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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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:

The Beard has been my linkman lately, and he did not disappoint today. His latest find was a pictorial tour of Mike Tyson’s former home on Illicitohio, an awesome (AWESOME!) site that documents the adventures of one anonymous urban explorer. The home has apparently been empty since the 90s and is mostly empty of furniture. It’s fun to look at what Mike Tyson’s decor guru thought was hot and what was left in the house after he decided to leave.

The photos speak for themselves, really. There’s commentary over at Illicitohio if you’re interested in anon’s take on the house and the decor, but I’ll leave you with this thought before presenting a selection of photos: Everything you see, from the furniture to the rugs to the faux plants, was someone’s idea of a real stylin’ pad.

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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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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!

There are few chores sadder than taking stock of the possessions left behind by an older relative forced by circumstance to move into a “home.” The things we gather over time define us in our own minds, but say something completely different to the outside observer. Some people–my mother, for instance–want everything to be new and flashy and modern. To them, anything vintage or outdated belongs in the dumpster.

Me? I like retro anything, even if it’s so kitschy as to be rather…ugly. I wouldn’t want a room full of kitsch, but a few crazy pieces of tacky history here and there can make an otherwise bland a room POP. People who visit say, “Oh my goodness, where’d you get this? My crazy old aunt had one just like it!” A ceramic cat or a crazy lamp really take people back…to spring vacations spent at the houses of grandparents…to their own childhoods. Everyone sees something different.

The story behind this photo and the ones that follow is this: I have a friend whose aunt is moving into a home, and it fell upon said friend to catalog the stuff left behind. His ladyfriend, Jennifer P., took pictures, and I found them to be quite moving.

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With apologies to those who live in the southern hemisphere, I’d just like to say thank goodness that spring has finally sprung. I was getting terribly sick of keeping my house hermetically sealed against the cold and dreary weather. Now that I can finally sit outside without risking hypothermia, I’ve realized that my complement of weather resistant furniture is woefully inadequate.

In fact, my entire collection is limited to two plastic armchairs and one tiny plastic table because the only outdoor space I had as of a year ago was a 5′ by 10′ bit of deck hanging in space. Now I have a deck that’s quite a bit bigger and also overlooks an entire yard, which means I’m looking for an upgrade.

In yet another moment of synchronicity, I was on the phone with my gram whining about my lack of weather-resistant seating surfaces when I found Ballard Designs‘ summertime catalog in my mailbox. I wasted the next fifteen minutes losing myself in daydreams of customizable umbrellas, intricate cast aluminum lounges, and faux bois planters.

So, yeah, it’s time to hose off the plastic and shop around for some good deals on outdoorsy accessories because $600 for a chaise isn’t going to happen any time soon.

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?

I just happened upon a The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Staging your Home, which is how you know some concept has officially entered the collective consciousness. Naturally, there’s also a Home Staging for Dummies.

I only saw a single staged home when searching for properties around Boston, and I was more than a bit surprised. I saw many, many houses that looked like the owners (or previous owners) hadn’t even bothered to run a dust cloth over the windowsills. Personally, I was mortified when I couldn’t really even tidy up when showing my old apartment. Yes, I could clean the cat hair out of the corners, but the mountains of boxes made staging utterly impossible. However, the apartment was in a desirable area and cheap to boot, so it was snapped up quickly.

Why stage? According to a study conducted by Realtor Joy Valentine, staged homes tend to sell more quickly than their un-staged counterparts. Even better, the average difference between the sale price and the list price is 6.3%, versus a paltry 1.6% for unstaged homes. That means mo’ money. It’s pretty easy, too, when you consider the basic rules: declutter, let there be light, give a good first impression, show off your trendiest and more beautiful stuff, make rooms look bigger, and hide life’s detritus.

You are, after all, selling a HOUSE not a HOME, and there’s a big difference between the two. My mother-in-law had a beautiful house filled with fabulous antiques that really enhanced the space from the point of view of someone living in the house. But her house didn’t sell until she took the advice of her Realtor and put all those wonderful pieces in storage. He said, and I quote loosely, that people coming to see the house were gushing over her antiques and forgetting all about scrutinizing the structure housing them. Oops!

Here are some basic staging tips from About.com:

• Arrange sparse pieces of furniture in an appealing grouping known as a vignette
• Showcase a generous usage of soft fabrics such as silk, lambswool, satin
• Display unusual knickknacks in units of 1, 3 or 5
• Drape window coverings with simple lines
• Add unique elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels, which draw attention to predetermined areas

If your furniture isn’t that hot, pick the best pieces and stow the rest. If you don’t have any high-end knickknacks, pick the funkiest, hippest ones that will have mass appeal–think a kitschy vintage glass elephant statue, not a penis-shaped lava lamp. Frankly, I try to keep my kitchen and living room at a staged home level of neatness all the time because, hey, I never know when the Queen or Patrick Stewart might drop by.

Whatever you do, for goodness sakes don’t “chop” your pillows. That was considered cool for about a week until someone finally had the guts to tell the San Francisco staging company that started it all that chopped pillows look ridonculous.

Etsy is one of my go-to destinations when I’m looking for cool stuff to feature on Manolo for the Brides, but it never would have struck me to look there for furniture. After all, shipping charges must be outrageous, right? And who wants to buy furniture you can’t inspect first? I’m not so sure anymore — a short search for furniture netted me all sorts of chill chairs I’d be more than pleased to install in my own home.

Here’s a sampling:

This “Swanky Louis XVI chair” is brought to you by Dinwiddies,maker of funky purses, pillows, skirts, and more. I’m personally in love with the giant stuffed olive.

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