Happy Thanksgiving!

I'll be too busy eating this weekend to blog.

Photo above from the consistently brilliant Cake Wrecks, the funniest blog ever written about bad cakes.

Neue Gallerie love

I love the Neue Gallerie (although not as much as I love its restaurant, the Cafe Sabarsky). They have a holiday catalog this year that is chock full of gorgeous, obscenely expensive objects.

I think my favorite part though, is the section for the "Hund." I think the model is so damn cute, s/he doesn't need any elegant Neue products.

My kind of office

No pesky computer, or anything like that. But the clean, warm design, with art and books as stimulation, seems custom made for productivity.

from Bo Bedre

Neutrality

White, minimal space looks great in other people's homes. But it's hard to imagine it working in mine (especially as long as a certain black-haired dog comes to visit). Still, I would love to stay in a place like this. So calm and peaceful.

The floor lamp intrigues me! More info here, but no prices.

from Jessica Helgerson Interior Design

Art wall

Although my art wall — I mean, art hallway — is beginning to get this crowded, it doesn't really look this good. Is the problem the quality of the art? The diversity? The wall color? I definitely like the variety of the frames. I need to work on that.

from Joanna Henderson

Birds and clouds

I know birds are kind of played out, but I still think this wallpaper is hot. It's Julia Rothman for Hygge and West. It's hard to pick my favorite colorway!


via Design*Sponge

Dog portraits

Have I ever thought of having a portrait done of the family dog? Um, yes I have.

from Paul Costello

Maps as wallpaper

I'm a sucker for decorating with maps in any capacity, but I get particularly starry-eyed at maps being used as wallpaper. I guess you have to live right on the ocean to pull it off.

from S.R. Gambrel

Blue mood

I'm not a big fan of Vladimir Tretchikoff, and I don't quite get the rug, but this room has a lot to desire. I like seeing the bold blue color paired with wood (because I like bold colors and I like rich woods). And I like the muted wall color and how it ties everything together. Plus, there's a Secto lamp. I really wish the Secto floor lamp was available in the U.S.; it would definitely be a contender in my great floor lamp search.

from Joanna Henderson

Frank-spotting

I started the week rhapsodizing about Josef Frank fabrics, so it's nice to see an example of one in an interior. Just a simple hanging panel. It's art! (Pictured fabric is Windows.)

from Domino

White wall, black wall

It kind of works? Or is the wall actually dark green?

The sofa and chairs are great, but what's with the books on the floor thing? Is that a "bohemian" touch? Dude, you have a Spun lamp. You can afford a proper bookshelf.

from Ngoc Minh Ngo

Bold

from Wary Meyers, who have chutzpah to burn

Vintage storage

The home of Wiz Wharton, who collects some cool vintage storage units!

from Design*Sponge

Smosch in NY!

Sandra of Smosch, one of my favorite photo blogs, is posting her pictures from her trip to New York. Fun! And odd — to be looking at a site usually dedicated to the wilds of Gothenburg, and seeing my hometown instead!

I find it a little hard to believe ...

that these girls ...

read these books.

from The Selby, which usually raises more questions than it answers.

The Times ran a HUGE feature on Selby today, which provided some backstory, including that guy with the octopus chandeliers! I still suspect that a lot of them are trust-fund babies, though. I mean, the 21-year-old student with a two bedroom in Soho?

I just hope he doesn't become so big that he stops updating his site, because I'm still really enjoying it.

Seascape

While I'm on an art frenzy, how about a nice little seascape?

Cutie-pie

I can't imagine a better pick-me-up than looking at pictures of Camilla Engman's dog, Morran. It's non-stop cuteness, all set against a pretty Swedish backdrop.

Task lamps

So I bitch about floor lamps, but I see lots of table lamps I like. Task lamps are particularly wonderful (and what is my favored Bestlite but a giant task lamp?).

