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.

Arranging wall art creatively shouldn’t be a frightening or overwhelming task, but the fact is many people are intimidated by the idea of doing anything other than side-to-side framed photos or paintings. The key to grouping success, however, isn’t talent but prep work. Decide ahead of time what pictures should go in what rooms, and where those pictures will look best grouped. If you have any kind of smaller, offset, or unusually shaped walls, consider using them as your canvas.

Here are some examples of arrangements that complement the rooms they’re in:

If you’re not quite sure how to start grouping framed photos or artwork on your walls, you can always begin with a unifying element. Think frame color, the size and shape of your pictures, or a theme. Design Hole posted a gorgeous primer for those people who want to cover their walls with images in a fun yet beautiful and cohesive way. Check it out here (and then go read the rest of that delightful blog)!

Of course, you could just go nuts and end up with something like this…

Or this…

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

I’ve recently been reading The Book of Games: Strategy, Tactics & History by Jack Botermans. It’s a look at international games and their place in culture and history, from The Royal Game of Ur, one of the oldest board games ever found, to the much more modern Mastermind. Naturally all that reading about games got me to thinking about games and furniture, which is how I found this super sweet set of Scrabble couches.

Crafted by Stephen Reed for employees in the London offices of Bloomberg financial services, it’s not only the couch cushions that, ahem, get into the game. The couches themselves are stylized to look like Scrabble tile racks, i.e., those easily upended wooden things where one hides one’s tiles.

I get the overall concept, but frankly I’m much more interested in the Scrabble tile pillows than I am in the Scrabble-racks-turned-seating. The look uncomfortable, at least where the back of the knee is concerned… and possibly also for shorter people, whose legs might not quite reach the floor.

You can steal this look with Scrabble tile pillows from Etsy seller Pillow Happy!

Looking for something to do with those thousands of pennies you’ve been stashing in coffee cans since you were wee? Coinstar machines take a cut of your jingly change, and rolling pennies just plain sucks. And saving those pennies for a rainy day might not be the best of ideas when some people want to kill the humble one cent piece. So what’s a thrifty guy or gal to do with all that copper (and zinc… mostly zinc, actually)? Lay a floor, of course.

This penny floor can be found in The Standard Grill in the Standard Hotel New York. I imagine that laying a penny floor could take a lot of work, but hey, at least the materials will be cheap. Think about $1.96 per square foot, i.e., a 14×14 grid as calculated by Bridge Designs. Don’t forget about glue and all the other costs, however.

Here’s another sweet floor, as found in a certain Mark’s home. Note the scrabble tiles inlaid in the wall.

Then there are penny backsplashes and walls lined with pennies, like this one in a French shop from RB Architects. Neat, yeah?

For the longest wear and the most natural aging of the copper in your penny floor or penny wall, look for pennies minted between 1962 and 1982 since during this period pennies were comprised of 95% copper and 5% zinc. After that, the composition became 97.5% zinc with a mere 2.5% copper.

Thought you were done, eh? Not quite! When things get chilly, it’s time to put your garden to bed for the winter. What, you didn’t know that gardens hibernate just like squirrels and bears? I kid. Winterizing a garden is less about cleaning dead things up and more about prepping your flower beds and vegetable rows for the growing season that’s months and months (and months and months if you live where I do) away.

The specifics will vary by region and by preference, since when you winterize will likely be determined by your climate and what you like to plant in your garden, but there are certain rules anyone can follow when winterizing a garden. First, if you have a bit of yard to your name, don’t expect to be able to do everything in one day or even in one weekend. Schedule plenty of time so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Second, when you’re done dealing with the flora, remember to put things like planters and hoses in a shed or basement.

So what does winterizing a garden actually entail? Here’s a basic to-do list for those planning to put their gardens to bed in the near future.

