Our NYC Home.

I've been busy perusing the gorgeous interior design posts on Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy as of late, and it's inspired me to take new pictures of our place. We've lived in our apartment for over year, and had most of it in place on day one. I'm a big fan of getting things set up quickly (changing light fixtures, putting up pictures, etc) to make it feel as much like home as possible. Over the past year we've added several key pieces, like a new table and desk, and I've wanted to share our updates. You can see the old post here from when we first moved in.

My favorite part of our little home continues to be the natural light and tall ceilings. I still can't believe how different it is from our BASEMENT apartment in Capitol Hill. We now get all sorts of glorious light and sunshiny beauty streaming in. I'm also quite fond of our newly discovered roof top! We live on the top floor of our building and the ladder to the roof is right next to our front door. It's absolutely nothing fancy and is very much a dirty roof top, BUT you can practically see Central Park and it's a darling setting for a picnic. Which is precisely what we'll be doing tonight with a Mexican feast and these drinks!

Although there are many, many things I love about our apartment there are days where a part of me longs for a "real" house to decorate, a bigger kitchen, and maybe less stairs to walk up before getting home. But you know, the other part is quite content with this tiny piece of Manhattan we get to call home.

Switzerland!

Gosh, this place was beautiful. I can't describe the feeling of seeing mountains this big for the first time. I may have said this a million times on our trip but I cannot believe real people get to live in places like this! I think my face may have been glued to the window the entirety of the drive, and I definitely made Aaron pull off the road for pictures every few miles. Despite the dreary weather, we were able to take a gorgeous gondola ride up Neiderhorn and hike all the way back down one of the days. We also spent some time in Bern, and ate enough Swiss chocolate for a lifetime! All in all it was wonderful, although I'm hoping our next trip back will be a bit sunnier so we can see some more of those gorgeous peaks.

Lake Como, Italy Part II

I finally got around to editing all of our pictures and making an Artifact Uprising book this weekend, and all of this picture viewing has made me re-inspired to post a few pictures here.

On the second day of our trip we tried to see a bit more of Lake Como before heading over the boarder to Switzerland. We spent the morning walking around the beautiful, waterfront grounds of Villa del Balbianello, which was made famous by movies like Star Wars and Casino Royal. Apparently, the villa was built for a Cardinal who wanted a 'retreat for reading'…. must be nice.