Author: Sue Erneta

Sue at Home is all about my creative life as an entrepreneur and jewelry designer. After 20 years as a magazine fashion editor in New York City, I launched Libby & Smee, a line of simple fun statement jewelry that I make by hand in my home in Westfield, New Jersey. I'm obsessed with peonies, margaritas, denim, homemade chocolate chip cookies, white eyelet, summertime and hearing my talented daughters and husband sing and perform. In the past, this blog was a place to share my creative efforts around the house — things like DIY decorating projects, party ideas, adventures in baking, and Halloween costumes — and you’ll still find many of them archived here but going forward, Sue at Home will give you a peek behind the scenes of Libby & Smee. To shop, visit libbyandsmee.com
Family, Home

Our Wedding: Newport, Rhode Island

Sue Erneta

It’s Wedding Week at Sue At Home!

This Friday July 27th, Pablo and I will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary. I can’t believe that the time has flown by so quickly. I figured I’d share some wedding pics with you this week to help commemorate one of the most amazing days of my life. Today, I’ll set the scene.

We were married at the Astors’ Beechwood mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. When we were dating, we spent a lot of time in Newport with my parents (who had a boat at the time) and we fell in love with the charm of the seaside city. Plus – we loved the fact that we could have a destination wedding that wouldn’t require air travel for most of our guests. Much to our delight, many of our friends and family made a vacation out of it and spent several days in Newport.

Back in 2002 when we got married, the mansion was open for tours during the day and was rented out for weddings and events in the evenings.  It was originally owned by the Astor family and Mrs. Caroline Astor was quite the grand dame of New York and Newport society. Her son, John Jacob Astor was married in the ballroom where our reception was held. He was famous for being the wealthiest man to die on the Titanic. (Remind me not to take a cruise.) Recently, it was sold to the founder of Oracle who now owns it as a private residence. I read an article saying that he has plans to renovate it and use it as a gallery. I don’t care what he does with it, as long as I can walk through it again someday!

Our ceremony took place on the lawn behind the mansion overlooking the water. Pretty dreamy, huh?

Did you notice those people in the far distance by the fence? They’re on Newport’s Cliffwalk. It’s a walkway that goes between the Bellevue Avenue mansions and the ocean. The views are spectacular – and it’s free! If you’re visiting Newport, it’s not to be missed.

More ceremony pictures:

The cocktail hour was held on the veranda on the back of the mansion. (I wish I could tell you more about this part but I was busy taking pictures so we missed the whole thing. If I could redo one thing from our wedding, it would be to skip the formal family and wedding party pics. Other than that, I wouldn’t change a thing!)

The reception was held in the ballroom of the mansion. I usually don’t get into such antiquey stuff but I love the gold details and all the amazing lighting. It was so romantic!

I’ll end on that sappy picture. I hope it has you saying “Awwww!”, though I know my kids will say “Ewww!”

Hope you liked the tour of Newport and the Beechwood mansion. I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about wedding attire. (The best part!)

XO

Sue at Home

Aerial shot from here. All other photos by Mark Nelson. If you can’t wait to see more wedding details, check this out now.

Family, Food

Rainbow Cake: If I Can Make it, You Can Too

Sue Erneta

I pretty much suck at cooking. Case in point, tonight’s dinner: I made pasta, a jar of Patsy’s tomato basil sauce and a package of Stony Brook Farm Turkey Meatballs. Yawn!

So it seems kind of silly for me to give cooking and baking advice. But, there are a few things I can make well. My main criteria for my cooking is that it has to be really easy with very little room for human error. And the bonus for you is that If I Can Make It, You Can Too. Hmmm…sounds like a new feature!

Remember a few weeks back when we celebrated Lily’s birthday with a rainbow themed party? And remember that I promised I’d give you the play-by-play of how I made the rainbow cake? No? Well, good. Cause I forgot too!

Let’s start by staring at my beautiful new Kitchenaid mixer in Aqua Sky. Ahhh…she’s lovely, isn’t she?

