Wednesday 26 January 2011

Pretty new computer...

....means I should play around with it and show you pretty images, no? I got a Macbook Air as part of my bomb new job and it's going to be hard to give back to the university once my time there is up....it's so pretty. And thin. And light. And NEW. And did I say pretty?

Here are a few things that caught my eye today. Unrelated, yes. Pretty? Also yes.

First up....this amazingly unique engagement ring. One of my best friends is looking at rings with her boyfriend (so exciting!) and she told me to look up Knox Jewelers, based in my very own Minnesota--Minneapolis, to be exact. They specialize in custom rings....I would kill for this ring, with a big ol' diamond in the center. So different!



Sexy sexy patent leather bench, I'm looking at you. Just like you intended, dammit. Sneaky bitch.


Lastly, I thought this was a cool idea to (as the small print in the upper left says) make this little reading corner seem bigger and purposeful, less like a forlorn corner that nobody wants to get banished to. So cheery! I love paint :)

I've got a few tricks up my sleeve DIY-wise so perhaps I will post some before and afters one day. I'm crazy-busy the rest of the week but I'll check in sometime soon I'm sure!

Thursday 20 January 2011

Oh, and another thing....

...I found my latest greatest favorite living room on the blog Scandinavian Chic....


What I love about it:
  • gray comfy modern sofa
  • gallery art wall
  • colorful non-matchy matchy pillows
  • warm wood table with character
  • brass lamp (I've been loving me some brass lately...more on that in another post)
What I would change:
  • I'm not digging the prissy metallic wallpaper....I do like the wainscoting tho!
  • the lamp in the corner isn't quite right
  • the Ikea Lack table 'lacks' (ha!) character, as I can attest to in my own home
  • personally I think zebra rugs are a bit played out....I'd like to see a fun graphic floral with big pops of yellow and fuschia....I know Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters used to have one but I can't for the life of me find it!
What do you guys think of this living room?

Long time no blog!

Time flies when your life is busy....I'm pretty sure that's the saying anyway. Apologies for the lack of posts; since I last wrote I've finished my first grad school finals week, flew home for three weeks, thought I was getting evicted from my duplex in Utah, lost a roommate, celebrated multiple Christmases plus New Years, flew back to Utah, celebrated my birthday, and went skiing for the first time in 15 years. Oh and my laptop got a virus in the middle of all that and my amazing (and handy computer tech-y) boyfriend fixed it and upgraded all my systems and programs. FO FREE. Yeeeeep I love him lots. But PHEW just typing up all that I've done makes me tired!

Anyway, since discovering I wasn't being evicted (long story), I've had a huge urge to make my house more of a home. I mean, when I moved in I did a lot in those regards too but the design has kind of stagnated since I've been busy with school so it's feeling a little worn down. With the new year comes a new desire to be artsy craftsy in making my home unique...which of course means DIY. Here are my inspirations for the projects I'm thinking about:


For Christmas I got myself the cutest little coffee table, but it needs a good paint job and some added pizazz to the top...I'm thinking cool wrapping paper under a glass top?


And actually, that coffee table is too small for our current setup (I know, wooooonnnnt-whaaaa) so we're continuing to use the stereotypical Lack coffee table in black that was left by a former roommate (thanks, Matt!). I'm so over the look of that table though so I'm thinking that I'll add some corbels from the Home Depot like above.....

....and do some cool painting on the top to make it even more unique.


I also have a large canvas that's begging to be painted. I like the idea of painting the whole canvas in swooping, overlapping colors, then coming back with a solid on top to make the background into outlines of some sort...does that make sense? Like the photo above?


Our kitchen chairs are borrowed from a friend and while I appreciate the loan, they are just toooooo big for the table I painstakingly painted and refuse to replace haha...so I'm thinking I need to run down to the local thrift stores, pick up a couple mismatched chairs, and unify them all in one color.


I've also had tissue paper hanging around the house for forever, with the explicit goal of making pom poms like above. Now it's actually time to do it!


Love this army cot-cum-coffee table, but what I'm actually after is the trays made by covering cooking sheets in contact paper. Genius!


This pic reminds me that I don't even need fancy chairs for the kitchen table--I can just paint regular old folding chairs in a pretty, bright hue, probably turquoise to match our open-plan living room.



Last but not least, a while ago I painted a long skinny canvas with a map of Chile (where I studied abroad for a semester). The colors don't work into my current design scheme so I'm planning on repainting it, making it look kind of watercolor-y like this one I found on Etsy.

So there you have it! I'll be a busy bee with all these projects. What are you guys working on?