Manolo for the Home

After a weekend spent trying to fit all of our stuff into the nooks and crannies of a rather small Cape, I am loving *LOVING* this clever board game storage idea dreamed up by the lovely lady behind Infarrantly Creative. She needed a little color for her game room and a way to get said games out of the way. Inspiration hit, and a few short hours with a table saw later and WHAM. Art, or something close enough to it for most folks.

Clever, yeah? And easy to DIY if you’re a fan of board games who doesn’t even have a game room. Even better if you happen to have vintage versions of classic games! But, you say, how are you supposed to get the boards out of the frames when you and the fam want to sit down to a round of Monopoly or Chutes & Ladders? The short answer is you don’t!

The pieces and rulebooks are all stored in the back of the frame, so they’re right there when you take the whole works off of the wall. Love it, love it, love it!

Is it just me, or does everyone grow up with an ugly furniture store, the one that advertises on the weird local station that shows syndicated re-runs, wacky old movies, and very local news? I don’t know who supplies all the ugly furniture stores, but someone somewhere is making bank selling wholesale leather couches, “modern art” prints, and glass side tables to these places.

Here’s a little antidote to the colorful interior shots that had some of you covering your eyes because oh my gosh, the brightness!

Jake Phipps Jeeves & Wooster pendant lights are made from authentic bowlers and top hats, and are British to the core. Forget fun and funky, these lights will imbue your dining room or other space with a somber seriousness fitting your station in life.

People get freaky about their dolls, but really it’s no better or worse than any other hobby. Silly me, I actually didn’t realize how deep the doll obsession can run until I stumbled upon some dolls that look way too much like real people in little dolly fashion shoots. That led me to some doll houses that look way too much like real houses, which I’m totally digging with a level of enthusiasm equal to the level of horror I feel when looking at those scary high fashion dolls.

These gorgeous wee interiors were created by Michael Williams for his “Welcome to the Haute Dollhouse” feature in Haute Doll Magazine. I actually bookmarked one picture in his album thinking it was a real room, but I won’t tell you which one.

Aren’t they lovely? It makes me want to buy a basic doll house for my daughter when she’s old enough to enjoy it, and fill it with analogs of designer furniture and home accessories. Basically, I want her to have the hottest (and hautest) doll house on the block.

Pink goes from being cool to not being cool anymore with surprising rapidity, which means sometimes my tastes are cool and sometimes they’re decidedly uncool. For I, like many people, like pink. You’ll never catch me wearing it (heaven forbid!) but I do like to surround myself with touches of pink. And for a while I even had bright pink hair, so you know I must truly adore it. Every so often I go looking for more pink in my life, and now is one of those times.

Here’s just some of the pink stuff from Graham and Green that I’m digging on right now:

This pink mercury table light with its matching pink shade would pop in almost any room, but looks especially stunning when displayed amid lots of black and white or, as shown here, mirrors.

Cute as a button, a pink and white lambs wool hot water bottle cover hides the actual hot water bottle. Which is nice, since they tend to look rather nasty and medical.

This pink dresser would be great in a girl’s room… or a grownup girl’s room. But somehow even though The Beard is quite oblivious when it comes to most of my decorative choices, I don’t think I could slip this past him. Nuts.

I love this antique-style rattan back chair with its luxurious pink cotton velvet upholstered seat. Tell people it’s vintage and that you reupholstered it yourself. Who’s going to argue?

Finally, there’s a mother of pearl inlay bedside table with clear crystal glass drawer knobs. Handcrafted in India. Unique with a flaw or two, as a result. Very cool, I think, since pink paired with that style of workmanship is surprising.

It’s been more than a year since I posted a photo of my friends’ sweet wall-mounted mini bar created from random bits of shelving, so I thought it was time to revisit the topic of mini bars. Particularly good for those wine enthusiasts or liquor lovers living in small spaces, mini bars make it so you don’t have to stash your boozahol in the same cabinet where you keep your Cuisinart. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind. But there’s something really classy about offering someone a drink and, when they say yes, walking over to the mini bar instead of futzing around in different kitchen areas.

The Acacia mini bar masquerades as a chic and modern freestanding cabinet, ensuring that your parents and other relatives with a tendency to drop in unannounced don’t suspect you of being a daytime drunkard.

This mini bar from Alpina is made to withstand varying weather conditions, making it rather manly. In that vein, it holds a mini keg and a jug of wine that are ejected via its two dispensers.

US army ammunition boxes from the Vietnam war era become a surprisingly attractive wall mounted mini bar… which holds the sort of emergency rations we all need now and then.

Perhaps you’re seriously short on space? Try a folding mini bar (otherwise known as a portable bar). When closed, it takes up a surprisingly small amount of space, but it opens to reveal six shelves for storing glasses and bottles of your favorite elixirs.

Folding mini bars aren’t always tiny, however. This one is about the size of a freestanding cabinet or tallish end table, but it expands to become a rather nice full bar. You stand on one side doling out the drinkles, while your party attendees stand on the other, hopefully putting a tip or two into that empty glass there.

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!

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.

I just received the season’s first invitation to a Halloween party. I know, I was just as surprised as you no doubt are. Autumn won’t even begin for another twelve or so minutes. But now that I hang with mommas and babies more often than I hang with 20-something hipsters, I guess I’m going to have to get used to extreme advance warning when it comes to holiday parties. Fair enough.

The invitation did get me thinking about Halloween and Halloween decorations and especially Halloween candy, but mostly about decorations since I do write a home and living blog. A quick sweep of Amazon reveals just what I thought it would: goth coffins, bloody handprint cling film, angry cats, severed heads, and goofy grinning pumpkins. There are even Halloween trees and Halloween treesHalloween tree decorations, if you can believe it.

Luckily, decorating for Halloween and other holidays doesn’t have to mean throwing good taste out the window. Suzanna Frosch and Blake Tovin‘ of New York’s lower Hudson Valley demonstrate that you can get ready for a night of ghosts and ghouls without sacrificing your home’s exterior to the Great Pumpkin.

Following their lead involves little more than a pair of scissors and some paper. Country Living has great Halloween decoration templates from white chocolate spiderwebs to upscale jack-o’-lantern designs, and of course, spooky bat stencils.

Throughout history, people have been obsessed with the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In other words, Pi, which is the subject of David Blatner’s The Joy of Pi — a book I am currently devouring. And what better way to devour a book on Pi than with one’s very own Pi plate?

Ceramics guru Maria Neal has a knack for imbuing pottery pieces with a little quirky fun and this Pi plate certainly does not miss the mark. While there are other Pi plates out there, this one is by far the prettiest and most appealing to me, since the design is subtle enough that both math geeks and non math geeks can enjoy it.

UPDATE: The artist’s web site can be found here!