Just a quick entry now that I've come up for air... Our daughter Ada was born on Nov 13th and we're now enjoying her in the house while we take a minute to figure out how we're going to finish this place with a tiny baby taking up most of our attention. It's pretty incredible-- I now have an increased respect for all of you parents out there.

Stay tuned for more house updates coming in the next few days!

In true nesting mode, we have decided to change the focus for a while from construction to decoration. It can get depressing to feel like one is always living in a campsite.  We emptied our storage space and are now unpacking some of the boxes to discover treasures that we haven't seen in over a year. It's like shopping for free! Here's a photo of my husband Josh fulfilling a life long dream of hanging tea cups and mugs from hooks in the kitchen. Who knew he'd be so into that?

We've even started to hang up some art on the walls...

...a true sign that we are ready to settle in. That cool orange lamp is another treasure from Sage Street Antiques. We really need to invite the owner over so she can see how much of her store has migrated to our house.

Now granted, we haven't painted (or whitewashed, as the case may be) the walls in this room, but we are finally at the stage where we can make little arrangements with some of the things we've bought for the house so that it begins to feel more like a home than a construction site.

The step ladder came from a roadside flea market in Maine. It's on Rte 1 headed towards Bath and is a favorite stop whenever we drive up there. The mercury lamp comes from our favorite little antique shop in Sag Harbor called Sage Street Antiques. It's only open on the weekends and has the most brilliant selection of goods at really reasonable prices. This number is a housewarming gift from my husband's very astute parents who understood that the best way to find something we liked was to have us buy it ourselves.

Wise in-laws.

Clearly we are crazy about the color orange (see our stairs, if you didn't know already...) so imagine how happy I was to find this great orange light fixture for the bathroom It's made by Artemide, and when my husband first pointed it out to me in a European design magazine, I figured we'd never be able to find/afford it. Imagine my surprise when the price came in at around $50 and we could order it from Gabriel Ross in Canada. Oh joy. Here's a close up so you can admire it. I think it'll look great with the round mirror that we found at a local antique store, which mirrors the shape of our toilet quite nicely...

I can't remember how much into the story of the wood burning stove I've gone with you guys, but we got this one, an authentic refurbished Portland Franklin from a company called Good Time Stove in New England. They sent it down to us, but without the special extension piece we needed to fit it into a standard chimney pipe. So we had to call the special guy who fabricates them, send him drawings and measurements, and 3 weeks later, we had the part. You can see it sticking up off the top of the stove in this photo.

So all is well and we can build the chimney and finally be finished with the major construction in the house, right?

Wrong.

Because on closer inspection, our very careful contractor has decided (and I can't say that I blame him) that we need a bit more fireproofing done on this little alcove. So we've now made steel heat shields to go on the sides of the stove, plus we are changing the border from wood to the same bluestone that is on the floor. This way, there are no surfaces that face the stove that are in the least bit flammable. This is annoying, because it sets us way back time-wise, but better safe than sorry, for sure. Especially when it comes to fire.

This is all going on now, while I sit in Brooklyn waiting waiting waiting for our baby to be born. The due date is today (Sunday) but still no sign of her...

Not that I don't love our Brooklyn pad, which I will never give up, but I am constantly reminded of why it will be great to move the base of operations out of the city. Here's the latest...

Above please admire a photo of our NYC living room. Yes, that's an air mattress smack in the middle of the room (plus my snoogle-- a crazy maternity pillow that has truly become my best pal) We had to spend Friday night up here because my downstairs neighbor had a karaoke party which promised to go on into the wee hours of the morning. I was in no condition to go downstairs and join at 9 months pregnant, though he very sweetly invited us. Our bedroom walls shook to various unintelligible musical flights of fancy while we put on eye covers (to block out the street lamps) and camped out in the front of our own place.

Not going to miss this at all...