Category Archives: Home Decor

March 15, 2013 · 3:02 am

Apartment Therapy House Tour Outtakes

Can’t tell you why but the sinewy legs of the gold crab against the NYT Magazine with Emma Watson on the cover is my all time favorite shot of the bunch. I’m simply in love with it. (The 5 different versions of it. I love them all, I am like addicted to the image).

I am so glad we have these photos of our first apartment together! Thank you to the lovely Nicole Crowder.

To see the full tour on the Apartment Therapy website, click here: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/alex-alinas-well-traveled-eclectic-home-183862

It’s one of the most “pinned” stories ever! It has over 6K+ pins, and if you looked through months and months of past stories (which we’ve done, obvi), the typical amount is between like 30 and 67 pins, with some being around 300 or 400 pins; one or two at about 900; and only one we’ve ever seen at 5k+. When the photographer came over, she told us the one with 5k+ was one of the top most pinned ever, so with 6k+ we think we hit it outta the park woop woop!

If you have any questions about sourcing or anything, hit me up in the comments!

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Filed under Home Decor, Interior Design, MyStyle

February 12, 2013 · 6:07 pm

APARTMENT THERAPY HOME TOUR–GO SEEEEEEEEEE!

Guys, me and this man I know (love/live with) and our LABOR OF LOVE, aka our rental, are featured on Apartment Therapy today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CLICK THIS LINK: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/alex-alinas-well-traveled-eclectic-home-183862

I am FREAKING out with happiness and excitement.

This is the single greatest joy of my life.

As I wrote on Facebook, this is all I have ever wanted. Lock it up, seal the wax, pour the dirt on the coffin, CAUSE I’M DONE.

I aspire towards no other goals in life. My ambition has ended. It was all for this. I care more about the iconic Apartment Therapy tour than any print magazine or professional accomplishment.

I was in Marie Claire last month talking about my hair and my heritage, and care approximately 02389403284048105801483248231048310428 times more about Apartment Therapy. I could end up in a movie, making out with Ben Affleck, and I wouldn’t care as much as I do about this Apartment Therapy tour.

This is the summation of my entire life’s work and wishes and dreams and priorities.

HOME TOURS ARE THE SINGLE THING I CARE ABOUT IN LIFE. HEALTH, HAPPINESS, FRIENDSHIP, FUCK IT.

jk jk jk. If you’re new to my site via the Apartment Therapy tour, welcome. I hyperbolize a lot hence my blog name The Hyperbalist. I like to consider it passion/enthusiasm/zest/zeal.

But the successful rearing of a human child will not matter more to me than this house tour.

HOPE YOU ENJOY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CAUSE I’M FREAKING THE F*CK OUT!!!!

bye

POST SCRIPT: I’ve been getting emails in response to the post, and my favorites by far have come from Alex’s guy friends. Winner:

“Kick-ass, Alina. A job well done. Taxidermy. Southwestern patterns. DIY motherfucker. HORSES. LET’S GO.”

hahahaha that’s about how you could compartmentalize the feature into succinct guy-brain bullet points.

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Filed under Home Decor, Interior Design

October 30, 2012 · 10:53 pm

Around the house/life

We got a new round, wood, hefty, amazing dining table and I am obsessed with it. OB. SESSED. WITH. IT. {before we hung the cow skull/horns}

{After}

You may remember that several months ago, we got a free rug from some people in our building. We’d been wanting a rug for the dining room area for a really long time, and it was pretty fugly but………it was a rug, that we didn’t have to buy, so we went upstairs to the 9th floor, took it off their hands, and brought it down to live in our home for several months. I was never in love with it, in fact I thought it was hideous but it warmed the place up and was free so it was what it was. But month after month that it chilled in its spot, I got progressively and increasingly irked by its ugliness. To recall your memory: (throwing up as I view it)

When my genius friend came over to rearrange our place, she left me with a few recommendations of what she’d ‘like to see’ in the place, and one of the things she said was, “I’d like to see…..a round dining table here. In a really nice, like solid, WOOD.” I had never, once, ever, even considered a round dining table. I just only ever look at rectangles. I had never CONCEIVED of looking at or purchasing a round one. She said it and it blew my mind. And I realized how very, very very much what we’d needed to buy from the BEGINNING was a round one. The space was begging for it. The size and shape of our MINIATURE “dining room”, which is basically the size of a shoebox, was way too teeny to have the scale of a long rectangle in it. The sheer nature of a rectangle meant there was practically no space on either side of the table. We needed something that didn’t have corners, and thus would free up like 4 feet of extra space. The rectangle just didn’t work.

Not to mention that the rectangular dining table we DID have was literally a piece of shit. It was $25 dollars from Ikea. The top itself was a $10 slab, and each leg was $3.50. We bought it the day we moved in because until that day, neither of us had ever owned “a dining table.” For one year in this apartment, we lived with and ate on a $25 dollar dining table from Ikea that was basically plastic. It got to the point where we’d really grown out of it. It was like, we’re 26 years old, we have jobs, we are at a place in our lives where we can graduate beyond a plastic Ikea dining table that cost a twenty-dollar-bill. Enough.

{The white Ikea dining table took many forms since the day we’d moved in)

DAY WE MOVED IN:

DINING TABLE when our chalkboard wall was a calendar over the holidays last year, hence the christmas lights:

DINING TABLE for Ellie’s Birthday:

DINING TABLE FOR MY BIRTHDAY (You can see we recycled Ellie’s sign):

Man, that dining table saw a lot in its $25 dollar lifespan. But after the recommendation of my friend to find a chunky wooden round table, my plan all along was to search for the perfect round dining table per her suggestion, then when I found it, sell the rug that we’d gotten for free to counteract the cost of the table. Thanks to my favorite local second-hand furniture stores and Craigslist, the plan was executed perfectly.

Several weekends ago, after stopping into GoodWood and Foundry where the dining tables of course were amazing but out of our price range, we stopped into Miss Pixies at literally 6:00 when they closed at seven. And the first thing I saw when we walked in was this table. The price tag was $229. SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YOUUU IN MY DINING ROOM, TABLE. I was one BILLION percent certain that was exactly what I could get for the rug, if not more, since it was a legitimately NICE rug that someone would want. Although its colors were fugly, the rug was like…………..*really* nice. Like heavy, 100 percent wool, thick, nice tassling on the edges. It was a legitimate rug that probably cost 900 dollars when they bought it.

So we bought the table ON THE SPOT- it was the most incredible piece, I could not even breathe. They wouldn’t be delivering it for 2 days, so I had two days to sell the rug. I put it on Craigslist and 1 hour later, a nice woman who had a Mercedez station wagon and was retired and only plays golf all day, came and picked it up for use in her home office! And that is how I made $250 dollars. On a free rug. THEY GAVE US THE RUG FOR FREE, AND WE SOLD IT. We couldn’t believe it. If they had just taken the time to put it on Craigslist, they would have made TWO HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS IN CASH. But they didn’t. Because sometimes, people just want things GONE. They don’t want to photograph it, they don’t want to DEAL with it, and it’s more worth it to them to have someone just get it the fuck off their hands. And that is how they lose money. So we sold the rug for DOLLAR BILLZ that funded our amazing new dining table so we could throw our POS-Ikea table in the trash. #WINNING.

It’s REAL, beautiful, wood in the PERFECT color– not blonde, not dark, just perfect. And it has this barrel, cylinder center that looks like a spool, with gorgeous curved legs ON WHEELS. For a little funky, industrial touch. IT’S MY DREAM DINING TABLE. AND IT’S ROUND. AND IT ADDS SUCH SOPHISTICATION AND CLASS TO THE SPACE, WHICH WAS FORMERLY INHABITED BY A WHITE PLASTIC $25 IKEA TABLE. LOOKS AT THE BASE/LEGS!

