January 19, 2012
I’ve been excited to decorate our new place… yet terrified at the same time. I’ve never felt like I have a knack for decorating like I do designing something on a page. Committing to a piece of furniture makes me a nervous wreck. I gravitate towards colors and patterns and usually buy things accordingly, but then I get them home and realize they’re not right for the space, way too loud, or have no relationship to anything else in the space. More often than not, I am tired of it in five minutes and regret making such bold choices.
I’m trying a new approach where I set some guidelines for myself, don’t buy anything impulsively, and if I see something that looks bold and awesome — I realllllly think about it (and usually end up realizing it’s too much and I need to scale it back a bit). So far, so good.
For the walls, I fell in love with Benjamin Moore’s Palladian Blue… but then, after painting a handful of test swatches throughout the first floor and upstairs hallway (which would all eventually be painted the same color), I realized it was waaaaayy too much blue. After a few more Goldilocks trials and errors — you know, this one’s too bold, this one’s too boring, etc. — I landed upon Sherwin Williams Sea Salt, a muted grayish blueish green (that’s the technical description). It was perfect.
We already have charcoal grey couches which will stay, along with a coffee table that Nick made, but we need some other pieces to tie everything together… and that’s where I get stuck.
Enter: Design*Sponge At Home by Grace Bonney, editor of the Design*Sponge blog. I got a copy of this book a few months ago when I attended a signing at Terrain (Grace was super nice, by the way!), and it has become my decorating bible as of late. I love that pretty much all of the sneak peeks featured in the book are far from what you’d call matchy-matchy, yet they still have a very pulled together look despite being very eclectic. So many of them speak to me and remind me why I’ve never been drawn to buying matching sets of furniture.
In deciding how to decorate the downstairs of our new home, I looked for rooms in the book that had similar wall colors to Sea Salt, and just rooms that I generally liked. After browsing a handful of pages one afternoon, it struck me that so many rooms had one great thing in common: amidst calming neutrals, there was often a distinct pop of red that stood out as a focal point, and really tied the room together. Don’t believe me? Here are just a few rooms found on Design*Sponge (the blog this time):
image 1 // image 2 // image 3 // image 4
Coincidentally, a lovely friend also gave us a gorgeous red cast iron trivet as a housewarming gift, and I was sold. Pops of red — yes! Why didn’t I think of it sooner?
Thus, our color palette was born: mostly warm neutrals, with pops of teal (I mean, I’m still me, after all) and fire engine red. It looks pretty subdued to me here, but I think that’s a good sign that I won’t get sick of it in five minutes.
I’m thinking a red statement lamp would be perfect sitting atop this pedestal end table that was my nana’s and just came to live with us over the weekend:
We have yet to hang anything on the walls and I’m sure many more colors will come into play then — but having this new red revelation has me excited to decorate so it looks like grownups live here. Grownups who have an eclectic yet pulled-together style.
What’s your decorating method?
January 11, 2012
Who wants to buy this for me? Come on… any takers?
American Flags Map from These Are Things
For Christmas, I gave Nick a framed print of a vintage map of our town; he loves all kinds of maps, and I love all the different maps that have been popping up in the design world lately. Perhaps maps could be a fun theme throughout our new home? Have I justified my inevitable purchase of this yet?
January 10, 2012
This philosophy has definitely come to the forefront in the last 6+ months. I work hard and I work a lot, but I also carve out a lot more time to unplug than I used to. Rather than sitting in front of the tv at night with my MacBook Pro on my lap (but not really being productive), my computer now pretty much stays in my office while I spend most evenings and weekends relaxing, connecting with Nick and/or our friends, and living. It’s no wonder that I feel much more creative, productive, inspired and fulfilled (and a lot less exhausted) these days.
by Departika on Etsy, found via Jessica Bishop on Pinterest
January 8, 2012
Yesterday was unseasonably warm here (60 degrees!), so my mom and I did what anyone else would do when it’s gorgeous out: we sat inside a movie theatre.
What can I say: we like to be unpredictable.
We saw The Descendants, which I’ve been wanting to see for a while. We both loved it, though at times it was a little slow. (I don’t feel like that’s necessarily a bad thing, but Nick surely would have been a bit restless.) We especially loved the little girl who played Scotty, George Clooney’s youngest daughter. It was a sad movie, for sure, but it had some funny moments, mostly thanks to Scotty.
Have you seen anything good lately?
January 5, 2012
Who isn’t a sucker for a sale? We’re having a month-long sale in our shop this month — head on over and don’t forget to use the promo code 2012ANDCO at checkout to get your discount!
January 3, 2012
Happy New Year, friends. There’s lots of settling in to be done at the moment — continuing to get settled into our new home, settling into a new year that hopefully has lots of goodness in store, and settling into winter (t’was a frigid 27 degrees here today… brrrr!). It’s only the third day of the year and already three pleasant surprises have landed in my lap (details later, depending on how things pan out), so I’m hoping that 2012 continues to be so splendid and wrought with good things.
