Greetings from Houston!

Howdy, friends. Greetings from sprawling Houston, TX. We're in town for a dear friend's wedding. While my groomsman was playing the obligatory wedding morning round of golf, Moogee and I hit up some local design destinations. First stop: The Guild Shop. A huge thrift store, the Guild was clearly a popular Saturday morning destination for locals. This is not your everyday Salvation Army thrift store, folks; there were fine treasures to be found, with the price tags to match (relatively speaking of course). Interestingly, the prices are dated; after about a month, the price drops about fifteen percent. Of course, the longer you wait for the price to drop, the greater risk you encounter that someone will make off with your sweet find. Ahh, economics at its best!

Take a look at some of what we saw:



Love these Villroy & Bosch Acapulco dishes! Moogee has some, and I feel like they should come with some obligatory guacamole.




It's LBJ!



A set of seven Gone with the Wind plates.



This rocking chair would look amazing painted a glossy black (I know, I'm so predictable), with the seat reupholstered in a bright, graphic fabric. Reupholstering is a project I'd like to gently tackle one day.




Likewise with this great wicker chair! Black paint, with a great graphic cushion-- primo nest feathering, people. Primo!


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Location:W Loop S Fwy,Houston,United States

DIY: Journal

In recent months, I've started carrying around my journal at all times. I'm as attached to it as my iPhone; if I leave the house without it, I know a brilliant (-ish) idea will strike me, I won't be able to sketch it or write it down, and I will of course forget it before I get home. I don't discriminate in my journal; it's a place to gripe, whine, and complain, but it's also a sketchbook, an idea bank, and an inspiration board. Clearly, something so important gets used often, and I'm just about to the end of my book. Not one to just run down to Rite Aid and buy a notebook, I've been hunting for the perfect replacement. I'm partial to Moleskin notebooks, but on a recent trip to Paper Source, I discovered bookbinding. Suddenly, another world opened up in front of my eyes! Not that I needed another reason to spend money at Paper Source, but the idea of having a journal that was as personal on the outside as it was on the inside was too good to pass up.

The possibilities of my discovery stretched out in front of me... and like every good bridesmaid, my mind went to "How can I convince Lissa to use this at her wedding??" The answer: GUESTBOOKS! In my humble opinion, wedding guest books are, at best, hideous. Not only are they visually dissatisfactory, but also they're expensive! And then you have to buy the pen in the lucite block.... uff. No gracias. Anywho, I envisioned making a book for Lissa and Greg that was pretty and personal. And clearly, I would have to experiment first to make sure I could actually do this and that it woudn't make white leather guestbooks seem preferable.

Here's what I ended up with:

I printed the photos (of Beau and I on our honeymoon and paddleboarding; the back has a wedding photo) on paper-backed linen and then cut them to size. I love how the linen gives the photos a vintage-postcard look.

More photos and instructions after the jump!

Spotted: An idea!

This could be fun to make:




It's a chalkboard! I'm imagining a cool vintage-cameo-silhouette cutout, painted with chalkboard paint. If only I had a jigsaw! Or whatever tool you would use to cut this out...

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Location:Christiansen Alley,Pasadena,United States

These adorable paper placemats are from Paper Source. How cool are they??









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Spotted: obsession

I love this card. It would be perfect for my dad, who is a major olive lover!




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Valentine's Day

It's my understanding that approximately 70% of the country was affected by snow this past weekend.

Not us! Miles and I spent the morning in Santa Barbara at a stand up paddleboard demo hosted by Stand Up Paddle Sports. We bought our two boards from them, and we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to try out some different ones! My next board is going to be good for cruising around and looking for real estate from the water. Miles wants a whole quiver of surfboards. Anyway, take a look:

[photos courtesy of Stand Up Paddle Sports]


Not a shabby way to spend Valentine's Day, if I do say so myself. Go ahead: it's OK to be jealous.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dear Readers (all 4 of you),

My apologies for the dearth of posts this week; between tutoring and Valentine's week at the bakery, life was hectic! This week will be better (I hope!).

Since I haven't done or made anything of note to tell you about, I will instead share some pictures of the beautiful flowers Miles gave me for Valentine's Day! He's the sweetest. I know diddlysquat about arranging flowers, so I winged (wung?) it. The bouquet was gigantic; I actually have another vase-full that I didn't take a picture of. The bouquet had a rather untraditional palette for V-day; dusty lavenders and peaches, with shades of brighter purple tucked in. Take a look:

I have absolutely no idea what those tiny white flowers with the twiggy branches are. They have purple tips, and they smell divine. In fact, they remind me of the smell of Sausalito in the early morning, when I used to go for walks with my dad and a friend. Maybe that's a start for my investigation... Anywho. I like how romantic they look in a vase all alone. Without other flowers, it is easy appreciate their willow-like beauty (I'm so flowery today! Pun intended. I'm sorry.).

