Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Things that make me smile and a Happy Birthday

Today is my hubby's birthday.  Instead of a traditional birthday card, I thought I would dedicate this post to him.  Happy Birthday Mike, if I had my way this is how we would spend your birthday....I love you! 


Mid Century Moment

I absolutely love this week's mid century moment photo. I don't know why but I just can't get enough of it.  I can imagine lounging in the Eames rocker with a glass of wine and listening to records with friends....sounds like a perfect evening.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Retail Therapy - Rie Elise Larsen

This weekend was so busy and I didn't have a lot of time to prepare a post for today so I thought I would start out the week with a little inspiration from the cutest online shop featuring beautiful accessories for the home, Rie Elise Larsen.  This is another find from one of my German design magazines I picked up while traveling.  I promise to share them with you soon, they have been giving me so much inspiration and ideas.  

Friday, August 27, 2010

Fashion Files - European Street Style

One thing I loved about Germany was all the amazing street style, especially in Berlin.  Street fashion is something I really miss about New York.  I loved walking out my front door every day and being so inspired by the truly unique and diverse styles.  Even if it may be something I would never wear, I have so much respect for people who write their own fashion rules.  




Thursday, August 26, 2010

Stylist Nicole Olsen

Flipping through some of the German design magazines I picked up on my travels (more on these later) I found the name of a stylist, Nicoline Olsen.  I googled her and found her portfolio...her work is amazing.  It gave me a lot of great ideas for my own house.  These are some of my favorites but her website has many more, definitely worth checking out!

 Photos: Nicole Olsen

Industrial Vintage

I may be in industrial/vintage/interior design heaven!  Katalin from artkraft Loftdesign e-mailed me to tell me about her amazing interior design and furniture gallery full of great industrial vintage and some times re-purposed finds.

I decided while on vacation when I happened to ride my bike past a stack full of old industrial crates and an idea for creating some kind of light fixture/pot rack for our kitchen started to float into my mind, that I truly love the utilitarian simplicity and unexpected beauty of industrial vintage.  Especially items like these...

Photos: artkraft loft design

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Our Kitchen Nook

I feel like such a slacker.  I have set so many goals for house projects and for some reason I cannot seem to get anything done but Mike and I are both so tired of our house not feeling like a home so now we are totally dedicated to putting the focus into our home.  I would really like to have some progress made by the holidays and I have these grand plans to throw an amazing house warming party sometime before next summer when it gets too hot to be outside again.  I get overwhelmed just thinking about everything there is to do so I am going to try and break things out into small weekly projects.  I want to try and tackle as many of these as I can and then I want to start focusing on the big things like hardwood floors and a new kitchen. 

One of the first projects I want to work on is the nook in our kitchen.  My plan is to paint the wall with magnetic chalk board paint.  We painted some closet doors in one of our NY apartments with magnet and chalkboard paint and I loved it.  It’s a design trend that I hope never disappears.  I also just really love the contrast of a black colored wall. 

There were a couple of problems with our chalkboard closet doors that I hope to rectify this time around.  The first problem being that the magnet paint did not work well at all and all the magnets slid down the wall.  I read that you have to use the entire contents of the paint jar to make sure you are getting all the magnetic particles on to the wall - makes sense.  The second problem we had was the mess the chalk made on the wall and once chalk had been used, the doors never had the luster they had when they were first painted.  I found two solutions for this.  Supposedly, according to a pub owner, you can use coca cola to clean the chalkboards and this will restore the original look.  Personally this sounds like I would just be setting up a giant free for all for every ant and bug in the neighborhood to come and lick coca cola off my walls or whatever it is that ants do.  The second and more suitable option for us is these chalkboard markers.  Supposedly they are all the rage and Starbucks even uses them, so they must be amazing. 


Marie Claire Maison


source unknown

Tim Evan Cook

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Things that make me smile...

Today is just one of those days - where you wish you could crawl back under the covers and not come out.  Today is not a good day.  When ever I feel like this I always turn to something inspiring to get my mind off of whatever is going on.  These days as you know, Pinterest has become a constant source of inspiration for me.  These images all come from my "Things that make me smile" pinboard.  I hope they bring a smile to your face today as they have certainly helped cheer me up. 






Mid Century Moment

 Check out this very cool super retro pre fab house from the1971.