Much better than this, wouldntcha say???

Can you even believe it’s the same place? Crazy how homes evolve over time. [And how much better your place can look when you have a friend who is the Picasso of interior design.] CLEARLY, those horrible wicker chairs need to be swapped out for OTHER CHAIRS, specifically, other WHITE chairs, since they are just WAY too close in color to the floor itself, but I’m not spending any more money on anything ever for like seven years so………….I will just have to deal with the visual trauma of shades of blonde woods melding into one another.

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Filed under Home Decor, Interior Design

August 3, 2012 · 2:40 am

Some shit

Yayyyy our gorgeous Turquoise over-dyed Turkish kilim rug came today! I texted my boyfriend who was at work when it came: “it is magnificent.” It’s such beautiful quality and just makes the room feel REAL, and LIVED IN. I can’t describe what a difference in coziness a great rug makes in a room. It makes it feel just so….real. Like a real bedroom that real people have, not children like us. It makes it so WARM and inviting. I LOVE the room with it!

My boyfriend relaxing in the bedroom over the new rug.

It’s the first rug I’ve ever owned. Like this is my first rug as a human being. I lived at home, then I lived in dorms, then my first place ever had carpet (the horror– I try not to remember it), and then we moved into this place with its parquet floors, which we have lived in for 9 months– 8 months of which we had nothing on the floors but a cow’s hide from Ikea. Then, our neighbors upstairs were giving away a FREE RUG (SUPER fugly, but free), so we took that for our dining room. So this is the first rug I’ve ever bought and I eyed it for literally 19 months before finally going for it. It’s kind of a joke how inexpensive the rugs on RUGS USA are. Like who is the joke on? Is the joke on me? I’m confused, but I love you Rugs USA.

Total game changer and goes a LONG. WAY. But we still have a gagillion things until this room is ‘done.’ It’s still far too boring and neutral for my liking. It needs depth. Layering. I need more art for the walls. The nightstands need things. Possibly different lamps. Probably something entirely different for the foot of the bed– like poufs, or something tufted, I DON’T KNOW, but it’s still too much of the same thing. That is– white, brown, green, grey. I need some pattern in there, something peach or raspberry or purple, some things that make it feel less spartan. Different pillows, some curtains. Blah blah.

But who ever doesn’t get rugs? Like where the fuck have I been living? Carrying about my business like an idiot, with nothing but parquet floors. Like a savage. It’s uncivilized really. To live on rug-less parquet floors. Rugs are IT. Rugs are everything. Also the parquet is clearly like, so much better than carpet, but I’m going to need some hard woods pretty soon here. The parquet pretty much makes me want to kill myself every day. So thank god I have something to cover them up now.

THEN, I went and ordered this giant photograph of a scuba diver that I spent no less than 49 hours at the computer debating. I mean I did a TON of research to find a photograph I thought was super cool– I’m totally obsessed with the under water world as it pertains to photography. I think photographs of the creepy ass creatures down there, like octopuses and weird fish and sharks, and scuba divers are just cool as shit. Something about it really appeals to my particular eye. The colors of all the various blues, the bubbles, the eerie way everything looks submersed in water… I just think badass photos of scuba divers have this super creepy alien-esque vibe to them, with their black rubber suits and their weird eye goggle masks and all the equipment. Something about it feels disturbing..unsettling.

And, I’ve been OBSESSED with the notion of one, giant, huge, statement-making photograph (or piece of art) in a room for forever. It’s just an interiors thing that totally speaks to me. For some, it’s so not their style. For me, it’s the epitome of me. I just like BOLD, crazy, whack shit. That’s why I love “The Antonio Treatment” on HGTV because Antonio Ballatore is this totally insane interior designer who does AWESOMELY out of the box shit for his clients– so he’ll build like an aquarium in the middle of their living room, or like, find a sculpture of a giant sea horse and work it into their bedroom and it looks amazing. REALLY loud, crazy, bold stuff but it looks sick how he does it. So I just like loud art on a massive scale.

These are a bunch of examples of exactly what I’m talking about– images that I’ve been saving for years that show rooms in houses that have one HUGE photograph blown up or one big piece of art. Some how, it looks effortless and natural and awesome in all of these places.

This is in a museum and is very famous but like, I would LOVE this in my living room at this exact scale. Fucking technicolor Mao? That’s the kind of thing you walk into a room and go “SICK.”

Pop art Jackie O in a dressing room against busy wall paper? yes.

Love this black and white photo of what looks like the queen? Or this chick’s grandmother? Or a Shriver? haha not sure.

The Novogratz’s (9 by Design) have a giant piece of art in just about every room in their house. I love this photograph of a vulnerable looking Lolita type, who’s a dead ringer for model Barbara Palvin, in that amazing yellow dress, and it kind of looks like a blend of an oil painting and a photograph.

The photo was taken by interiors blogger Jen Ramos, when she went to their house in New York for a private blogger event, so it’s like a personal iphone photo from a blogger of the amazing Novogratz home. This is another giant piece of art in their home, that’s directly to the right of the girl in the yellow dress:

And ANOTHER large eye-catcher, a blown up photo of one of their kids:

See, the Novogratz’s don’t give a shit- they just go for it with out-there wall art. And I love it.

Famous octupus triptych that’s made its rounds on the internet:

So on Art.com, I spent hoursssssssss playing around with different large, water-related photos that would make an insane statement. The cool thing about the site is that you can actually “frame” the photo, and scale it, and see what it looks like in different ‘living rooms.’ They have like 8 or so room set-ups with paint and furniture, and you drag the painting into it to see how it can look. So like, I looked through FOUR BILLION photos to find the ones I personally liked, then framed them based on like 40 frame options, and then dropped them into certain rooms. So it’s not like “order your shark print here!” It was my creation, not a pat option. I played around with some crazy shark photos:

Two different great white options:

And a super extra-terrestrial esque scuba one, that I really really liked and debated down to the wire:

Buttt, we ultimately settled on “Fish on Reef” because I liked the visual interest of the spots on the giant Grouper fish, the little pops of neon yellow from the diver’s flippers and the little fish, and the electric lavender color of the grouper.

Of course when it came I was like, Alina what the fuck have you done. I still can’t tell if it’s fantastic and just needs the right scenery, or if it’s totally tacky and awful.

BUT, here is what I am thinking. I think the reason it looks awesome in the “test photos” is because since it’s such a bold, loud, colorful piece, it needs to be balanced out with sleek, straight, masculine, white lines. Those square club chairs are the perfect accompanying pieces to the photo. I’d envisioned it also in a really sleek dining room- with a long white table, white chairs, that photo, a great flower arrangement, and some natural accents. Obviously it looks like SHIT in that photo up above because our dining room overall looks like shit because it’s thrown together with free pieces from unknown neighbors and $35 dollar Ikea and Home Depot accents. Like what is this dining room. It’s an abomination to my visual senses. The red and blue rug? It’s there for two reasons: (1) it was better than JUST the Parquet, staring back up at me in their conceited way– “we’re all you’ve got, just a whole bunch of PARQUET SQUARES, STARING AT YOU IN OUR HORRIBLE GLOSSY AMBER WOOD COLOR, NAKED.” Naked Parquet– horrific. And 2.) it was free.

But the red/blue/yellow primary colors of the rug + the black of the chalkboard wall and pink colored chalk– it’s really NOT doing it for us anymore. So this is what I imagine though—- imagine if we TOTALLY lightened up the room. Like THESE dining rooms:

(Camille Styles’ gorgeous dining room)

So we get like a white or cream or grey rug, paint over the chalkboard wall BACK to a white, swap our wicker dining chairs for white ones– and then hung the picture behind the dining table. THAT IS MY VISION. And when I envision it like that, I think the piece will be a really cool background to a white/neutral dining room. My friend who is an interior designer/genius is going to come over and give me some thoughts. I texted her tonight “I got an insane photograph of a scuba diver and a grouper. Can’t tell if it’s awesome or tacky. I am troubled.”

