It's happening!

I'm hiding in the bedroom right now while my husband is out there supervising.

I took a few pictures of the cabinet units so you can see the scale of how big these things really are. The first picture is the 8ft cabinet that will hold large boxes and tubes, next is the cubby storage for my 24" rolls of printing paper. My mind is a frenzy just thinking about putting all my stuff away that is currently scattered thoughout my house. It's been a dream of mine to have a designed office for a long time, so happy it's finally coming true. This office project has been ongoing since January! Back then it was snowy and spring wasn't in sight, so I took a crowbar at them! Maybe it was cabin fever, not sure, happy I did it.

I finally found a picture of the old closet doors back from 2008. There was lots of wasted space up top and my things would never fit in there. Two years later they looked like this...

Is it done yet?

Nope, I've been patiently waiting for weeks, but no cabinets yet. My house is in a horrible state of disarray, I do all my work: cutting, packaging, and everything else on my dinning room table. It's a big sloppy mess.

The cabinet guys say they will be here tomorrow installing, but they said that last week and the week before that. So I'm starting to loose my mind. Please send some good vibes my way for the install tomorrow so I can spend my weekend organizing my new office.

Long-arm wall sconce

West Elm has a really beautiful new wall sconce. It has this Serge Mouille vibe I've been searching for, too bad I allready got a lamp on eBay. There is a room picture with this lamp above in the W.E. catalog, but I can't seem to find it on their website. If you don't already get one, request a catalog here.

The Peacock spider

This is the cutest spider ever. I recommend sticking with this till the 3:00 mark, that's when the magic happens!

And the winner of the placemat giveaway is...

Last Saturday I decided to giveaway a set of the placemats I recently had made. Earlier today I stuck all the names in a bowl and my husband picked out the winning name.

The winner is... Christa P.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Getting another planter

The 20" steal planters with rusty patina in the photo above were made by artist Joe Papendick. I asked him to make me some after I was poking around some of his photos and saw that he had made these cute planters pictured below.

Recently I decided to order an even bigger one for the back patio area. I've bought metal planters in the past and they feel so thin, they were never big enough and don't weather well. The planter below is from CB2 and this was the biggest size they made... not big enough. The new one will be big, 42" x 32" x 12".



I'll post a bunch of pictures when it arrives!

Mid-Century Monday: Tony Paul

One of my readers informed me that the candlestick holders I got for only $3 at Goodwill were designed by Tony Paul.

He was born on February 28, 1918 in Bronx, NY and passed away last April. Tony was an industrial designer who began his designing career in the 1940s. His remarkable career spanned approximately 60 years and he continued to design well into his later years. His designs included furniture design, kitchenware design and lighting. Tony found a love and niche in lighting design, and continued that path for more than 20 years.



I guess the candlesticks I picked up were his first design, I have yet to find a price for them. I was originally planning on selling them, very glad I didn't.



All images from www.tonypauldesigns.com

Giveaway!

One lucky winner will get a set of my new placemats. To enter this giveaway, simply send your contest entry email before April, 21 2011 to jennski_giveaway at yahoo dot com. I will post the name of the randomly selected winner on Friday 4/22/11). This giveaway is open to anyone in the world!

The e-mail entry should include your first name and last name initial and the set you want, Avocado Kitchen or Peaches & Pears. I can do half and half if you want.

Hurry hurry!

Oh me oh my

I love them! I have to clean off my dinning room table so I can stick some of these on it. I will have these for sale in my shop soon as I take more pictures.

Product Info:
3 color silk screen
13" x 18.5"
Made of the same fabic as my bags
-80% Ecotec, recycled yarn made from excess cotton fabric from industrial clothing manufacturers
-20% is made from recycled plastic soda bottles
Made in NH

Dreaming of a double lounger

OO this would be so nice... I had a hard time finding a large outdoor lounger that I liked. I'm thinking I may buy the cushion and have my husband build around that (He made my amazing bed). West Elm doesn't have white or cream cushions left so it will have to be PB. I better start working on a design.

