Today is my darling sweetheart’s birthday. I can’t believe she is 5! I took this photo of her on Saturday, when we had a party for her at Kid’s World and it was a great time! Her whole class was invited and of course, her other friends she knows aside from school. There were 19 kids! More photos of her party weekend to come.
Yves’ cousin, Samy, and his wife Sabine came for a visit last week from France. They live in Brittany, by the sea. This was Sabine’s first time in New York and they did all the usual touristy things. I met them for the first time on Wednesday. My dad came over to watch Sienna and I met everyone at the restaurant, Da Andrea. It was a wonderful time! The food was delicious and the 2 bottles of wine were devine! Sorry I don’t have any photos of the food but I do remember that I got the tower of grilled vegetables with goat cheese for appetizer, the squid ink taglioni with fresh clams for entreé and chocolate gelato for dessert. Samy and Sabine are such good people and it was very easy to talk with them. They sent us off with loads of crepés for Yves and a huge box of macarons for me! And a cute outfit for Sienna. So generous! They were leaving Saturday night so we invited them over our place so they could meet Sienna. We took them to Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was a super windy day, up to 60 mph! But sunny! We had lunch at Bubby’s, where I had one of the best sandwiches I had in a long time (THE PILGRIM – roasted turkey, cranberries, stuffing and cream cheese on housemade sourdough bread)! We walked around a bit but probably not as much as we could have because of the wind. Then, before heading back to the house, we swung by Coney Island just to show them. I felt it was colder by then so it was a super quick trip. Back at the house, we had coffee and cocoa and the banana bread I made that morning. Yves drove them to the airport with promises of visiting them in France soon. They will be back in August with their son and entourage so we will be seeing them again in no time. Sienna enjoyed their company as well and said to me that it was very nice that they came.
MMMMM macarons! NOM NOM NOM. They are all gone now.
Group shot!
By my favorite bridge
Sienna’s point of view! (I should have given her a camera for the day!)
Sienna and Sabine running
On the wall
Squinty by Coney Island
We sent them off with some gifts of our own. We bought a Brooklyn t-shirt for Simon and a notepad with a colorful Manhattan skyline on the cover as well as a couple of handmade items. I made Sabine an S pendant and a set of NY coasters from my photos.
Yves sent me beautiful flowers for Valentine’s Day. 2 dozen roses! Here’s is the Instagram photo.
I decided to do something a little different and ordered chocolate covered strawberries from Edible Arrangements via a friend’s recommendation. Since there was a local branch, me and Sienna went to pick them up today. The strawberries were very tasty!
Here is the card I made for him.
When I saw this image of the kissing kids in a heart, I had to have it from the Silhouette store. I turned it into a pop-up card. It really came out cute because you can have them do the kissing motions by just opening and closing the card slightly. I just love images of kissing kids (although I kind of dread the day when Sienna has her first kiss! Ironic!)
Ever the procrastinator, Sienna and I worked on her class Valentines today. We also worked on special treats just for her best buds, Vinny and Emma, pink chocolate covered sandwich cookies.
I loved this idea when I saw it last year and finally did it. These are for her classmates.
Sienna had a lot of fun making these with me. She was a great sprinkle adder.
I joined a bunch of Valentine themed swaps. This one was for A Piece of My Heart swap. I pulled out my Melting Pot and Ultra Thick Embossing Powder (UTEE) and some rubber stamps and started playing. I got the idea from this video on youtube.
This one was for a handmade heart swap. The birds and small heart were die cut using my Sizzix. I hand cut the big heart and free handed the love. I added fabric stiffener to the back of the heart, which is why it’s curved on the edges.
Some simple heart embellished paper clips.
Initial heart pendants. Initials cut by my Cameo using vinyl.
And here are a bunch of cards I did for card swaps:
 (I absolutely adore the kissing kids from the Silhouette store!)
I know I have a lot of catching up to do! Thought I’d start the new year with a Sienna achievement! She was so happy about this.
Lots of Halloween fun over the weekend! First off, last Friday, we met Starr and Sylvie at the library in Bay Ridge for a special Halloween storytime and craft. I was afraid to let Sienna wear her Thor costume too much in fear of ruining it so Starr was nice enough to bring something from her stash.
I think it’s hysterical that Robin is taller than Batman! They look cute regardless!
They made paper plate ghosts (which was one of the crafts I had set up for the kids for Shirley’s party Saturday!)