I mean right now with the parquet and the rest of our dollar-store dining room of course it’s awful, but I PICTURE it in a white room with sleek lines and I can see it. And all that room would take is a coat of paint, a different rug, and selling our current chairs to get new ones. Easy. I’m going to see what she says. I have 30 days to return it so I’m going to give it a chance to show its potential without all of the strikes against it right now, that aren’t its fault (mainly– the parquet and the chalkboard and the wicker).

that’s all for now! I got some really cute new shoes and I was going to post about them in this post since it’s entitled “some shit”, but………….I’m now too lazy to continue so I’ll make it a separate post tomorrow.

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Filed under Home Decor, Inspiration, Interior Design

June 6, 2012 · 11:55 am

A NEW COUCH AT LONG LAST!!!! And more information than you could ever want to know about it

Specifically, it’s an L-couch with a CHAISE, and it’s a beautifully made piece– very very nice bones and upholstery, like a real true big-person couch, but for $525! Which split with my boyfriend was $250 each!!! It was from Miss Pixies– an indoor flea market of sorts in DC, where they buy nice pieces at auction. I wonder what the previous owners were like. I believe it was a very expensive, very nice couch, probably like 2K. It’s absolutely beautiful in person, the lines and body.

My boyfriend and I have been searching for the perfect couch for our space for over seven months. When we moved in, we were far too poor to afford anything but Ikea. He was at a different job and had taken a massive paycut, and the cost of moving is always so expensive. We just could not DO anything but Ikea, it wasn’t an option.

Since then, we kept trying to find the perfect piece that was $500 or under, which is quite frankly extremely difficult to do. Couches, even the smallest ones are extremely expensive! A tiny loveseat that isn’t comfortable to recline on and doesn’t accommodate houseguests and just isn’t comfortable period, can be $450 upwards! Comfort is a key factor, because it’s inane to spend a dollar on a couch that discourages it’s very purpose– BEING SAT ON. We are very very very living-room centric people. We value TV and movies. Snuggling up on the couch after work, with whiskey for him and chocolate milk for me, enriching our lives with the genius of Seinfeld (reigns supreme), Mad Men, The Killing, South Park, Family Guy, etc. As I type this very post, my boyfriend is reclined with the Celtics play-off game on.

On top of being restricted by money and needing solid quality comfort, I’ve never been a person who likes the idea of getting upholstery from a thrift store, Craigslist, or outdoor flea market. Well first off, there’s the fact that I’ve never legitimately found a nicely-kept upholstered piece I WANTED at any of those places. To me, the selection is always really shabby and shitty. Dirty, gross reject pieces that don’t have good bones and are just kind of nasty. Like I’ve legitimately never once desired to walk away with a piece of upholstery from a flea market or thrift store. I’m sure there are real gems out there, but I’ve never seen one because I feel that the good pieces don’t end up at a flea market. They get auctioned. OK, maybe at the really incredible markets in New York and LA and Portland and such, but in DC you don’t find like…”your perfect dream couch” at Eastern Market. And honestly the shit there is laughably overpriced. I see crappy wooden side tables for like $850 at Eastern Market and I literally laugh inside. Not because $850 is beyond my price range for anything, which obviously it is, but because the sellers really crack me up with how absurd that is. Like, do you take me for some kind of idiot? Your wooden side table is a piece of shit. They think because it’s on Capitol Hill and it’s DC’s oldest market and has all this history and it’s near the homes of famous politicians and senators, that any chump will buy their loser wood or upholstery for ridiculous prices. I think Eastern Market is a joke. Sorry, DC. (Well, at LEAST in terms of furniture sellers. I have found some cool jewelry there. But not furniture).

Craigslist is a crapshoot too, and you don’t know the seller, and you don’t know if there’s nasty shit like bed bugs or god knows what.I don’t think I’ll ever go to a flea market and come home with a piece of upholstery….it’s too risky/sketchy!! Lord KNOWS where the pieces came from, they could have picked it up off the sidewalk of a dilapidated crack neighborhood. I also don’t believe in buying furniture online like on ebay. You need to SEE the piece in person to really understand it’s mass and visual impression and how it will look in your place. And, obviously, you need to sit on it. And also shipping large pieces of furniture such as a couch from anywhere but the city you live in is, in my personal opinion, idiotic. It’s like a $200 addition to the cost of the couch.

On the other hand, a place like Miss Pixies is a professional establishment basically run by interior designers. They’ve been buying pieces from auctions and estate sales for years, it’s literally their job to know what has value and then mark it up a bit in order to make a living. (Whereas I feel like flea market sellers will legit find an abandoned crack couch in an alley and try to sell it to hipsters for $400 at their flea market). The peeps at Miss Pixie’s know what to look for. They know when they see an item worth buying and attempting to sell at their store. And they have a brand to represent, so they’re not going to buy some ghetto piece of furniture from a sketchy place because that would just make them look bad. They’ve created a business that’s trustworthy and reputable so an upholstered piece there is legitimate. And beyond all of that, there’s just the rational common sense of…..your eyes. Trust me, you don’t have to know a thing about interior design, or upholstery, or couches, to know when you spot a good quality couch that’s in perfect condition.

There was hardly an ounce of wear to this thing, and it tickled my inner historian with delight imagining what it could have been like in its last home. I seriously see a rich person having it in their extra sun room that no one EVER went in or used and thus no one ever used the couch. It didn’t have a shed of trouble spots or stains or just…anything! The pillows are so full and thick and robust, there’s no depression/sinking. I was in SHOCK. I almost want to call the owners and beg them to tell me more details about the piece…..what state it came from first of all! I’m just fascinated with it.And it’s so comfortable and stately. It COMPLETELY transformed our living room. It’s the best design and money-spent decision we’ve ever made.

As more back story, we’ve been casually looking for the perfect piece at the perfect price point since October. Not super actively, more passively like….’we’ll know it when the opportunity comes.’ Basically the only two stores I would check or would buy upholstery from are Miss Pixie’s and GoodWood. (I chronicled a tragic experience about losing a couch from GoodWood because it was about 1 inch to big to fit through our door which you can read here). But I stop into these stores 3 times a week not even with the predetermined intent to look for a couch, just because they’re part of my life, and literally part of my social experience in DC. Like I get coffee, stroll through the neighborhood, and stop in whenever I have nowhere to be, and then while I’m there, it’s a side-thought of seeing if maybe our dream couch happens to be chilling there. And clearly, for 8 months, it has not been.

But last Tuesday, the day had arrived. I was walking from my house to my friend’s house to catch up on the Bachelorette, and Miss Pixies is a happy part of the route. As I passed by, the couch was in the window and I died on the spot. I ducked in so fast, reclined on it, and freaked when she told me the price. I asked a bunch of questions, and she told me it had literally JUST come in….if you ever visit Miss Pixies, there is a big painted sign behind the cash register that kindly informs you “Tuesdays are the best day, we get all the week’s new inventory.” Like they had l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y just put the couch in the window when I walked by. She said “you are the first person to see or sit on this.”

[It has a subtle zebra print. But it's quite elegant and chic in person. It really, sadly does not photograph well. It looks significantly more wonderful in person.]

So, I texted my boyfriend a picture of the couch and called him to say……….’I think now is time. I think we have found our winner, and need to pull the trigger because this is a real catch.’ Like those stories you hear about. I knew we’d have to buy it that night or it would sell. But we were freaking out about dimensions. I asked the lady what the dimensions were like a thousand times (she was ready to kill me), and the problem was that the store would close before we’d be able to get back to the house and re-measure everything (just to be sure), and confidently be able to purchase the couch. Plus, Alex hadn’t even seen it in person.

