design + decor :: office inspiration

I've been spending all of my spare time swooning over AMAZING office spaces!

Inspiration boards . . .

blue and whites . . .

rich glossy colors . . .

organization . . .

graphic fabrics . . .

and organized chaos. 

Love Love Love!

remodeling :: office space inspiration

Good news!

I'm finally getting an office here at the house!

Before I left to go out of town this past weekend, prep work was being done.  When I got back and walked inside the house, not only could I immediately see the painted white walls all the way from my kitchen, but I instantly realized that seeing the drab dark paneling (i have no idea why we never put up a shade on the door) and piles and piles of stored junk had been such a burden to me over the past couple of years.

(view from the living room)

It's amazing how a little paint can make such a drastic change!

Even better news!

I went to Lonny Mag website to look at some of the work space inspiration pictures that I've been swooning over for awhile, only to find that 

1. the May/June issue just went live yesterday (talk about good timing)

and 2. it just so happens that they have a huge spread on decorating their new offices. (double good timing)

They haven't posted pictures from the current issue in their gallery just yet, so no pictures to post . . .

but of course, more to come!

design + decor :: refurbished lamps

Anything refurbished makes me giddy, so take a look at these babies . . .

These poor things were so ugly. I bought them at a garage sale about a yr. ago and despite their lack of luster, I fell in love with their shape. So away they went into our garage (along with all the other refurbishing hopefuls) and stayed nicely put for a year. 

But during my spring fever stint a few weeks ago, I pulled them out, painted them a bright teal blue and rewired them. 

Oh, wait.  That's where it all went wrong. I TRIED to rewire them but for some reason I wasn't doing something right. After a couple of small shocks and a large one that travelled up through my arm and straight to my heart (literally) I realized I was playing with danger. I could actually hear DJ Lance on Yo Gabba Gabba singing "Danger, danger, danger. Be careful when there's danger. Look out, look out. everybody watch out!"

So I put it down and pouted for the rest of the day! 

But guess who came to town that weekend!? 

No, not Santa! Better than that.

My brilliant engineer of a dad! 

(hence the man hands in the picture)

And of course, the sweet man that he is not only rewired them correctly for me, but he also

1. praised me on my work 

2. reassured me that the instructions I was following were not correct

and 3. taught me a 'lil trick that all engineers know about how to stand with one hand firmly griping your thigh so that if you DO happen to get electrocuted then it won't jolt your heart which would give you a greater chance of living. (sorry about the run-on sentence)

(I love that man! He even knows the correct way to get electrocuted! Those that know him will find that particularly amusing.)

  

So we've been enjoying my refurbished lamps for awhile! I just love the jolt of color!

And yes, those are original Dorothy Draper chests. . . 

those are my little pieces of heaven that I stumbled upon. (which is a whole post within itself.)

design + decor :: toile toile toile

So here's another one of those things marked off my list.
Not so much a honey-do list, but more of a
"there's a million things going thru my head that I'd like to get done" list.

 I am working on a very exciting new retail venture (more to come on that), but in the meantime 

I have been collecting inventory
which has (not surprisingly) taken over my house.

Our current dining room
table and chairs being one of them . . .

The table is on the list to be redone but I seriously could not look at the 60s/70s era fabric on the seat cushions for another minute. YIKES!

So I am proud to say that I have officially marked that one off of my list.
I was so eager that I didn't even take the old fabric or cushion off. (obviously that would be the Martha Stewart way of recovering) There were so many staples that I wasn't about to spend a week on this job.

There are lots of fabrics that I played around with but for some reason I couldn't get away from the french toile pattern.
So I flipped those ugly babies around and started stapling away.

Toile. Toile. Toile.

So there you have it.

recover dining room chairs

DONE.