For Stink.

My poor whippet-girl Haley got a chunk taken out of her butt by another dog at the park last night so she's now spending some quality time on the couch recuperating. I think she'd feel much better sooner if she was as lucky as this whippie with such a gorgeous spot to recline:



Source: Angus Fergusson via Desire to Inspire.

Bookshelf love.

I love the sturdy industrial-yet-somehow-elegant look of this bookshelf.

Source: Rena Tom on Design Sponge

Bach break.

I have this weird issue with side tables. Basically I loath almost all of them.

But this is great, especially how it works with the very feminine, traditional decor. I am most definitely been inspired to try this.

Source: Apartment Therapy.

More pallet love.

Check out the shipping crate furniture in this great beach studio featured in Dwell (link to slide show). It's official, I'm going to have to do some scavenging and make myself some patio chairs.

Seriously budget patio furniture.

There's always a pile of pallets outside a business down the street from my house and I'm always trying to justify grabbing some and making furniture. Now I have a proper excuse, 'cause my new deck looks far too lonely without furniture and my outdoor decor budget is officially blown for this year.

Source: Apartment Therapy.

Cinder block love.

So, after the snow had sufficiently melted, RW and I were finally able to pick up some cinder blocks and throw together the modern, minimal (and cheap) bookcase of my dreams. Behold, in all its wooden concrete glory:



Of course, my shite camera does not do it proper justice but I swear that for $60 you ain't going to get anything half that nice anywhere else.

Excuse me while I weep.

Gus*, Canadian makers of couches and chair that I would quite honestly kill to own, are having a warehouse sale this weekend in Toronto and there's no way I can be there.

Apparently I masochistically signed up to get an email notification for this event. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. As though the crushing winter blues weren't bad enough this week... If you're in TO please go. Do it for me.

8-4, March 8-9th, 2008 at 223 Evans Avenue.

Loving the 70s.

Last night I found a stack brilliant books at my local Salvation Army. One of the best is entitled "Furniture You Can Make" published in 1972 by Sunset Magazine.

The book has some really great, simple ideas for making furniture with clean organic lines. I've been wanting to try my hand at this sort of thing for a while now having become increasing depressed by the complete lack of affordable, reasonable quality, non-Ikea furniture.

Image credit: dig modern.

Emotional turmoil.

This "sneak peak" post at Design*Sponge has both crushed and inspired me.

I want to weep and pull my hair because I known I will never produce nor inhabit anything this beautiful. But I can't stop looking at the pictures either because they are so damn gorgeous.





Be sure to click on them to get the full impact of a larger photo. Also go check out more pics of Blake Dollahite's home and furniture on his website.

Breaking two resolutions with one chair.

I just got my fall Pier 1 unsolicited propaganda in the mail (addressed to a former resident of course, I'm sure some poor sucker is getting all my Victoria's Secret mail outs too so I guess it's catalogue karma) but I was actually pleasantly surprised to see a couple of things I don't mind in it. They have a really nice looking couch (the Bennett Sofa) and a really cute chair called the "Orbit" for $99 (Canadian, yo) which they basically admit is a knock-off of the 1950s swan chair. Normally I hate wicker (too stick-y and poke-y looking to be comfortable) but this chair may just be the (temporary?) solution to my search for affordable living room seating.


I think this chair was big news last year in the States but this is the first time I've seen it up here. In Canada. The land devoid of good furniture stores. I may just have to break my resolution not to spend any more money on furniture and not to buy any more chairs and grab one of these little suckers this weekend.

Better than the original.

A couple of weeks ago I found these amazing pale candy pink bentwood chairs in a junk/furniture shop up the street from where I work. Actually I only bought one at first because I have this thing for only buying one of things. I do this with coffee cups to the point of obsessiveness. Pairs or sets make me nervous because if you really love them and one breaks, you will always feel sad when you look at them because you'll remember when they were a happy, whole set.

Yes, I have a problem with emotional attachments to inanimate objects.

Well, I loved the chair so much I decided to go back and buy the other one. I was going to take pictures and do a whole post about how much these chairs rock and how I'd started seeing a whole bunch of them everywhere I looked. The last issue of Domino had them in like 3 or 4 shots looking all cute and artsy.

Well, before I could get around to doing that, the lovely and talented sfgirlbybay did a post devoted to bentwood chairs. She did a much better job than I could have done so I'm just going to send you over to her. Oh, and check out the pics of her apartment while you're there and tell me you don't want to move to San Fransisco.

Stylish bach pad inspiration.

Or, "Why I Weep Because Room and Board Doesn't Deliver to Canada"

This post is dedicated B - who feels this blog is too girly (something which I have never been accused of). As such, I felt the need to respond by dialing-up the butch factor a tad without, of course, loosing the class and refinement for which I am known.

So, B my boy, here's a couple of ideas that I could see working for you boys. If you could just get D to give up the "box room".

Mid century moderate.

So, I've been trying to come up with some non-Ikea solutions to my living room seating shortage. It may be just me but there seems to be a real dearth of attractive and comfortable seating and, despite my best efforts to look elsewhere, I find myself coming back to mid-century pieces again and again.

Of course, they tend to be pricey little buggers too which just kills my Scottish Virgo tendancies. As well, although I do love MCM and Danish furniture design I'm not quite as ga-ga over it as everyone else seems to be these days. I think there are a couple of reasons I feel this way:

1. it's getting a little "been done"
2. a couple of pieces are ok but it is possible to get too much of a good thing
3. though aesthetically appealing, many pieces don't look like furniture you want to hang out on curled up with a good book on a rainy day.

So, I need some opinions. Do these lovely seats from the very cool Found Design (the Ottawa source for all things MCM) look like something you'd enjoy hanging out in having a bevy or two?

Not that I could have afforded it.

But where the hell was this sofa when I was dragging poor RW all over town and spending days scouring the Internet looking for a company that actually had a store located in this furniture-forsaken country?!

Sigh, oh well, the price isn't shown on the site because it's a custom order only so you know it's gonna be bad. Ah, yes, the curse of great taste and large student loan debt.