Sweet hip printed cotton canvases by DuffyLondon take the place of actual lighting fixtures when tiny houses and apartments simply cannot handle the introduction of something as impressive and imposing as a full-size chandelier. All the glamour without the threat of banging one’s head or snagging delicate glass!

Some of the DuffyLondon prints even glow — the images are digitally printed onto cotton canvas and stretched over wooden frames that installed with low energy strip lights that illuminate the prints from within. Interesting, but sounds kind of ghetto, a la the glowing crucifixion scenes one can purchase at the Dollar Tree.

Or you could just opt for a straight-up crystal chandelier poster, like this one from ElectricPopSpot on Zazzle:

It’s not quite as chic and cheeky, but the colors are fantastic and with the right frame it could be a lot of fun!

When you’ve just bought a house, especially if it’s your first and the house itself could use a little fixing up, it’s hard not to want to start knocking down walls and building additions. Yet as strong as the urge to remodel right away can be, I’d council you to wait. At least a year. Maybe two if you’re planning on doing anything drastic like starting your own business, becoming a telecommuter, or having a baby.

“What?” you say, both incredulous and impatient to get those renovations underway.

But hear me out. Unless you have solid, unchangeable life plan that will guide your every action for the next decade or you have enough spare cash to re-remodel whenever you like, you may find that one or two years from now what you need from your home is quite different than what you needed from it when you closed. It’d be shame to build a dormer and turn two bedrooms into a single master bedroom just to discover that the bedroom you sacrificed would have made the perfect home office or crafting room or nursery. It’d be even worse to renovate without thinking very carefully and end up with a mishmash like this:

So consider letting a year (or more) go by before you nail down your remodeling plans. I guarantee you that in a year or two, your house will tell *you* whether you need to expand your kitchen or build a front porch or install a bay window. The Beard and I have been in our little house just over two years, and only now have we come to realize what we need to do with the upstairs, which is add a landing with a banister and divide one of the two bedrooms into a home office for each of us. I’m glad we waited until the house told us what we should do because if we hadn’t, we would have ended up with two bedrooms upstairs. It would have been nice, but not what we needed.

I’ll take one of these:

And four of these:

And while you’re at it, I may as well have you send me one of these:

Love,
Never teh Bride (who is redoing her kitchen)

Walk around any town with more than a few triple-decker apartments long enough and you’re bound to see at least one or two faded armchairs or loveseats that have obviously been exposed to their fair share of rain, sun, and, here in Massachusetts’ North Shore, snow.

I personally have always maintained that there is indoor furniture and outdoor furniture, and never should they meet. No plastic chairs in the living room and no couches on the deck, in other words. Not everyone shares my opinion, however. Just out of curiosity, I thought I’d post a poll to find out just how many people do or don’t. Have at it, please:

Do note that so far as I can tell, this pretty upholstered plum settee from The Quill Pen was only let out of doors for a few moments for a unique furniture photo shoot. Otherwise it dwells inside where it is protected from the elements awaiting its forever home. If you’re interested, the price is listed at $850.

If you’re strapped for cash but desperate to update your living room, you can always start small, with something like new throw pillows or throw pillow covers like these from Ruby+Stella Home.

Twenty bucks or so won’t break the bank, and a burst of color where you park your butt might be just the thing to brighten a dark mood brought on by the American economy. Then again, why spend even that much if you happen to own a sewing machine and have easy access to fabric you like, whether already in your collection or at your local sewing shop? Personally, I’m partial to the Eames tribute fabric I found in the LA Times, but any fabric will do.

Slipcovering a couch may be too difficult / time-intensive / annoying to contemplate at this point in your life, but it takes hardly any time at all to whip up covers for square or rectangular throw pillows!

Here’s the DIY skinny: Choose your favorite fabric. Measure the pillow you want to cover, up and down and from side to side. Add a bit to both measurements since you need to account for a seam allowance, but don’t add too much since you want the end result to fit rather tightly on your pillow. Cut one piece of fabric that matches your measurements-plus-a-little-more, then two pieces that are as tall as your measurements-plus-a-little-more but only about 3/4 as wide.

You can probably see where I’m going with this… Finish one up-and-down edge on each 3/4 piece. Then, with right sides together sew your single side piece to your two pieces with those two pieces overlapping. Turn inside out and, voila! You have sewn your very own custom (and customizable) throw pillow cover. Once you have the hang of the basic cover, you can add embellishments like borders or buttons or whatever else strikes your fancy.

Every been tempted to cutesy up your powder room by replacing all your bathroom accessories with a matching set featuring, oh, a fancy hat and feathered pumps?

Or flowers or little pink poodles? When I moved into my house, the sickly yellow bathroom walls were painted with badly-stenciled ivy, and the combo was supposed to match the white and lilac tiles (including accent tiles with sad little groupings of flowers). The only reason I can think of for stenciling in ivy was to try to make the bathroom a little more cute.

