To Nest: Ariana F.

Ariana F. lives in Rockland County NY, a suburb of NYC, with her husband and son, who is 15 months old. She grew up there, left for many years and returned three years ago.

List three words to describe your home:

Cottage, Cozy, Peaceful

What is your favorite room?

My favorite room by far is my son’s nursery. I love the monkey in the tree mural my husband painted on the wall and the soothing sky blue color. Plus it’s the warmest and coziest room in the house.

What is your favorite item?

My favorite item is my camera! Getting a DSLR camera right before my son’s birth reignited my love of photography. It is now one of my main creative outlets.

What is your favorite color for your home?

I don’t have a favorite color, I do have favorite color combinations like gray/silver and buttercup gold. My house has a lot of blues and sea greens in tribute to it’s roots as a summer cottage.

Describe your morning and evening routine.

My morning routine is chaos I have to make my son’s breakfast and lunch for daycare, get dressed, get him dressed, eat breakfast etc. all while he is running around eating snacks, pulling things out of cabinets and getting into everything he shouldn’t be getting into.

My evening routine is a bit more calm: feeding Jasper dinner, then bath, stories, nursing and bedtime. After he’s in bed my husband and I eat and
then I usually blog or edit photos.

Name three items in your fridge:

In my fridge is a lasagna my best friend (who is in chef’s school!) made me last night, some grass fed beef and chocolate covered pretzels.

Do you recognize anything about your aesthetic style that reminds you of your mother or grandmother’s home?

I don’t see much if anything in my home that reminds me of my mother or grandmother, I decorated my home in a bit more of a shabby chic style than my mother who has more eclectic tastes.

What do you pack for lunch for your child? Snacks?

I pack my child one of the two or three things that he eats (he’s quite the picky eater) such as HappyBaby fishsticks or organic grassfed beef hotdogs (Applegate Farms). He also gets organic cheese sticks and maybe a fruit like pear for snacks. His eating is a bit of a source of stress as he is incredibly neophobic and picky, I’m hoping that’s a stage he’ll grow out of sooner rather than later!

What is your child’s favorite activity, craft or game?

My son is a bit young for crafts as of yet, he has though shown an interest in writing utensils recently so we just bought him some washable crayons – I’ll let you know how it goes! (I’m wondering if he’s going to be an artistic prodigy like his father was as a young child.)

His favorite activity right now is playing peekaboo – any object to hide behind or anyone to play with will do!

What has being a parent taught you?

I recently read a quote “While we try to teach our children all about life, Our children teach us what life is all about.” Being a parent has taught me to be selfless. It was certainly not something I would have ever been accused of before, but I am a different (more caring, “softer”) person that I was before having my son. I am also in the constant process of learning to let go as I parent him. It doesn’t come easily to me as I am a self admitted control freak!