Tempting Throw Pillows

Are these pillows too femme for a couch that's used by a gentle giant while watching car shows, hockey, football, and racing? We were in west elm trying chairs on for size and I spotted these cockatiel and hummingbirds pillows.

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Would this be considered putting a bird on it?

In person, they look like they would look great with my tie dye pillows from west elm circa 2011.

{Source: west elm, no longer available}

I should have snagged them before they're gone! I wish that west elm wasn't such a hassle to get to on weekends.It's definitely a weeknight treat.

I am totally dying to change something up in the house. I haven't had a project in over a year and I've gots the itch.

{Spring Detox} Cheap Living Room Art

A while back, I mentioned the boring corner of our living room that needed some sprucing up. I found these wonderful Sanna Annukka greeting cards from 1973 at a sample sale for only 20 cents a piece.

{Source: 1973}

I framed them in gallery frames from west elm.

It's still a little bland, but better than nothing.

{Spring Detox} Cheap Bedroom Art

After dropping a few hundo on frames at west elm, I couldn't afford any "real" art to fill them. Hopefully, I'll be filling them up with photos and street art from gay Paris. Until then, I've improvised some "art" for our "headboard" by photocopying the pillow covers from my Jonathan Adler Bargello Waves pillows.

The small frames are filled with plain text paper from Paper Source. I might switch those up with some fancier paper. Or not.

Around the rest of the room...

I have a framed print that I purchased from a guy in Venice, Italy.

 I had the chalk drawing we received as a wedding present framed in the same frame and size as the Italy pix.

 

And to fill in the rest of the blanks, I hung some framed some etsy art, wedding photos, and wedding mementos.

I am disappointed in the quality of the photos in this week's posts. I used my new DSLR camera, but the  pictures don't really look DSLR-worthy. :( I can't believe how long it's taking me to get the swing of manual photography. I know it will just "click" one day, but I'm getting antsy for my "A ha!" moment.

Previously in {Spring Detox}:
New "Headboard"
Our Granny Chic Bedroom

{Spring Detox} New "Headboard"

When Andy and I upgraded to a king-sized bed, I had to sacrifice the headboard that matches my bedroom set. Once again, I am back to melding my modern tastes with my early American furnishings.

I have my heart set on the Hoffman Bed from Room & Board:

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Unfortunately, in the Food/Paris vs. $1499 Bed argument, Food/Paris win every time. BUT, I couldn't live with my blank slate any longer. I felt disjointed and sad to be living like a student at age 36.

I assembled some silver gallery frames from west elm into a makeshift headboard.

Not mind-blowing, I know, but I can't believe the difference that it makes.

 

Even Andy agrees, which is a total win since his idea of an inspiration board is this:

I also added a cheap-cheap-cheap tailored bed skirt from Target to hide all of the bins, crap, and dust bunnies stored under the bed.

Our building's had a few break-ins, so we started sleeping with a bat under the bed, as you can see.

Up Next: Cheap Bedroom Art

{Spring Detox} Our Granny Chic*** Bedroom

This post doesn't really have anything to do with my Spring Detox series, but I wanted to mention my bedroom suite to set up the posts that I have planned for later this week.

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When I graduated from college and was penniless and furniture-less, I inherited a very, very, very old bedroom set from my great aunt.

While I'm very lucky and grateful, I sometimes struggle with it, as it's not my normal style (whatever that may be at any given moment). Over the years, I've paired it with a various linens:

Simple yellow linens in my first apartment:

I can't believe that I *ever* had a teddy bear on my bed.
I think that my little sister gave it to me when I was in the hospital.
It's the only remotely feasible guess I have.

Modern Calvin Klein linens in my second and third apartments:

This apartment was infested with thousand leggers, which I am terrified of. I actually took down my closet doors and installed these curtains so that my bed would not touch any walls and, hopefully, not be conduit for thousand leggers to crawl on me in my sleep. Guess what? Thousand leggers crawl on curtains.

Homey modern paisleys from Crate&Barrel when I moved in with Andy.

{I have no pictures of this, as I've mentally blocked living there.}

When we moved into our current place, we wanted a modern, clean, and airy bedroom in which to spread out and recover from living in a glorified box for two years. But how do you achieve that look with an OLD, OLD, OLD bedroom set?

I fell hard for the bargello waves pillows by Jonathan Adler.

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Crochet AND mod? Yes, please! They cost me a small fortune, but were worth every penny. Tossed on simple beige linens, they really helped me bridge the gap between the centuries.

