Have a lovely weekend

Any good plans for the weekend? I'm starting mine with a nice dinner at one of my favorite restaurants: Milos.
For the rest of the weekend, I have nothing planned yet. The only thing I know for sure that I need to do is bake some cookies for a bake sale at F.'s school on Monday.
Then, we'll improvise.

Not so "Cultural Thursday"

Marquise do Ibirapuera - São Paulo, Brasil (I took this picture a year ago)

When I started this blog a week ago, I had decided to devote my Thursdays to culture, by visiting a nice exhibit, museum, gallery, etc. However, today was not as cultural as I would have liked it to be. In fact, there was no culture at all. I had to take my son to the pediatrician for his 2 year-old check-up. The poor little fellow received two shots, so wasn't very pleased with our outing.

Then, since we were already in the neighborhood, we went to then new Fareway on the upper east side. No culture there as well.

But to save the day, let me share with you the work of this photographer Vivian Maier that I just discovered today. She was a nanny in Chicago and for 60 years did street photography, at a time when almost nobody was doing it. She died in 2009, just a few months before her work gained notoriety. There's a book about her work coming up, in the next month or so, called Vivian maier: Street Photographer.

Potato stamps

It rained all day long and it's actually still raining. It was the kind of sticky, cold rain that freezes your bones and make you just want to stay in bed all day long. Well, with two very active young boys, this is not an option for me.
To forget about the weather outside, as I had mentioned in my previous post, I decided to make some stamps with my oldest son (the two year-old participated a little bit at the end) using potatoes, cookie cutters and paint. It is extremely easy to make and a great way to entertain the kids for at least an hour.
Take a look at the pictures:

And, as kids will always be kids, art projects can (usually) get very messy. So, once we were done with our potatoes stamps, soon the hands also became stamps. With paint all over their hands and happy faces, the boys ran straight to a warm and long bath. The afternoon was a success!

Raining potatoes

Photo from Minas de Ouro

It's raining in New York. I don't like the rain and I hate grey days. As I was walking back home, after dropping P. at his preschool, and complaining about the weather, I started to think on how I would entertain my kids in the afternoon. The memory of potatoes stamps that I used to make as a child crossed my mind. And as I got home and was reading through one the many blogs I follow, I found this post. Such a coincidence! I love this creative way of using cookie cutters instead of carving the potatoes. I think I'll try this today.
However, after a very badly slept night (P woke up screaming at 5:30am and nobody could go back to sleep afterwords), we'll see how the mood is in the house. If the level of crankiness is too high, we'll have to think of something else.

Just a regular Tuesday

Today we didn't do anything special other than routine things. Music class for P. in the morning, school for F. all day, and I finally got the courage time to run some much needed errands (my "to-do list" was getting longer by the minute).

Hence, I'm just going to share some pictures of P.'s birthday party that we celebrated a couple of weeks ago. The theme was: Dinosaurs! And, as always, the party went by so fast that at the end I realized that I had forgotten to take pictures of the dinosaur shaped sandwiches, the brazilian cheese breads (pão de queijo) and the children's table that had little pop corn boxes personalized with the theme of the party, mini bottles of water also with a personalized label, apple juices and some cute dinosaur plates and cups. It makes me remember of my wedding, where I was so busy dancing all night long that I missed the dessert table, I don't have a picture of it and people keep telling me how amazing it looked and how great all the desserts tasted.

Chocolate cookies that were given as favors

Lollipop cookies to decorate the table

Dinosaurs cookies

Personalized banner, invitations, food flags by Meema design

Brigadeiros by Brigadeiro Bakery

Alfajores de maizena

The chocolate cookies ready to be given to the guests

The favors were books about dinosaurs nicely wrapped in a fabric with a dinosaur pattern 

First Autumn signs

Look what we managed to do over the weekend! Yeah! We have our Jack 'O lanterns now and, modestly, I think they look pretty cool for beginners. Don't you think?!

Sunday was just gorgeous. We went to Central Park and the only thing missing was Woody Allen's voice off celebrating this beautiful city. Imagine the scene: lovers walking hand in hand, the sound of a sax under each bridge, a perfect sunny day with New York's skyscrapers in the back. It made me want to watch "Manhattan" again. Instead, in the evening, we watched "Horrible bosses" (entertaining but really really silly movie - it had been a while since I had seen such a stupid movie).

Have a great week!!!

Last weekend at the Hamptons

For Columbus Day weekend, we went to the Hamptons. The weather was fantastic! Unbelievable warm for this time of year.
Here are some pictures.

Fun at a local Country farm