Well…EVERYTHING about it was fate because first of all, I called the woman and she said “we hold for 2 hours, and because it’s 6 and we’re closing at 7, that means I’ll hold it for you for one hour into opening tomorrow.” So first feat– I had it on hold overnight. But, Alex wouldn’t be able to leave work the next day just to go visit a stupid couch (the store wouldn’t open until 11 am, and anyways we share a car and I take it to work, so he would have had to take a cab from his job to the store). So…….. it’s pure chance that Miss Pixies happens to have FLOOR TO CEILING GLASS WINDOWS THAT STAY OPEN AT NIGHT, and that this couch was IN THE WINDOW and the LIGHTS STAY ON SO YOU CAN SEE…..(because Miss Pixies has a huge sales floor and a room in the back that frequently houses couches, so what if it had been back there? Or what if it was Goodwood, which closes up and turns off the lights so even if the couch was in the front window (which they never are because the space inside doesn’t allow for them to put couches at the front), they close the lights off so you can’t see anyways). SO WHAT THAT MEANS, GUYS, is that it hit me like a light bulb that Alex could meet me and see the couch!!! So ALEX MET ME IN FRONT OF THE STORE (it was 10 p.m.), and was able to SEE the couch!!

I honest to goodness wasn’t sure what his take would be, and he adored it, and so that next morning at 11 am we called back, and with a simple phone sale the bad boy was ours! And Alex told me they couldn’t deliver it until Saturday, at which I was devastated, but he was a sneaky little surpriser and it came that night!!!!! I hugged the upholstered cushions when they came. And then we spent our first night together on our amazing, grown-up, chaise-lounge couch.

GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT! AND THOSE WHO WALK TO THEIR FRIENDS’ HOUSE TO WATCH THE BACHELORETTE, AND MISS PIXIES HAPPENS TO BE ON THE WAY TO THAT FRIEND’S HOUSE, AND IT HAPPENS TO BE TUESDAY, WHICH HAPPENS TO BE THE DAY THAT MISS PIXIE’S GETS THEIR NEW STUFF, AND IT HAPPENED TO BE IN THE FUCKING FRONT GLASS WINDOW, BECAUSE IF IT HADN’T HAVE BEEN, I WOULDN’T HAVE GONE IN TO THE STORE, BECAUSE LIKE I SAID, I ONLY STOP IN WHEN I HAVE THE TIME AND HAVE NOWHERE TO BE, BUT ON THAT NIGHT, I DID HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE, AND IT WAS MY FRIENDS HOUSE, SO NOWHERE IN THE PLAN WAS I GOING TO STOP INTO MISS PIXIE’S TO ‘HAVE A LOOK AROUND,’ BUT I HAPPEN TO HAVE SOMETHING ALL HUMANS HAVE CALLED PERIPHERAL VISION, SO AS I WALKED BY THE STORE, I HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO SEE THE WHITE BEAUTY GLISTENING OUT OF THE CORNER OF MY EYE, WHICH IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN IF IT HAD BEEN PLACED ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE STORE OTHER THAN THE FRONT, AND THE STORE HAPPENED TO BE CLOSING SOON SO NO OTHER HUMAN WOULD HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SNATCH THE COUCH UP FIRST, AND BECAUSE OF THE GLASS WINDOWS, ALEX WAS ABLE TO SEE IT DESPITE NOT GETTING OFF WORK UNTIL 10 P.M. THAT NIGHT, WHICH IS WHAT ENABLED US TO BE ABLE TO BUY IT, BECAUSE IF ALEX HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO SEE IT IN PERSON THAT NIGHT, HE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO MAKE IT TO THE STORE UNTIL THE FOLLOWING NIGHT AFTER WORK, WHICH WOULD HAVE MEANT THAT THE NEXT MORNING THE STORE WOULD HAVE RELEASED THE HOLD AND IT WOULD HAVE SOLD. OF THAT I AM SURE.

This is what it looked like at first, naked of pillows:

Then I found these awesome black-and-white striped pillows from Ikea for $3.99 each that I felt added the perfect bold, graphic pop. {I’m pretty sure they’re meant to be outdoor pillows but IDGAF they look good}

We weren’t at first sure what to do with the Ikea couch, because it just felt/looks so dumpy compared to the chic, clean shape of the sectional….This is the way the living room was BEFORE the L-couch came:

Then we put those two bamboo director chairs in our bedroom, and obvi put the Ikea couch where they used to be against the window:

Despite being at first unsure, it just makes the living room so cozy and filled-in and gives us and our friends who come over such cozy-comfy seating. From movie marathons, to game days, to friends crashing, there is no point in NOT keeping the Ikea couch there despite it’s sad ugliness compared to the new kid on the block.

As a little history/comparison, this is the way the living room looked the day we moved in (!):

The window area/the whole place has just been BEGGING for a larger more impressive-looking piece of furniture to fill it. It looks so sad and lonely in comparison to the warmth it has now.

I’m so happy that it finnnnnalllly feels like a HOME!

The glass side table that sits perfectly between both couches was a buy from a couple weeks back that I’d been meaning to blog about. It was $95.00! Oh my god.

The weird thing was that this was one of those weird, very rare times that I actually do set out WITH A PURPOSE. I woke up that Saturday morning and said “today is the day I’m going to look for a round, glass, side table.” The reason being: we needed another arm-level surface for a table-top light and drinks, and EVERY SINGLE THING in the living room is/was square. Every single thing. And also we had white, masculine, leather, and mirrored surfaces but not one ounce of glass. In interior design you really need a mix of heights, shapes, and textures. You don’t want all your accent pieces to all be leather, or all be glass. I never expected to actually find the exact dream piece I didn’t even know I was looking for (meaning yes, I knew I was looking for a round glass table but I didn’t know I wanted the legs to be an amazing cool yellow steel), but for some reason it another fateful, lucky day…

I walked into Goodwood and within 1 minute spotted this table, and was worried to check the tag because I knew I loved it so much that I would buy it unless it was truly prohibitively expensive, like 400 dollars. AND IT WAS $95.

$95 DOLLARS.

A BEAUTIFUL, FUNKY, EDGY, AWESOME, ROUND GLASS SIDE TABLE THAT’S THE PERFECT HEIGHT, THE PERFECT SIZE, AND HAS A RUSTED, YELLOW STEEL, INDUSTRIAL-LOOKING BASE THAT ADDS THE PERFECT POP OF BRIGHT COLOR???? ARE YOU KIDDING??? I LOVE GOODWOOD!!! LOOK AT THE BASE! HOW COOL IS IT?!?!

This is what it looked like in the store:

$95 are you KIDDING ME??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anna (the owner, who I uncomfortably idolize), told me that it used to be hers and Dans! And then, that it used to be Scotty’s (one of the shopkeeps), so she said it was very Goodwood-loved.

Then, she helped me style the table top with super cheap AMAZING finds. The best parts by far are the outrageously fantastic brass table lamp- perfect shape, perfect height, perfect size, for $45.00, and the creepy/amazing blue crystalized jelly fish! It adds this perfect little dose of color and is just awesome.

And its new resting place (before the couch swap):

AND THE FINAL. END. PRODUCT!

