Manolo for the Home

If putting two little birdies or one tree on your wall sounds too tame, there are other decals out there that are a lot less ordinary. Blik sells a rather largish collection of re-stickable and not re-stickable wall decor that’s about as out there as you could want. The room above is hellsa grownup when viewed in the context of their other decals!

How about angry robots…bloody cartoon psychos…trippy cities…or crazy critters?

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Please don’t confuse this with the five things I can’t live without. It’s totally, totally different! For one thing, I already have some of the things listed below. It’s just that my particular versions aren’t quite as nice. And some of the things are totally impractical, pointless, and even silly!

It is the height of ridiculousness and something I could probably make myself, if necessary. We’ve talked about ceramic cats in the past, but this one is just a tad different. What’s stopping me from snapping it right up is the price tag. The Rosenau Castle cat (part of Nymphenburg’s Big Five porcelain trophy series) costs a cool $929. Ouch.

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It’s a pear…with a butthole. At least that’s what it looks like to my eyes, which have seen scads of cartoon cats with little star-like pencil sharpeners under their cartoon tails. While I’m sure that Maija Isola and Kristina Isola put a lot of thought into this colorful fruit back in 1969, all I can see is a pear with a butthole.

This is what buttpear looks like on the wall in your super mod living room in what I’m sure is your fabulous New York City apartment that’s located in a building that was once a factory.

What I do like here is the concept, conceived of by Marimekko for CB2. In case you didn’t know, it’s Crate & Barrel’s new hip venture meant to appeal to young hip folks like me and you. First you buy a set of metal hanging bars and hardware, then you buy interchangeable fabric prints like this one, which I adore. They’re relatively inexpensive as wall decor goes, and they are absolutely HUGE. That means bang for your buck!

But, yeah…a pear with a butthole.

I’m lucky in that I can sit here at my desk and stare out of my window into my extremely green backyard. The plus is that I can see flowers and shrubs and trees and a baby rhubarb and broccoli seedlings. The minus is that I can also see the dandelions. Now, personally, I like dandelions…on other people’s properties, that is. They’re pretty, but give them an inch of your lawn and they’re going to take over the whole thing. Grrrrrr!

Not everyone is so lucky, however, which means that city rats and apartment dwellers have to improvise when it comes to getting a nature fix. There’s not always time to get to the botanical garden or hike the nearest mountain range, but there’s almost always time for a little retail therapy.

Multi-colored metal says fall to me, but it may say something different to you. But at a foot and a half square and two inches deep, I have to wonder how heavy these leaves are.

Custom framed golden leaf prints by S. Hadley…whoever that is…represent a lighter option.

Is it weird that I can’t figure out whether these are plates or plain old circles? I love putting plates on the wall, even though plenty of them are a pain in the tuckas to hang.

But wait…am I being too literal? Too literally leafy? Personally, I like this:

I’m still sick, and I’m looking forward to going back to bed. Perhaps my convalescent experience would be made more pleasant with a few wall decals? The first time I encountered these was surprisingly weddingish–a company I haven’t been able to find again was pushing stick and peel decals. I wondered, at the time, how frazzled site managers would feel about brides and grooms covering their walls, floors, and dancefloors with monograms.

Personally, I like art on my walls…from photographs I took myself whose artistic merit is on shaky ground to Chinese paper cuttings to my crazy glittery Jesus painting framed in red velvet and gold. The Beard bought that last one off the back of a truck somewhere near Mexico! I’ve never considered wall decals, but I’m tentatively open to the idea. Here’s a supercute selection from Vinyl Wall Art, a great online shop in desperate need of a better name:

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There is but a single quatro of napkin rings in the whole of my house. They’re pewter, and I found them long ago while poking through The Beard’s things. I was mystified…why did The Beard have a set of fancy napkin rings embellished with a single engraved H? They were obviously old–the heavy cardboard box in which they were stored was too nice to be new.

All mysteries aside, I thought that lovely pewter napkin rings really ought to be in the general circulation, so I confiscated them and bought a mess of ecologically responsible cloth napkins.

Who’d have thought mannerly cleanliness could be so much fun? I like sending The Beard to work with a packed lunch complete with a pretty yellow napkin tucked into a napkin ring. He’s told me that his coworkers think it’s awesome, and there are few things I like more than impressing people from afar.