Pottery Barn Riviera Double Chaise & Cushion
West Elm Wood-slat double lounger

Spring is in the air

I have made an appearance outside everyday this past week mostly racking, and leaf blowing. My house has no back yard, just boulders and trees. It's impossible to keep up with all these leaves. The picture below is of the back patio outside the bedroom door.
I need a team of gardeners stat! lol

DNA results: Who am I?

Weeks ago I spit into a tube and mailed it off to 23 and me. It's a DNA testing service providing information and tools for consumers to learn about and explore their DNA


Yup thats my map above through my maternal line. The haplogroup I belong to is seen in British and Scandinavian populations. Hmm, interesting...

History on my Haplogroup
By 4,000 years ago an offshoot of J1c2, known as J1c2-16192, had made it all the way to the western edge of Europe, becoming entrenched among the Celtic-speakers of the British Isles. But even that wasn't the end of the journey. Beginning in the 8th century AD, Viking raiders who regularly pillaged coastal Britain and Ireland often sailed back home with Celtic women aboard. Some of those women carried J1c2-16192, so that today there are Norwegians and even Icelanders with the far-flung J haplogroup.

I also got other cool info like drug response and traits.

-non-verbal IQ performance averaged three points higher (thats cool)
-I'm a slow metabolizer of caffeine
-I can taste bitter
-higher sensitivity to pain
-typical odds of heroin addiction (good to know...lol)

And they scare the crap out of you and tell you all the horrible things you're at risk for, other than that it was really fun looking at all the info.

Office progression

This horrible thing above was my old storage closet for my business supplies, etc. It originally had 3 large sliding doors that I eventually took off. It was all stained dark brown so I started painting it, but then I felt like it was a waste of my time painting this ugly thing. It was like this for so long! Then back in January I went a bit crazy and starting destroying it! That thing was built like a rock, but my husband and I killed it! GRRR!



Then we moved on to the walls. So many people might be mad at me for tearing down the pecky cyprus paneling, but it made me so unhappy. We live in the woods and we get a mouse every so often and I would sometimes hear one crawling in there. Yuck! The paneling was riddled with masonry nails. If you don't know what those are imagine pulling out 100 mini swords in stone. That took us a month to finally complete.



Then the plastering... I'm all for doing it yourself, but the plaster I bought at Lowes was so thick. I had such a hard time. After 2 months of working in this room I just lost that energy, so I surrendered and called a professional. In a week it was done!



MMM smooth. In this picture we are putting up the vintage dome light that used to be in the dinning room. The walls arn't painted just yet. The plaster on the walls is very similar to the paint color I chose. I actually really liked the plaster color and found paint that was a close match.



Painted walls, new window frame, and new blinds. I can't believe how good it's all looking! It's about one more week until the cabinetry will be delivered and installed. Yipeee!

The solar do-nothing machine

Found via http://moon-doggie.blogspot.com

"It is not supposed to do. It is supposed to be. Its whole function is in its being."
-Charles Eames

Vintage reissued fabrics and wallpaper

I love collecting vintage paper and fabric. I have piles of old folded wrapping papers and bits and pieces of fabrics I find at flea makets. I never use them because I always think that they're too special to use, or that I'm waiting for that perfect project. Maybe when I die someone can use them, HA!

Fabric
Fabric designer Michael Miller is reissuing a bunch of vintage Tammis Keefe fabrics. 15 designs were issued, dogs, cats other adorable animals.

Wall Paper
This is a bold and iconic collection of wallpapers that celebrate a decade of design which transformed the boundaries of interior decoration. The Sanderson 50’s collection combines original 1950’s designs from the Sanderson archive with designs from contemporary artists who have taken great inspiration from this era.

MMm yummy paint brush

Spending the day priming and painting the window frame my wonderful husband built. It was kind of a pain to make because he had to use masonry nails to hammer the wood to the concrete, but after lots of wood putty and sanding, it looks amazing. This kid has some talent!

Ah it's finally all coming together. I talked with the contractor that's building my cabinets and they say it will be one more week. I can't wait!!!!!