Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

The front yard got spruced up… it was a bit of a mess with a ripped tarp all over, roots and garbage and some prickly sad plants. We planted our Maple tree PJ2 which hopefully will thank us for getting out of the pot after two years and we left some space for the plants to spread out …The birdbath was left from the previous renters and is plastic…I am on the hunt for a nice new one…but one step at a time.

Also happy to hang those vintage treasures for the Easter Holiday. In Germany it is tradition to Easter eggs form branches…those are fake pussy willows I have to admit though …I find it hard to find them here in the city …I guess because it is not such a big tradition to have them in your vases around spring.

I am so excited that this poor house is being restored and it is getting a new beautiful fence …I will def. walk by often to check on the progress.

Not my poop – in case you were really wondering hahaha. I am curious about the story here …so much to unpack I think LOL. I also need to walk by again to see if that is a continuing story …

I love these simple art deco apartment buildings with this really beautiful blue decoration on top.

Left over gate part from a long gone house I guess…I love that someone decided to leave it at least ..it is like a little nudge to find out what came before right there.

Another interesting renovation project- this old house facade is nice but in a really bad shape, it made me wonder that someone would tear down the hole house behind but go to lengths to keep the facade …and then I learned that you get a renovation loan if you just keep the facade in the front …it is not a new building …go figure…well…at least it will have a beautiful restored facade I assume alas the rest of the house is probably another box without any charm.

And if you do not know it by now…I am in Jersey City …aka Jersey City Tough …aka Peacock Nation. For my international readers- sorry – it was March Madness which is a time in March when Collages are playing Basketball single eliminating against each other in a short period of time . Our tiny St. Peter’s University team which was given no hope or chance beat some pretty tough teams and went further than any team ranked that badly before. The University itself is a Jesuit University with about 3000 students, here in my neighborhood and it was a huge deal for them and a huge deal for our city. I have never seen our city so united and happy about something.

The guys got a parade and all the neighboring schools participated. It was wonderful to see all the school kids being so happy …we needed this after the pandemic. It was a great afternoon.

This guy was super sweet- his siblings both went to St. Peter’s and I forgot how the Wrestling was connected to his siblings but he want all out and asked us very nicely if we could take a picture of him in his gear in front of the Sign and well known Student Pub. Not all heroes wear capes but some do.

Spring in the dining room. I really love how this room turned out- it is an eclectic mix of time periods and colors and had fun putting it together.

Love this sign and the font – I wonder how old this is. In any event …it is a sign that this has been a corner store for a long long time.

Hope you enjoyed the little stroll, see you next month for a new neighborhood walk :)

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

This is it…my studio all packed and wrapped up on the day before moving to the new house just about 3 blocks away.

I loved the “Lady Office” labeling LOL. The guys were great in packing but let’s say I would not again have someone else handle my art supplies. I would have them pack anything but the supplies. Part of it was probably because they had no idea what they were packing. Having for example oil sticks loosely thrown in with charcoal and then have the box sit next to a radiator …I think you might have an idea how unpacking went.

I mentioned in my newsletter yesterday that even though I am so happy about our new house, it was a bit emotional to say good by to our little pandemic cocoon. We left like many people before us a not in the basement.

But then there is this little breakfast nook which makes me happy every morning – the window is just so beautiful and it is a magical little place to start the day. You can see our mini fridge on the right …we left our cool SMEG fridge in the old house and ordered a new one and well..it was stuck in container hell.

This little beaner was our companion (as I am writing this we finally got the new fridge delivered) for a couple of weeks and it is actually very interesting how much food you can tetris into this fridge.

Here is my new painting studio …taking form …I love this room, the light is amazing. Don’t get fooled this was at a later time of the day. I cannot wait to start painting again.

Lot’s of papers and boxes

which smoothed out waited for several people to them up . It is so much waste during a move it felt good to know that at least 5 different people will be able to move with our stuff …also embarrassingly tells how how much stuff we have in art supplies and books.

This was the living room pretty much on the evening we moved in … all boxes gone, and bang …yes that is Citron on the wall … you either love it or hate it but I am cool if you hate it …not your living room lol- so that should make you feel better than ;)

I took some time as soon as I had my paints and journals out to do some art journaling and as you can see Mingus was very helpful. The cats are doing great btw – if you are a cat owner you know that is a bit of a traumatic thing for cats but apparently the cards were newly mixed and Bobby Pretzel is now the king of the castle and they bonded through the move even sharing the cozy spots in the house.

I am ready for spring now – well right after we have some warmer temperatures and this railing at our stoop is redone …I cannot wait to take to through some strolls through my new old hood :)

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

When I say Stroll Through the Hood it was mostly a stroll through the hood to our new home and that is where I spent most time as we are moving in one week – wwahhhhh.

The fire place above is my favorite one – the color is just making me so happy!

The inserts of the fireplaces are also not too shabby- isn’t that a gorgeous pattern? And practical too as the plates store the heat and reflect it to the room – things you learn while renovating and talking to different contractors- I love it!

