re:gift

These gifts are pre-owned and a bit worn, but one-of-a-kind and far superior to a vintage look-a-like at Anthropolgie.

1. M is for moi: find a vintage initial to personalize your wall. Salvage Nation on Etsy, $35.

2. A white elephant gift (literally). Rekindle on Etsy, $11.

3. A colorful clock to brighten a bedroom. ClockworkUniverse on Etsy, $27.

4. A vintage hotel Key Rack to organize keys or jewelry. Three Potato Four, $65.

5. A perpetual calendar to make someone perpetually happy. Three Potato Four, $55.

6. A crabby door-knocker. Tawnilla on Etsy, $18.

7. Amazing art deco necklace. Pinguim on Etsy, $74.

hello winter

It is freezing outside and i am curled up in bed with my cat. Only my face is exposed. So long productivity. The cold has won.

image from skull swap.

re: purpose

This cabinet would be great for a tv stand. You might even be able to use the many drawers for dvds, remotes and other electronics.

You can buy it here. St. Louis Craigslist, $150.

perfection

installation in Belgium.

via a cup of jo

beautiful ruin

A couple of weekends ago, Jeremy and I headed to the town of Hale, MO (population 475) for my grandmother's auction. It was a beautiful day and as we were driving through the small town of Bogard. We spotted an abandoned church at the top of a hill off the highway. The door was wide open, so we decided to do some friendly tresspassing and I'm so glad we did. The desolate church was both sad and beautiful. Take a look at what we found.







Jeremy is an amazing piano player, so the lonely piano made the church all the more intriguing.

re:color | kelly green

Jeremy and I have decided that our bedroom could use some major updating. It is a bit drab. When we bought the house I wanted rich chocolate walls and deep colors, but now that I am living in it I really want our room to feel bright and cheery. So, we are debating on how to make this happen. One idea is to only paint an accent wall and paint the other three walls white. In addition, we plan to use white accents in the curtains, bedding and furniture to brighten up the space.

But the question remains, what color should I pain the accent wall? Lately, I have been leaning toward a bright kelly green. Here are a few rooms that inspire me and are leading me down that path. Don't these rooms make you happy?

re:decorate | pairing patterns

I love bold use of pattern, especially when someone is daring enough to combine multiple patterns in a room. Here are a few successful examples of this. It is so rewarding when you take risks like this (but I'm preaching to the choir).

re:purpose | collections

It is amazing how beautiful the most simple and ordinary objects can look when arranged in multiples. What collection do you have that is waiting to become art?

Want more collection ideas?
Go to A Collection a Day.

Re:Decorate: Bathroom

So, now that all of the dirty work for our bathroom is almost complete (more posts still to come), I am working on the decorating part which is way more fun!

The shower curtain has been tricky. I haven't been able to find anything I like. In addition, I want an extra long shower curtain that hangs from the top of the ceiling. That has been difficult to find as well. The bathroom is predominantly neutral (gray, black and white) with yellow accents.

I was searching for fabric in order to make a shower curtain and then I stumbled upon this awesome duvet cover at Anthropologie. I thought it was perfect but way out of my price range. I went back a few weeks later and found it to be on crazy sale. The duvet cover (normally $300) was on sale for $60. Not too shabby. In addition, it happens to be the perfect height and width for a shower curtain. All I need to do is take off the back of the duvet cover and add some holes for the curtain rings. I'm so excited!

Doodle Art

These amazing installations by Heike Weber have decorated galleries all over Europe. I wish she would come decorate my house. Heike uses permanent marker and acrylic paint to create these beautifully doodled patterns on floors and walls. It is truly amazing (and also kind of trippy). I could see Johnny Depp's house looking like this.

spotted on The Jealous Curator.

Jonathan Adler Calendar

One of the best (and hardest) parts of my job is designing calendars. It is so much fun to concept, but it is also difficult to consistently think of something new. I was searching some of my favorite blogs today and was surprised to see the Jonathan Adler calendar featured on Design Crush's 2011 Calendar Roundup. I worked on this last January and it is so exciting to finally see it produced.

This calendar is a lot of fun. Complete with bright and bold Jonathan Adler patterns and quirky icons. Find out the top nude beaches of the world in August, discover how to make a balloon poodle in February, or pick our your favorite mustache style in October. I will be ordering several for my friends and family. You should too!

You can buy one at here at Paper Source.

Re:Model: Bathroom Part 3

Apologies for my lack of bathroom updates. I promise, we haven't been living with our bathroom in utter disarray for this long. I just haven't updated you on our progress.

