Looks great, but where'd it come from?

If I say shipping pallet furniture, what comes to mind? I immediately think of stacks and stacks of flat pack being unloaded at Ikea’s back door, but that’s just me. And it’s just wrong. Turns out that people are making more than just frames out of old, no longer useful shipping pallets. There are a ton of DIY projects for the home out there that start and end with shipping pallets. Shipping pallets, you may be surprised to discover, can be made into everything from headboards to patio furniture to bookshelves and more.

But is it safe?

Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on where your pallet was born and what it has been used for since. If you want to embark upon a DIY pallet project, make sure the pallets you have at your disposal were made in the U.S. and used within its borders. Pallets used for international shipping, you see, have to be treated with some heavy duty pesticides that sink right into the porous wood. Would I want my kid sleeping up against wood treated with methyl bromide every night? Not particularly. So when you’re collecting pallets for projects, stay safe and make sure you know their chain of custody before making them into a coffee table.

What say you: Pallet furniture… cool or meh?

Maybe I’m alone in this, but I’m not big on having a lot of faces around my house. I make a few exceptions – like for me Jizo statue (with his closed eyes) and the bust of some unknown philosopher (who I prefer to imagine is blind since he has no pupils). And with a daughter, I’ve had to reconcile myself to the fact that I now share my house with about eight hundred big-eyed plushies. But no joke, I will clean up simply to avoid having inanimate objects staring at me.

So is it any wonder that I find these pillows from Vintage Jane kind of terrifying?

Come play with ussss...

Cute, but still creepy

Sure, they’re kind of charming and even a little bit adorable in that way only vintage cartoons are, but that’s only during the day. What about at night, in the dark, when they start blinking and following you with their cold, dead eyes? What, I ask you, will you do then?

How many times have I mentioned that we were having a little remodeling done? A bunch, I know. Which means it’s only fair that I share at least one picture of my new bedroom, which was finally finished at the end of last month, yay!

Want some details? We went with mismatched bedside tables and no-VOC paint from Freshaire in a pretty gray color. Our color scheme includes gray, a very dark gray for detailing, white, and red, with some black furniture and some wood. We decorated using furniture we already had, which has saved a lot so far, though I did make some quickie DIY “art” using scrapbooking paper and picture frames I had lying around. (But it wasn’t this or this, for the curious.) I’m loving it so far – and I’m feeling especially proud of the work we put into it!

What have you done in your home lately that you’re especially proud of?

A bed can dominate a room or get lost in it, depending on the bed and on the room. Big, bold beds can be absolutely fabulous, until you put them into a tiny room and there’s no visual room for anything else but posters and headboards and footboards and pillows. And small, unassuming beds can stand out in that same tiny room with the right linens or fade into the background if your bedroom happens to be larger than most. Today I ran across two beds that used clever solutions to overcome problems.

(via Domnio)

The first is perfect for anyone who, like me, has a bedroom with crazy sloped walls. If the joint between the vertical wall and the slanted wall is placed low, the easiest solution is to choose a very short headboard. But in many cases, a very short headboard will be boring and potentially so unnoticeable as to be no better than no headboard at all. This bed gets some oomph with a little extra headboard action – by wrapping it around the wall, it seems bigger than it is.

(via)

If, on the other hand, your problem is a long but very narrow room, you may think that you’re doomed to having no bedside storage or living in a space so cramped that you might as well be in one of those economy hotels in Japan. But what if you used fantastic built-ins to not only give you a beautiful bed, but also plenty shelving for books and anything else you might want in a pinch while in bed? This example has a twin mattress in a day bed frame, but imagine the same bed with a full or queen mattress facing outward. Perfect for the narrow room, no?

If you’re looking for a four-poster bed with a twist, how about a tree bed? That way, you can have four posts or fourteen, depending. And it’s a wacky, but adorable way to catch some Zs in the great outdoors without all the muss and fuss of camping. I’d love the first one or the fourth one, but depending on how rustic you want to go, you might love the others more!

(via)

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I have a good friend who moved into her house (which is a lot like mine in terms of size and shape except for a few additions and swapped doorways) way before I did but has way more bare walls and surfaces not being used to display stuff. My impression was always that her decor choices were entirely intentional. While I can’t seem to see a bare wall or buffet top without immediately thinking of something that would just be perfect there, I also like the clean, uncluttered look that many people prefer. As it turns out, however, my friend’s decor style actually isn’t her style!

She admitted to me one day that there are all kinds of things she wants to do to her house to make it her own. But she doesn’t actually want to do any of them until she can do all of them because she doesn’t like that ‘in transition’ feeling. She’s much more interested in achieving what I call a finished-finished look, i.e., a decor scheme that is put in place and then remains unaltered until it’s time for a complete overhaul. I, on the other hand, am one of those people who is always shopping her own house for things that would fit better in other rooms. I don’t know quite how I want everything to look, but I know it when I see it, enabling me to take advantage of things like $1 signs at the thrift shop.

My friend has a concrete idea for her home. My dream house is always evolving, which is why I’m still making inspiration boards for my daughter’s room when her room is, in the eyes of everyone we know, done for now. Finished-finished, in other words.

But if my living room and bedroom (currently non-existant, but whatevs) and my kitchen will never be finished-finished, why should my daughter’s room be considered done? I like an evolving house – besides the fact that little touches keep things fresh, I will probably never have to do a complete room overhaul. Something, I hasten to add, I doubt I’ll ever be able to afford. But that’s just my way of keeping a home. As outlined above, it’s certainly not the only way, which is why I want to hear about YOUR way. Do you wait until you can whip up a whole perfect room or do you decorate and then redecorate in bits and pieces?

(Images via: Little Crown Interiors, Zachary Dickory Dock, Sproutstyle, Sugabee Lane, Modern Pea Pod, Cookie Dough Designs, and Sweet Retreat Kids)

I love Branch Handmade‘s screen printed bedding in simple black and white – the images are classic, but the way they’re used is eye-catchingly contemporary. In Branch’s bedding collection, you’ll find everything from guns to gilded cages, along with bikes, birds, and even orchids.

Aaaaaaand they make tea towels and clothes, too, so the fun doesn’t have to stop in the bedroom. The bikes are def my favorite Branch Handmade print – what’s yours?

How awesome is this room from lakbdesign?

Love their design philosophy:

every child needs a special place at home, a place where they can learn to be alone, can have “away” space from the rest of the family, but children also need comfortable gathering spaces, where they can play board games or video games with friends, or where siblings come together to create a lego village. lakbdesign children’s spaces. easy.fun.perfect.done.

It’s the little details that really make this room for me – the elephant wallpaper… the disco ball in the corner… the zither (which is both pretty and fun).

When I was growing up, money was extra tight and my immediate family had no real eye for design, so my room was what I could make of it, which wasn’t much. Sure, there are those amazing seven year olds who manage to out-decorate the pros, but I was not one of them. That’s part of why I’ve been spending lots of time on my daughter’s room – I want her to have fond, happy memories of her childhood space.

So do like me and DIY it: