Smartification

It's smartification season. It's May, and the April showers have brought May flowers, babies and graduations. I had the pleasure of attending one cousin's graduation last week from Penn. Most of Schwartz-Sweet-Petri-Egger family (Schweetezieneggers?) headed to Philly to be there to watch Alex get an award and get her wizard of city planning diploma. In between, we did a lot of sitting, waiting, eating mini sandwiches, clapping, reading in seats, biting nails (I know, sad, I relapsed) and trying not to fall asleep. But for the 30 seconds that Alex was being honored, we were really excited and proud. Here we are looking so proud:

Being on the Penn campus around so many students made me nostalgic-like-whoa for the years of sauntering through the sun-drenched quad, biking through campus, and living within a half mile radius of all my friends. It made me smile, it made me want to cry, and most of all it made me wish Kaitlin would hurry up and get that time machine running already so we could go back and relive the glory days. Hurry up girl, Senior year is waiting!

In honor of Alex's Master of City Planning degree, I decided to test my Master of Sewing skills and make her a bag to show of her style as the queen of urban transportation. Here's the bag I sewed myself:

Bikes on the outside, subways on the inside. And yes, that is a customized "Handmade by Natalie Schwartz" tag (thanks Allison!).

I also made some matching pencil cases:

Here is Alex with her gifts: I think she liked them? Yay.

This week much of the same crowd is headed out to Colorado to watch Kroger graduate from college! Sadly I'm sitting this one out in NYC, hoping to make someone proud and get a job... It's a proud time for families everywhere, and I am also very proud of my San Francisco Stanfordites turned MBAs Dary, Kat and Chase who are graduating this week and next!

This Weekend Was Sew Productive

My first weekend in NYC in a month was domestic to the max with a hint of spice-- yes, I got out on Saturday night. I vacummed, did laundry, got a facial, cleaned, ran errands, went running, made delicious lentil soup and finished my first home sewing project! (Am I housewife year old trapped in a 28 year old's body? Sometimes I wonder...)

I've had bare windows in my kitchen/living area ever since I moved in. I managed to put up some blinds to prevent any perv neighbors from watching me vacum in my birthday suit, but they're plain white-- borrrrrring. Since curtains seemed a little overwhelming for my first solo sewing project, so I decided to try something a little easier to practice my skills. So here they are:

Yes, some may say they turn my already nautical or childlike apartment into a circus, but they make me happy (and isn't that what apartments are supposed to do anyway?). Here's a close up of the happy flags, so you can marvel at my imperfect sewing skills:

I got the pattern/instructions from this little book called Home Sewn: 30 Projects for Every Room in the House. Lots of fun little projects in there-- next up, new tablecloth!

Sew exciting!

New year, new hobby. (And yes, I'll also be trying to maintain the old hobby of blogging, which I know I've been failing at lately)

In an effort to further morph into the modern Martha, I signed up for a Sewing 101 at 3rd Ward (rad place BTW) with Christina. I've done some sewing projects before, but only with the help of my master-seamster dad who basically set everything up so I could sit there and push the pedal. Sew, I decided, time for me to learn to do sewing projects on my own. For the first 3 Wednesday's of the year we trekked out to Brooklyn learned how to wind a bobbin, thread a machine and sew (semi-)straight lines. We made simple bags for the first 2 classes and on the third we learned the skill/thrill of installing a zipper...which turns out to be one of the more satisfying projects I've ever finished!
Needless to say, I'm hooked, and ordered a sewing machine which arrived this week! Not taking requests yet, but stay tuned...

Domestic Weekend Recap

In lieu of staying in NYC and feeling sorry for myself for having no date and an empty apartment on Valentine's day, I hopped the Bolt Bus to Boston for a weekend of domestic bliss and hibernation. While there is no doubt that sleeping is one of my best skills, something about being home accelerates my narcolepsy. Pretty sure I logged a solid 30 hours of sleep since Friday night.

When I wasn't sleeping in the car, bed, or bus, I continued to be semi productive doing projects for my apartment. Saturday I enlisted the help of my oh so crafty lawyer, woodworker, retired glassblower dad to sew some pillow cases, napkins and table cloth out of the fabric I had bought at this adorable shop in Soho last weekend. Check them outtttttt:



After a fabulous Saturday night of tacos and sangria in the company of the future presidents of the United States (aka Alex's Harvard Law School classmates) courtesy of Alex and Pat, I headed up to my parents new digs in New Hampshire on Post Pond, where I really felt domestic sewing napkins in the kitchen overlooking a pond full of ice fishing huts, listening to NPR and my parents discuss paint colors. Lovely.

View from Post Pond house.
And yes those specs are icefishing huts.