As an amusing postscript to our previous discussion about the difference between a duvet and a comforter, Metafilter asks, ‘Do British people use sheets?’. Cue lots of Americans horrifed by insanitary British habits.
Can I turn this
into this?
Heavy Petal is a great gardening blog based in Vancouver BC and thus full of tips for the Pacific Northwest gardener. She found instructions for making this gourd birdhouse on craft blog Two Straight Lines and I’m going to have try it.
Surely even someone as craft-challenged as myself can manage this, particularly when you can buy the gourd ready drilled and cleaned from here? I have ordered my gourd and will keep you posted.
It appears that I should also be buying tomato seeds about now. I want to try growing heirloom tomatoes this year and am thinking about trying them in Topsy Turvy planters hanging round the house.
With apologies to the Fug girls.
I have been discussing with Elaine from my new BFF blog Decorno the importance of having opinions, of which she has many very forthright ones.
As a cynical Brit I do find the ‘hearts and puppies’ stuff you find on some other blogs a bit difficult to cope with, so I’ve been thinking for some time of doing a ‘rooms I hate’ series on here. Though I was gutted to find that Elaine already does this (and much better), if you want more snark.
But I digress. Today’s room is from the doyenne of British interior design Kelly Hoppen. Ms Hoppen has built an empire on designing rooms for people with so little personality that even colour is considered to be freakishly avant garde. She has even produced a range of beige paint. Her rooms shriek ‘good taste’ so loudly that they end up having not much taste at all.
This example from Homes and Gardens is apparently part of a new London house built for an American client.
I have to say that I do like how she plays with different textures within the neutral palette, and her signature black wenge floors and the subtle pleated pelmets at the top of the curtains which work in a room this big and imposing.
But everything, from the immense table, to the huge black armoire and the heavily bevelled mirror is just so stolid; and a room without colour would drive me me mad in about thirty seconds (just one little hot pink flower arrangement somewhere PLEASE); and I hate that this is a brand new house but filled with repro details; and the way the knick knacks have clearly been bought in by the yard and there’s not a single thing in here that is treasured or has history. And most of all I hate that the chairs are wearing dresses.
Didn’t chair dresses go out in the 80s? Weren’t they just things in ‘Ideas for Soft Furnishings’ books that no one ever made? Or if you did make them it was to disguise the fact that your chairs were all mismatched and rickety and came from a junk shop? Which I hardly think is the problem here, since the table apparently costs upwards of £50,000. And the wonky seam on that chair with its back to us is driving me nuts.
What do you all think? Get dissing discussing in the comments.
We’re thinking of going to Mexico in March and April, but don’t know where to go. Any suggestions?
We need a nice beach for the Minx but would also like to find somewhere with a bustling Mexican vibe and traditional Colonial architecture, but not too touristy – which I think rules out Acapulco, Cancun and possibly PV -, and not too remote either as I fancy sitting in little cafes and restaurants and watching the world go by.
And any recommendations for beautiful, smallish (and cheap!) boutique-y hotels would also be much appreciated. It is possible that the things I desire are not actually available in reality.
Let me know all your ideas – I know next to nothing about Mexico, so the smallest bits of information would be useful. Thank you!
It seems like ages since I’ve given you any update on what we’re doing with the house, mostly because nothing at all has been happening.
But I’ve started to get traction again in the last few weeks, so I’ve a got lots to tell you about.
This is where we’d got to last week. Note fabulous new Emma Gardner rug has arrived. Note that very heavy glass coffee table is not on top of fabulous rug, because we are terrified of making deep grooves in said rug. Note that horrendous nursing chair and egg-yolk yellow walls are still in place.
If you remember I wanted to replace the nursing chair with a curvy chaise longue. I also wanted the chaise longue to be in raspberry sorbet pink but could only find it in various shades of beige.
So imagine how excited I was to find this little beauty in very hip Seattle store Inform (which appears to have a very groovy looking sister store in Vancouver, BC) in exactly the shade of pink I was looking for.
The chair is a ‘Little Rock’ by Canadian company Bensen and is wildly comfortable. We clearly have a thing for pink rocking chairs.
The chair is accessorised with a glorious cushion from Swedish designers Adam & Viktoria made from raw linen with very dark chocolate cutouts.
I’d never heard of them before but they’re actually featured this month in Elle Decor. I love their stuff and am going to look into getting some of their cushions in for ‘mirrormirror’.
I was pleased, but also a bit worried to see in Elle Decor that chartreuse – the colour of the rug, together with the Ikea curtains and Crate & Barrel runner in the background – is the new colour for spring. I’m worried because it will clearly be tremendously passe’ next year – and we certainly can’t afford to replace the rug, like, EVER.
Stay tuned to find out what our new coffee table looks like, when I’m going to organise those shelves a bit better, why we haven’t finished the fireplace *blushes*, and what colour we’re going to paint the walls.
Tune in next week also for an update on the colour scheme for the Minx’s room – somewhat embarrassingly featured today on Ohdeedoh.com (which appears to be the new name for Apartment Therapy Nursery). I wish they’d waited until we’d painted the walls a colour I actually like!
So how am I doing?
Get thin – I’ve lost a stone (14lb) since mid November! Still a ways to go though, but thrilled since WeightWatchers really does seem to be working.
Get dancing – Not quite yet, but have just completely Rolfing session 4 and can’t describe how much better my whole body is feeling.
Get organised – Bedroom/office still a tip. Top priority at the moment as we have friends from the UK coming next week and it’s EMBARRASSING.
Get making – I’ve done my beading class. Need to find another beading project to make.
Get going on the house – Have got various meetings lined up with remodelling people, architects and painters. Have bought nice furniture (of which more anon) and have decided on colours for main room and Minx’s room (of which also more anon).
Get photographing- launched my daily photo diary Today I Am Mostly
Get blogging – still don’t seem to have time to do all that I want with the blog
Get rich – January’s revenues were up about 40% on last January! But then last January was very, very bad for some reason.
16 January 2008 in Ramblings | Permalink
