My Home

I realize that I talk about decorating and defining your style and other decorating stuff, but I've never shown you my house in any detail, so here is the living room. Like all of our homes, its a work in progress. (Wow, it's a little scary putting your room out there for others to see and critique. I'd never before realized, and give all who do on a regular basis credit).

My style is Mid Century Modern (clean lines with subtle curves, simplicity, organic and geometric forms, texture, wood - in my case vintage teak, and a more minimal style) moving toward a color scheme that is only turquoise, aqua, olive green, brown, and cream with black accents and an occasional pop or orange; a focus on folk or hand made art and accessories; live plants and comfortable functionality. All my furniture (except the Ikea couch grrrr) is from the 1950s or 60s, including the lamps (and my dishes - but the dining room is for another day). Now I have to warn you that minimal styling means just that. I don't have many do-dads and vignettes around - on purpose.

My style has a big twist in that I have bold color on my walls (deep turquoise, sour apple green, fudge brown) and some very bright colored accents instead of neutrals and occasional pops of color more typical of  mid century design. I've trying to move away from the bright accent colors, to a more streamlined and sophisticated color palette and trying to inject some more modern into the mid century.  My first step was to change out the lamps. But you get to see pictures of that another day. I've also thrown in some paintings from my talented son and you can see some of my crafts featured on my blog scattered around. I like the hand made / folk art look and will be incorporating more of that into my space as I slowly finish projects. They key is to remain minimal while doing so - I'm not sure it will work.

Yes, that's a dog create next to the couch. Sebastian is part of the family and enjoys hanging out with us. You might notice I made the decision to center the art on the wall instead of on my off center couch. Two schools of thought on that idea. I have rolling ottomans under the coffee table.

The dresser is now aqua. I had a small table in it's place, so the clock needs to be  raised up and something done with the rest of the wall (picture ledges, or frames hung up - can't decide)

Bright colored accents, while I think they are super cute, are slowly going away to be replaced with hand painted stretched muslin squares and something unique (don't know what) on the small solid colored canvases (maybe toliet paper roll art). This is a stop gap measure until a large wall hanging/quilt is done and in their place (haven't even started the quilt yet - but its all planned out). The chair is to be reupholstered in a turquoise, blue and green flower explosion of 1950's original never used fabric. It will be very gorgeous.

I'd love to show you a completed room, a show piece, that accurately represents my style as of today, doesn't have any filler furniture or accessories (filler while waiting to purchase the piece you really want) and all the projects are done. But I don't think most people live that way and honestly my rooms will never be done, as I always think of new projects and ways to switch things up. I can never focus on just one room until it's done. My brain just doesn't function that way (and I'm a bit jealous of people who post beautiful, perfectly finished rooms on blogs). I'm scattered and work on projects as they interest me. This is done enough for now as I focus on a quilt for my son's high school graduation, blog posts and projects and daily life. Plus I have a bee in my bonnet to make a religious wall hanging and it's 1/2 done on my dining room table. I always have more projects going on than time and the energy to complete them. Such is my life.

This post started out about my new lamps and completely morphed into something else. So a lamp post and a painting the aqua dresser are in your future!

I hope you enjoyed a tour of my living room.

My tree top condo

Some days you can hear me grumble about my 3rd floor walk up condo. Especially if it's grocery shopping day or laundry day (when it's 4 flights from the basement laundry room).

But today I'm reminded of what attracted me to this unit in the first place. I'm on the 3rd floor with giant mature trees all around. It's like living in a tree house.

I have branches within 2 feet of my windows covered with beautiful chartreuse buds waiting to burst into leaves. From my couch I can easily see the squirrels scampering from branch to branch moving to the mature trees across the street.

A woodpecker has a nest that is about 7 feet away at eye level. I enjoy listening to the repetitive peck, peck, peck as I drink my coffee and look forward to seeing babies again this year. The bird songs are quite loud as they are within feet of my open windows. I love trying to identify the bird by its song.

The more urban street traffic becomes an ebb and flow like ocean waves (really, you get used to it and it becomes beautiful - except for the sirens of the local fire department).

