library love (part deux)

d*s reader sam just sent this photo over after seeing jennifer's colorful libary below. sam's not sure where the photo came from (if anyone knows please let us know below so i can properly credit the mag or owner) but we're both in awe of the sheer rainbow of color. this photo is from the home of flickr user chotda. [thanks, sam!]

creative painting

yesterday i spent the afternoon painting a second coat of paint on our dining room walls. i figured some of the splotchy bits would show up in photos so i should really get around to fixing that. halfway through the painting i was cursing our uneven walls and my short legs for not being able to reach the top despite standing on the tallest chair we have. so i took a break and read an email from d*s reader nikki. after seeing what SHE did with paint in her home i felt like a total loser for complaining about a single plain room. nikki received a lighting fixture from a designer friend and decided to mimic the shape of the lamp in paint on the ceiling. it's such an unexpected but beautiful detail. then she added a slew of stripes on the wall by her door and i was suddenly filled with the desire to stripe our whole home. it looks so pretty and really gives life to what could have been a cold studio space. stay tuned for a full sneak peek of nikki's home on the new d*s next week. [thanks, nikki!]

library love

one day when we have room for two seperate rooms of books i'm going to hijack our collection and arrange half of it by color. right now ac prefers to arrange by theme but if this picture of jennifer's home from the domino decorating contest is any indicator- color looks way, way cooler. love that chest of drawers by the front door, too. so cute!

the sound of panic

today i'm heading out early to work on finishing up our apartment. the other day it hit me: i promised i'd do a sneak peek of our house as the first post on the new site and the house isn't done. eek! it will never be totally done but there's a lot that could be finished up today so i'm going to head out early to finish some painting, find some much needed details and make things a little spiffier for the big reveal next monday. so stay tuned, monday i'll introduce the new d*s (some new team members!) and our little d*s home. can't wait!

office help update

with the help of your reader suggestions mk made some (fast!) changes to her office. i just wanted to share the new orange and blue theme she set up over the weekend. that's some quick painting!

sneak peek: office makeover

d*s reader cassie sent over some fantastic photos of what must be the world's coolest advertising agency. apparently the white walls and awful built-ins with imitation formica were killing the creative spirit so the agency decided that a make-over was in order. cassie's bosses gave each employee a $300 allowance (some used additional funds of their own) plus a new desk and new chair to redo their cubicles. cassie said that at first they thought it might end up looking like a carnival, but they all were pleasantly surprised. "now we each truly have our own space. and it is “almost” as pleasant as coming home. certainly defines our creativity, which in fact is our job.". i love this idea and the results are pretty impressive. you can click here for larger versions of these photos or scroll down to see some of the results. [thanks, cassie!]

office suggestions?

d*s reader mk has what i think is a pretty adorable office. but after seeing yesterday's pink and black office she wanted to see if you guys had any ideas for her to help jazz things up a bit. i think it would be fun to paint the walls, reupholster the chair and find a funky chandelier to add some flair. i'd love to see some of these pieces in the room (i'm still really into yellow right now), but what do you guys think? mk is all ears!

sneak peek: pink and black

d*s reader meagan goldberg is a graphic designer who lives my fantasy life. she decided she wanted to paint her office bright pink and well, she did. i have dreams about painting several rooms of our house a soft pink but i just don't think it would fly with ac. meagan however designed her dream pink office and sent it along after she read the pink + black article i wrote for etsy. she was kind enough to share a few extra pictures and i'm so happy that someone out there can have a bright pink room if they want to. great work meagan- thanks for sharing!

sneak peek: sulu design

last week kelly at hoping for happy accidents emailed me about a gorgeous home belonging to sulu design artist, susan lutjen. i immediately checked her website and was blown away by her bautiful portland, oregon home. not to mention the fact that they only moved in one month ago- wow (it's taken us two years to move in fully). susan was kind enough to share some additional photos of her home with us to create a full-sized sneak peek. as always, you can click here for (several) additional photos and full-sized versions of these images. thanks so much for susan for sharing her beautiful home with us, and to kelly for the great tip!

