Happy St. Patrick's Day.

This is, like me, only marginally Irish:

Search for the Perfect Bread Box: Option 1

Joseph Joseph melamine bread bin with cutting board lid: this one looks pretty good-sized (bigger than your average bread box, you might say. Or you might not. Actually, let's not sat that.), and I like the functionality of the lid/cutting board. I'm still looking around, though, at new and vintage options. Major contenders will be posted here, and in the meantime, all bread in this house will brave the elements.

Too cute, right?

He's flipping it on Ebay, but I thought I'd at least document that the little alien lived here for a bit. A true 70s gem.

Stu-stu-studio Wall Plans

Marimekko Unikko wallpaper; Walnut Wallpaper

Hi. Still here. Work has been a little nuts the last few weeks, but I've missed this little forum for wishful thinking/documenting our progress at the house. File this one under "Thinking, Wishful":

We've managed to put up some cork wallpaper on the big blank wall in the stu-stu-studio: picture soon... right now the stu-stu-studio is also serving as a storage room for things that would be in the dining room, if Sean hadn't moved everything out of the dining room to rip up it's carpet. (We're kind of a mess right now.) Anyway, I've been thinking about what to do with the other three walls...

Original thought was just to paint them a clean, pretty white: good backdrop for a kooky assortment of art. Then I thought I might embark on another painting project: a kind of abstract owl pattern (again, too lazy to post a picture). THEN, I thought, "why not some nutso, giant-repeat wallpaper?" And if one is going to go whole hog with a loud wallpaper pattern, shouldn't it be one's all-time favorite floral, Maija Isola's "Unikko" for Marimekko?

Well, sure.

Thing is, it's expensive, and I'm in no position to justify it right now. So I'll either wait until I can, or think of something I can paint. And I can always paint now, wallpaper later. Even though I really wanna wallpaper now.  

Bedroom Walls: Done!

Hooray!! The era of non-stop taping and painting has passed, and the age of reading and chillaxing is upon us... thanks in LARGE part to Sean, who finally got fed up with how long it was taking me and picked up a roll of painter's tape and a brush.

Not my most flattering pair of pants... but the Ghostbusters 2 mirror itself (Sean + Ebay), I love. I traced it's space on the wall before I started drawing the pattern, to make sure the other shapes would meet up with its corners.

This Inspector-Gadget-y retractable lamp is another of Sean's ebay finds... as is the Aalto chair. And most everything else in our house... like this:

...a Curtis Jere wall sculpture that we originally thought we'd put in the dining room. But it wasn't quite right; kind of an odd match with everything else in that room. Turns out it was just waiting to be perfect for this spot.  

That ceiling fan is sticking out something awful now, and it's gonna have to go soon. We already have a possible replacement, but I'm not really sure if it's going to work. If it does, I'll show ya. If it doesn't.... well, I'll probably show you anyway. 

This is a super blurry picture of my temporary solution for the other bit of unsavory lighting in the room: a $3.44 home depot special wall sconce. This is one of the places in the house where they replaced an original spun aluminum bullet sconce (the house would have had 12 or 13 of them, but we only have four left) I took the grape-vine etched tulip shaped glass shade thingy off, and threw this Tord Boontje garland over the bulb. It's a little slapdash, but it'll do until we find the right sconce.

Do you have a contingency plan for a crapstorm of this magnitude?

Not really, Jack Donaghy; not really.

But I have some new shorts.

It's already been way too interesting of a morning. We've been planning a fall photo shoot for weeks now: we found a great photographer and a wonderful stylist; had one of our buyer's assistants working her booty off getting hundreds of clothing and jewelry and accessories samples flown in; found a perfect location and lugged a whole mess of borrowed furniture and antiques there; went round and round on the model choice....

Today's the day, and the model we finally settled on is puking her guts out.

It'll all work out, of course. No one died or broke any bones, and I'm sure we'll figure out a violent-stomach-virus-free way to reschedule. We just lost some sleep and money.

Here's a nicer thing: I did get a super-great deal on these polka dot play shorts I've been wanting. They have giant side pockets, and they remind me of something I would have worn when I was five. I will be living in them during off-work hours this summer.

I could find places for ANY of this, Arik Levy.

http://www.ariklevy.fr/

Carport Plans

So this is what the carport looks like now, and these are my issues with it:

For one thing, there's a giant row of cabinets... we call it the workbench... on the west side that's not really serving a useful purpose. Sure it's storage, but it isn't secure, and it really isn't pretty. It's not the most well-constructed thing in the world---wonky doors and such---and on top of the "work surface" there are some old phone book pages, or maybe newspaper, fossilized under layers of paint. We tried to sand it off, but it wasn't happening. Also, there are all kinds of chemical residues on the inside, along with boxes of rusted nails and broken tiles that the previous owner left behind (I know I could just take the nails and tiles out... I'm just painting a picture for you).

And then there's this unfortunate effect of its existence: it's turned into a catch-all for our ongoing project paraphernalia: mixing buckets, boxes, scrapers, etc. I know I shouldn't really blame the workbench; that's just us pretending like the carport is a garage, and that no one can see through our invisible garage doors. But if it wasn't there, we couldn't stack things on it.

Anyway, here's my other beef: the front door is on the corner, and then there's another door (the one on the right) that just leads to a small storage area. I don't like the two door thing. I want the main entrance to be prominent, and the other door to be hidden somehow. I also don't want it to feel like a carport... I want it to feel like a front porch or patio... like a loggia, where we happen to park our cars.

So this is my plan...

1. Kill the workbench.
2. Replace the cracked concrete with something pretty: some kind of large paving stones.
3. Put up an L-shaped wooden screen: one side would be on the west side of the carport, and the other would cammoflage the storage room door and the water hose (I forgot to add that to my sketch, but the water hose is to the left of the storage room door.), leaving enough clearance of course for opening the door and passing through to the back gate (something we can't to now because of the workbench).

Here's a better idea of what I think it should look like from the street, with option one for the screen pattern: 

See how the eye is drawn to the front door and seating area instead of to a storage room? I also thought that a pattern like this could be nice:

It's a little bit busier, but not too much. And we could put some simple boxes for plants on the side that faces our neighbors to the west:

So that's my plan. Now I just need lots of time and money.

THIS OLD THING: A Two-for

From luola on etsy. $39.

We've been in the house for a solid year now. Can you believe that?

Okay, you probably can. But I was kind of thrown by it. We've accomplished a lot, for sure, but we still have so much to do... and I still have so many unfinished projects just partially sitting around and staring at me, uncompletely.  

Anyway here are some lists: what we've done, what we're in the process of doing, and what we know we want to do soon, but haven't started.