The Guest Room (and a bit of bathroom)

The newly drywalled guest room:


The general design direction of the guest room (Ikea rug, vintage red hospital bed, print from Yellow Monday):


My styled-by-Anthropologie, very much work in progress bathroom:

Bits and pieces

My own print in a new Ikea frame over a little display of children's books and other miscellanea on top of a radiator.

I am making slow progress in adding to the house. Today was a big day - I picked up a pair of chairs I got on Ebay, and made a trip to Ikea for cushions for those chairs and a bunch of frames for my own artwork as well as the prints I got from Yellow Monday via Etsy. Unfortunately I broke one of the frames after I got them home, and I also need a different size for the smaller prints, so I will have to make another trip at some point. Good thing Ikea is so close to my house!


My own photograph of the side of a building in Durham, NC in a cheapo Ikea frame.


One of the new-to-me Ebay chairs with the patio chair cushions I got for it at Ikea - pretty good fit! Trying to decide if I want to to d a pattern or a color as cushion covers...

Slowly coming together

One of the hardest parts about redoing our house is that as soon as we make a little bit of progress I am immediately reminded of the 8 million other ideas, projects and dreams I have. We finally have drywall up in the guest room (not even painted yet) and already I am collecting ideas and pictures for the entry (from Martha Stewart)



and the storage/pantry/mudroom (also Martha)



even though these are probably two of the last spaces we will be working on. I am so easily distracted!

And of course, this is all really not what I need to be focusing on at the moment, with a mountain of grad work piling up as I finish my masters program this term...

Help me!

I don't think anybody actually reads this blog yet, but on the off chance somebody does, I need some design assistance. I have this set of dining chairs that I got for $40 on Craigslist, a price that is pretty unbeatable. I like the general lines of the chairs but I don't love how they look now.

Here is the current look:


I am thinking about redoing the seats in Clementine Pod Stripe fabric from J Caroline Creative:


Additionally, I would stain the wood to match the dark brown-black wood table. Thoughts? I am trying to Photoshop together a mock-up, so if that works out I'll post it here.

Happy Easter!

Guest Room

Inspired by some of my favorite design blogs, I have decided to attempt to make inspiration boards for some of the rooms in my house. In the process I have discovered that for some rooms, I need a LOT of inspiration. Case in point:



That is my guest room "inspiration." Sad. I think maybe a better course of action is for me to photograph the rooms and Photoshop in the colors and ideas I have as I go to compare things. Stay tuned!

Spring Cleaning: Books

I have a lot of books, including many I am sure to never open again. Imagine my excitement to find this post on Unclutterer (a great blog that's name should clue you into the theme) entitled "How to Use Powell's Books for Uncluttering." I am originally from Seattle, so I have in fact had the chance to visit the amazing Powell's City of Books in Portland, OR, billed as the largest new and used bookstore in the world. Thanks to Unclutterer, I got to feel connected to the Pacific Northwest and get rid of many of my books that were just taking up space at the same time.

What you do is go to the Powell's website and type in the ISBN numbers for the books you would like to get rid of. They will tell you if they want them or not and offer you an amount of store credit. You can then accept their offer and they will give you a mailing label to print out. Box up the books, stick on the label and drop it at the post office - the postage is paid for by Powell's. Couldn't be easier! I dropped off my first load today and am about 45 books lighter and looking forward to my store credit once they receive and check the books.

A little creative inspiration.

Like many others in the online world, I am loving Etsy these days. I am thinking of opening my own shop, starting with some prints I have from college and building. One of the big roadblocks is that I haven't really found an outlet for my desire to be artistic and creative recently.

When I was living in North Carolina, I used to go to the coolest shop in the world, called The Scrap Exchange.

They have tons and tons and tons of just raw material - buttons, fabric, miscellanea, beads, and on and on, all super cheap. I used to go and just collect things that later became the materials and inspiration for projects. I have yet to find anything equivalent in this area, and am sort of at a loss as to where to get scraps and fun little materials that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Some of the ideas I have for projects I would like to tackle include:
- Handmade fabric dolls
- Drawings/ illustrations
- Needlepoint work
- Handmade children's books

Eventually I would like to return to printmaking as well, but probably not the entire silkscreen process unless I find studio space I can use (my old house is not suited to such space-consuming pursuits... maybe one day we will create that studio in the scary basement, but not yet). So many ideas!

Bathroom style

Anthropologie, one of my all time favorite stores, has a great selection of new bath stuff and they have done a lovely series of looks incorporating shower curtains, towels, bath mats, etc, around a variety of themes. My "master" bathroom has been my biggest design dilemma since it is teensy, needs a lot of work that we can't currently afford, and I find it entirely uninspiring, so I am actually getting a bunch of the items from the "Wildflowers" look to brighten things up for the spring and summer. Not everything (I don't like towels with textured prints like that), but a lot. Why not let the geniuses at Anthropologie be your own personal interior design team, too?

Image from anthropologie.com

Beginning again, again

I've tried the blogging thing before, some times with more success than others. Big things are going on in my life, so I thought I would start anew and try chronicling the things going on in my world along with things in general that interest me (design, art, leading a bigger and better life, you know, the basics).

Currently, I am an elementary teacher but that will be ending with this school year, and I must admit I cannot wait! I just got an offer for a new job, which I think I will enjoy a lot more. Adding to the fun, I am learning to be a real adult. I bought my first house last summer, and am slowly but surely fixing it up with my fiance, although limited funds and time is forcing us to be creative and work through things in small amounts. We just got a dog (rescued from a shelter, a big huge white pit mix that might be the calmest dog in the world) and we are planning on getting married at the beach in July of 2009, although nothing has actually been planned yet.

In a nutshell, that is my life. It has been a hard few years, but I think I am finally seeing the potential in what I have. As the French say, après la pluie, le beau temps.