I was looking at the space in person the other day, thinking, wow man, this looks like a million bucks, in a proud/humble way {haha you may mock that and disagree, but I am obviously very proud of and thrilled with the way of it looks}, and was just really taken aback (in a good way) at how you can pull something together with extremely inexpensive pieces. The brown ‘leather’ arm chair was from TJ Maxx and was free because my mom gave it to me (the woman lives at TJ Maxx and it’s the only place she can afford items); the little mirrored cube that has the hydrangeas on it and sits in front of the Ikea couch was a $20 clearance find at Pier 1 two years ago, the Ikea coffee table is $35, the throw pillows were $3.99, the framed picture above the couch was $11 clearance from West Elm over 3 years ago {I believe I will go to the grave with that being the singlehandedly most incredible purchase I’ve ever made, in terms of the insanely low price for what it was. I ordered it online back when I had no idea what West Elm even was, this was 2009, and I thought I was ordering an 8 1/2 by 11 framed print (like the size of computer paper). I didn’t look at the dimensions, I literally thought “oh it’s a cool $11-dollar desktop print”, and it came in the mail in this giant cardbox box and my mind was B-L-O-W-N. Nothing has ever made less sense. It was a complete fluke because West Elm has good sales but not to the extent of a massive framed photograph– and it’s a really fucking COOL photograph too– being 11 dollars. The mailman delivered it and I opened it up and felt like I was on The Truman Show.); and of course you now know the story of the couch and the glass side table/lamp; any of the other lighting is Ikea and Home Goods (my Refinery 29 editor even gave me the pink Ikea lamp off to the very left so that was free), the modular TV stand is Ikea (and was my boyfriends before we met), and the big burlap pillows with the blue stripes I got with a discount when I worked at CB2. Like this was a straight up BUDDDGGGGGGGGGGETTTTTTTT operation, and I legitimately think it fools people, which is the goal of course.

Fhewwwwwwwwwwwwwww that was a long post. I think I’ve been writing for 5 hours. I’m not kidding. I’m pretty sure I’ve been writing this post since 5:30 p.m. today and it’s 10:30. Jesus. But I’m saving this post to publish tomorrow morning (aka this morning….aka…you’re reading it now, in the morning…. because that’s when I’m publishing it even though I’m writing it now, in the present tense, at 10 p.m….get it…???)

Hope you enjoyed it…!

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Filed under Home Decor, Interior Design, My things

March 14, 2012 · 4:05 pm

26th Birthday Party

For my SUMMER themed 26th birthday party, this is what I wore. A little Aztec print pink-and-purple mini with fun cut-outs on the sides, that I got for like $30 bones at a neighborhood store on the day of. Very Coachella style. Throw on a floppy hat and 40 thousand arm bracelets and I’d look like how the rest of the 10 million tricks at Coachella dress.

It was still kind of cold out on my birthday, believe it or not since it’s now like 80 degrees, so I wore my leather {Pleather, really} leggings underneath. I’m OBSESSED with these leggings. They were $16 bucks from Windsor and I literally WANT to marry them. I’ve worn them six different ways since they arrived in the mail last week– with chunky knits and ballet flats, with a tee shirt and long cardigan, with this mini-dress. I’m just obsessssssssssssed. On my left hand {holding the phone} I wore this little silver turtle ring I got in Cabo two years ago. It’s my favorite. It’s literally…. an intricately carved TURTLE. With cute little legs and a tail and all this detail on its shell. People always notice it and comment on it.

On the other hand I wore this tiny delicate heart ring I got at Old Hollywood boutique in Brooklyn {they have the BEST delicate, hand-made jewelry and you can also shop it online} + my Nanette Lepore fish ring since it was my birthday and I’m a Pisces. And dark nails. Some shimmery blue-green-black color by Essie. I’m obsessed with it. And my new Dannijo friendship bracelet that my amazing friend Carolina sent me for my birthday!!!!! What a present. I saw the Dannijo box in our mail and FREAKED out. I am such a girl. I don’t think anything has ever gotten me that excited. It’s like getting a Christian Louboutin box in the mail. I love Dannijo’s jewelry but haven’t ever bought one of their pieces for myself b/c of the price point, so to get one as a surprise GIFT in the mail was like HEAVEN.

The party was exxxxxactly as I’d planned it. Hot dogs, condiments, potato chips, caramel corn, coke in old fashioned bottles, mason jars, striped straws, citrus flavored water, white summer blooms, old-school red-checked tablecloth, projector playing Wet Hot American summer, spiked lemonade, etc. It was perfect!

We got 12 of the perfectly-sized mason jars at a hardware store for 9 dollars. We got a few bottles of Mexican coke from a hispanic restaurant in the neighborhood. And then the kettle corn, chips, baked beans, and hot dog fixin’s at Target. I’d found the striped straws {yellow and turquoise}, hot dog bags, and purple gingham popcorn bags from an Etsy seller a few weeks back for about 14 bucks total. The tablecloth was 3.99 at the same hardware store as the mason jars. We got one orange, one lemon, and one cucumber to slice up into the water bottles. It was really a very inexpensive way to entertain since good old fashioned summery American food is about the cheapest food out there. I LOVED the way the lemon, orange, and cucumber peel looked in the old-fashioned water bottles and it flavored the water SO amazingly!! The cucumber was amaaaaaaaazing. Oh and I put out giant colored chalk on the table for people to draw with since we have a chalkboard wall but it also just happens to be a very summery thing.

Ellie made me THE MOST amazing cake EVER IN THE WORLD- double layer yellow with HOMEMADE vanilla icing- as in, she literally whipped the icing herself, and rainbow little round sprinkle decorations. HOly EFF it was good!! THANK YOU ELLIE!!!! And she also got me a MANI PEDI at the Elizabeth Arden spa!! WHAT?!?!?! So excited to use that bad boy.

And my sweet friend Tory got me these gorgeous green and gold bangles that JUST SO HAPPEN to match the sunglasses my boyfriend got me PERFECTLY. He consulted with my friends at Style Etoile and bought the Mathew Williamson Linda Farrow sunglasses I’m wearing in my facebook picture- my favorite picture of me of all time- that my brother took, with the neon feather earrings. This one. So now those are mine. I wear them every day and am obsessed.

Anddddddddd of course we played my favorite movie ever! Nothing like Michael Ian Black in gym shorts. ‘Twas a lovely night.

Sorry I haven’t been great about blogging in like the last 3 months. I’ve basically blogged once a week on average, since December. I mean it’s just winter. Plain and simple. In winter months, I am not myself. In spring and summer months, and 3/4 of the way into Fall, I am. But winter steals my soul and deprives me of everything I get joy out of in life. Things like sunshine, walking, eating outdoors, wandering through the city without shivering through my bones, and walking to my car without wearing 10 layers. I’m really a simple person. All I need to make me happy is the ability to walk outside in one layer. It’s really kind of a JOKE how seasonally affected I am. Like to the extent that if I want to have a happy life, I have no choice but to move to a warmer climate. I absolutely cannot spend the rest of my life being miserable for 3-4 months of out every year. The winter makes me want. to. die. EVERYTHING DIES IN THE WINTER ANYWAYS- life, greenery, trees, flowers, your skin. Squirrels and bears and racoons just go the fuck to bed for 4 months because WHAT THE FUCK ELSE ARE THEY GOING TO DO. They literally take a FOUR MONTH LONG NAP. Honestly- are they going to wake up at 7 and go to yoga and make hot chocolate? No, they don’t play any of that bullshit. They just SLEEP. Which is basically what I do. My soul literally like……dies. I can visually picture my soul: who I am as a person, this little like, ball of my being– like picture a cute little animated ball with legs and eyes- and it’s my soul. And it shrivels up and DIES from December-March every year. You could pronounce it dead. It gets cold and dark and pessimistic and lonely and hopeless and puts on a sleep mask and crawls into a bed and pulls the covers up and throws its deuces up to the world. Peace out guys. And then one day, four months later, birds are chirping and it’s warm out and my little soul pulls the covers back, throws that sleep mask off, hops out of bed, washes its hair, puts on a cute outfit, starts flirting with everything in sight, and just SPRINGS back to life. Shining and pumping and working the way it was made to. The SECOND it gets warm again. I am only alive for 8 months out of every year. Me and my poor little soul friend are just NOT meant to survive the winter. Which, thank god, is hopefully OFFICIALLY over here in DC.