Somewhere in the last year, I’ve become hesitant to blog and have also just been so very busy (you’ve heard me promise several times to get back in the swing of things here, but it hasn’t quite happened yet). During my quietness, I’m sure I lost a lot of readers, and blogging without comments is just not as fun. However, this blog has always been for me, and comments and connections with others have just been a bonus, so I’m going to try to keep that in mind as I attempt — once again — to update more regularly.
On that note, here’s a little peek into my world of late. I got a new iPhone in late November and could finally get into Instagram (since my iPhone 3G camera tended to hate me, which it expressed often by freezing, being generally slow, and taking horrible pictures). So for now, I leave you with some of my favorite pics from the last month. If you’re into that sort of thing, you can follow me — I’m claremontroad — and we also created a curiousandco business account for the occasional sneak peek into our workdays.
top: packing up some Curious & Co. orders from our new online shop; sunset view from my new home office
middle: tire tracks from the year’s first snowy dusting (this morning!); new chevron rug from Urban Outfitters
bottom: sunlight streaming in through our new front door; enjoying Christmas morning with our niece, Ginger
December 9, 2011
I tend to pin a lot of quotes on Pinterest — I’ve always loved a good quote to get me fired up/over something/optimistic, and I’m especially a sucker for one that’s been laid out with pretty type — so I thought I’d share some periodically on the blog.
This one is available as a 10″ x 26″ letterpress print and it’s on my wish list, for sho’. I mean, what’s not to love? It’s a great quote, it’s letterpress, has stacked type, and includes a few of my favorite fonts. Gimme!
for sale at crazyonesquote.com, found via Donna Fung on Pinterest
December 9, 2011
As we live amongst boxes and try to find our sanity, this adorable family’s annual Christmas video has managed to put me in the Christmas spirit. Apparently they create a new video every year in lieu of Christmas cards, and I’m betting that it’s something their kids will love looking back on when they’re older. What an awesome tradition (and what very cool parents they have!).
Jingle Bells – Christmas Video Greeting 2011 from Jared Foster on Vimeo.
Found via Design Mom
November 28, 2011
As we started packing up our lives to fit in a UHaul, I realized I didn’t have any recent photos of our apartment. Before the boxes get out of control (they’ve mostly been living in the second bedroom thus far), I decided to document the place I’ve called home for the last seven years. Nick moved in five years ago, and we’ve made changes over the years, but for the most part things haven’t changed too much. I painted the living room walls just before I moved in and they’ve remained the same Benjamin Moore Pale Sea Mist ever since. (I still love the color and I’m not ruling out using it on every wall somewhere in our new place.)
Here’s a peek at our living room, where we spend most of our downtime. This is a view from the entrance to the room, off of the main hallway in the apartment. (PS, I want a fancy camera, but for now, these shots taken with my point-and-shoot will have to do!)
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On the wall are four letterpress prints from Old School Stationers, and through those French doors is my office, which you’ve seen before.
November 26, 2011
Oh hey, late November. What’s up?
We just returned from spending Thanksgiving with Nick’s family, and there was no shortage of mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, or leftover turkey for making delicious moist maker sandwiches. It’s been so long since I posted that I don’t really know where to begin as I attempt (yet again) to blog a bit more regularly! How about a numbered list of mundane details? Yes, that sounds exciting!
1.) We’re moving. After seven years in the same apartment. And I loathe, loathe, loathe moving. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t done it in seven years. But yeah, Saturday is the big day, and I’m dreading it, but hopefully everything will go smoothly (with the help of some great friends and family and a rented UHaul). I’m expecting the month of December to be a bit chaotic, but I’m hoping that we’ll feel somewhat settled upon the new year.
2.) We’re still going to be renting. After house-hunting a bit, we were still a bit nervous to buy. Everyone will tell you that “it’s a buyer’s market” until they’re blue in the face, but that still doesn’t mean it’s the right time for everyone to buy. The reality is that it’s going to be a buyer’s market for a loooong time. For now, we were anxious to have a bit more space (especially storage), a little yard, central air (I’ll crank that baby UP when the time comes) and off-street parking, so in order to get some upgrades while we wait for the perfect house to come along at a time that’s right for us, continuing to rent was our best option. We’re looking forward to be moving into our new house which has lots of charm (and a basement for STORAGE!), plus, renting has its perks: when something breaks, we can just call the landlord :) I’m sure there will be some DIY decorating posts in this blog’s near future, so stay tuned.
3.) I’ve still been blogging regularly, just not here! I blog once or twice a week over on the Cog Blog, the official blog of Curious & Co. Occasionally we post about our own work and goings on, but we also blog about cool and interesting finds in the design world. Have you been reading?
4.) That segues me into the exciting news that we now have an online shop for our new Curious & Co. stationery products! You’ll find some colorful note cards (sneak peek above) in stock now, but check back very soon for even more papery goodness.
5.) Ginger is now seven months old and I can’t even handle the cuteness. I’m resisting the urge to spoil that little niece of mine rotten when Christmas rolls around. We can’t wait to spend Christmas morning with her.
That’s about all for me… I have a few more posts in mind for the coming week if I’m not buried under boxes (but I guess I shouldn’t make any promises). I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving!
