Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Christmas Windows

Here are some pictures of the windows at Bergdorf Goodman. This is only from the women's store, I have pictures of the men's store as well but they are totally different and deserve a post of their own :) The displays were inspired by Lewis Carroll's books and you definitely get the Alice in Wonderland vibe, although the polar bears below remind me a little more of C.S. Lewis and the Queen of Narnia. The crazy part is that the displays take a whole year to produce!I love the polar bears but the picture didn't really do them justice. They are made from fringe and their faces are buttons and sequins, really beautiful!This one is pretty awesome as well with the greenery horses. There were several others but I liked these the best. It was freezing cold and really windy the night I took the pictures so several of them weren't the greatest pictures. It was way too cold to worry about picture quality though!

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, I know I did! My mom and sisters came up for Christmas and it has been so great to have family here for the holidays. Its even been surprisingly painless having five people in the apartment.

I wanted to share my Christmas decorations with everyone, even though I put my tree up a couple of weeks before Christmas I didn't really put the finishing touches on my decorating until the very last minute, so here it is, better late than never :)I was trying to do kind of a modern Christmas so I chose a less traditional green as my accent color (I was looking for lime green but it turned out to be hard to find) and then I just did mainly silver and white for the rest. I found this really awesome crocodile silver foil wrapping paper at TJ Maxx. The tree ended up being pretty monochromatic which I've never done before but I think it turned out nicely. John mentioned something about there not being any color though so maybe next year I'll have to change it up a little. I didn't bring any Christmas decorations to New York when we moved so in an effort not to spend a fortune I made these cute snowflakes from pipe cleaners. I found the instructions on Martha Stewart's website. I think they turned out great and they were so easy and cheap.
I made this wreath from wire coat hangers and left over branches, its kind of more of an oval than a circle but I was bending the coat hangers myself and I think I did a pretty decent job. The tree vendor was really nice and threw in a big pile of branches from other people's trees since he didn't cut much off of our tree. I had more branches than I knew what to do with, I could have made at least two more wreaths! Just in case you didn't know, everyone in New York gets a real tree because there's no where to store a fake tree the rest of the year. My poor husband had to lug our really decent sized tree several blocks back to our apartment.

PS - I'm up at 2 in the morning blogging because its wintertime in New York which means our apartment is sweltering so we have the windows open and apparently a building very close to ours is on fire because I can smell the smoke and hear every single thing (sirens, breaking glass, chainsaw, etc)!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Winter Is Here

...well technically not until tomorrow, but 11 inches of snow sure says winter to me! It started snowing Saturday and by Sunday there was almost a foot of snow. I'm so glad it was over the weekend and not while I was trying to walk to work because it was freezing. Saturday night John and I took Rosie on a walk and went out to dinner and it was soooo cold! Poor Rosie's paws got so cold and icy she wanted me to carry her (she normally hates being carried). It was really snowing hard when we were out walking around and the wind made it pretty unbearable.Sunday was much nicer to go out and see the snow because there wasn't much wind and it had pretty much stopped snowing. We went to Madison Square Park and let Rosie run around and then we got Shake Shack for lunch. Shake Shack, for those of you unfamiliar, has a really awesome burger and its pretty cheap. Unfortunately those qualities make it highly desirable and there is ALWAYS a line. They even have a live web cam just so you can see how long the line is. John and I like to go when its really cold outside because then there's only a small line :)

Thursday, December 17, 2009

What was I Thinking

I've been putting off all the things on my to-do list all week. I really didn't want to be running around NY every night after work so I came up with the great idea to do it all in one trip.

I meticulously planned my route so that there would be no backtracking and I could get everything done efficiently. What I forgot to account for is that I would be carrying everything I bought with me on that meticulous journey. It was about the third store in that I realized this was a bad idea and by the time I made it to my last store I thought my arms were going to fall off. I was starting to get bad looks and one guy even made some sarcastic remarks while we crossed the street. I took a picture when I got home just so I could share with you guys.Even better is that it was super cold and windy outside but I was drenched in sweat! These are the days I'm not so sure I really like living in NY.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Christmas at Bloomingdale's

I went to my Bible study Christmas party tonight and Bloomingdale's is close by so I stopped to take pictures of their Christmas displays. This first one is a series of two windows and I think its awesome! Dynamic duos night to meet Santa and you've got Batman and Robin and Barack and Michelle Obama.
I don't really know what this window is about but there are a ton of shoes and everything is covered in glitter. The gigantic shoe is actually a conveyor belt and the shoes move along it. I think the tree made entirely out of shoes is pretty great.This one is gummy bears, I think, all I know is the bears are adorable!
So at least I've gotten pictures from one of the big stores now. I did manage to get my Christmas tree this past weekend and get it decorated but I'm not ready to share pictures just yet :)

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Its NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas

....at least not at my house

Everybody's blog posts the past couple of weeks were titled "its beginning to look a lot like Christmas" and they were cute pictures of their trees and their houses all decorated. As for me, I just can't seem to get in the mood for Christmas. I was hoping to do several blog posts of all the fun Christmas stuff around the city but this is the best I can do right now.

Last weekend I went to run an errand and happened to walk by Macy's. This picture is one of their Christmas display windows. They had several but it was raining and snowing at the same time and it was unbelievably crowded, so I just took this one.This is the Christmas tree in Madison Square Park which is where Rosie and I walk most evenings. Sorry for the poor quality, I took it with my phone.
Maybe next week I'll be in a more Christmas-y mood and do a better job showing you guys the city all dolled up for Christmas.