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Filed under Home Decor, Life and things

February 20, 2012 · 3:31 pm

Coffee Table Treasures

While we were in LA, we went into two stores on West Third that had me apoplectic over their wares. The first was New Stone Age- a tiny little store OVERFLOWING with tiny little things.Every single shelf had different weird, interesting, eye-catching, curiosities– things like pillboxes with glittery bugs on top (not real ones obviously…), hand soaps shaped like miniature babies, little paperweights, bowls, quirky bar-ware, etc. I was obsessed with these giant (relatively speaking, compared to most dice) wooden, old-fashioned looking dice that were 2 bucks a pop. I thought they would look really cool and masculine in a small white bowl on the coffee table, something that people could actually use while playing drinking games or just to fiddle with, but also nice-looking. It was $20 bucks for eight of the dice and the little bowl.

In New Stone Age, I also found this glittery pyrite heart that I clearly could not walk away without. I mean it’s a silver, glittery, pyrite heart that looks amazing as-is but can also be a paperweight. I’m such a sucker for decorative objects especially if I can slightly wean a little functionality out of them.

Down the road from New Stone Age, there is a coffee table book store called “OK” and I found three books there that literally stopped me dead in my tracks and compromised the stability of my heart. I’m just that in love with books, books that are visual, typography, and the topics that these three books were about.

Book 1: LOCALS ONLY– A book about California, skating, and the ’70′s.

I mean..AYFKMRN????? As I said to the store clerk and several strangers in the store– THERE ARE THREE THINGS I LOVE IN LIFE: CALIFORNIA, THE ’70′S AND SKATEBOARDING.

A giant coffee table book with sick images of hot skateboarding bros in California in the 1970′s? Goodbye life. Because all I am going to do is get lost in this book every single day of my life. The cover of the book is so cool…..it’s like a little 8- year-old bro–hair hasn’t been cut in like a year, obviously– blonde, ratty– and he’s just doing his thing, totally indifferent to the extremely hot women that past by him to the left. Women that look like Farrah Fawcett, with feathery blonde hair and supersupersuper tan, healthy bodies, and the dude does not give a FUCKKKK. Because he’s skateboarding. #yes.

Second book– Surfing Photographs From The Seventies.

I meannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn……….seriously this book-store was just fucking with me. A COFFEE TABLE BOOK, NOT ONLY ABOUT, BUT ACTUALLY TITLED “SURFING PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SEVENTIES”? I am equally obsessive about surfing and skating culture in California in the ’70s, so the two words are pretty much interchangeable in terms of my fondness for them. And the cover photo is the coolest bro of all time, completely stoned, giving the camera a peace sign, with a giant ‘fro, as he rides out to the wave? YES. SEE YOU ON MY COFFEE TABLE. And the FONT on the cover of the book? That cool white font overlayed on the image of the blue/green water? I mean the book had my money before it even went to print.

Last book was about a very different topic but something I love just as much– a thick fatty book about French New Wave with miss Brigitte Bardot on the cover. That was it in terms of books/objects I bought, but the last new edition to our coffee table is a really great Remix magazine, with a dope cover of Anna Kendrick, looking slick. The black-and-white photo with the turquoise lettering looks awesome. The magazine totally looks like a book. I also love that it’s “The Hollywood Issue” because what do I love more than Hollywood, and also….it’s where I got the magazine so it has the associations of LA already. Definitely keeping that one for gooood. We accidentally stole it from our hotel. Woops. Sorry I am not sorry.

The other things on the table are agate coasters from the MOMA store; a little bowl of red-and-pink hershey’s kisses for Valentine’s Day; one of my skeleton trays that we use for the remotes; and two little numbered pillboxes I got at a tiny boutique in Brooklyn, called, INCIDENTALLY enough, Old Hollywood. Weird. And then we have a corner of stacked books that are hyper masculine– a book about the World Series, my boyfriend’s Bowdoin College yearbook, a book called “Red Sox Century” (he’s slightly obsessed being from Boston and all…..), and a Travel Book. Oh and then my Downtown Chic coffee table book by the Novogratz’s– that attractive family of 9 that had a reality show about their design firm called “Nine by Design.”

So that’s that. PS–> After my super emo post on Saturday, it was hilarious because we walked outside and it was like 60 degrees and warm. HAHAH, I was SO emo and poetic, about the cold winter air, and how it was such an assault on our senses, and so far from the sunny beaches of Venice California, and then we walked outside and it was sunny and sixty. Awkward. Whatever it’s normally freezing here okay? And DC still isn’t Venice. Even when it’s sunny.

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Filed under Home Decor, Life and things

February 2, 2012 · 4:56 am

Our Almost-done but-still-in-the-works entryway, and other new things around the house, and a rant about the tragedy of losing a couch to your loser doorframe that’s too small for the couch to fit in, and loving GoodWood

IT’S FINALLY FURNISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All it took was one giant piece of amazing wall art, and a hallway runner. That’s it. EXCEPT for a tiny little thin narrow console table that will go directly underneath the horse photo. Clearly that blank, bare wall space isn’t meant to just be chilling naked like that. I mean it’s basically going to have to be like 2 inches wide haha. I’m certain I can find something that will work for the space though, tiny it may be. Also, I’m really in to the peach colored roses in a vintage mint julep cup, because they contrast really nicely with the navy. Peach and navy is where it’s at. Also with the grey too.

Walls: Benjamin Moore Old Navy, like 10 bucks or something from any hardware store
Pendant paper lamp: Ikea Maskros, $49.99
Grey and white hallway rug (the cute motiff of which matches the pendant lamp perfectly!!!!! Obsessed}, Overstock.com, $109.99
Black and white Horse Print, blown the fuck up: $90.00, Etsy seller Apple and Oats
White frame for the print: Ikea Ribba, $24.99
Little white square table: TJ Maxx 3 years ago, stolen from my mother

We painted the walls and hung the pendant lamp pretty much the weekend we moved in, so it’s been 3 months of empty hallway, waiting to be filled with art and a rug. I knew from day one that I want to blow this very horse print up and hang it where it now lies.One day while on Etsy, this print happened to be on the homepage feed. I was in love before I even clicked, and then clicked to it and was OBSESSED, like beyond words. I could NOT get it out of my head. I almost ordered the 8 1/2 by 11 but knew it would look SICK blown up as big as the seller would blow it up. I favorited the print (an Esty term, you ‘favorite’ the things you’re lusting after with a little heart) and it’s been in my favorites for like 6 months till I could afford to blow it up. This past week, I convo-ed the seller and she could not have been more responsive and helpful and amazing. To blow it up to the size I wanted, which was specific to the Ikea frame, it was $90.00. I went according to the Ikea Ribba because the Ikea Ribba is a CLAAAAAAAAAAAASSIC frame in the design world for poor people. It’s like the Ikea lack table or the Ektorp couch– just Ikea legends. And that’s because the ribba is huge (at least the biggest size of it is) and framing is extreeeeeemley expensive. A piece of glass the size of the ribba I used for the print would be like $800. So I specifically told the seller I wanted the photo to fit the ribba. It had to be slightly bigger but that’s because the photo lab only prints specific sizes, so my dad helped me cut the photo down using an exacto knife to fit perfectly in the frame. God bless Ikea. I mean what would anyone do without it. Custom frame? LOLOLOL that’s hiLARIOUS guys, hilarious. I can’t EXPLAIN how in love I am with how it looks. It’s a SICK photograph. Just SO awesome, the contrast and detail. Obsessed.

Doesn’t it look awesome?!

With a cute little rustic console underneath? Done and done.

