Two days in New York

This past week I got a chance to tour Manhattan for two whole days.  (!!!!)  Hubby took me around town to celebrate my birthday (yay!) and then I showed our aunt around town another day.  It was such a nice treat to wear my "nice" clothes (aka non-mommy-stained-t-shirts) and see the city I love.

Here are some photos from my New York adventures:

Delicious breakfast at Cafe Lalo (famous from the movie "You've got mail.")

Sneakily taking a photo during a wedding photo shoot at Central Park's Bethesda Terrace

One of my travel companions

Fresh flowers at Union Square Farmers Market

Ethiopian food served at Massawa Ethiopian Restaurant

No idea where I shot these flowers, but I love them because they remind me of an old painting

Best. Popsicle. Ever.  (People's Pops on the High Line)  I left feeling inspired to re-try popsicle-making this summer

Beautiful mural seen on the High Line

Three Pie Face meat pies. Yurrrmmy.

Tiny New York City from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.

Homemade watercolor paints

Yesterday it rained a whooole lot.

Luckily, my homemade watercolor paints finally set (after two days of waiting), so Chuck and I spent the morning painting.

Overall, the directions I used were pretty good, but I made two changes:
1.  I only used half of the materials recommended... and I still had plenty of water color paints.
2.  I added drops of food coloring to each of the ice cube trays.  (Looking back, maybe I should have compensated for the extra liquid by adding a bit more cornstarch to shorten my drying time.)





As you can see, Chuck enjoyed painting.  He also enjoyed repeatedly dipping the Q-tips into the water... and sneakily trying to drink the dirty water.  (Ick.)  I probably had more fun painting than he did because I was so delighted that the paints actually worked.

Here are our two joint paintings:

The paints weren't chalky when they dried.  We'll probably cut up the cards to make a birthday card for a niece.  Right now the leftover paints are sitting in the fridge.  We'll keep using them throughout the week because I'm curious how long they'll last.    

UPDATE:  5/24- I pulled the paints out of the fridge yesterday and they were rock hard.  I was worried, but after I didn't need to be.  After adding a couple drops of water into each well, they became paints again.  The colors didn't seem as vibrant as before, so Chuck and I ditched the q-tips and just used our fingers to paint. We got some lovely results.  Now they're back in the fridge again, and I'll pull them out in another couple of weeks to see if they last.

Have you ever tried to make homemade watercolors before?

Washington, DC

Last week, our overseas relatives flew across the world to see us (well, mostly Chuck).  Last weekend, our family traveled to Washington, DC.  Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera, so I wasn't able to take too many shots.  Here are some photos from our first day in our nation's capital.

Freezer paper stenciled "dreaming of you" pillow cases

One of the cutest wedding gifts I got was a set of pillowcases from my friend Kim.  

(image from here)

I love how the two pillowcases go together.  So when I saw that Justine from Kerr-afty Creations designed her own set of pillowcases that went together, I had to copy the idea.  (Thanks Justine!)

The pillows are designed so that it looks like one person is dreaming of the other.  I thought the pillowcases would be a nice wedding gift to S and A.  I have pretty shaky hands, so instead of directly painting the images on I used the freezer paper stencil technique.  Here are some photos of my work:  

The end result was pretty cute.  But warning- If you try this design out, make sure that you carefully iron the cloud on.  I wasn't so careful and paint seeped through one of the edges.  Eek!

S + A Wedding reception

And here are the photos from their wedding reception:

S + A, thanks so much for letting me share in your special day.