Manolo for the Home

The nice thing about buying a house is that you own everything in it. Conversely, the bad thing about buying a house is that you own everything in it. Right now, I own counter tops that are made of some sort of material that absorbs stains as a matter of course and a sink that is slowly falling into the cabinet underneath. For this, I can thank the previous owners and their half-assed approach to DIY home repair.

Speaking of that sink, I’m loosely in the market for a shiny new one…and I can’t imagine buying the sink itself without buying a new faucet set to go with it. Curious to see what I’m considering? Read on for pics and what for me are incomprehensible stats.

The Polished Brass Single Handle Kitchen Faucet with Spiral Handle and Sprayer:
-3-Hole Installation -1/2″ IPS Inlets -11-7/16″ Spout Height -6-1/2″ Aerator Clearance -9-15/16″ Spout Reach -3″ Maximum Deck Thickness -Ceramic Disc Cartridge -Spiral handle with porcelain index button

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Before the official launch of the blog, I wrote about shopping your home when you need a decor pick-me-up. What do you do, though, when you’ve found all of the perfect pieces for a certain room in your house or apartment, but you have no clue how to arrange them? When I find myself facing this conundrum, I put scissors to paper.

I could explain myself in my own words, but Seeds of Knowledge wrote it out so succinctly:

1. Measure your room. Draw it to scale on graph paper which you can find at your local discount store. Use a 1/4 in. equal 1 ft. scale. If you can’t figure out how to draw out scale, ask your know-it-all teenage son!

2. Mark anything on your room drawing that will affect the arrangement of the room. Outlets, telephone, cable, light switches, windows, doors that open in, the space between windows, and the height of the window sills are all things that should be measured and noted.

3. This is the fun part! Make scale paper cutouts of your furniture (just like cutting out paper dolls!) Use the cutouts to arrange and rearrange the furniture in your room until you are satisfied with the result.

That’s it–without breaking a sweat, you can be sure you’re spaces will look wonderful in their new configuration. Even if you find drawing tedious, it beats asking your friends, significant other, or “know-it-all teenage son” to help you move your couch over and over and over again.

Like KIOSK’s description says: Germans will tell you that it’s impossible to boil eggs without one of these. Being that my family is comprised partly of off-the-boat German immigrants, I grew up eating boiled eggs that had been violated with an egg pricker.

This device supposedly keeps eggs from cracking while they’re doing their little boiling water dance, but I’ve eaten many an smooth-shelled boiled egg since growing up and moving away without the benefit of an egg pricker. I live without it, but you can take away my egg cups when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

I’d wager that something like 90% of my acquaintances and colleagues have never seen an egg pricker, much less used one. Have you? If so, has it positively impacted your egg cooking experiences?

Caravans aren’t just for gypsies, according to a certain Daphne. They can be retreats, guest quarters, studios, sheds, playhouses, and more, provided you have somewhere to store them when they’re not rolling on the open road.

You can even live in a caravan as Daphne did if you’re ready to eschew some of the comforts of home–heat and indoor plumbing come to mind. Apparently, the popularity of traditional caravan living is undergoing a resurgence in the UK.

If you’re in love with the idea of having a house that you can hitch up to your car, there are DIY caravan kits for sale at The New Gypsy Caravan. At around $500 for the double bed model, it’s a rather budget-friendly way to roam if you can turn a blind eye to the inevitable increase in gas expenditures.

A happiest of holiday to you and yours! If, unlike moi, you have a Christmas tree somewhere in your home, tell us about it. Real or faux? Little or sprawling? Fresh and green or plastic and pink? Voyeuristic minds want to know!

Whether you say belen, creche, crib, jeslicky, manger, nacimiento, pesebre, presepio, putz, or szopka, check out Friends of the Creche if you just can’t get enough.

It’s shaping up to be one of those days. You know, one of those days where you forget to put the filter carriage into the coffee maker and coffee goes absolutely everywhere before the darn thing belches out a never ending wave of coffee grounds? No kidding, this just happened to me about fifteen minutes ago, and I’ve been sopping up wet grounds ever since.

Coffee makers are nice–if not somewhat temperamental when confronted with those of us who wander into the kitchen half asleep. Espresso makers, on the other hand, are utterly grand…especially the simple stove top sort. I can’t live without mine, which I suppose makes it one of those things deserving of their countertop footprint. In fact, when my family gave me a fancy plug-in espresso maker with a milk foamer and timer, I gave it to the Goodwill without ever having used it.

Though I have offered up a variety of different sorts of espresso makers above (click for info, as always) I’d steer anyone looking for last-minute gift ideas to the model in the upper left hand corner. Of course, you could always do what I did and source a well-loved second hand espresso pot straight from Italy.

Yesterday we got to peek inside Betsy Johnson’s NYC pad. Today it’s time to have a gander inside Saddam Hussein’s mega-yacht, the Qaddisat Saddam. This $34 million boat, which now goes by the less disturbing moniker Ocean Breeze, can now be yours! Let’s have a look…

The 269-foot yacht comes equipped with bulletproof glass, a full medical clinic, prayer rooms, weapons storage, gold fixtures, marble, fountains, and more. It also comes equipped with decor straight out of the hotel decorators’ handbook.

Again, this is pretty much the set-up I would have envisioned if someone had asked me to guess at Saddam’s taste in interiors.

via Radar Online

A hearty thanks to The Manolo for letting me know that Betsey Johnson’s New York apartment was recently estate of the day over at Luxist. Had he not shared this link, I never would have had a chance to see into this Pepto Bismol world that is currently on the market for a cool $3.6 mil.

This is pretty much what I’d imagine Betsy Johnson’s living spaces looking like if you asked me to take a best guess at describing her digs.

When I first heard about Clocky from its creator Gauri Nanda during an interview, I was already in love. These quirky little alarm clocks finally went on sale many moons ago but I still don’t have one. Why? Because when I was interviewing Nanda, it was the original Clocky that stole my heart.

The “new” Clocky has modern curves paired with vintage colors, and that’s cool. New Clocky looks sweet and forgiving. Original Clocky, on the other hand, is rugged, big, and meanly anthropomorphic. He’s not going to take your crap–try to sleep in and he’s going to roll over to your neighbor’s yard and destroy their lawn gnomes. Still not ready to get up? Original Clocky will ransack your living room until he finds those compromising pictures of yourself you took in college.

You can’t avoid the realities of the morning when Original Clocky is on the prowl…