ALSO new in the home is this amazing, graphic, geometric, pink/orange/black pillow that I am IN LOVE WITH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was $30.00 at Urban Outfitters {currently still online}. It lives in our TJ Maxx Director’s chair that my mom gave to us. It was begging for a colorful graphic pillow and was lame without one, so I’ve been browsing the ‘net for months looking for JUST THE RIGHT ONE and low and behold friends, THIS WAS IT. It’s currently my boyfriend’s favorite thing in our house. And that does not make him gay.

This slab of marble was $15.00 at my favorite store in DC, Goodwood. It’s real marble– it’s the heaviest thing IN THE WORLD. ever. I cannot pick it up. I don’t know why it was $15 but Goodwood sometimes has things at ABSURDLY low prices and I actually do know why: it’s because they just want to move them. They have such incredible turn over, they are always going on buying trips, and you can tell sometimes that they price things to move them. Like their business model is basically having AMAZING new things pretty much every three days, so they don’t want something to sit in the store for weeks at a time being un-bought. We got our wood, Mad Men-y nightstands for $100.00 total, for BOTH. Ridiculous. Below, mine, with white+green hydrangeas in a mint julep cup, my design books (The Selby, Design Sponge, Domino), and a little brass swan I found on Etsy for $8.00 where I keep hair things and jewelry that I take off right before bed.My boyfriend’s, with fresh purple flowers I got today at Harris Teeter for $4.00 (they always have seasonal bunches 3 for 12.00), a $2.99 Ikea candle (obsessed with these– the Tindra, they’re 2.99 and look great and smell amazing, like vanilla cinammon sugar), a West Elm tray, and his Kindle.

So back to the marble tray: we first noticed it because it was sitting between the most amazing couch we’ve ever come across in our lives. It was rattan, it was MAGNIFICENT, it was uniquely shaped and masterfully constructed with gorgeous curved corners. It had brown curdory-ish upholstery, and a space between the two seating areas that the Goodwood people had styled using the marble tray and coffee table books.

It was, in my life, the most amazing piece of furniture I’ve ever seen, in terms of how VISUALLY cool it was with that space. My boyfriend and I kept imagining its functionality during a dinner party, with people sitting down and having a place to put their cheese and wine. We were going to use the marble tray as a cheese-and-wine platter and kept picturing our guests sitting down at the couch to use the built-in tray area. It was $350.00 and we HAD THE MONEY AND TRIED TO BUY IT, literally, Dan, the owner, came over and I was like “we’re buying it!” and he instantly goes “okay well, it’s very very wide and has no give because it’s a giant box of wood, so go home and measure.” And I was like, Dan, you practical dog you. Dan knows INSTANTLY what to consider because his enTIRE business is in buying and selling these pieces and he’s gone on a MILLION deliveries and knows exACLTY what specific parts of individual pieces of furniture are going to cause the issue. I was SO EXCITED to tell him that we were buying it so I beckoned Dan over (he knows me by face because I go in three times a week), and was like WE’RE BUYING IT! and he goes, “It’s really wide and the wood doesn’t give so it’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to get it into a small doorway, can you take your door off?” and I was like, “Alex can we take our door off” ( like I know) and Dan put a hold tag on the couch and said “I’ll throw in the tray for you guys, go home and measure,” SO SWEET, and so we go home, like soooooooo wary because we just know, that if Dan is skeptical about dimensions, it’s not looking good.

And so we roll home and do a SHIT ton of measuring, including attempting to roll our Ikea couch out the door, which we couldnt do no matter HOW many angles we tried, because the Ikea couch gets delivered packed down, so it’s muchhh bigger when it’s no longer packed, and the problem was that the couch at Goodwood was four inches longer and wider and taller than our Ikea. So over thirty minutes, we GRAVELY had to accept our somber reality. There was not a chance in HELL that the couch would fit. Not one.

Alex and I were LITERALLY distraught. Like DiSTRAUGHT. We kept looking at each other going “this isn’t happening is it?” THIS IS NOT REAL.” I was like “Alex, WE HAVE TO JUST MAKE IT FIT. DAN CAN MAKE IT FIT. DAN CAN DO IT. DAN CAN MAKE THIS COUCH FIT” with an increasingly desperate and hysterical tone. And then we’d both stare silently off into space for five minutes and go…”Dan can’t do it. No one can. It’s over. Our lives are over. This couch cannot fit.” And then I’d get a burst of hopeful energy and be like “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DOOR ALEX! WE HAVEN’T TRIED TO TAKE THE DOOR OFF!”, knowing that the door would give us like, 2 more centimeters of space, not 4 inches. For the next 5 hours all we talked about was how badly we wanted to end our own lives. Alex said he wanted to drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and take the marble slab to a park and pay a homeless person $15.00 to hit him across the head with it. I told him I planned to sleep on the floor in the place of where the couch would have gone. That at 3 am that night, he would find me curled up, on the floor, where the couch was supposed to go.

We had to drive back to the store, and when we got there, Dan was on another delivery. We literally felt betrayed, as though Dan cares about our lives or inability to fit a couch into our house. We were SO DEPRESSED and our lives were over, and Dan was just out, with another city-couple, on another city-delivery, helping them move in a couch that probably did fit into their stupid city-apartment. Dan like, does not care whether we were going to buy the couch for $350 or not because he is so anti sales person. He is just the coolest fucking guy in the world who buys amazing shit and runs the coolest business and is so realistic and legit. I love Dan. Dan couldn’t know less who I am except he knows my face as someone who goes there a lot. He’s not trying to sell you on anything. When we were checking out the couch all he said was, “do you know the dimensions of your doorway, it’s a big piece. I’ll put it on hold and throw in the tray,” and then walks away into the night. He couldn’t be nicer. He is just SO COOL. He’s exactly like how you would picture him. Tall and german or something (I probably made up the German part but he seems influenced by something not American). Dan and Anna are Washington legends. They have the coolest house I’ve ever seen, except not seen, just stalked from an Apartment Therapy house tour. I am obsessed with them. I go in every weekend and smile all big and am like “HEY DAN AND ANNA, WHAT’S NEW!!!” The Store looks great!!! HOW ‘BOUT THESE NEW PIECES YOU BROUGHT IN!” And they’re like “hey” and then go back to being cool. I literally might as well go in wearing pigtails and carrying blueberry pie for them. Like I’m such a tool compared to them. I want to be the third member of their marriage. It’s fine. One time I emailed Dan about how I wanted these Mid Century Modern Chairs and a Mexican blanket, and was like so cheerful and descriptive and friendly and it was like 5 paragraphs long and he wrote back “we have a mexican blanket. It’s $50.00 at the front of the store.” AMAZING. Marry me Dan and Anna.

So anyways we were upset because we obviously wanted to tell Dan OURSELVES that he was right, and the couch didn’t fit, and our lives were over. So we tried to convey to the store people who were working, to PLEASE tell Dan how devastated we were. We were like “Seriously, we are about to take our own lives, can you please tell Dan HOW sad we are, please tell him,” as though Dan gave ONE SHIT. Seriously when we left the store and Dan came back from his other cool delivery, the people were probably like “um this crazy couple wanted us to tell you that they were suicidal that they couldn’t fit the couch?” And dan’s answer was literally probably: “who?” or “what couch.” So obviously after that we had to get the tray. The tray that Dan was going to ‘throw in’ for us with the couch. Ugh, so cool. But since we didn’t GET THE COUCH we just bought it for $15. Sad day.

So now it’s here. With pine cone candle holders and fresh purple flowers.

This is our living room right now: I ADORE our three city windows– see right there, where the blue bench is? That’s where the couch would have gone, and where whatever couch we DO get will go. And our bedroom, in case you missed it. It’s twice the size of what you’re seeing in the picture- the other half isn’t done yet.

