so purty.

loving these images from anthropologie's july '10 catalogue.

the blend of chalkboard drawings + real stuff = amazing.

succulents!

i love these little guys. you can arrange them in so many ways, and they're super hardy so you don't have to give them tons of attention. and they're so cute and tiny! you can get them at any hardware store in the plants section, or you can even buy them at wal-mart.

i LOVE this succulent wreath. and the word succulent.

(sources: 1 2 3)

so i got really excited about doing some cross stitching again, and bought this pattern from the all stitches shop on etsy!i've seen this print everywhere on design blogs and such and thought it would be such fitting wall decor for a household. i am so excited to stitch this baby! now all i gotta do is buy some cross stitch fabric and a large enough hoop. and i was thinking of using a different color floss than black...maybe teal or something. and i would love to put it in a vintage frame or something...i will definitely share pictures when i'm done.

(and if you aren't familiar with the background behind the print, check it out here.)

(p.s. i kinda wanna go back and purchase this pattern as well. i think it would look pretty cute in my baby girl's room. like maybe 3 in a row with different colors.)

trees as furniture.

the farmer's market season is coming up and i'm itchin' for a new way to display headbands. i would love to get some kind of white tree-looking thing with lots of little branches to hang things on.

something like this, but sturdier.

other decorative tree things in homes that i like:

i don't know about the bird houses for a kid's room...they look amazing but i'd be afraid they'd fall off and whack 'em in the face while they're asleep. but i'm for sure drooling over this painted tree.

i WILL do this on a wall of my future house. i love the different shades of wood. what a lovely thing to have near your front door.
i really think i'll just find a sturdy tree branch (i'm sure i could find one in the ginourmous mountains 10 minutes from our home...) and then just spray paint it white, and cement it into a tin bucket or something. it's practically free and easier than trying to construct a tree.

there's something so pretty about a round table, don't you think?

and not the king arthur kind...although i'm sure it was very pretty.



perfect for a breakfast nook in the house that i will have someday that will have a breakfast nook.

teal!

i'm sort of in love with this color right now.

*coming and going coat rack, urban outfitters, $68.

*rose hook, urban outfitters, $6.

*a dressing room makeover.

*teal fondant flowers.

*man of my dreams.

expedit bookcase!

our last apartment we just moved from had a built-in bookcase and it was awesome. this new apartment, sadly, does not but i'm very excited to buy this expedit bookcase from ikea this weekend.
i've wanted one for forever, i just love how open and bright and symmetrical it is. we definitely need a place for our books, little picture frames, knick knacks and scrapbooks. and our new apartment is a bit bigger and has a perfect sized wall for it.

although i think it might have to be dusted alot...oh well! i don't care, i'm excited!

house idea: dinner table chairs

one day when we get a bigger house that warrants a bigger table with multiple chairs, i would love to work on this idea. it would take some time to gather all the chairs i liked from like craig's list or thrift stores but it would totally be worth it and, i think, really fun every time i scored a new chair.

while i do love the picture above with the different colored chairs, i was also thinking maybe all different styles of wood chairs, then all painted white + re-upholstered with the same fabric. that way, they look like a set but each chair is carved differently. in the pic below, it looks like 2 sets of chairs, but i would want every chair to be different. because that's how i roll.

either way, i could start with the first pic and later convert to all wooden/painted chairs. then i could put the cute metal/non-wood chairs around a small circle table in the breakfast nook that i'll have one day, too...the possibilities are endless! ha.

house idea: plate wall

i really really really would like to do this one some day. it would take some time to collect the different sizes and patterns, but it would be pretty cheap - most vintage plates i've found at the thrift store typically cost 50 cents to two dollars. and there'd probably have to be some splurge purchases in there, too - plates that were too pretty to pass up.

i think this might be hard though because i'd want to keep them in my cupboard and acutally use them as plates - which i currently do. i have a small collection of vintage plates, ten or so, and i think it would be hard to part with them. i started collecting them because i went to a restaurant once and none of the plates or cups or utensils matched and i LOVED that. cheaper for the restaurant to thrift the serving stuff, and it just looks so lovely. i had ordered some soup and a sandwich and the soup bowl was tourquoise with a red rim, the plate was beige with strawberries and my mug was bright yellow. SO pretty.

anyways, since then i've been thrifting vintage plates and mugs and i would love to have every single one of my plates and stuff NOT to match. and if one breaks, then it doesn't matter because it's not making a set of 4 glasses into an uneven set of 3, and it gives you a good excuse to go thrifting!

a mini plate wall.

i really love this one. just look at the swoop and curve with the combination of the little and bigger plates. i love that there's one bright blue one, and that it's a peacock. (and i didn't even see this before i wrote the next paragraph below! see the one silouhette plate?! i want to do that even more now.)

another alternative i would want to try is getting cheap blank plates and painting them myself. or have the wall of vintage plates and mixed in would be plates with silouhettes of each family member, like this:

it wouldn't be so obvious that it was a "family plate wall" but it would be personal and decorative at the same time.

and best of all, you don't have to live in a house to try this one. just make sure it's okay with your landlord to punch tons of holes in your wall in an erratic pattern so you can hang up your plates.

house idea: brick accent wall

while living in an apartment i can only dream about what kind of house we might live in one day. and while i am extremely grateful for any kind of roof over our heads, it's still fun to imagine how i'd like to design our future house. i am constantly grabbing pictures off the internet of ideas that i'd like to incorporate into our future house, and saving them in a folder called "house ideas."

one of my favorite house ideas is to have a brick accent wall somewhere in our house. i just love the rough, exposed texture of the brick juxtaposed with modern, newer appliances - just like an old warehouse in new york or something that's been converted into apartments.

(*i also want that couch.)

oh, how i love hangings on brick walls, especially mirrors.

all brick walls might be too much brick for me, i think it looks so lovely where a painted wall meets the brick.

that arch in the brick and the doorway? heaven.