Memory Hoarding

Hey Internet! I didn't forget about you, I promise. After a not so fun stint with jury duty at the beginning of last week, I caught a cold which turned into a week long drama, a trip to the doctor, and a round of antibiotics. So it's a week later, and I'm not totally back to normal (apparently when I get sick, I do it good) but I'm here.

Sooo, has anyone been up to any amazing projects or fabulous family activities over the past week? Please tell me!! I sadly had to cancel an apple picking trip with my bestie this Sunday, and my creative juices are definitely on low at the moment.
 

I had been working on a very small project for the past week. Emphasis on the "very" the "small" and the "week." Like this is the kind of thing you can knock out in one afternoon, but with no energy to speak of, it took an entire week. How embarrassing. Even better though, I finally finished it this afternoon, and promptly learned that when the directions on a can of spray paint says to use in warm weather, the directions don't lie. I ended up with a crackled mess of paint and had to trash it. So at the end of the week, I'm left with no project, and a cough that just won't go away. Woe is me people!!

So instead lets discuss the one thing I've managed to accomplish over the past few weeks... Putting my printed pictures into albums! I think we're living in a world where pictures stay on whatever device they were taken on, or get uploaded to a computer and then stay there. I also think a lot of people are making photo books instead of printing pictures and putting them into albums. I love photo books and have made them for special occasions, but otherwise I am old school and love to print pictures, and stick them into actual albums.
 

But lets get real, doing so is incredibly annoying and time consuming. It's even more annoying and time consuming when you order over 600 pictures at a time and Snapfish send them to you out of order!! Seriously Snapfish, what are you playing at?!

 

After I used my entire dining room table to sort and organize my pictures, I couldn't have been prouder of myself and promptly text this next picture to my sister.
 

 

I may have also mentioned in the text, that the envelopes contained pictures from only June, July, and August. And then my lovely sister starts to tell me how crazy I am.
 

Yes world, I know I'm crazy. Or as I like to call it, I am a memory hoarder. I take too many pictures, I print too many pictures, and I have way too many albums in various bookcases throughout my apartment. But can I defend myself for a minute? Is it really so bad that I do this? Lily already loves looking through the albums, and I feel like its so special for kids to be able to look back at pictures of their childhood.
 

So where do you stand on printing pictures? Do you never print anything but wish that you do? Do you print a reasonable amount of pictures and therefore people can't ever question your sanity? 

Snapfish may have had penny prints recently and I may or may not have another 150 pictures from September waiting to be sorted and put into albums. Yeah, maybe when my cough is gone.

Pumpkins Are Everything

I believe I've mentioned that I am a summer girl who is crushing on fall this year. Even though the love of this season is new to me, I have always been a huge pumpkin lover. 

Forrest Gump. If that movie is on I will be watching it.

Anyway, I'm the one in Dunkin Donuts asking for a pumpkin latte well into the winter, until the barista sadly tells me they don't make them anymore. I stock up on pumpkin scented candles for the year, and bake as many pumpkin goodies as I can. The three main ingredients in any dessert on my Pinterest board is always either peanut butter, blueberries, or pumpkin. So it's a good time of year for me to try out some new recipes.

A few years ago we painted pumpkins at a farm and Moshe had so much fun doing it that it's become a fall tradition for us. 

I took the kids to a local county fair yesterday. It was another perfect fall day, and face painting, pony rides, and a pumpkin patch, rounded out the perfectness. Lily took picking out a pumpkin very seriously. 

The pumpkin patch had tables with paint set out, but Moshe wanted to paint ours at home. 

I put out a lot of newspaper on my living room floor and let my little artists get to work. I made a big initial out of painters tape on each of the pumpkins so they would have a fun monogrammed pumpkin when they were done painting. 

^^^no clothes for those under two is always a good idea

I learned a few things having two kids painting this year. It's going to be insanely messy, the less water you have in the bowl to rinse out the brushes, the better, and there's not really going to be any time for mama to paint her pumpkin if she's trying to make sure the kids don't go all Jackson Pollock on the living room.

After the pumpkins dried and I pulled off the painters tape, this is what we ended up with. 

 

Lily got bored well before she had painted enough to cover the area around the painters tape but if you squint you can make out the L on her pumpkin.

After I cleaned up the mess my kids made, I colored on my funny shaped pumpkin (thank you Moshe for finding it for me) with a sharpie. I tried for a preppy pumpkin in navy and green with a modern monogram, and chevron design. I still love chevron, but it's going to be deader than dead in 2014, so I had one last chevron hurrah with my little pumpkin.

Our three little pumpkins all in a row by our front door definitely make me happy and more in love with fall.

What was everyone up to over this gorgeous weekend? Anyone paint some pumpkins? Even better, anyone bake some pumpkiny goodness? Send some my way if you did!

My HONY Moment

No, I wasn't spotted in the street and asked for a photo, but I had quite the Humans of New York moment last night.

Everyone here is familiar with Brandon Stanton right? He manages to capture the attention of not only the people of NYC, but people all over the world, with a picture and a one line caption of people he sees on the streets of New York. 

The Humans of New York book came out yesterday, and Brandon was at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, meeting his fans. I'm quite a fan girl so I went to camp out with my fab friend, Yael, to get our books signed. That Barnes and Noble is huge. Brandon was up on the fourth floor, and we were stuck waiting on the second. Yael and I haven't ran out of things to talk about over the last 20 years so we managed to keep ourselves entertained while we waited. We weren't even sure we would be able to meet Brandon, because the store employees had told us we needed to have our Barnes & Noble receipt to get in, and wouldn't you know, I had preordered my book from Amazon. 

We finally made our way up to the fourth floor even without a receipt and we got our first glimpse of Mr. Stanton himself. Even after putting his John Hancock on hundreds of books he was still smiling. 

Some of the colorful characters from the book were also there like this adorable tango dancer (EDITED: yes, I know he is dressed as a matador but he calls himself a tango dancer in the book) and Blackwolf the Dragonmaster. 

 

Yael and I had a very quick moment with Brandon, but it was quite a night. I heard an employee say she had never worked such a big event there.

When meeting the author of a book that celebrates New York City, the only way to end the night is with some sketchy hole in the wall falafel and a two hour ride home on the subway because of night work. 

Was anyone else there last night? Did you buy the book even if you weren't there? What do you think of it?