Happy Halloween

This is our first Halloween in the apartment on Charlton Street. Being so close to the West Village, we are in the heart of the annual Village Halloween Parade and are getting to experience the festivities up close. Apart from feeling a bit trapped in our apartment since the building has been barricaded, we get to enjoy the energy with a bird's eye view. While our living room looks out on to Charlton Street, we are close enough to the corner of Sixth Avenue that we can see the parade diagonally out our window. The people below are 15 deep, craning over each other to get a view. This is our view from the warmth of our apartment. Meanwhile, we wait for the trick-or-treaters to knock on our door... while we eat their candy. And yes, we just watched a team of zombies do the entire Thriller dance.

Pierre Terrarium

If I was going to make our terrarium purchase again or if we were to purchase another one, this is the one I'd go for (the medium one in the middle):



It's the Pierre Terrarium sold at Sprout Home in Brooklyn. A friend who knew I've been interested in terrariums just told me about these. They are beautiful, and seem to be built in a much more plant-friendly manner than the West Elm variety that we bought. That one doesn't have an open window or door to allow for ventilation. As a result, the terrarium needs to be manually opened every day for about an hour. The maidenhead fern doesn't seem too happy about this arrangement, which makes me think that this new terrarium may be a better bet. But do we really need more than one terrarium?

Keeping Track

After posting the last post, I noticed that Blogger tracks how many posts you have done on any given month or year. In 2010 we posted 85 times, yet as of today, we've only posted 28 times in 2011. Although I realize that we had so much going on last year with the renovation—it makes me feel like this year has been, well, rather uneventful. Or. Is it that we just aren't doing a very good job of tracking our year this year? I like to think it's the latter rather than that this year has been a bust. Maybe it's just that we are so busy enjoying our new apartment and neighborhood that we haven't been keeping you as well-informed? Regardless, I'd like to do better. This is sounding a bit new year's resolution-y. Appropriate as we near the end of the year, I think.

So Much Better

Two weeks ago, as we were cleaning the apartment a day before a house guest was to arrive, our vacuum cleaner broke. Normally we would not have been upset, as this vacuum was unbearably heavy and unwieldy and we'd been looking forward to replacing it for awhile now. However given the imminent arrival of our guest, we weren't pleased having to do a quick assessment the vacuum cleaner market and make a purchase. But we shouldn't have been surprised. This unhappiness was indicative of how we felt about our now-defunct vacuum.

We did some quick on-line review searches and headed off to Bed Bath and Beyond the next day. We were fortunate to find a VERY knowledgeable sales person who gave us the low down on the various options available in the various price ranges. For those who don't know, canister vacuums are meant more for wood floors while standing vacuums are better for carpeting (and they tend to scratch wood floors). The exception to this are the crazy expensive Miele canister vacuums. Since we weren't prepared to drop $400, we were directed to the Shark Navigator. It was slightly more than we wanted to spend, but can handle both wood floors and light carpeting. It's much lighter than our old vacuum, and much easier to handle. In fact, we were vying over who would get to vacuum this weekend. Quite the opposite than before.

Pumpkin Trifle

While we were on the way home from Montauk, Long Island last weekend we stopped by a Fairway supermarket. Part of the appeal, of course, was the large pumpkin display out front. Although we're going pumpkin picking this weekend, we wouldn't resist buying a handful (er, armful) of the mini albino pumpkins and some gourds to decorate our trifle bowl.

Terrarium

Back in May we went to Lake Placid for a friend's wedding. The event itself was wonderful and we had time to explore a bit of the area as well. While there, we found a cute little terrarium that we considered buying. Of course, we didn't... and have lamented that ever since. But then we went into West Elm to exchange our pendant lamp, and lo and behold, there was a terrarium quite similar to the one we passed by in Lake Placid.

And so we are the proud new owners of a small terrarium. A glass house for plants. We're still working out what plants work best in there... and are hoping not to kill the ones we have currently. It looks quite fetching on the drawers in our bedroom, next to the tv. Let's hope our green thumb holds out...