This room uses what I'm pretty sure is a Hector lamp. Somehow it makes me like this bedroom, which might seem too girly for me otherwise. Neisha Crosland wallpaper helps too.

from Chris Everard

More Taschen goodness

After the previous post, I took a longer look at the Taschen site, and found these color saturated shots from "Brussels Style." It really is a great book!

As a bonus, here's a shot from "Berlin Style" (which I also own). Considering how I've been obsessively hanging art lately, it's nice to see the impact of a blank wall. High ceilings, of course, help.

Brussels Style

I think that Brussels Style is my favorite of the Taschen Icons "Style" series (and I own far too many of them). So many of the rooms have this great laid-back bohemian feel, which I find makes an extravagant home much more relatable.

(The Icons books are kind of impossible to scan from though.)

New art!

I've bought some art online recently. This weekend I framed it and installed it. I had gotten so sick of what I had on these shelves (a rotating collection of my own photographs). But the bigger sizes and contrasting content really energize the space! Next up, the bottom shelf!

A floor lamp that's not awful

Can you tell I'm looking for a floor lamp? To clean away the specter of the previous post, I present the floor lamp I DO like, very much. But for a few practical concerns ...

It's a Bestlite.

Why are floor lamps so awful?

Or perhaps the real question, why do I find them all so awful? Is there something wrong with me? This room here has such a creative, casual vibe with that robin's egg blue Chesterfield sofa and the ancient wood coffee table (on casters!). But then there's that FLOOR LAMP, which doesn't even seem tacky in a fun way. Sigh. The pendant lamp in the back is cool, though.

from James Merrell

Seaside cottage

I actually have no idea if this is a seaside cottage or not. But it looks like how I would decorate a seaside cottage, if I had one.

My one objection, again, is the white furry rug. Is that a design classic, or just an omnipresent trend? Either way, I can't really get behind it. I'd prefer a little braided rug, I think.

from Design*Sponge

Frankly, my dear

So, I was looking at a Pottery Barn catalog this weekend, and I saw this:

I confess that I haven't really kept up with Pottery Barn, so I have no idea how new this is, but I couldn't help but go on a rant to the catalog owners, who I doubt knew the difference between Josef Frank and Josef Hoffman.

I've been in love with Josef Frank fabrics since seeing them at Liberty of London many years ago. I couldn't afford them back then, and I still can't afford them now, but I always thought that one of them would find a place in my fantasy home. This year I went to Stockholm and visited Svenskt Tenn, the exuberant flagship of the Frank universe, where my love continued unabated.

On closer inspection, the Pottery Barn "homage" is not as close as I originally thought, and I suppose I have no real reason to object. But I blame Domino (and their recent Frank-boosting) for all this.

But here are the original designs that most inspired the knock off.

Vegetable Tree

and Aralia

I wish I knew ...

... the person who came up with this idea.

from Polly Wreford

Sit for awhile

I had lunch today at an expensive restaurant with unbelievably bland, generic decor. So, I'm going to look once again at the Hotel Tresanton, a place where I'm always happy to spend lots of money. This is the lounge off the bar.

Photo tips

I liked this post at Decorno with tips from photographer Paul Costello on photographing homes.

Cherry fever

I spotted this light-up cherry blossom branch at my funny eye and OMG, OMG I want to buy three and have them shipped from the UK immediately. But I'm trying to restrain myself.

Lighter than air

Abby Clawson Low's clean, pared-down apartment. Everything is so elegant and simple, that the cheap industrial storage looks chic.


from Design*Sponge

Color love

Erin at Design Crisis has a great post today about decorating with bright colors, full of delicious, candy-colored photos.

from Domino, originally

Looking closely...

Is that a real Bestlite? I think it's a knockoff.

P.S. Hate the rug.

from Living Etc

I want to live here.

Seriously.

from Elle Decoration UK, November 2006

Dear Owner ...

Please invite me to stay.


from Marie Claire Maison