["My husband Barry and I moved to Portland just over a month ago. Barry is an avid photographer as well as a collector of found photos. Luckily, we share a very similar design sense. With our common eye and my obsessive nature, we had our apartment in Portland, Oregon unpacked and settled right away. We both are very drawn to the clean lines of midcentury design, but also love heavy, worn, industrial pieces and found objects with great patina. We are constantly looking at resale shops, antique malls, thrift stores, and in garbage piles to find pieces that will work in our home. We have pulled a lot of our belongings from the fabulous garbage piles in New York City, where we lived for the past thirteen years. We also have picked up many pieces in our travels - every summer for the past several years, we've gone on lengthy road trips all over America. We find such amazing pieces (and people) in small towns that aren't on the map. We do have a few shops on which we have relied heavily, too."]

["When we lived in Astoria Queens, the Astoria Furniture Market was a spot that we'd check out regularly. We found our sofa and rocking chair there. And the Chelsea Flea Market (several years back, before the lots it sat on were bought up and developed) was a weekly pilgrimage. We picked up our Bertoia chairs and Jonathan Adler pillows there."]

["We owe thanks for many of our pieces to our parents, too, who each have great design sense of their own. Barry's parents live in Richmond, Virginia, and they're always finding fabulous pieces like our dining table, the large blue vase in our bedroom, and the huge print above our record shelf. And my parents gave us our Case Study Bed as a wedding gift years ago. It is one of only a few things in our home that was not pre-owned. My brother, sister, and their spouses, too, are extremely design-minded and are sources of inspiration for us. As I express through the Original Intent project on my blog, inspiration is limitless. It's everywhere."]

["Iron Fish Trading Company in Beacon, NY has been our source for several weighty metal pieces as well as a beautiful midcentury bar cart. Both Beacon and Cold Spring in the Hudson River Valley have great antique shops."]

["Boom Modern in Cleveland, Ohio, my hometown, always has the most wonderful mix of midcentury finds (like the print in our dining area) and clunky metal pieces, like stools that we use all over the apartment. We picked up one of our Ironrite dining chairs there, found another at Suite Lorain, and got the other two on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland, which is lined with antique shops. The big mixer attachment is from a used restaurant supply store in Astoria."]

carla lane interiors

for the past few years i've been daydreaming about either going back to school for interior design or opening my own specialty food shop. they're very different projects but for me, both are about expressing a vision for a specific art form. these days i've been leaning towards the food shop but when i meet a designer like carla lane, i start to think that design might be a more exciting option. carla emailed me about some beautiful wicker chairs she rehabbed and included a link to her website. based in the san fernando valley of california, carla recently opened her own interior design studio after years spent writing her own lifestyle column for angeleno magazine. i always love hearing about people switching careers and carla is a wonderful example of being able to transfer good taste from one field to another. her style is a mix of east-coast cool and california comfort with a dash of bold vintage furniture. i've included a few of my favorite photos above and below but you can see more of her work right here. enjoy! [thanks, carla!]

sneak peek: copenhagen bookstore

designer susan cerra at the kitchen designer sent over these beautiful photos of a modern bookstore in copenhagen denmark. i love the bold artwork on the walls, the throws over the reading chairs and the way the pendant lamps hang down low to light books on the table. looks like a nice place to relax with a cup of tea and read.

little girl's room

speaking of little girls, who wouldn't want to live in this room? i would have loved that pink curtain by the bathroom and the bunny posts on the bed- it's so sweet and girly.

robert nassar design

i love this bedroom shot over at desire to inspire- it looks like such a nice place to curl up with a good book and unplug from the rest of the world. the desire to inspire gang will be posting at the d*s guest blog soon so stay tuned!

camilla engman

i love this little sneak peek into camilla engman's home on her blog. her shelves are so full of life and beautifully designed objects. click here for her full post and here to see more of camilla's home.

clip wall

what a fun idea- a wall full of prints hung by bull dog clips. inexpensive, quick and easy- can't beat that. via jan at poppytalk.

sneak peek: paper pony

i can think of no better way to end this week than with a sneak peek into the beautiful (beautiful) home of photographer raya carlisle. i've been a fan of raya's photography for a while now (her flickr page and blog are fantastic) and i was sure her home would be just as amazing. raya lives in ventura, california and her home oozes cool, california style. it was a treat just to click through all of these so i hope you'll enjoy them as much as i did. as always you can click here for larger versions of these photos and check out descriptions in raya's word's below. thanks to raya for sharing her lovely home with us! [see you all on monday!]

