Am I the only one who can’t quite decide if she’d like her house to look like this?
Or like this?
Black and white… color… black and white… color. I just can’t decide! Right now, my little Cape is colorful. So much so, in fact, that it’s often the thing people notice first and it’s certainly the most commented on characteristic of my home. But not infrequently I find myself thinking how chic it would look if I switched up my interior with a monochromatic palette.
(Images via)
Nine times out of ten – make that nine-and-three-quarters times out of ten – Palmer Weiss hits a total home run with me. For real, I will tell anyone who listen that I just love how Palmer Weiss puts together a room. So hugs and kisses, Palmer Weiss. I adore you, but this, not so much:
Maybe it’s just me, but the prints and color combination in this old Victorian house family room just scream old lady to me. Or if they don’t scream old lady now, they will in five years. Of course, what do I know? Maybe an old lady lives there!
The second story of my house was meant to be an attic. Maybe. We’re not really sure. An elderly neighbor who has lived in our house’s double since both were built told us the tale of refinishing his upper story a little bit at a time, so we know that the second stories of our Capes didn’t start out finished. But there were standard-size staircases in both houses from the very beginning. So our homes started out with giant unfinished attics accessible by full stairways and two windows in each “room”? Or were the houses built with the intention that the homeowners would eventually finish the second story spaces? We don’t know.
What we do know is that between then and now, someone decided to finish one half of our second story very, very badly. I’m talking gaps between drywall, icky carpet, cheap heaters, outlets on the sloping parts of the walls, and more. And the other “room” is still unfinished. Bare beams and boards. No outlets at all. What’s this mean for us? It means we’re looking for sloped wall bedroom/office inspiration so we can make our second story an adults-only zone.
Here’s just some of what I’ve bookmarked thus far:
Telecommuting rocks, but it’s easy to let work get derailed by a sink full of dishes, a pesky bathroom faucet leak, or other tasks that you’d normally try to avoid doing. Isn’t it funny how the boring-but-necessary becomes so palatable when one is searching for ways to procrastinate? Telecommuting gets easier when you have a home office, but still that sink full of dishes is just a short hallway away. What’s a work-from-home employee to do? There’s always shedworking, which is apparently what’s hot in the alternative home office world! (Suck it, coffee shop!)
Oh em gee, I love it! It’s scads nicer than the home office I have now, I’m ashamed to say.
Unfortunately, while I have a shed, it’s currently full of a wheelbarrow, a push mower, grass seed, trowels and things, and about a gajillion lady spiders watching over egg balls. Creepy. Not conducive to work. Also kind of dirty. But I suppose I could haul all of my outdoor gear into the basement, tear down my yucko shed, and replace it with some chic Swedish work/life shed.
(Image via Shedworking)
Ask me one day and I’ll tell you that I’d gladly live in an all-black universe. Ask me the next and I’ll tell you that I adore bright, dramatic colors. Today must be one of the latter days because I’m salivating over rooms created by designer Dutch Ghislaine Viñas – she combines vivid hues with simplicity, so the colors frequently play a starring role in her interiors (as opposed to a few stand-out pieces of furniture or a unique room profile).
Born in the Netherlands and raised in South Africa, Ghislaine brings a special blend of international sensibility, intuitive style, humor and refreshing enthusiasm to her work. She is driven daily by her passion for interior design especially by form and color. “Color excites me. As a child, I would feel a rush of excitement when opening a box of crayons.”
Which isn’t to say that her choices of furniture are anything but amazing. She mixes modern and vintage pieces in such a way as to create a kind of perfect harmony. Hers are not rooms in which one might say “How clever to have mixed something old with so much new.” Rather, eras blend, united by Viñas’ color choices.
I would be happy to give Viñas carte blanche to come into my home, throw out most of what I own, and replace it with stuff she picked out in my stead. Now I would love to link to her site, but every time I try to visit I’m warned off by Google, which says there’s malware there. So I’ll share a link to her Interior Design Magazine blog instead – check it out, she seems like a lot of fun!
It is truly an unfortunate thing that there is no room in my home that could currently accommodate a proper window seat. Where the windows are large enough, they are far too high up. Sure, I could find a tall bench and place it under a window, complete with plenty of soft, punched pillows, but it’s not really the same thing. A real window seat has storage underneath, and is a quiet, sturdy place to relax and read or watch the world.
Someday The Beard and I are going to do all sorts of interesting things to our little Cape, but for now I have to be content posting pics here of all the things that float my boat. Perhaps you like window seats as much as I do? If so, you’re going to love the following pics.
Love the lamp, love the view. I have no clue where this is, but I want to believe it’s in one of those cities that feels more like a town. Maybe somewhere by the water? I’m ready to move in.
Among the many books I received as a gift this Christmas, Wary Meyers’ Tossed & Found by Linda and John Meyers was a definite favorite. The husband and wife team visits places where furniture goes to die and brings that furniture back to life in awesome ways. It’s very. very cool.