What a difference tile makes. Our bathroom finally began to look like a bathroom again once the shower and floor were tiled.

For the bathroom wall tile, I wanted to go with a medium gray ceramic tile. I liked the idea of using larger tiles for the bathroom wall and going with the smaller tile for the floor. I was amazed at how hard it was to find gray tile. It took lots of searching, but I was happy with the end result. We tiled all the way up to the ceiling in our shower to give it some more height. It really helps to create the illusion of more space in our small bathroom. Although we used larger ceramic tile, we needed bullnose tile to trim around the outside and to frame the window in our shower. Thanks to our good friend Jeremiah for helping us with the shower tile! It looks amazing.

I wish I could say our floor tile was as easy as the shower, but alas I cannot. I wanted to do small hexagonal subway tile on the floor. I also thought the white tile would brighten up the space quite a bit. The look is great, but the installation is not so great. The tiles come attached in 12x12 sheets which gives you the impression that it won't be much more difficult than laying regular ceramic tile. That is not the case. Jeremy wishes I could have just picked out normal tile. The small tiles, although they are loosely attached, still shift and move on the mortar as you lay them. It is also very difficult to get the floor level with all of these smaller pieces. The other problem was all of the mortar seeping up through the gaps in the tile. We tried to clean out the excess seeping through so it wouldn't show when we grouted, but it was still problematic. We ended up changing our grout color from a dark gray to a lighter gray so that it would more closely match the mortar color and show less. In the end, it looks great (except for the problems that we notice). Jeremy did a great job with a difficult task and the overall affect is very nice. This was the one time we were thankful for our small bathroom. Thanks to our good friend Michael for helping us grout the floor!

A nice cold beer was much needed after this night.

Printer's Cabinet

Must have this...

Oak Printer Cabinet & Drafting Table, St. Louis Craigslist, $450.

Rescued Letters

I am constantly on the search for salvaged letters to hang on the wall in my home. They are so beautiful. How brilliant to have a whole museum full of them just for people like me? Totally brill.
Check out The Museum for Rescued Letters.

Thanks to Swissmiss for this post.

Office Color Wheel

This inventive office space (DLA Piper Office) is designed by Dutch architecture firm Hofman Dujardin. If the color variation wasn't inspiring enough, they actually arranged the carpet gradient according to the amount of sunlight coming in through the windows throughout the day. The cooler tones are the areas where there is more sunlight and the darker areas appear brighter with the use of warmer tones.

www.hofmandujardin.nl
Spotted on Swissmiss

It's Biking Weather

I am not currently a big bike rider, but this bike makes me want to be. How could you not have a great day riding this bike? It gets even better. You can completely customize the colors of your bike down to the handles and seat. See the bike I designed for myself below. Perfect!


You can customize your own here.
Spotted on You are my Fave.

Re:Model: Bathroom Part 2

Once the demo was complete, we started slowly rebuilding, starting with new drywall on the walls and ceiling and backerboard around the shower. Hanging the drywall was going so smoothly until we had one major snag. We measured around the old bathroom fixtures, not realizing that the new bathroom fixtures would need to be moved and installed first. Woops! I hadn't even ordered them yet.

Hence the photos with multiple holes around the tub fixtures. Luckily, that could be easily patched prior to tiling the shower. Also, in the ceiling photos you can see our newly installed vent. This is key so our walls/ceiling don't crumble off again due to moisture.

As far as finishing the drywall, we called in the pros on this one. We had heard multiple horror stories about how difficult and painful it is to finish drywall and then not being happy with the end result. So, that part was smooth sailing and definitely worth the money.

We also decided to get our good friend Dale to come in and help us with the plumbing. Since our original reason for tackling this project was water leaking into the basement, we wanted to make sure everything was in tip top shape. Also, installing the shower fixtures was WAY harder than anticipated. We thought is was just a little unscrewing and tightening. This is not so. It involved some sautering, a new valve and pipe extensions. Hence, the big hole in the backerboard. So, needless to say, we asked Dale to come back and help us deal with the big mess we made.

Also, a huge improvement was that we moved the shower head up about a foot to accommodate the height of my 6'5" husband. I think that is his favorite part of the whole remodel.

Accomplishments during week 2:
-Hung Drywall on the walls and ceiling
-Hung Backerboard around the tub
-Finished drywall (well, a professional did this during the week)
-Damage control on our shower fixtures

Lessons learned:
-Order/measure/install new fixtures before hanging the backerboard