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. 

September 1 update

Okay so we have been busy and remiss in our blogging and photo updates. So sorry.

Here is a quick and dirty update (photos to follow as soon as we find the camera cord):

1. HOUSE: The new house is looking better. Furniture came (via mambo movers) and we pretty much finished the downstairs (or round 1 of the downstairs) renovations. The carpet is gone, wallpaper is gone and we are awaiting the floor refinishers (week of Sept 12) and new blinds and then the first floor will be pretty well complete. The second floor looks the same, still has wallpaper and everything. On third floor we took out carpets and painted the paneling in one of the rooms. Its quite a transformation. We painted our front door a dark purple and got a really cute doormat. Our neighborhood is terrific. One thing I particularly love is the trees on our block. I also love the proximity to things. We have Faragelli’s bakery on one corner, Ippalito’s fish market on the other corner, and a grocry store, pharmacy and all that jazz three blocks away. We are also located near the Italian Market, which is really an amazing place to discover. All these cheese shops and butcher shops and all this fresh produce and stuff. Pretty cool.
2. WORK: Mike started his job at the EPA last week. Mike got a teeny weeny studio in Capital hill/ Eastern Market area of Washington DC, and he started on the 22^nd of August. So far, the commute and the job have been a tough adjustment (Well who wouldn’t have a hard time adjusting to a desk job after 4 years of non-desk-job jobs and 2 years of school and 3 months of traveling footloose and fancy free?) but we are looking forward to a reunion in Philly this labor day weekend! As for my work (Karin) I am using this opportunity and move to shift my career and get out of the Instructional Design business for a while. I have realized over the last few years that I seriously miss working with others - I have felt rather isolated working on my own without co-workers, and frankly, Instructional Design has not been fun and creative enough for me lately and so, I can just tell that I am ready for a change. So the gist of it is that I have decided to embark on a search for “what’s next” -  I will continue to work, but for the next year, I will work only on a part-time basis so that I can have some time to explore some new directions by meeting with friends and community leaders about new possibilities and maybe even volunteering in the community.  
3. FAMILY: Our families are doing good. We have nothing much to report!

Family in the News

So my mom released a research study back in late July, and I am a very proud daughter!
It is all about women who step out of the workforce, and how hard it is for them to re-enter the corporate world. The bottom line is that if you step out and even if you don't intend to go back, you need to stay connected to the business world in one way or another -- It is a very noteworthy and timely topic for many of my friends who have left the workforce to be full-time moms. Here are a few of the articles I have seen about her study:

• Wharton School Article
  
• Business Week Online
• Yahoo
• Inc.com
  
• San Jose Mercury news

Work work work

After a weekend of guests, family events and all kinds of distractions we've gotten back to work.
We've primed the Living room walls (almost entirely) and everything is half painted right now. Last night, we put up our new foyer light and dining room lights from Ikea. We made yet another trip to lowe's. We painted and cleaned some more. And last night for the first night in two weeks, we slept on a bed! What a delight to get a full night's sleep.

Today, we have a lot of the big work still ahead of us that we’d like to get done before Thursday morning, when our movers come to bring all of the rest of our furniture and stuff.

• Finish painting the living room (its primed, but now the pain needs to go on, 2 coats)
• Finish touching up the orange in the dining room (Needs another two coats at least but I like how it looks)
• Paint the dining room walls and windowsills
  
• Touch up the foyer paint and trim
• Touch up kitchen paint at top
• Take up the carpets on the third floor and on the staircase and bind and put out for tomorrow’s garbage
• Scrape rest of black tar stuff off the living room floor, pull more staples
• Clean living room floor up with some Murphy’s Oil
• Take up all the kraft paper, clean floors up in the first floor
• Peel paper in our bedroom (Might not happen today)
  

Living room today. All the wallpaper is gone and the staples are almost out of the floor. Now we have to prime and clean the floors up before we paint it.  

Our living room after we took up the carpet yesterday. That's my mom helping Mike. Both of our moms have been really helpful.