We’ve done what we can to tone down the cute by painting the walls white and pairing the purple with a soft green, keeping our bathroom accessories subdued, and avoiding signs that advertising things like “We aim to please. You aim, too, please.” Seriously, what is up with those?

Looking to refresh your bathroom or hate the bathroom you inherited when you bought your house? You’re better off skipping the cutesy accessories that are going to grate on your nerves in six months or a year and saving your pennies and springing for a gallon of paint, some new towels, and a pretty mirror. Maybe a pedestal sink if you’re otherwise set where bathroom storage is concerned.

Trust me — think long-term when you’re updating a room and you’ll save money in the long run.

The Beard and I are starting to think seriously about home renovations, which is a good thing when you consider that I have an office and he doesn’t, and the entire upstairs of our house is basically unfinished. We think, though we’re not entirely sure, that we’ve figured out a way to turn the upstairs floor (which is currently divided into two fairly large rooms) into two small offices and one big master bedroom. That would leave us with two children’s bedrooms on the first floor and a basement that said children can eventually destroy, thus saving my living room from wear and tear.

This change, if it’s even possible, is quite a ways off, which is fine since we’re still, nearly eight months later, getting used to managing the day-to-day responsibilities of being parents, homeowners, employees, and well-rounded grownup people. Oh, and Horde warriors, but that’s another tale for another day.

Back to those small offices. I’m not sure what The Beard will do with his other than fill it with expensive audio equipment and an ankle deep pile of papers, but I plan to actually work in mine since that’s what I do in my current, rather more expansive home office. Moving upstairs will mean some things have to go — like my freestanding bookshelves, for example. So what to do, what to do…

There’s this:

Isabel Quiroga’s Storyteller Shelves could be a fun DIY project resulting in some truly deep shelves. And cheap, too, if I have the patience to scour the classifieds for legged coffee tables that are just about the same width. Plus a similarly-sized desk. Overall, I love the look (not to mention the color!), and it’s something I’d consider if it happened that the Craiglist freebies board became inundated with shorty tables.

(via)

In one of my upstairs rooms, I keep what my wonderful old Opa calls a Wintergärten. Being that it’s upstairs and therefor both out of sight and out of mind, my little indoor garden is by necessity made up of plants that thrive without much help from me and mine. Oh, and did I mention that while my house gets all sorts of gorgeous southern light, the upstairs has no south-facing windows. When we choose plants, we can’t be too picky.

Succulents, as a result, are all we keep other than spider plants, which share a common trait with succulents in that they don’t mind much if you forget to water them or go away for a week or the sun doesn’t show itself for the entire month of July. According to Wikipedia, succulents, also known as fat plants because their water-retaining properties make them look positively chubby, have evolved all sorts of adaptations that make them perfect for the lazy gardener. They can be green or pink or some combination of orange, yellow, and red. Some succulents even look like stones!

Aren’t they gorgeous? Especially when grown in vintage tins and cups!

You can grow them yourself from seeds, or let someone else do the work for you. The succulents above in their darling little pots come from Etsy seller Monkeys Always Look, purveyor of both fine succulents and vintage housewares.

Right now I’m hating wallpaper. Hating it! The previous occupant of my home put up a wallpaper border that spans the perimeter of the kitchen and the main hallway, and getting it to come off has been a real pain in my ass. I remember quite clearly telling our realtor that we wanted to put an offer on the house and his response… “That’s the first thing that has to go,” he said. Maybe if I hadn’t dragged my feet and made it the fifteenth thing to go (possibly the fiftieth, but who’s counting?) it wouldn’t be manifesting a will to live that frankly amazes me. It just. won’t. come. off.

And yet there are still some wallpapers I think about installing in my home, even though I know I’d grow sick of them on some future day and curse myself for my choices. Like Frames Wallpaper, which is advertised as being for kids, but come on. We all know who makes the wallpapering decisions in a family.

You can draw or paint in the empty frames, or glue pictures or postcards or inspirational tear-outs from magazines right into them. Or use putty, I suppose, though I wonder if that would leave a tell-tale blue mark.

Details, details:

Here’s what it looks like up close:

See also: Familjen Wallpaper Same idea, different execution.

Arranging wall art creatively shouldn’t be a frightening or overwhelming task, but the fact is many people are intimidated by the idea of doing anything other than side-to-side framed photos or paintings. The key to grouping success, however, isn’t talent but prep work. Decide ahead of time what pictures should go in what rooms, and where those pictures will look best grouped. If you have any kind of smaller, offset, or unusually shaped walls, consider using them as your canvas.

Here are some examples of arrangements that complement the rooms they’re in:

If you’re not quite sure how to start grouping framed photos or artwork on your walls, you can always begin with a unifying element. Think frame color, the size and shape of your pictures, or a theme. Design Hole posted a gorgeous primer for those people who want to cover their walls with images in a fun yet beautiful and cohesive way. Check it out here (and then go read the rest of that delightful blog)!

Of course, you could just go nuts and end up with something like this…

Or this…

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!