• Pull weeds, dig up the roots of invasive plants, and pick up any debris like twigs, if you haven’t been doing these things regularly. Raking isn’t a bad idea, either. This gives you a blank slate to start with.
• Cut down the previous season’s annual plants, like flowers and veggies, then trim your perennials. If any of your perennials need to be divided, now’s the time to do so.
• Dig up any bulbs unlikely to survive the cold. Cannas, tuberous begonias, gladiolus, dahlias, and quite a few other summer-blooming bulbs cannot make it through the winter in USDA Zone 9 and colder. Then plant hardy spring-blooming bulbs.
• Prior to the first ground freeze, water and apply antidesiccants to any vulnerable evergreens.
• Apply a winter mulch to perennials, evergreens, and newly planted trees if you live somewhere where winter temperatures generally fall below minus 10 degrees F. These can also be covered in burlap to avoid common wintertime damage.
• If you have a vegetable garden, cover it with weighted lack plastic to discourage early weed growth or unwanted seeding in the springtime.
• Water all remaining plants and apply fertilizer as necessary, but consider that fertilizing later in the season can spark new growth that simply dies when temperatures drop.

Photo by Johan van Beuzekom

What’s this? An ordinary striped house, albeit one with a somewhat unusual exterior color scheme? Hardly! Once upon a time it was British TV personality James May’s house in in Dorking, UK — he loves Legos so much… well, let’s just say the Top Gear star wanted to surround himself with them.

That’s right, the entire house was constructed using more than three million Lego pieces. With the assistance of 1,200 people, a whole domicile was created, complete with lots of Lego furniture and a Lego toilet that actually flushed. What did the helpers do? They put together full-sized bricks, each one consisting of 272 Lego pieces. Whew!

But May’s Lego house was a temporary one, and the whole thing was disassembled and transported to Legoland, where the pieces will be part of a display that visitors can use to build scale models of whatever.

*sniff* Gone too soon, I say.

Your home can be a little bit country without animal heads on the walls, lots of dark exposed wood, or being a little bit rock and roll. Just like you can be mod without plastic chairs or inflatable furniture. Not that there’s anything wrong with going a really rustic route.

Check these country interiors out for down home inspiration without the gun rack:

A recipe for rustic: take one piece distressed furniture and combine with old world landscapes, vintage art pieces, and crisp white furniture. (via)

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No, they’re not models. Not entirely plastic, either, even though they look rather like something that came out of an injection molding factory. Jasper Van Grootel‘s Fantastic Plastic furniture collection is in fact classic furniture pieces coated in soft RealSkin rubber.

I can’t say whether the chairs and sofas are nice to sit on, but I do know that their coating allows them to be used both indoors and out. You can finally fulfill your dream of bringing indoor furniture outdoors!

Each is available in a whole palette of colors…

The designer Jasper van Grootel, founder of JSPR, keeps expanding the collection every year with new furniture and accessories, completely covered with a thick layer of rubber! The quality of the rubber has now reached its highest level yet because of the new production techniques at JSPR Production. The rubber feels soft and is very flexible and therefore more durable. Any combination of colours is possible.

And all Fantastic Plastic pieces are individually crafted by the artist.

Any combination? Really? Yes. Besides the 18 standard colors one can choose from, there are apparently an infinite number of custom colors (had for a fee, of course). I’ll take the sofa in the dark pink, thanks!

Look at all that metal… now what do you suppose that is? A paper tray for the modern desk? An extremely low minimalist chair? A little something for the weighty steel set?

Give me your guesses in the comments, and I’ll link to the answer here. Need a hint? Whatever it is, it was created by Ron Arad.

Looking for a unique storage solution?

Ten Green is a modular shelving system that’s perfect for enterprising highbrow college students, almost everyone in their 20s, my mom, her girlfriend, my MIL… basically anyone who finds themselves with extra wine bottles lying around. Zero-Waste Design, in collaboration with Coach House Trust, designed shelves made from empty bottles and wooden planks, with no glues necessary. That means the shelves are adaptable, eco-friendly, easy to put together and take apart, and portable enough for those moving in and out of university apartments.

You can find the DIY instructions linked off of Zero-Waste Design’s web site — both the technical drawings and the assembly instructions are there. It’s up to you to find the wood and the bottles needed for construction, but a combined trip to Home Depot and the local package store should net you everything you require.

The shelving system is designed for very simple construction, appropriate to the Trust’s facilities such that it could in the future be produced through one of their workshops. It uses reclaimed bottles and wood, and no adhesives, thereby becoming extremely simple to disassemble and reconfigure or reuse for other means.

See pics of different permutations of the Ten Green wine bottle shelves here!