BTW, last Saturday would have my great aunt's 100th birthday. This is a picture of her and my dad back in the day.

I wonder if he is smiling so big because she told him she'd give his future daughter a bedroom set one day?

***"Granny Chic" as seen on Making It Lovely.

{Spring Detox} About that Dining Room Wall...

The wallpaper that I had my heart set on was discontinued. Boo! Searching for wallpaper has to be one of the most frustrating tasks on the the Internet. (Seriously, if they gave Razzies for Web design, I'd bet my insurance copay that a wallpaper company would at the very least place.) So, after blowing about $60 in wallpaper samples, I gave up on wallpaper.

 

The wall sat like this until New Year's Day, while I obsessed on paint colors and wallpaper options.

Thirty dollars in orange paint samples later, all of which Andy nixed, we ended up painting it with the brown paint that I had picked up last October. I was getting worried about how naturally dark the area is and being overwhelmed with brown, so I decided to paint a rectangle to lighten it up a bit.

I'm not wild about the brown, but am forcing myself to live with it and move on. Andy loves it. I've gotten a lot of compliments from friends, which has me feeling more reassured.

The brown rectangle posed some problems that I hadn't foreseen:

1. Our table and light aren't centered on the wall 99 percent of the time. (Thanks, developer!)
2. We needed art* that worked when the table is "tucked in" daily and "pulled out" for guests and parties.

We decided to use the light as an anchor point and staggered CB2 Perspective mirrors across the rectangle.

I love, love, love these mirrors. I was slightly hesitant to hang mirrors across from the kitchen, but they were just what we needed! Our condo is pretty vanilla (as are our decorating and DIY talents). These mirrors give us just the smidgen of personality that we need and widen and brighten the space in the process.

(*As a total aside and much to Andy's chagrin, I refuse to hang a giant Chicago skyline picture in any home in which I hang my proverbial hat, including this space.

Impulse "Gardening"

I wasn't planning on putting flowers on our balcony this year. This is VERY uncharacteristic of me, but planting on this balcony just isn't as much fun as I would have expected. By the time I haul home whatever half-dead flowers Home Depot offers, lay down a tarp to avoid dropping dirt to the neighbor's balcony below, kneel on the sweaty tarp, and cut the sh*t out of my feet on the screen door as I take my shoes off to run inside for something, I'm always, "eh." And then we keep the blinds closed to keep the house cool, so I barely get to see them anyway.

But on the way home form my morning walk yesterday, a hanging basket caught my eye at the Lincoln Square Farmer's Market. So I nabbed it.

And while I was waiting to pay for it, this potted arrangement caught my eye, so I nabbed it too.

As I carried my treasures home, I decided that their window boxes were a total steal at $20-$24/ea. Since I was working from home to focus on a big deadline, I totally had time to grab the car and run back down there. Which I did. And then did again to pick up a third box when my selections didn't fill in our built-ins. Those adorable teens working the gardening stall were very patient. Love them.

The view from the street:



I realize that this goes against the blog grain given that everyone is so hip to urban and window gardening this season, but this has to be one of the most brilliant (albeit lazy) decisions I've made in my 14 years of apartment and balcony living.

I'm totally going back next week for a basil plant.

P.S. I have so much blogging to do, but have just been too lazy to gather all of the photos together. Editing photos on my slow-a*s laptop is lame.

P.S. I need to Impulse Redesign my blog. My header graphic makes me puke.

Pretty Curtains

I wish that I could find a way to hang some pretty curtains in our living room. I bet that it would change the whole look of the place.

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If I had a little girl, these curtains would hands down be in her room. No questions asked. The color is perfectly divine to me. 

 

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{In the Works} Tie Dye Pillows and Ikat Chairs

I've become bored with our orange pillows and wedding pillows on the big green couch. Hours of e-searching for fabric hasn't warranted anything that wouldn't give Andy a yeast infection (from the girliness) or isn't $40/yard. I've talked myself into these and am now obsessed with them.

From my new Paper Source (i.e. my new retail obsession), of course. I am even considering paying shipping if they're sold out in Chicago. (The Oak Brook store was sold out.)

Speaking of fabric, I've ordered this excellent orange and white ikat to recover our kitchen chairs:

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I was so excited to find this fabric. It was *exactly* what I had envisioned in my mind. Unfortunately, it is a trade fabric, but I found an etsy seller who was kind enough to order some for me.