To make the 6 layer cake, I used three 8-inch diameter pans and made 2 box mixes of cake. You can use any kind you like. (Or knock yourself out with a homemade one. I just find that the box ones are pretty good so why bother with homemade?) I made one batch first and separated the batter into three bowls. I was very careful to make sure that I separated it evenly so the cakes would be the same size. Bowls from here.

I always use gel food coloring for cakes or frosting because I like the colors to be really bold. (If you want pastels, go ahead and use liquid coloring. It’s much easier to work with.) I kept the “color station” very methodical. Each color got its own knife so I didn’t mix them up and I was sure to put it on top of plenty of paper towels because that stuff can stain your counter tops! (Note, gel coloring is kind of disgusting looking but totally effective. If you’d prefer some more natural colors, well…you’re reading the wrong blog.)

I’ve learned that you need to add a lot of food coloring at first because you can’t add color, then mix, check the color, add more color, mix more, check the color again, add more color, mix more…well, you get the point. The problem with that is you’ll end up overmixing the cake batter and it gets thin. So, go bold the first time and don’t overmix!

Once the red, orange and yellow cakes were done baking, I let them cool while I washed and prepared the pans for the second patch.

After the cakes were baked and cooled, I wrapped them individually and put them in the fridge until I had a chance to frost them the next day.

When it was time for frosting, I whipped up a double batch of buttercream frosting. I’d love to share my top secret recipe but if I did I’d have to kill you. Kidding! I use the recipe on the side of the Domino powdered sugar box. It couldn’t be easier and it’s delicious. One by one, I frosted and kept adding layers. Some of the cakes were slightly angled so I used a serrated knife to slice a little off the top to even them out. An important tip I learned from the LHJ food team about frosting a cake: only use the back of the spatula.

 

 After it was frosted, I let Lily add some sprinkles to the top. I don’t have a cake plate, so I used an upside-down bowl to display it! But there was a tiny lip around the bottom of the bowl and I was totally out of frosting to hide it, so I used a cheap can of ready-to-use frosting to make those little dots around the base. Shhh…don’t tell anyone!

 I love that it’s so simple from the outside because when I cut it open, everyone Ohhh’d and Ahhhh’d!

But most importantly, Lily loved it! For all the other details of her rainbow party, like rainbow balloons, rainbow fruit salad, rainbow favors and rainbow manicures, click here.

Happy baking!

XO

Sue at Home

Before and After, Decor, Family, Home, My house, Uncategorized

DIY Painting for the Dining Room

Sue Erneta

Allow me to reintroduce you to my dining room. Dining room, readers. Readers, dining room. You might remember that you met this room back in this post but here’s the recap. This was our dining room before we moved in. Simple. Subtle.

Cream and brown.

Here’s how it was recently.

The only big problems were 1) the too-short curtains that need to be replaced by something that goes all the way to the ceiling and 2) that weird art by yours truly. The curtains are going to take a little time to hunt down but I got to work on the painting yesterday. I was inspired by this picture I had seen on Amber Interiors but I wanted to do it with a gold background instead of silver. (Yes, I know that silver would “go” better with the gray walls but that’s precisely why I want to use gold. You get me, right?)

OK. So we’re all recapped now. Let the painting begin!

I used Craft Smart acrylic paints from Michael’s in Gold and Neon Pink. I actually had to make a run to the store to get more Neon Pink. That’s what happens when you share your paints with 2 little girls. (Who am I kidding?  I used it all myself!)  I made my first coat and I could still see some of the other colors through it. I liked it on the pink part but the gold was just looking greenish. (Also – please note my amazing art studio. It’s called laying-newspaper-down-on-the-living-room-floor-and-leaning-over-the-painting. Really fancy, huh?)

But luckily after a few coats later, it was finally covered – with just a little bit still showing through the pink part.

I actually like that little bit peeking through the pink. Nothing like a happy mistake!

So, it’s good…for now. I’m quite sure I’ll be changing it in a few months, but until then, I’m content.

And I’m not the only one who likes it.

