the queens museum (and house-hunt updates)

This past weekend, Bob and I went to see a particular house in New Jersey that we’d seen once before. It’s a single-family home with loads of potential. A fixer-upper! Which is really just a nice way of saying, it’s going to need a lot of work. But! If we can get this at the price we want, well…that’d be the best thing we could ask for. I mean, this place is practically perfect for us. Yes, it’s a bit cozy (real estate buzz word for ‘small’!) for a house, but the location is ideal, in terms of access to public transportation, shopping and NYC. We can deal with cozy.

People keep telling me not to get my hopes up too high because it could all fall through any minute. Unfortunately, it’s already too late for that. I’ve already begun to imagine barbecues in the backyard, painting over the pink walls, waking up in our new bedroom, making dinner in the granite-countertop kitchen and taking long baths in the jacuzzi (!!!). Honestly, the jacuzzi wasn’t something I was looking for, but if it comes with the house…hey, why not?

In other (unrelated) news, we also found time to go to the Queens Museum in Flushing Meadows Park. I hadn’t been before since I don’t find myself in that part of Queens too often, but it has been on my list of places to visit for the longest. So we went. It’s everything you’d imagine a modern museum to be: clean design, bright white open spaces and really cool exhibits to lose yourself in.

This is a minimalist’s dream library ↓

In which I found this book that instructed me how to put on my makeups! ↓

These are cupcakes, but all I see are nipples. ↓

Tiffany doesn’t just make jewelry and share breakfast pastries with Holly Golightly—she designs lamps too. And I’ll take one of these over a ring any day. That blue one in the middle that looks like a weeping willow please! ↓

A pig with a mushroom head. The artists’s words, not mine. ↓

But perhaps the best exhibit is the famous panorama of New York City. It’s truly impressive and we spent so much time just shouting out neighborhoods and spotting landmarks. In this photo, you can see Central Park on the right, part of the Bronx on the left, Randall’s Island (that green patch island with two bridges running through it), Roosevelt Island, Brooklyn and Queens (which are all across the river from Manhattan). I got such a kick spotting our neighborhood here! ↓

The only borough not pictured here is Staten Island (womp, womp, sorry SI).

If you ask me, this museum is way underrated and in the shadow of some more well-known museums in Manhattan. It is significantly smaller in size (it took us about 1 1/2 hours to get through all of it pretty thoroughly), but I think it’s worth visiting.

At the same time, I loved practically having the place to ourselves. It’s a welcome change from having to deal with the massive crowds at some of the more popular museums!