Things We Love: Watermelon! Sparklers! Holmes Lake Fireworks!

Growing up, we spent all our 4th of Julys at our grandpa's house in Lincoln, Nebraska. He lived right by a lake where he'd take us fishing and make us touch the bait worms. His backyard had a great old-fashioned clothes line and a beautiful garden where the world's most delicious tomatoes and cucumbers grew. He'd use those cucumbers to make us jars and jars of pickles every year. On the 4th, we'd always grill and eat watermelon and then sit back and watch the fireworks go off over that lake as our aunt told us ghost stories.

Family Reading Time

Grandpa Bill reading a story in to Hollister in California.

School's Out for Summer!

Let's starting down counting down the days until summer camp starts! Horseback riding, camp fires, smores, and perhaps that first crush. This photo is of our grandpa at camp in 1929.

Things We Love: Sailor Chic

This week is Fleet Week. New York welcomes our sailors to dry land and reminds all of us that the sailor look never is old or dated. This idea was reinforced when I stumbled upon these two photos on my new favorite website of old photographs. Time Tales is a collection of found photographs ranging from pre-1930s to the present. Of course Hollister and I aren't strangers to the sailor chic look either. The photo below was taken on Easter around 1985 on the Country Club Plaza.

Family Photos: Looking Foward to Memorial Day

We're counting down the days until Memorial Day Weekend. I was talking with our friend, Mark von Kreuter, who, like a bazillion other Manhattanites, plans to kick off his summer in South Hampton at a posh clam bake on the beach. It brought me back to stories our father tells about his summers in the Hamptons as a boy, including the time when Truman Capote offered him a ride home from the beach club. That's dad up above, with our grandma (who had the best body ever) and great grandparents. As for the Hovey girls, we're staying local to prepare for our two gigantic summer initiatives: our Raj on the Roof and the launch of Hovey Vintage!

Things We (HHH) Loathed: Piano Lessons

By age four I was fully involved in ballet, gymnastics and piano, the latter of which fell far below the more active activities on the enjoyment spectrum. As my dad and I toiled away learning Mary Had a Little Lamb, my mom toiled away shopping for culottes and a miniature tuxedo jacket for our big performance. Recital day finally arrived and she gussied me up for the big duet. We took to the stage, me, wildly calm and focused (just look at the photo!), my father, a wreck of nerves. We start to play. I play Mary Had a Little Lamb. He plays something else entirely. I stop the recital and point this out. That was the end of piano.

Family Photos: Grandpa Bill Goes Swimming

Things We Loathed: Christmas and Easter Photo Sessions

You could always guarantee a biannual fit out of Hollister.  Christmas and Easter photos were her greatest torture. There were the costumes - and yes, they were costumes - and a lot of yelling...and it gave me a free license to maul her with hugs. Every single photo of the two of us is the same -- Hollister, looking like something from American Gothic, me, looking like an elated, loveable bunny. This (which we estimate is from Easter '85) is obviously no exception.

Family Photos: Grandpa Bill At Camp

Our grandpa at camp in the early '20s.

Family Photos: Aunt Virginia Drives the Ostrich

Oh, the good ole days when children wore simple, beautiful clothes and knew how to get themselves around town in style. We hope to help Brooklyn's tiniest residents dress much like our great aunt Virginia "Ginny" Hovey (shown here in the early '20s in Pasadena, California)!