XO

Sue at Home

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Home, My house

What I Love About My Small House

Sue Erneta
Me and Pablo on closing day 12/21/2010

I have big house envy. I’ve got it bad. Every time I’m in a friend’s house that’s bigger than mine (and they all are) I start saying things like, “I just love how WIDE the hall is!” and “It must be so great to have your own bathroom” and “……….”. (That’s the sound of my jaw dropping as I see their walk-in closet.)

I grew up in a decent sized house. Formal living room, dining room, 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths – the whole deal. When I was in college, my parents moved into an even bigger house. Meanwhile, my first place of my own was a rented 1 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, which I shared with a roommate and then my hubby. For 12 years, I learned to share very little space. When we had S, we quickly bought a townhouse in NJ that was about 1700 square feet. Seems like a lot of space but by the time we moved out, we were a family of four and we had started drowning in all the “stuff” that comes with having kids. In 2010, we moved to a house. A real house with a yard. But alas, since we were upgrading the town, we weren’t able to upgrade the amount of space.

So, here we are in about the same amount of space as the last place, except the kids get a lot more of it. In the move, Pablo and I gave up a 10 x 5 master closet and a mammoth master bath while the kids gained separate bedrooms and a playroom. That just doesn’t seem fair. (Unrelated: At what age can I ask them to pitch in for the mortgage?)

While I’m busy drooling over bigger houses, I do have to admit that there are a lot of nice things about having a smallish house.

1. It’s cozy. No seriously. It really does have a just-enough-space feel to it. If I’m cooking in the kitchen and the kids are downstairs in the playroom, they’re a few steps away. Plus “my room” (the living room) and “Pablo’s room” (the den) are fairly close. (Our couches are only 26 feet apart! You can see the view from mine to his above.) You know what I mean, right? We each have our own space to chill, watch TV, and spread out. We usually watch different things on TV (him: sports 24/7, and me: anything else) so it’s nice to have that private space but I would hate for our “offices” to be on different floors.

2. It forces me to purge unnecessary stuff. Years of Manhattan living were good training for this. Believe me, there are drawers full of stuff that have to be edited but needing the space makes me go through them much quicker.  (And I’m more frugal during beauty sales at work. I know I don’t have room for another body scrub that I will never use so I don’t bring it home!)

3. It’s easier to clean up. Since we live in a tri-level split, we don’t have long flights of stairs so when it’s time to get the girls to put their toys and shoes and hair clips and artwork and dirty socks (WHY do they leave them balled up all over the house?) in their rooms, we can just toss them to the top of the 6 steps and they can get put everything where it belongs.

4. It costs less. Sure, the house itself was less than a big house. But there’s also the lower taxes plus the savings on heat and AC. Why pay to heat and cool rooms that you rarely use?

5. It’s a well-oiled machine of  efficiency. My lack of kitchen cabinet space means I need to keep the not-often-used stuff in our walk-up attic. The other day I had to go up to get the bundt pan – it took about 30 seconds to walk up there and grab it and this was the first time I’ve needed it since we moved here 17 months ago. So, why do I need a kitchen big enough to store it? The same goes for my closet. That 50 sq foot closet in the last house was great but it held every handbag I own, all my evening clothes, old Halloween costumes, basically everything I have.  Oh…and Pablo’s stuff too. Now, all of those items plus bathing suits, extra coats, old shoes that I can’t bear to part with, and off-season clothes live in the attic. My closet may be small but it only has clothes that fit, are currently (somewhat) stylish, and are weather-appropriate which makes getting dressed in the morning much easier.

6. It’s big enough to host a guest or two, but they don’t seem to stay too long. And isn’t that ok for everyone involved? Enough said.

7. It’s ours. I could waste time obsessing over what I don’t have or I could appreciate what I do have – a great house with plenty of space in a beautiful town. Isn’t that the American Dream?

So, the next time I start drooling over a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house, I’ll just try to remember these reasons. Plus, how long would it take to clean a behemoth like that?

XO

Sue at Home