A Picture says a thousand words...

You see... I told you there was a toilet!

Good Morning everyone.  I wish my people in New York and its neighboring boroughs are baring this Hurricane that is approaching the East Coast.  I know that things that we can’t control is always scary and Nature is one of them.  Let's hope God's hands will weaken the strength of Hurricane Sandy. 
There is one thing I was looking forward to do before our move and that was having a family photo shoot in it.  I can’t tell enough how much I love photo shoots.  It's fun, enthusiastic, and hopeful.  You get up early in the morning, one of my favorite things actually, go out to get fresh flowers, set up, get all made up and dress up and have as much fun as you can.  But, of course the most important part of a photo shoot is the memories that we captured especially family memories. 
I wanted the pictures to be natural, kind of like lifestyle pictures, and we were lucky we came across Diego Molina, a professional photographer who did a great job capturing very special everyday-moments in a fashionable and tasty way.  Photographing kids is not an easy task.  Lucas, our son, for instance goes at his own will.  You don't take a picture of him if he doesn't want to, so I was glad to see that Diego had experience with these kinds of situations and I was able to end up with a bunch of great pictures of our little one for the future, which reminds me I haven't sent the respective grandmas these pictures.  Have a great and safe week!

When is my bed arriving here in our Sao Paulo home, please?  Hello!

Cachow!

Our cutie pie and I trying to surf in the dry.

Me, myself and I.  Diegoalso makes people look not so bad without filter.  ha! an Instagram insiders joke. Thank you Diego for the great pictures!

My Kitchen: Before and After

While thinking about what to post today, my own kitchen came to my mind.  Since we're soon moving to another country (Sao Paulo) I feel it would be great to show how I renovated our kitchen. The picture above shows how our kitchen was before.  Very unattractive!  We teared down everything, from the cabinets to the walls, got rid of that double tray ceiling and redid the floor.  My vision was to create something charming instead of modern because this house was built around the 80's when there was absolutely no reference whatsoever to any period architecture.  So I decided it would look like something between old and au courant.

I wanted the Ikea cabinets to go all the way up to the ceiling so I had the extra open boxes custom made and installed mirror in the back.  I also added crown moldings to make them look more custom.  These cabinets don't really need handles but I decided to install them anyway for the same purpose.  I was happy when I found this kind of porcelain mosaic for a great price at a place called The tile shop.  If you didn't, know the smaller the pieces the more expensive the mosaic, that's why  the places that offer more affordable tiles usually only have mosaic of one inch.  This one is little less than 3/4" which makes it look more like the real thing. 

 

The custom banquet, upholstered more than three years ago in a Quadrille fabric.

photos by Robert Levi