Our home is being used as the set for a photoshoot on Saturday so I’m very very excited!!!! Though would be 10x as more excited if that stupid fucking couch had fit through our goddamn door. I mean REALLY. How badly can a DOOR FRAME fuck you over? I was ready to airlift the couch in from the outside windows. I wanted to hire a carpenter to saw it in half so it would fit through the door and then glue it back together once inside. ALL VERY PRACTICAL IDEAS.

‘s All for now. Its midnight. good night.

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Filed under Home Decor, Life and things, LOLz, Uncategorized

December 8, 2011 · 3:32 pm

Chalkboard Wall Calendar

Seeing as how obsessed I am with visual planning, to-do lists, calendars, schedules, etc., I am really surprised it took me 1 full month of having a chalkboard wall in my home to think of making it into a GIANT MONTHLY CALENDAR. I mean I don’t know what I’ve been thinking using this wall for anything BUT this. It’s amazing. I love the clean, organized, graphic look of a grid calendar, and the rustic dusty chalkboard effect. I love how the whole thing looks, with our bright white table, christmas lights, wicker chairs, bright pink flowers, and pine cone candle holders. (These were a 10-dollar find on Amazon and I ADORE them!!!!! I’m looking at them right now and just want to kiss them.)

Moooore pics of the new place (CHALKBOARD WALLS ARE SO.FUN.)

My favorite part of our place is the three huge windows in our living room. They let in so much light, and make the place look so warm and inviting and BIG(!) and they look out onto a park.

From different angles:

I am IN LOVE with our darling little kitchen. I get excited and happy every single time I walk into it. Like I’ll be watching TV, and then get up to get water, and walk in and squeal out loud because it never stops exciting me no matter how many times I walk into it. I just think it’s so cute, and I love the window that overlooks the same park and pretty trees as the living room does.I can’t BELIEVE my boyfriend and dad doubted me on painting that chalkboard rectangle in the kitchen. Can you IMAGINE what it looked like before that? I shudder. This is what we ate today.

Chalkboard art is apparently a theme in the place, because my friend got me this adorable chalkboard glass CUTTING BOARD, and it now sits permanently on the left side of the sink. I love how it looks. I picked up these plum-colored Fall flowers at Harris Teeter for four bucks today. The bouquet was big enough to put them in three different vases. I really like the deep, seasonal color. They look much better than the hot pink I had the other day. I was wondering why something was off, and even though I liked the pink and liked the pop of color they added, they were just too summery. They were so pink they were practically fluroescent, and since it’s so cold and cozy out now, and Thanksgiving is near, a plum is much better! I picked up this thank you note at a random boutique in Soho this past summer. I knew I could make one myself with glue and glitter, but I figured I might as well support some local artist. She was selling a bunch of glittery stationary that was adorable. I love its simplicity. I couldn’t bear to fill out and send it to someone and say goodbye to it, so now I just like how it looks as a small piece of art. Especially with the holidays coming up, the glitter is perfectly festive.

You guys- we didn’t realize, until it was at our disposal, HOW MUCH FUCKING. FUN. having a GIANT notepad on your wall is.

I am a huuuuuuuuge list person, and so to have my most important lists be able to be projected on a huge wall, that I can never miss or forget, and can always look at and keep present in my mind, and have it look AWESOME and aesthetically pleasing at the same time? It’s a DREAM!! My boyfriend and I woke up on Friday and went to town making lists. We started with the television series we want to start watching from BEGINNING to END, methodically, every single episode. Now that we live under the same roof, this is much easier. Here is our list: {NEVERMIND the “People to Kill” list that you might have noticed in the larger photograph. My boyfriend’s friend came over and thought it was funny to mar our beautiful lists with a joking list of who to kill. I was too lazy to erase it pre-photograph but I don’t find it amusing. The word “kill” just looks ugly in print because of its associations. He put: People to Kill–> Bob in 341 and Kirsten Dunst. Very funny.) Back to our TV list–, yes The Hills/Laguna Beach/The City was my choice. I am obsessed with those shows but for awhile, didn’t have cable and missed out on so many episodes, and want to start them totally over. Laguna Beach especially makes me really nostalgic. That’s what my friends and I LIVED ON in high school. Ugh, Stephen. So hot. So did we miss any good shows from this list? We already watch The Killing and Homeland. Oh and I am adding “How to Make it In America” to it. What major, good shows are we missing? Let me know in the comments please!!

We also made a list of “things we need for the apartment”, and “cities”, which can mean cities we want to visit or cities we want to live in eventually. The chalkboard is fun to dream on.

THE BEDROOM: is quite frankly an embarrassment. It is SO BIG and we only have enough furniture to fill 20 percent of it!!! It is a massive, space. We came with two things: a dresser, and a bed. We don’t even have a headboard. It needs paint, it needs curtains, it needs art, it needs some MAJOR furniture– like a seating area or book shelf or couch or desk, but we won’t be able to afford any of that for a few months so it’s basically just…the place where we sleep for now. It’s going to be hard to furnish it. Pictures do not do it justice- it is SO LONG. Like the size of the space that is furnished– that half with bed and dresser? There is like one-and-a-half more of those, just EMPTY! This is peeking in from the hallway with the bathroom–And this, my friends, is my closet. For my OBSESSION with visuals– my need to SEE everything, it’s the most perfect closet I ever could have imagined. It’s like it was made with my obsession in mind– to just walk in and SEE, all at once, every single pair of shoes I own. I HATE when things are tucked away and hidden. It’s so so so nice to SEE everything!!! It’s the best closet I’ve ever had and possibly ever will have, in terms of rentals. One day when I own something I can BUILD whatever I want, but I can’t imagine another rental having something this perfect for a visual person. I’ve seen gagillions of closets over my life– from everywhere I’ve lived and rented in the past, to all of my friends’ places, and never seen something this perfect for its ability to display everything, all at once. The shoe shelves are orgasmic. It’s just like, TA DA- here I am. My boyfriend has a closet in the hall. It was HIS idea!!!Quite happy, but mostly just happy to be living with him in OUR place. And cook together {him exclusively, but I’ll come up with concepts and do the grocery shopping and help stir things}, and watch TV, and paint and do home improvement projects and snuggle and have people over for drinks and game nights (even though games make me want to kill myself) and just finally have an awesome place in the SICKEST location!!!!!!!We are in HEAVEN. Last weekend we woke up, and WALKED to Tryst. One of my favorite places in this city (a funky lil coffee/brunch joint in Adam’s Morgan with the bessst atmosphere and music}. Then we walked down to U street and furniture-browsed at GoodWood, and Miss Pixies {indoor flea market CRACK}, and then walked up to the Target/Marshall’s in Columbia Heights, and just kept high fiving each other going ‘urban couple’, URBAN.COUPLE. You have to know our sense of humor to know in what tone we are saying that…. We are just so happy to finally be living in THE.CITY. Where we can be at our favorite bar in a 3 block walk. There is a Harris Teeter IN OUR BUILDING!!!! {okay it’s not IN it, but you walk out the side door, walk TEN STEPS, and you’re there. For all intents and purposes it is IN the building.} Harris Teeter is a delicious, and CHEAP grocery store. IT’S HEAVEN. We don’t have to drive anywhere! It’s like having a market at your doorstep. We don’t really keep groceries. Like the Europeans. ; ) We just go there to purchase exactly what we need for exactly the meal we’re going to have. Oh it’s Saturday? What do we want for brunch? Eggs and sausage? Perfect- lets’ walk TWO FEET AND BUY IT AND THEN MAKE IT. And we live so close to so many of our friends. And are just SO HAPPY. We may have a combined total of 67.00 in our checking accounts, but we won the LOTTERY with how big and lovely our space is for how much we’re paying {even thought it’s still outrageous compared to what every single person I know pays in every city BUT dc, and I will forever maintain that it is the most expensive city in terms of rent}, buttttttt we never plan to leave, until we move from DC. As long as we live in DC– in this place we shall stay.