The best part is when all the trees have their full leaves. Then the buildings across the street and even the street itself disappears from view. Just a cloud of soft greens. So serene.

What do you like about your house?

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Dinner (using the term loosely) at Costco, the mega giant warehouse store. You can get a hot dog or polish sausage and a drink with free refills for $1.65. $1.65! The last time I was there, I didn't purchase anything, but had only planned to stop by for a cheap meal after a hard day of shopping.

Playing on the Internet

I love the internet. Whenever I have free time, I'm playing on the internet, looking up obscure facts: Do swans mate for life? (yes) What other (than humans) animal has sex for pleasure? (dolphins - who knew?) Or taking weird quizzes, researching information for a blog post, reading blogs or general tom foolery. My newest fun thing has been building an avatar of myself (as realistic as possible).What do you think? My lips are a little small, they didn't have any fuller. And I couldn't get the eye color to change to blue. But I think it looks remarkably like me. What purpose does it have? None. Just playing around.

How do you waste time on the internet?

 life seems hard right now

my emotions fluctuate

like springtime breezes

Fab Friday Favorites

Here are some fab creations from around the web this week. Take a look see, jump over to their site and spread some blog love. Just don't forget to come back here and finish looking at the list!

Little Miss Momma makes this wonderful button bracelet. The outstanding part is she has a great tutorial that also shows how to put on a lobster clasp.

I just love wreaths. I wish I had more doors to display them on. If anybody has any unusual wreath display ideas, just let me know. This beauty is made from ... wait for it .... paper towels and food coloring! Redberry Barn was super creative with this. ** Update. The wreath inspiration and the picture that I actually posted was from Nicole over at  Made by Nicole. I got the credits wrong and Jenn at Redberry Barn was nice enough to help me out. **

These necklaces look like something expensive in a boutique store. They are made from ordinary washers and come from the creative mind of Yolanda at Monkey See- Monkey Do. Don't they make you want to run out and get a metal stamp set? If you make these you can use the tutorial from Little Miss Momma above to put a clasp on it. See, I'm watching out for you!

Isn't this just adorable? Jessica over at A Few of My Favorite Things made this t-shirt with rosettes. I really like this. It's feminine without being cutesy.

OMG, I'm in love. The Little Green Bean has made these mini fabric bolts to store her fabric obsession I mean collection. I would need a bazillion of these. I love that they are neat and tidy and you can see all the fabric. Swoon.

I Can Find the Time has this neat quilted coaster project. What a wonderful way to use up some fabric scraps. I'm thinking Christmas gifts!

Jessica over at Lemon Tree Creations made a tray from a frame. I like this. You can coordinate the fabric inset to match your decor and change it up when you like.

I had planned to feature a completely different project from Tatertots and Jello, then I saw these pillows from an October post and knew you had to see them. I'm still not over my burlap obsession and just love how these pillows are dressed up and changeable.

I hope you enjoyed this Friday's Fab Favorites. Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel (Batman cartoon reference for those of you who didn't get that, although if I have to explain it it reduces some of its fun quotient).

Just Because Its Pretty ...

I have this problem. I'm easily distracted by pretty and shiny things. I like to window shop on Etsy and Craig's List even if I don't need anything, have the space to put anything, or even have the money to purchase anything. If my ancestor cave woman was a gatherer then I was the one who was trying to trade my berries for the other cave womens different colored berries, not happy with just one color and deciding that it was time to switch things up a bit.

Now I think I've mentioned that my condo is furnished in a mid century modern style with a bit of folk art  thrown in. I have a really tight color palette that I furnish in. And my space is small so it's minimal by design and necessity. And yet I still shop. And torture myself with all the fantastic bargains and gorgeous items I find.

Like this recent Etsy fabric I was lusting after. Yes, pure lust. Right style, right colors, OK price ...but I just couldn't find a use for it. I wanted to own it because I wanted it. Just that, no real purpose for it. I had to be talked down from the ledge by Alison.

Just because it's pretty doesn't mean I have to own it. Sigh. Life is hard.

What have you been lusting (gasp) after?