My favorite rings are the porcelain Lenox rings, but that may be because I already have a pewter set. Unfortunately, the rings I have will have to do for a bit…at least until I get some new napkins and start entertaining again. I’ve been too busy lately to even think about rolling a napkin into a napkin ring.

It’s not all that tough to sew a pillowcase, and with the right directions, almost anyone can reupholster a chair. No kidding! I know one moderately skilled needle pusher who redid her entire living room by carefully taking apart the fabric on her furniture and using that to create her own pattern. I’m not suggesting you do that if you’re not comfortable with your sewing machine, but why not try making a lap quilt? Or a quillow?

The best thing about sewing — as I’ve said in the past — is that there are oodles and oodles of totally sweet fabrics out there. I like to shop the sale cottons, of which there are usually many, and my favorite brand is Marcus Fabrics. If, like me, you have an unpracticed eye when it comes to matching colors and patterns, take heart! Many of the fabric designers and retailers create and list their wares in pre-matching sets so you know you’re going to get two or more fabrics that harmonize perfectly.

Have fun!

Everyone has that short list of items they’d take with them to that hypothetical desert island that comes up now and again in conversation. Much of the time, those things special to us wouldn’t be of much use to us on that island (what good is a Kitchenaid mixer without electricity?) but we’d haul them along with us anyway. Human being are kind of like magpies that way, and more power to us. I think that our ability to imbue inanimate objects with emotional value is fascinating.

Here’s my list, which I put together just now. I didn’t let myself think too much about my choices because I wanted to see where my impulses would take me.

1. I try to keep an unending supply of petit fours in my pantry. Sometimes I buy ‘em, and sometimes I make ‘em from scratch. You don’t want to run into me on the street when I’ve run out. Little cakes…they are my crack.

2. My collection of Russian khokhloma kitchenware is important to me because it represents a connection to my heritage. Well, part of my heritage seeing as that I’m what one might not-so-politely call a mutt. In more courteous conversation I hail from “mixed ancestry.”

3. I always admired my grandparents’ collection of masks from different parts of the world, and now I have all sorts of masks of my own. Why do I like creepy faces hanging inside my house but hate the creepy faces hanging outside of other people’s houses? I’m going to guess it’s because mine are culturally relevant. I do worry that they’re going to scare the hell out of my kids someday!

4. My red Oreck upright rocks my socks — it was a hand-me-down from my grandparents, and thank goodness for that. Vacuums are way more expensive than I assumed they’d be back before I ever had a floor of my own to keep clean.

5. As annoying and yucky and mean as they can be, I adore my my quatro of cats. Did you think I was going to say “the litter box?” Having living beings around is, in some way, invigorating, if only because I find myself chasing them around the house with the spritz bottle.

I guess at my core I am a crazy, cake-eating cat-lady neat-freak who has a weakness for other cultures. Now tell me, what are the five things that you wouldn’t want to live without? And what does your list say about you?

Right this second, someone, somewhere is thinking about how if they could have anything at all in the world, they’d pick a giant ent face that is poised to vomit half-digested birdseed all over the poor sparrows congregating at the base of the tree.

Sure I only just wrote about these fun forest faces — that’s what the manufacturer calls them — but I couldn’t resist showing you this one, which looks as if it had a rough night on the town with the Birch Boys and is desperately searching for an antacid or a little hair off the dog…anything to wash the taste of birds out of its mouth.

Bathroom moisture issues aside, shower curtains seem relatively unimportant. It’s so easy to pick up a plain white or black or blue one at the drugstore and be done with it. But consider that shower curtains are BIG — they take up a lot of space, which means that a boring one creates a huge blah space. If your bathroom is already crazy interesting, then skip the cool curtain. But if your bathroom could use a little oomph, a new shower curtain can really freshen up that space.

Take a cue from these black-on-white stick figures and banish your morning blahs with a little impromptu dance number. They obviously know something we don’t.

I personally wouldn’t combine the Lucky Stripe curtain with the Lucky Stripe bathmat and the Lucky Strip accessories, but YMMV. Altogether it looks a bit too matchy-matchy. Mix it up!

I like this paisley number because it reminds me of wallpaper and scarves and other good things that have nothing to do with your average bathroom. Plus it can go just a touch longer than a plain white shower curtain without needing to be thrown in the washer! It’s win-win!