And speaking of Shirley’s party, it happened on the day we got a freak snowstorm! Thankfully, we didn’t have far to go. I set up a craft table for the kids with pom poms and pipe cleaners, markers and crayons, glue and tape, etc. I made pasta salad and apple cupcakes with chocolate buttercream and apple cider cupcakes with apple cider cream cheese frosting with fancy Halloween themed cupcake wrappers that I made with my Silhouette SD. AND I FORGOT MY CAMERA!! Boo hoo! So no photos from the party from me! Anyway, the apple cupcakes were good but I didn’t get a chance to try the apple cider cupcakes! And the craft table was big hit with the kids! Even the boys wanted in on it!
On Halloween, Sienna’s class had a party and the parents were invited to come during the last hour. We got to see a little bit of what they do during school.
Her class sitting on the rug. There are 18 kids in her class.
Eating goodies from the party
Dancing and Sienna turns and smiles at me (awwww!)
Sienna and her 2 best buds!
This is why Sienna loves this song:
Later on that day, we went trick or treating with Emma and Leah, like we did last year. I forgot to take a photo of all 3 of them posed together tho! Darn! Where is my brain?
Just like last year, Emma and Leah were ready to go home after about an hour but Sienna kept wanting to ring more doorbells! LOL! That’s funny because she didn’t even eat all the candy she had gotten from last year! I guess she just likes to get free stuff like her mom! HA!
Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy and safe Halloween! More to come later! We’re off to go fight crime! (photo by Shirley!)
I know that Sienna’s first day of school was over a month ago and things have been going really well so didn’t want to jinx it by posting too early. She actually says she likes school!! Practically everyday that we would walk across the street to nursery school last semester, she would tell me she doesn’t like school. From practically the first day of this new school, she would wake me up in the morning by asking if we can go to school now. At 6:30 in the morning. The first few days there were issues with walking the 3 blocks home, where she wouldn’t want to walk home. Things are better now, thank goodness. Don’t know what that was all about. And while lately, she hasn’t been waking me up to go to school, she is still happy to go!
It is now part of the routine to walk over the bump everyday going to and from school. The bump is from the Hurricane Irene back in late August when a tree fell over and uprooted the sidewalk. Almost 2 months later and it still hasn’t been fixed!
She instantly became friends with a girl we had met when we were at the school to register, back in June. Her name is Emma. She is also friends with a boy named Vinny and usually the 3 of them play in the playground if it is nice after school (or even when it’s not so nice out!) and I get to hang out with the moms for some adult talk!
Playing with chalk on a sunny day
Playing Simon Says, it had just stopped raining! Do you see Vinny’s butt all wet? They had just finished running around the whole playground and Vinny was sitting on the play areas!
A self portrait!
I’m happy that she has a chance to run and play after school. It helps the time go by since she gets out of school so early. I have a bunch of craft kits in the arsenal to pull out for the winter, when it’s too cold for the playground. I hope that they will be adequate substitutes!
On Friday, Yves and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary! 10 years ago on Friday, we went to Vegas to get married and a handful of our friends and family joined us. We had planned it earlier that year as October is my favorite month. It was nice to get so many well wishes on my Facebook page. Our friend, Rob, who went to Vegas with us, reminded us of how his room in the Tropicana hotel had mirrors on the ceiling! LOL! He also wanted to make note that he did not request the mirrors! HA! Yeah, ok! 🙂 Anyway, we celebrated on Friday by going to Morton’s Steakhouse. I knew of the place, having bought a gift card for friends Bill and Laura, who were moving from New York to Chicago a few years ago (all the cdmomers chipped in!). Our friend, Jana, highly recommended the place so we said, why not?
Here’s the photo they took of us. The service was wonderful and everyone wished us a happy anniversary. The food was so good! I am still full from the dinner on Friday! We opted for the steak and seafood special. They started us off with warm onion bread. I could have easily eaten the whole thing! But I only cut off 2 pieces! I ordered the chopped salad and Yves got the caesar. I love that salad! It was so delicious! I’m going to have to attempt to make that at home. I got the Shrimp Alexander with my filet mignon. The shrimp was jumbo, lightly breaded with a butter wine sauce. MMMM. I also ordered the brussel sprouts sauteed in bacon and shallots! Yves got the lump crab cake with his filet and the grilled asparagus with balsamic glaze. I was already half way full when our entrees came! I was only able to eat half of my warm chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream! It was so good but I felt like I was going to burst! Yves got carrot cake. It was very light and fresh but it had cloves in it, something that Yves doesn’t like. If it wasn’t for that, it would be the perfect carrot cake! He ended up taking home the carrot cake. It’s too bad I couldn’t take the warm chocolate cake home!
My chopped salad, you can see the onion bread in the back!
Sorry for the bad vegetable photos but I just wanted to make sure I document them. We ended up taking them home too.
