living Room. We took down the wallpaper and border, ripped up carpets and refinished the floors, moved the fireplace (its an electric, plug in) and replaced the vertical blind with a top down bottom up pleated shade. And of course, stuck our own furniture in there. Doesn't it look so different?

Living Room Furniture

So if I were to sum up our overall taste, I'd say it is based on a bunch of hand-me-down danish mid-century modern furniture that my parents gave me. I have always loved this teak modern furniture, and especially its low profile. Two years ago, we added to our "grown up" furniture the Modernica Case Study DayBed. I love the daybed - its very practical and streamlined, and it was great for our very small living room at our house in Charlottesville, although I now question as to why we chose an off-white fabric for it, because that's obviously totally impractical. Last year we added a danish, teak modern buffet to our growing bunch of "grown up" furniture, - I found that at a junk shop in Charlottesville and we both love it. This year, now that our living room feels cavernous, we decided that it was time for some chairs to go with the daybed...and so here they are...we bought these vintage chairs and one other similar one on Ebay a few weeks ago. So for now, this crazy set of chairs will be sitting in the living room. But we plan to recover them in a dark grey or chocolate wool as soon as we can afford it!

We painted our front door a very dark dark purple color, and painted the number placard to match. Our friends Molly and Rolando gave us this adorable doormat to go with the house. Its a contemporary image of a walrus kind of waiving. Its awesome and it totally finishes the entrance off. last week I added a small fir tree to the corner of the sidewalk that's next to our railing. Now it looks "loved" and as cute as the nieghbors' houses! 

"Before" and "After" photos of the foyer/ entry way. We peeled all the paper, and replaced the light fixture and switchplate. What a huge difference! It feels like a new room!! 

This is what a lot of the wood floors in the living room looked like. Old linoleum tar or something all over them. Couldn't wait to get them refinished!!! 

Our dining room "Before" and "After". We peeled the wallpaper borders, and painted. Yes - we like orange, and yes it is the same exact shade of orange from our last dining room wall in our house in Charlottesville... once we painted it, we felt like we were home again! We also replaced the light fixture with something a little more streamlined from Ikea.  

This is Mike and my mom helping to rip out the green carpet. We peeled all the wallpaper (finally) and were delighted to find the walls in very good shape. We gave the whole room a coat of paint, a very calm greyish color, called "Navaho Smoke" or something like that. Next on the list was to get the floors refinished, and that happened this week. Photos to come! 

"before" of the Living room. Note the wallpaper, and border which is also all throughout the second floor hallway. The wallpaper and green carpets and tinfoil vertical blinds made it very very dark in the room. The fireplace is one of those pug-in electric jobbies, so it is moveable! 

"before" photo of the foyer/entry - This is a close up of the foyer wallpaper and light fixture 

mmmmmm. cheesesteaks. 

Welcome to South Philadelphia. Home of the Cheesesteak.