HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAMA!

happy birthday to my stone cold fox of a mother! 

dear mama: i tried to get henry holbrook to sing happy birthday to you on video, 

but for some reason the happy birthday song makes him all grouchy lately. 

so i got him to sing the next best thing (in huck's opinion, anyway). 

happy birthday, mama! we love you sooooo much!

MEANWHILE, IN CHINATOWN . . .

over thanksgiving when all my family was in town, brandon and brother-in-law zach took huck and cousin teddy on a little bro-venture down to chinatown, destination: chicken feet (and other boy nonsense). it turned into this epic afternoon of chinatown discovery and brandon hasn't stopped talking about it since. as soon as the weather warmed up he wanted take me to retrace their steps, so on saturday we did it. i mean, it wasn't warm or anything but march and i are trying to make peace with each other. 

 p.s. special mention this weekend goes to these dark chocolate marshmallows i found at zabars on friday because they have been blowing our ever loving miiiiiinds.

AROUND HERE LATELY

"hello? hello spring? spring, is that you?" 

the other day i passed a man on the street in a charcoal pea coat wearing a dark green beret and brown leather boat shoes. he was eating chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone and was crossing the street at 72nd and broadway. he was sort of squat but also terribly classy. his paisley scarf was tied cravat-style around his neck, and he sported a terribly lovely, amazingly bushy, wiry white beard. i thought for a second that it was almost positively the ghost of ernest hemingway. i am considering it a springtime good omen, though it is ridiculously too cold out for chocolate ice cream.

a few other things making me terribly happy this week (warning: mostly silly and unnecessary things ahead):

△ passover food! passover food! i'm sorry, i just really love passover food. △

 △our wanderlust is returning after a depressing cooped-up season indoors. huck is ready! △

△ i tried my hand at that stupid imadeface app in a moment of severe boredom the other night. i took me a full twenty minutes to put these together and not only does it look nothing like us, it didn't even make me feel like i'd accomplished anything? so surprising. also, to quote brandon when i showed him my masterpiece,  "oh . . . uh . . . okay." △

△ number of days this month where i haven't had to wear my level-three down coat to go outside and where the sun has shone her pretty face for longer than an hour: TWO! two is one more than one anyway? △ 

△ nearly two weeks later and this photo of huck at the intrepid still makes me stupidly happy. △

△ i am hatching a plan to move us down to the flatiron district when our lease is up later this year. basically it requires that brandon's long-standing belief that he would one day win a trillion dollars in the lottery finally come true. △

△ ranunculus and irish soda bread with fig butter. it feels springy in our apartment at least! △

△ there is a homeless man bleating like a sheep at me from across the room right now. (don't worry it is thursday-writing-in-café-day, i am not at home!) i don't know, but it's something! △

△ his holy highness the king of cuteness just keeps on getting cuter . . . and also more demanding quesion mark? ;) △

△ sunshine beaming down on the cabs on sixth avenue yesterday. that sunshine felt so. freaking. good. △

△ some really, really fun things in the works this summer! i can barely contain myself. △ 

△ brace yourself. this place gets weird when it warms up. △

 △ theeeeeese boyyyyyys! △

and yes, all of these photos are crummy cell phone photos you've likely already seen on instagram because i'm laaaaaazy. 

oh also these!

what YOU should be buying at forever 21 RIGHT NOW

and 

what would huck wear? 

INSPIRATION ON A TUESDAY

it might be snowy out, but when i'm getting dressed in the morning, this is what i want to be wearing.

those clogs, those wedges, that leather jacket, those ray-bans, plus that whole polyvore outfit found via wit+delight.

do you ever pin something on pinterest and think you could basically shut down the entire operation, because that one image has basically summed it all up for you?

that happened to me twice this week. 

happy tuesday!

SATURDAY . . . AND SUNDAY

happy weekend! and happy st patrick's day.

we managed to avoid just about everything green this weekend. on saturday morning we made it down to the village for a fun (and fa-reezing) shoot with our friends at hunter boots, followed by an attempt at warming-up with some insanely decent waffles at the waverly . . .  i baked me up a little lemon blueberry cake that surprisingly turned out pretty good, despite my best efforts at ruining it (i am channeling my inner anne shirley these days and botching cakes left and right, like a boss) . . . and on sunday we went to church, had the home teachers over, heated up a super random assortment of frozen food for dinner (time to order the groceries!), then took ourselves on a bundled up family walk to the park to get the wiggles out of our toddler (i wore three pairs of pants, seriously. i was still freezing).

here then are a few odds and ends from our cold, cold weekend.
(i only managed to get brandon in ONE shot. you win this time, ginger!)

A QUICK SPONSORED POST W/ LUCKY MAG + VASELINE

lucky magazine asked us to partner up with them to share some of our favorite tips on streamlining our morning routines, in conjunction with vaseline spray & go, a brand new, compressed air body moisturizer (doesn't gunk up between your fingers or in your rings when you apply it--genius).

so, here are my best tricks for speeding up a morning routine:

shower at night // when huck was a newborn i quickly discovered that morning showers were no longer gonna work. i switched to a nighttime shower, after the baby was asleep or once daddy was home to help out. i can't believe i didn't start this one sooner--who wants to wake up twenty minutes early for a shower anyway?

use multitasking beauty products // i prefer to wear bb creams or tinted moisturizers so i have one less product to fuss with. i especially love double duty products like cream blushes that also work as lip color.

have a go-to hair style in your arsenal that doesn't take a lot of time and always looks good // a slouchy pony tail, or maybe a deep side part with a sparkly barrette (trés trendy right now). sometimes i like to remind myself that the french almost never have perfect hair, and if it's good enough for the french, it's good enough for me. 

have a momiform // a momiform is a dumb word for a brilliant idea. it's just an outfit that you can wear multiple days a week because you have enough of the basics on hand at all times, that you always feel put together in. here is mine:

// 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6

serious game changer, the momiform. 

this post was sponsored by lucky mag.

for more information, check out maxthemorning.com

thank you as always for supporting the businesses that help support our family!