Afterwards we had originally thought of going to check out a movie. Going to the movies is not something we do often since Yves has unofficially banned going to movies. He ALWAYS seems to get stuck sitting by the noise makers! But since it was a special occasion, we were thinking of giving it a go. Well, we were so stuffed from dinner that sitting down for a movie did not appeal to us. We had to walk it off! So we decided to walk down to the Brooklyn Promenade. It was very nice! We haven’t been down there in awhile. We also took a few night shots, which we used to love doing!
All in all, a very nice evening! Oh, here is the card I made for Yves too! Very simple.
The last weekend of August, we drove up to Maine to visit our dear friends, Geneva, Layne and their girls, Phoenix and Lennox. We almost didn’t go because that was also the weekend of Hurricane Irene. I am so glad we decided to go for it. It was nice to get away from the drama of the hurricane (subway closings, flooding, etc.). We missed the major part of the hurricane and only got some heavy rain in Maine on that Sunday.
We left that Friday, early in the morning – 6am! We stopped for breakfast at Cracker Barrel in Connecticut (my secret plan as I knew there was one up there!). It was pretty smooth sailing all day. There was one point we had to pull over and Sienna used the travel potty (the first time to use it too and we bought it in May for Myrtle Beach!), she just had to go. It worked out well. A cop pulled over behind us and we got nervous but when he saw Sienna, he told us to take our time. Whew! You never know about those CT cops as I always remember it was in CT that I got my first speeding ticket ($285!!)
We stopped off for lunch when we hit Maine and I got my lobster roll!! MMMMMM. Starr had mentioned to me about all the lobster shacks there are as you head up north and I found one! We went to the lobster claw in Saco, Maine. See how big my lobster pieces were?
Posing with the fisherman
We made it to their house around 4:30 and as you can see, Sienna made herself right at home with Phoenix and her friend, Delaney!
Let me say that Maine is a pleasure and such a different place! The girls played all afternoon, going in the house, going out the house, going next door to another girl’s house, etc. Since they all knew to stay out of the street, it was safe for them to play outside and up the street without having to constantly watch them. They don’t lock their doors! Having never lived outside New York, that concept is so foreign to me! Yves even marveled at how he saw a woman pull into a Target parking lot, left all her windows open and went into Target! Wha?! Anyway, I didn’t see much of Sienna the rest of that day as she was so busy playing with Phoenix. It was so great to see! Makes me miss them that much more.
Lennox getting in on the fun!
They had a ball jumping from the giant bean bag to the bed. They were doing this for awhile! Everyday!
Saturday, we went to the American Folk Festival! Food and music!
Too loud for Sienna!
So yeah, I was too busy eating to take photos of the food! Sorry! Here’s a list: pulled pork BBQ sandwich, mini donuts, chicken on a stick, root beer float and fried dough. Sienna got cranky because she was tired and it was humid out. We went into the neighbor’s pool to cool off (how awesome is Ann, her neighbor?!) but we didn’t stay very long as the water was really super duper cold and Sienna did not want to stay in.
Later that night, Geneva’s neighbor (Delaney’s dad), Matt, BBQed some seafood. Bacon wrapped scallops and salmon pinwheels. I made guacamole with tomatillos and Geneva made cole slaw and corn on the cob. MMM!
Matt did a great job and we went over his place later that night and took a walk around the block.
Sunday was the day the rain came, heavy at times. Geneva took the girls to a bouncy house place (sorta like BounceU) so me and Yves could go out. We intended to go to Bar Harbor, a touristy area by the water that is an hour away, but it really was pouring down hard so went to The Lucerne Inn instead. Their seafood brunch was very good!! I was so into the food that I forgot to take any photos!
Later that day my dear Geneva took me to the craft store, how can I say no? We left the brood sitting on the couch playing video games.
Geneva picked up these pirate mask to color for the girls.
Later that night, we took everyone out for dinner, a small gesture to thank them for the hospitality they have shown us.
We promised the girls ice cream so went to another place to get it. They had cute retro decorations all around the place.
They had a ton of ice cream flavors too. They mix it to order and I thought that was pretty neat. Unfortunately, Yves’ butter pecan was pretty flavorless but my creme de menthe and Sienna’s chocolate was delicious! And Phoenix let me try her tutti frutti too! That was also good.
The next morning, we started heading south toward home. We were going to take 2 days to go home so we can stop at one of the beach towns along the way. More on Salisbury, MA in another post. We went to a local bagel place for breakfast. Geneva turned me onto their apple cinnamon bagel. It was very delicious!
Her face shows the attitude I’ve been getting from her lately. Hmph indeed!
I finally managed to catch a photo of Lennox laughing!
Good-bye hug.
Earlier today Sienna told me she was sad because she missed Phoenix. I told her that I missed Geneva too so she asked me if Daddy missed Phoenix’ daddy, Layne. LOL! And how can I forget a photo of their cute puppy, Elsa?
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