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?

Design Savvy: Ethnic

After posting on what makes up my design style, I decided to elaborate. In specific posts. Here are my favorite pics to represent my love of Ethnic style.

Washed out boho glam at its finest.

This living room has just enough touches of ethnic to be neutral yet stylish.

Gorgeous Suzani.

John Robshaw. Yummy textiles.

I love me some Moroccan wedding blanket. And that chest. And the bright colors. And the rug.

Awesome table...leather chairs....and pillows. Love this.

Everything here is amazing, but I don't know if I could live here myself...what do you think?

So chic. Each piece is beautiful individually, and they all mix together so well without being overdone.

I know it's probably a bazillion dollars, and all those metal points probably hurt like a bitch....... but.....this is just really really pretty.

If I were the type of girl to go for a neutral bedroom, I'd totally use this as my inspiration pic. Love the mix of tan suzani and grey quasi-trellis textiles.

Looks like a place a really cool college kid who spent her summers travelling abroad would live in...after she brought back all her cool foreign finds, of course.

A bit overmuch, I think...but individually, each of these pieces would be gorgeous spread throughout a home.

Holy inlaid mother of pearl. Those textiles ain't too shabby either.

So that's my best of the best for ethnic inspiration!

Pretty in Pink

When I was a little girl, I made my mom paint my room pink. Pretty normal, right? No. This wasn't just any pink; it was PEPTO BISMOL pink. And let me tell you, being bathed in diarrhea medicine day in and day out gave me a similar reaction to the color pink for years afterwards.

Finally, though, I'm coming around to embrace the girliness of the color again and have found myself gravitating towards rooms that utilize pink in all its many wondrous forms. I love that, for a very feminine color, it can be dressed up or down to suit the personality of the room's owner. Take a look:

Pink with a punch. This room is still very feminine but the pink is pretty bold and they bring in black and masculine stripes to balance things a bit.

This is pretty much as girl as it gets, as I mentioned in this post.

Pink goes modern and a little moody in this infamous Abigail Ahern room...

Here's pretty much the definition of glam, dressed up nicely in a few different shades of pink.

Pink goes a bit vintage (love the Tord Boontje lamp)

Boho-modern pink

Artsy-craftsy pink

In-your-face, functional pink

And last but not least, Bright Bazaar blog shoes us these chairs in a shocking yet whimsical pink. Yummy.

What do you think of pink? Are you a recent convert like me, or have you always loved/hated the color?

My Style Formula

A blog I recently ran across called Style 42 is challenging/inviting bloggers to come up with their own desing style formula--what goes into what all makes up your personal design style? Here's what I have come up with:

1 part personalized/DIY:

1 part glam:

1 part natural/organic:

1 part wandering soul:

And 1 part colorful boho:

I guess you could call it Rustic Boho Glam?

Obsession?

Can't stop thinking about this pic....I nnnneeeeeeed a dark inky blue wall somewhere in a future house so I can pair it with those pretty pretty brights plus an awesome chandelier, amazing rug, and chippendale chair. Don't the colors pop amazingly against that wall? LOOOOooooOOVe.

What I'm digging right now

I currently live with 3 girls, which means we have 100% permission to be all-feminine, all the time in our decor. My current living room is pretty blues and greens, lucite lamps, and a gorgeous chandelier, but I've been itching to work fuschia into the scheme somehow.

Lately I've been really digging super-feminine rooms, and this is about as feminine as it gets. French fireplace, giant antiqued mirror, chandelier, DISCO BALL, mirrored picture frames, and a fuschia chair. mmmhmmm.