So imagine my delight when I discovered that the Meyers have on their web site not only pictures of the spaces they have designed and decorated for others, but also photographs of their own home, which they call “a work in progress.”
Color, color, and more color defines this space — but it’s not overwhelming, balanced as it is by the muted couch and unusual but unobtrusive coffee table. This is just one corner of a living room that is elegant and beautiful, but also obviously made for living. It doesn’t look like a cut-out from a magazine; it looks like someone’s home.
Love the table. Love the chairs. Love the sideboard, exclamation point. Love the wallpaper. And love the way this dining room exists seamlessly between the living room and the kitchen.
And don’t even get me started! This guest room reminds me so much of a childhood spent in the house of a determined art book collector that it’s not even funny. I used to go to sleep surrounded by books upon books in a cozy room with mod furniture and eclectic artwork on the walls. Does this room’s familiarity make me love it more than I might? Just a little, but I like it plenty fine anyway.
Almost all home owners and apartment dwellers could use a little more space, not necessarily for stuff, but rather for the breathing room. Many houses simply don’t have enough windows to let the outside in, and apartment windows frequently open on views encompassing the sides of other buildings, trashy courtyards, and metropolitan sprawl of the least aesthetically pleasing sort. Knocking down entire walls costs big money. Putting in new windows costs less money, but isn’t by most people’s measure inexpensive. So short of giving away one’s earthly possessions, how can one open up a space on the cheap?
Wall mirrors. You read that right, simple wall mirrors. They bring light into a room, especially when placed opposite an existing window, and can even mimic windows when hung like panes and decorated with window treatments. A large wall mirror becomes a focal point, reflecting back the entire room resulting in a depth of space that makes a living room or bedroom feel expansive.
This doubling serves a second purpose in feng shui, where a wall mirror that reflects something good or lucky — think a treasured family portrait or beautiful objet d’art picked up on your travels — that positive energy will be doubled, too.
When you’re hanging wall mirrors, play around with the shapes and sizes and styles you choose. A classic wall mirror can beautify and open up a small space like a foyer or stairway landing, while a modern wall mirror will look great hanging above a couch or mantel. Try mixing traditional wall mirrors with mirrors like Jason Nipp’s Umbra Movamira mirror, which is evocative of a large small-paned window.
Whatever you do, make sure your wall mirror or wall mirrors aren’t reflecting clutter, lest that negative energy come back to haunt you in the form of even more mess!
Living small. Small space living. Whatever you want to call it, there are people doing it all over the world. Some get into small space living out of necessity — usually because either the money or the space simply isn’t there. Others do it because they want to see how low they can go when it comes to their ecological footprint. And I suppose there are those who think that 175 sq. ft. is plenty, thankyouverymuch.
Zaarath and Christopher Prokop appear to be just that, according to the NY Post. They work a lot, they don’t eat in, and they don’t host guests, which is why they had no qualms about buying a microstudio — possibly Manhattan’s smallest — for $150,000.
The kitchen is used to store the few articles of clothing they keep in the microstudio, with most of their clothes living at various dry cleaners. Oh, and the couple’s two cats eat on the counter. There’s naught in the fridge other than espresso and champagne. A queen bed takes up a third of the microstudio, and the bathroom is the size of a small closet. At a mere 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, you can bet it feels a little claustrophobic.
“I’m amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there,” Zaarath said. “But it’s harmonious at this point. I have friends who say they could never live with their husbands in a place this small. It’s a good thing we like each other enough to live there.”
The only other resident of the microstudio is the couple’s Roomba, which must scare the bejeezus out of those poor cats every time it’s turned on. On one hand, I applaud Zaarath and Christopher Prokop for making the most of the space they can afford — they’ll apparently be able to pay off the $150,000 in a mere two years. On the other hand, they seem a little self-congratulatory about their knack for small space living.
Love her or hate her, Julia Child exerted a great deal of influence over the evolution of American cooking — a book I love, Something From the Oven, touches briefly on just how much. But that sort of history is best left to authors of food tomes and cookery bloggers. What I’m interested in is her kitchen. Want to see it? There’s an amazing reproduction of Julia Child’s kitchen in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I’d post a picture here, but I’m unsure about the legality of doing so, which means you’ll have to be satisfied with the link above.
Isn’t that a beautiful kitchen? Julia Child’s kitchen was not particularly pretty in the sense that a staged kitchen in House Beautiful is pretty. Rather, it’s a lived in kitchen… a worked in kitchen… a kitchen that is beautiful in its perfect usefulness. The knives, the colanders, the parts for the KitchenAid are all accessible. I somehow imagine that I could walk right into Julia Child’s kitchen and start whipping something up without much trouble. I doubt anyone could say the same for my kitchen, since not much beyond my cast iron pan and my teapot is accessible without digging around in cabinets and drawers. Could someone say the same for your kitchen?