In love

Isn't he gorgeous?


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To Market, to market.

On a whim this morning, I hauled myself down to the Santa Monica flea market. I always think about going, and when the morning of shows up, I make an excuse and sit in my chair all day. Today, I have nothing to do until 5:30 and no Super Bowl plans, so I got brave and went! I'm so glad I did. Admission was discounted because there wasn't a huge collection of sellers today (the girl at the gate said "a lot of vendors were stuck because of rain" but I suspect "rain" on a bright, sunny day is code for "Super Bowl parties").

I was particularly taken with one man's collection of vintage prints. He's retiring from the flea market circuit and was selling everything for $10. I regret not buying more; he had a fabulous collection of architectural prints, old maps, Audubon-esque prints, vintage fashion magazine pages... A woman rifling through things next to me mentioned that hummingbirds were special to her. I had a print in my hands that I knew probably wasn't going to make my final cut, so I gave it to her; she was so moved she nearly cried, and when she mentioned my kindness (I didn't think I had done anything too spectacular, but I'm glad it made her happy), the vendor popped into his van and pulled out some even better hummingbird prints-- for both of us! This truck must have had a trap door to an alternate universe, because I have no idea where he was putting all of these treasures, but they were in there. And he could find them quickly. impressive!

Here's what I bought:

And a little something for my beau:

(he has a shark fascination)

Note to self, flea market shoppers: if you're going to take your check book, make sure it actually has checks in it! Nothing kills your momentum like having to leave to find an ATM.

My next stop was one of the stalls near the front that I peeked at when I walked in. The vendor had a very cool dress form that reminded me of a book that my friend Lizzie lent me, Recycled Home, by Mark and Sally Bailey. In Recycled Home, the decorators are all about decorating with "found" objects. While some of the rooms were very soothing, calm, chic, yada yada, some of them were SO undone that they looked like you might find a hobo roasting a squirrel on a stick over the fireplace. You know? ANYWHO, I digress. They use a lot of vintage dress forms in the rooms (ie. a bedroom would have a bed, a chair, and a dress form. That's it. I think the Baileys would have a coronary if they saw my room.).

This dress form was a little out of my price range, but I managed to talk the vendor down quite a bit, which I felt like was a real coup. Look, Miles-- I can haggle!  Here she is in her new home:

I think I'm going to put jewelry on her! And at Christmas time, we can move her upstairs, put a Santa hat on her, and pin our Christmas cards on her! Of course, this year we received 2 holiday cards, so we're going to have to make some more friends if that's our plan. But that's another post.

The Engagement Present, Part I.

I have been working on a top secret engagement present for my sister for the past three weeks. She finally received it yesterday, so now I can talk about it! Take a look:

Both the piped pillow and the frame (remember the painted frame from an earlier post? This is it, in its intended purpose!!) are silkscreened with a silhouette of Lissa and Greg. Making the silhouette was a bit more complicated than I anticipated. For starters, I requested a picture of them standing side by side. However, being as they are in the throws of new love, the picture I received is of them hugging. Not so good for my purposes. My brilliant Miles suggested I print out two copies of the picture, then cut out each person individually; then, once I had a piece of each, I put them together with a little space between each, so you can see their individual selves, and taped them to a separate piece of paper. Then, I traced around the new silhouette, cut it out, and used that cut out as a stencil.

Simple, right? Au contraire.

Spray Paint Magic Part IV!

My spray paint obsession has now grown to include mirror spray paint... I FINALLY received my Krylon Looking Glass spray paint in the mail yesterday. For some reason, it is not available in stores anywhere, so I finally bit the bullet and bought it on amazon.

Behold:

Pretty neat, I say! The vase on the right in both pictures received the heaviest coat of paint, the left, a lighter coat. I sprayed the paint on the inside of the vessels; this created a liquid situation on the inside that I didn't anticipate, and I spent a few minutes swirling the glasses around to get a semi-even coat on there. Then I took a spray bottle and lightly squirted some water in there to give it a mottled, antiqued mercury glass effect. Eventually i just propped them up upside down so the excess could run out (onto the newspaper I put beneath them). I have a similar mercury glass votive holder that I bought from Pottery Barn for about $12... my Pizza Hut vase only cost about $1! See Miles, I can save money! Sort of.

Cheyenne's bag

Cheyenne sent me pictures of her Christmas present! (Thanks Cheyenne!) Here they are:

The bag was actually a breeze to make (and I had MUCHO fun printing the fabric-- the purple fabric required me to stand on the stamp to transfer the ink adequately-- it was like Twister!). I've been thinking about making a few more out of the scraps of fabric I have around the apt and using them to store my various art/sewing projects I have going on. Perhaps I shall...