Speaking of pattern – StencilGirl Products was so sweet to make a Wall Stencil out of my Art Deco Summit Stencil and I stenciled this wall in my future office. I would do a lot of things different in the future- there are mistakes but can live with that for now and will fix the oopsies later :) Also …if you are here for perfection, you are at the wrong place LOL

The Color scheme was pretty much inspired by this fireplace and the wall we painted purple :) Left over paint is a nice thing.

We went all color this time- which is really unusual for us – we are usually very bland white wall person but this old lady as we call our new house screamed for some colorful oomph and I think she can wear it.

BTW- this is my new Fainting Sofa …I mean…you gotta have a Fainting Sofa, no? I love it so much and it is actually very comfy – I cannot wait to faint ..eh …read on it …I wonder if this will become the cat’s favorite spot.

Other than that most of my days nowadays are consumed by cleaning or running last minute errands. Even though we did big renovations in serval of our former homes, I seem to be still caught off guard by how much construction dust is clinging around forever.

I have been MIA for the past couple weeks and will probably be another 2 weeks until we moved and unpacked most stuff, but I see light at the end of the tunnel and I cannot wait to live in our new sweet home. Wish us luck for a smooth move :)

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

I love a good fire escape view :) This one is actually from our new house – nothing speaks American City more to me than a fire escape…I know I know …Europeans LOL

Ever wonder what is underneath those boxed in houses? When you are in our city you might be deceived as to how old this city really is …a lot of houses are from around 1890 but they just look as if they are from the 50s 60s 70s because they have siding on top. On this house which is from 1890 you can actually see several layers of siding going down to the old wood siding with shingles, you can also see the windows used to be bigger ..there is a super cute house underneath the siding …but fear not …the aluminum siding is back on … This house is just an example why I always stroll through the hood wondering how the houses look underneath that stuff.

Playing around with kitchen tile – we bought some antique tiles for our new kitchen and I was playing around how to best arrange the new subway tile with the old ones. I am excited …I am in love.

And speaking of green, well I didn’t really speak of green but here you go …this is the color of our new living room…I feel so bold hahaha. See the funny thing is that even though I am bold and colorful in my artwork and art journals, I am actually usually a kinda white wall person. Maybe because as a child I helped taking off landfills of wall paper and painting several times over colorful walls (that is what you get when you move several times to old apartments and houses). But …well…the color bug took over since we are convinced these rooms need a bold color statement. Let’s see how I feel living in it LOL- I will keep you posted.

How can you not love this wonderful window handle with a greek key pattern but also some pattern inside the handle.

Speaking of Tiles …I am jumping around here- I love the architectural salvage place here in Jersey City- it is mostly totally out of our budget ..but we have been here several times for antique tiles and I am always in awe by the stuff they have.

This Possum Belly Baker’s Cabinet is moving into the hood – we saw it several months ago in Pennsylvania and we decided it will will be a wonderful addition to our new kitchen. So we had a fun little road trip.

Love our current deck and the tree with snow …It wasn’t there too long …but it was pretty

When you try to convince your husband of the color choice you already made but you humor him and yourself by putting all kinds of other colors on and then the color you really want ;) – Can you guess which one “we” picked? I will reveal next time ;)

A while ago I saw a house that was restored in the neighborhood and they had wonderful wooden shutters placed inside the windows. I squealed with delight when I actually realized that this is an historic feature we used to have in our house as well …pocket shutters. To be honest I wouldn’t have put 2 and 2 together if it wasn’t for those strolls. They vanish into the pockets on the sides of the window. Ours are unfortunately gone but you can still see the holes where they were hinged on. I am inquiring about having them back as the horrible plastic blinds and the old curtain need to go (like yesterday)

And there I leave you with a picture of Pretzel who jumps onto me when I am here and work on CJS22 – he misses having me around all day but we just have so much to do with renovating etc. right now- his cuddle time is a bit more limited when he is used to the last two years.

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

What can I say..come on in I guess :) This is the place I have spent a lot of time the last couple of weeks. It is our new home to be. An 1890s townhouse. And yes, some people might ask “Didn’t you guys do a renovation a couple years ago and move?” Yes …we did and we would have not been doing this again if it wasn’t for this particular house, which we have been dreaming of forever, in fact…I painted the house and it’s sister houses and there even is a foam stamp out there which shows it. So now if you believe in manifestation …there you go. And if you don’t , well tough … I am convinced now. We are still pinching ourselves.

The house comes with a dumb waiter …I have never seen one in real live before and this puppy works – it is pretty screechy but it gives me so much joy. None of the other 4 identical houses have the dumb waiter anymore- so we are very determined to keep it. After all we believe we are just guardians of this old house and we want to keep as many of it’s original features as possible. It is pretty rare to find a house that has not either been stripped of everything or painted excessively.

I love this tile in the vestibule – it needs some love and deep cleaning and I need to read up on how to do that best. But it makes me happy to just see it whenever we walk into the house.

This 1920s Fan Slip Shade Chandelier has been in the house probably since that time – as a former owner of the house who bought it in 1978 told us. I love this chandelier so much – I could lay under it forever, but alas …I have to swing the paint brush and pull another five million nails off old carpets from the staircase.