["The waterfall in our pool makes the backyard so peaceful. My favorite thing is to float on a raft with a magazine on a sunny day and listen to the water. This photo above is probably my favorite area in the house- a sitting area in our dining room that is great for morning tea and reading. These chairs were a craigslist buy and at first I thought I'd recover them, but this yellow is now working its way throughout the whole house. I'm finding as I decorate that I'm drawn to bright colors subconsciously - especially yellow and any shade of aqua/blue. The poster on the wall is for a Modest Mouse concert by The Decoder Ring Design Concern. They have a great selection of posters on their website."]

["A corner of our living room. This Ikea book shelf is one I see all over blogland, but it is such a great piece if you don't have much room because it holds so much. Our coffee table top is also from Ikea, but I found some old hairpin legs on craigslist that we used to give it a more mid-century mod look. We really haven't spent much money on furniture with the exception of our dining table - this chair was purchased second hand and our couch is one Forest was given to him during bachelorhood, but my mom recovered both in matching fabric. She's a professional seamstress and has made us so many pillows, cushion covers, etc..we can't thank her enough."]

["The dog painting is my first real art purchase from painter Andrea Heimer in Seattle. Her bright colors and imagery appeal to me - she has a great body of work on her website. This Bertoia diamond chair is the first piece I purchased when we got serious about decorating our house and I had recently discovered my attraction to mid-century modern. Our house is a 1951 beach town cottage so I want to keep the interior in line with the architecture, just mixing in modern pieces here and there. I bought these lockers from my neighbor for $15 - a steal in my mind, but he works for a local school district and just had them sitting in his garage. Forest repainted them and they now store all my craft/art supplies as well as other things. Our garage was converted into a room so we use it as our office/studio/garage. We covered an entire wall with cork and would like to eventually rip up the carpet and do a painted cement floor in a slate blue."]

["I love paint-by-numbers. They are so wonderfully tacky. Our kitchen is really spacious and it's nice to have so much counter space but then I don't know what to do with it! I know, it's a problem most people don't have. Here I've displayed a few of my sugar & creamer sets and baking ingredients in vintage jars."]

["I try to keep the house away from too much girliness, but with the guest bathroom I went a little more that way since we don't use it all the time. I found these portraits of 1960's actresses in cheesy gold frames at an antique store and they were my inspiration. Lots of pink, peach and green. The mirror is very old, found at a thrift store. Our bathrooms are very tiny, so the big mirror brings in more light."]

sneak peek: jezebel

i'm so happy to share a little sneak peek into the home of one of my favorite stationery (and soon to be interior!) designers- leigh batnick of jezebel. leigh has a brand new website and i thought it would be perfect to time her sneak peek with the launch of the new site. above and below are my favorite photos of her home but as always you can click here for larger versions of these photos. thanks so much for leigh for sharing her home with us.

["I am a magpie but also strict with myself in terms on new acquisitions. I love stories and lineage and being surrounded by that which tells a tale. My bed is surrounded by totemic bits: my boyfriend found the tile on the wall to the right of the bed- it's of an old Japanese erotic woodcut intertwined with a vintage wallpaper print and I dream of tiling an entire bathroom in it's likeness, a seashell lamp and mobile from a trip to Mexico with my mother, and jewelry belonging to my grandmother, and an alarm clock from Ikea that I love for its no-nonsense tight lines. The still life was done by my grandmother and the couch is piled with pillows from over the years- the mirrored pair were thrown in for free by the Indian woman I brought a brown velvet couch from when I lived in Washington D.C.. I had to leave the couch, but the pillows have stayed by my side."]

["My favorite old against my favorite new- books are first and foremost for me and I just purchased a pair of these crazy brass-studded, patent leather, swivel, chrome-based, bucket chairs. They make my heart beat faster."]

["We call my apartment the dollhouse as an ode to its diminutive proportions- quite the thrill to acquire this dollhouse shelving unit for $3 at a thrift store- it's stocked with my feathered headbands, my beloved black owls, a bit of coquillage, and an indispensable Radio Shack radio."]

["Photos of my grandparents (in high-stepping dollar store frames) flank either side of my desk. I think they were pretty glamorous and along with coffee, they provide daily inspiration. The amazing nautical themed table is courtesy of the painter Elizabeth Deull. Also, I'm mad for shells and do my best to sniff their low-tide brininess over the mustiness in any junk-tiquing situation."]