I was the first to wake up this morning despite the fact that I was the last to go to sleep. It’s amazing how well I can function on so little sleep (relatively speaking, of course). I’m not used to being the first up in our house so I thoroughly enjoyed the quiet living room, watching the sun stream in.

I often wonder how long we’ll live in this apartment. It’s been 3 years and while the first year was nothing short of a nightmare (and those who know us, know what I mean), the last two years have been most pleasant and I’ve even grown to love this place. It’s a new building in Brooklyn so it has no character or architectural interest what-so-ever, unlike every other place that I’ve lived, but we’re making it our own. Is it weird that I have no interest in owning a house? Aside from a backyard (that’s what my parent’s house is for), and perhaps an extra room so that guests don’t have to camp out in the living room, I’m perfectly content in an apartment building. We’re lucky that we don’t hear neighbors and we have enough space for now. I’ve seen quite a few friends leave Brooklyn the last 2 years, and I’m sure I’ll see a few more go, but we’re holding on to our life here. Besides, I’m not sure where we would even go.

I’m hearing rustling in the other rooms. We’ve got a busy day ahead, prepping for the Flea tomorrow, plus we have a few birthday cake orders going out. By the way, I think I’ve decided that I can become quite good at decorating cakes so as soon as I have some free time (ha!), I’m going to try my hand at flowers and piping icing. Fun!

Happy mother’s day. It’s sunny here and it looks like it will be a gorgeous day. We’ve got lots of moms here to celebrate with: Mark’s mom, who is visiting from Olympia, and my parents, who are here in NY, will be driving over to come visit us at the Flea and then have a family dinner. One of the side benefits of doing the Flea is the flowers that I’ve been buying for our table and then bringing home. I love having fresh flowers as part of the display and while I normally have done quite well spending under 7 bucks for yellow snap dragons, daffodils and freesias, I splurged yesterday on my favorite flower, peonies. Even though I love having flowers in the house, I never buy them because our cat likes to eat them, and well…it’s not a necessity in our strict budget, so it is a nice change to have flowers in the house.

Mark splurged a bit this week as well and bought 2 bottles of wine, which is was something that we cut out of our budget altogether when Mark became unemployed (and I know this sounds pathetic, but we had a one bottle a month rule even before then). And the girls just gave me a gift certificate for a pedicure at a local spa, another thing that I never do. We’re living large this week!

Mia’s collection of little pots lining her windowsill is suddenly bursting with cute little green sprouts. I swear she just planted these last week. I have no idea what kind of plants they are, but it’s making her quite happy to care for them and watch them grow.

It’s funny how quickly you adapt to change once you’re faced with a sudden disruption in routine. The house is messier than it’s been in quite awhile (well, for us - I admit to being a total neat freak) and I’ve been spending way too much time in front of this screen. I’m the kind of person who needs to make the bed each and every morning, but lately, there are days when I just don’t bother. When I had the kids all to myself 3 days a week I was much more energized to keep the house in order and this was my built in free time, away from work and away from the computer. I was motivated to schedule playdates, socialize and organize activities, but now that Mark is home, I find myself falling into a routine of turning this machine on first thing and launching into work straight away, often without a break till dinnertime. Freelance is like that. It can be nonstop for weeks or months if you’re lucky, then suddenly, work dries up and there’s nothing.

We managed to keep afloat the lean times because there was one of us with a steady paycheck with health insurance and a job that could be left at the workplace. Now that we have started this business, I worry about how it will impact the kids since life and work is now getting even more blurred and we’re both distracted and thinking about business. When I didn’t have adequate childcare I stressed over needing to respond to client emails and phone calls during the day when I didn’t have anyone to cover me. Now that I have coverage 7 days a week, I worry that I’m ignoring my kids altogether because I have so many deadlines and I’ve been needing to work every day. I made the decision to stay freelance for the last 5 years so that I could have more time to spend with the kids, but it’s not easy to achieve the perfect work/life balance if you’re a working parent of any kind no matter what your work situation is. Our life seems so much more hectic now that we’re both home, which comes as a bit of a surprise, and it’s overwhelming to think that it will get even more so once we do launch this thing out in the world. Is anyone else in the same situation as we are? With both parents self-employed?

Most observant people will do a double take when they spot the little wicker doll chairs in the corner of our living room. This is because we have the same fabric upholstered for the cushions covering our Danish Modern chair that I scored off ebay. I immediately started hunting around for fabric because the cushions seemed in great shape, but the old chenille fabric was all shades of “old man” brown and dragged the chair down. This black and tan graphic print seemed snappy enough to give the chair new life. Now, I consider this a hack job of sorts because covering cushions, especially ones that are not square or rectangle in shape, is trickier than it looks (and I didn’t even attempt the piping which the original cushions had), but I HAD to cover them the same evening our chair was delivered, but didn’t have much time because of a tight work deadline. For now it works - just don’t look too close.

So what to do with all this leftover fabric? I’ve been meaning to cover the cushions of these wicker doll chairs that we got graciously from a friend. I know that the fabric is everywhere in our living room (uh, also made a lumbar pillow, but that’s it I swear!), but don’t the doll chairs look nice? I’m more happy with the miniature chairs than the danish chair, and it’s so nice that Claudine is playing with them now too.

Right before Mark became jobless, I went a bit on a spending spree for the house. I had a good freelance year last year and admit that even though I am frugal, I can spend money (with limits, of course) like nobody’s business when I have it. We’re not talking big purchases, but a few nice chairs, some small danish modern chests off ebay, shelving and some art and frames to go with it. It does all add up though, so when we were suddenly dealing with unemployment I felt a whole lot of buyer’s remorse for my recent purchases.

At the time I could justify anything - “I work from home…I’m surrounding myself with nice things because I sit here and have to stare at the house all day…we’re not kids anymore, we can spend money on the apartment because that’s what adults do”. As I sit here, my mind racing through the millions of things I need to do for the food biz and for my work projects, my eye always seem to wander over to the ceramic plant orb by Perch, one of the last purchases I made. I don’t know, it just makes me happy. And with the way things are going these days, one can argue that it’s not a frivolous purchase after all, right?