I don’t want to bore you with a million photos of the new home- we are still renovating and I might throw a pic into the Strolls here and there- but if you are interested in how it looks like and how it is going -you can see more and follow it’s own Instagram account . But before I move on…above is a picture of the one bathroom that is awesome in the house (the other one …oh boy …let’s not talk about it). This bathroom is also from the 20s/30s and I just love love love it – the green tile and the tub- swoon!

Our cats couldn’t be less impressed by our renovation efforts …well they don’t know yet that they will be moving in a couple months, so bless them and their ability to sleep on the smallest scrap of packaging LOL. Bobby Pretzel cracks me up.

Mingus is doing his best to blend into the background but we all know that his true focus is on this:

Pizza Rat …you probably have to be from NYC or live in the NYC Metropolitan Area to find humor in this ornament LOL- it makes me laugh.

And here it is, this year’s tree- the most pokey tree ever- we cut it with our friends and we had to wear gloves putting ornaments into it …I guess it kind of fits to the whole year …I am laughing about it.

I wish you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday season, some quality time and lots of love and rest! See you all soon as I am taking a couple days off to get ready for the big bang in the new year and start of Creative JumpStart 2022! Thank you for joining me on my Strolls through the Hood in 2021.

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

I don’t know what happened but our fig tree in the garden that never yielded in more than one fig a year is on steroids this year. I am not exaggerating to say I had about a 100 figs at least- the picture above is just one day’s harvest. My favorite way to eat them is sprinkled with feta cheese and then baked in the oven …nom nom nom – so good as a side with all kinds of things. That being said – I really hope next year will be another fig year :)

I got a lot of messages about the flooding after the storm a couple weeks ago. It was terrible- but we personally have no damage – we had some water in the basement – but many of our neighboring businesses and friends and family have not fared too well. It is heart breaking to see people being displaced and all the personal belongings on the side of streets. Many places in the city that never flooded before were flooded and given the fact that this is going to be a more occurring phenomenon in the future, I hope we all are doing more to change our behaviors to do our part regarding Climate Change. It is real !

After the storm due to water problems we had a 4 day water boil advisory in place. Another terrible side effect of such storms. Throughout the city were some of those water “thimbles” and stations to get bottled water. In such an event you realize how privileged we are with our clean water …never have to think about it when washing our food, brushing teeth, giving it to our pets etc. I am not complaining – I am just saying it is a humbling experience and we were again lucky, at least one county in NJ (Passaic) had a boil water advisory for at least 2 weeks in place.

I am never getting tired of this view when biking down to Liberty Park.

I left a little mailbox in the park – I am not sure if someone found it and wondered what the heck this is, but it makes me smile to think someone did – maybe a kid – that would be cool. I know I would have delighted in finding this as a kid :)

In cat news …Mingus is being hilarious as always …He loves the banister and railing – we do not like that too much as we are afraid one day he is gonna fall badly.

Bobby Pretzel loves being on my desk- sometimes trying to interrupt me while working on my computer. He is sleeping next to my keyboard as I am typing and if you watch any of my webinars ArtCollab or Spill your heART, he is 90% of the times also right next to me then :)

another ride in the park – this one was a little fall indicator before it got crazily hot again.

Mushroom galore!

Loved seeing some life jazz music on this corner …It is funny how it really changes the mood of people when they walk by and then stop in their tracks and enjoy some life music.

Some new murals! This one is by Distoart , he always amazes me.

“This one is for the workers that built the tunnels.
This one is for Gene from DPW.
This one is for the David’s throwing rocks at Goliath.
This is for those rocks mined from the tunnels being the ones that smash the windows of Kushner’s skyscraper.
This one is a reminder that the truth always wins.”

Insanely and amazing huge mural by Mona Caron –

“Shauquethqueat’s Eutrochium. A so-called Joe Pye weed, (not a weed but a native wildflower here), rises with the sun, facing off the skyline across the Hudson. A vision of Nature winning, of plants being the ones towering over us for a change, putting us back in our place. May we learn. May they come back.”

Hope you enjoyed this stroll through the hood. See you next month for another one :)

Nat

Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.

A window that was closed at a police station – the little aquarium make this act look much better!

The early bird sees the sunrise – never ceases to amaze me.

I love the sign above the window – Hands of Gold ! Apparently this building used to be a suitcase factory- why it is was named into Hugo Pronti Artist Loft Building? No idea because those lofts in there are not any “normal” artist could afford- but maybe I find out some day :)

Another gorgeous brick building- the windows here are also bricked up – I wonder how this looks inside – it looked as if Elk Lodge was using it, but if it is still in use, I couldn’t say.

what a beautiful old gate.

This brick house in a row of many had this super beautiful tile in the brick.

Guess we have a little brick theme this time – love this chimney!!!

Bobby Pretzel and Mingus are checking out the visitor on the deck…the guy outside was pretty unimpressed LOL

Love this new photograph printed on metal that my husband purchased from Chris Woodward, an awesome photographer from Jersey City. Check out his photos here on instagram.

That was it this month – see you next month again with some photos from my Strolls Through the Hood.

Nat