Deals, Window Shopping & Inspiration
Holiday By Hand
Two Sundays ago we hit up the Richmond Craft Mafia’s craft show called Handmade Holiday. As one of my friends described it, it was like Etsy… only in real life.
We love supporting/meeting local (and not so local) artists and artisans, so we went expecting to see some cool things, bump into a few people we knew, and maybe even to snag a gift or two. Instead, we saw LOTS of cool stuff, bumped into DOZENS of friends and blog buddies, and snagged a BUNCH of gifts. Well, I guess I should clarify. They were gifts for ourselves. Here’s a snapshot of our handmade bounty after we returned home and laid everything out on the counter:
1. A print from Zou Zou’s Basement ($25) which is a print of a mixed media rabbit painting. We thought it was fun and colorful. We actually almost got this elephant, but at the last minute Clara said “Bunny rabbit!” and the switch was made.
2. A robot coloring sheet from Turnerbots which they threw in for free after we purchased a bunch of ornaments (see #5). So nice! Clara had a blast coloring it when we got home because, as you may have read here on Young House Life or here in our desk-building post, Clara is a coloring fanatic as of late.
3. Two small canvas paintings from Amy Keith Barney ($15 each) who mainly specializes in stained glass – but the bright colors of these felt perfect for Clara’s frame wall. And can you beat $15 for such amazing little original paintings?
4. A Virginia-shaped ornament from Funnel Cloud Studio ($7). The ornament had us at hello (yay maps!) and we almost got one of her Virginia prints too, but managed to practice a smidge of restraint. She has Maryland and DC ones too for anyone interested…
5. Ceramic letter ornaments from the aforementioned Turnerbots ($7 for all four), one each for Clara, me, Sherry and Burger. Turnerbots mainly specializes in candy-colored pottery like these cool vases and cheeky robots:
6. A crudload of business cards for all sorts of vendors – every booth was seriously worth stopping for!
7. A letterpress card from Almanac Industries (free) who had one of the coolest booths at the whole fair. You could just feel their passion for what they do.
And we loved that our initials were coincidentally on display (doesn’t take much to excite us). Well Sherry’s, Burger’s and mine were – and if that P had been a C we really would have been downright giddy.
And since we couldn’t support every vendor that we admired with a purchase, we thought we’d at least show them some love by sharing their cool stuff here. Like these “Dangerous Animal” notebooks from MonkeyDogStudio. Sherry and I disagree on which one we think is the funniest. I vote the octopus with the ninja throwing stars, but Sherry died when she saw the squirrel with the pistol.
Speaking of cheeky animals, there were also cool woodblock prints and cards featuring some chic birds with fresh, punny attitudes (Yo Momma!) from Bowerbox Press.
Continuing the theme of craftiness with a sense of humor, we loved all of the funny crocheted items – like this jellyfish and ray-gun from Needle Noodles…
… and more jellyfish (this time as ornaments) and a crocheted conch shell from Lazymuse Productions.
There were also this awesome assortment of colorful faux antlers (they were made of resin) from The New Woodsman. Predictably, Sherry my Jersey wife was most in love with the metallic gold ones (sadly not pictured).
Illegible Ink‘s print of vegetables was really charming and detailed. You could stand there and study it for hours. There was a really funny meat one too.
There was also lots of jewelry at the fair, like this peapod necklace from Lucky Accessories that Sherry mentally bookmarked for the day that we have more than one child (it was available with one pea, but she figured she’d rather wait and beef up her pea quotient before jumping the peapod gun).
We also saw some familiar faces, like Love Elaine (who gave away a fabric wreath back in May). She had lots of Christmas fabric goods, but what caught our eye most was this festive kids apron. Clara would look so cute rocking this while making cookies.
And there was Phil Barbato, another giveaway alum, who makes these funky ape stuffed animals amongst other things (Clara said “buh-bye monkey!” when we walked away):
We actually bought a print from Phil this summer at another Richmond art event (the First Friday Art Walk), but it wasn’t until returning home with our new crafty treasures that we finally figured out the perfect place to hang it along with two of our Handmade Holiday finds (don’t mind the frames, they’re just what we had around).
This little frame collection is on the short wall right outside Clara’s bedroom door, opposite the playroom door. We thought she’d love saying “Hi” and “Goodnight” to the bunny, but instead her favorite thing to do is point at the robots and say “Color! Color!” Figures…
So that was our adventure in handmade arts and crafts. Are any of you going handmade for the holiday this year? We’d love to hear about any craft fairs in your area, or if you’ve snagged any crafty gifts or items for yourself or the ones you love.
Pssst- For more gift-related fun, check out Mrs. Limestone’s post about the whole Secret Santa thing that Sherry and a bunch of other fellow bloggers have been having fun with. You can even guess who had who to win a prize over there!
Tile, Shelves, And More Tile
We’ve mentioned having a backsplash + open shelving + range hood idea a few times without much elaboration, so here’s the full monty explanation: we basically want to create a counter to ceiling accent wall of backsplash tile with open shelves and a range hood going on. Sort of like this, but completely different (you know, since the finishes and tile and shelves and range hood and cabinets and beams are not the same as the ones we’ll end up with):
Behold, a few more rooms with lots of inspiration when it comes to open shelves, tile to the ceiling, and sometimes both:
It’s hard to see, but the white subway tile goes to the ceiling on both walls of this space:
This Sarah Richardson kitchen is especially appealing to us when it comes to the tile choice (we love white subway tile, but we’re thinking we might do something a little less white since our cabinets will be going white and we don’t want to completely whitewash the whole room).
Check out this pretty tile too. I’ve always loved this clean and happy kitchen (all the sources for these rooms are at the bottom of the post, btw). Oh and as for where we think our tile will start and stop, we plan to cover the entire wall with the range on it and just do a standard below-the-upper-cabinets backsplash on the adjoining sink wall and most likely on the other side (with the peninsula) for balance – just like the pic below. Definitely could change as we go though! We’ll keep ya posted.
These shelves are also pretty great, and the soft-but-not-white tile is nice too (so the shelves subtly stand out).
When is marble tile not hawt? Never. Exactly. If only it grew on trees (thereby making it a quarter a square foot).
Now I will read your mind in a move I like to call “David Blaine-ing” you. You are thinking the following things:
- What type of tile are you going to use?
- What type of range hood?
- What color will your shelves be?
- Will they be floating or have brackets?
- Won’t open shelves get dusty and full of grease?
Allow me to address those questions below:
- Not sure yet
- Not sure yet
- Not sure yet, but most likely white like the cabinets
- Not sure yet, but for the moment we’re leaning towards floating
- We’ve asked friends who have them and their short answer is no, but it’s just one of those to-each-his-own things. Allow me to elaborate:
We’re not going to have open shelving everywhere and zero cabinetry with doors. We’ll have plenty of base cabinets and some closed uppers to stash not-so-pretty stuff out of sight. As for the one eight foot wall that we’re excited to smack with a range hood, some open-shelving, and counter to ceiling tile, we did a little “research” before committing. We know two different couples who both have one wall of open shelves above their stove with a range hood… and they both love it. When we asked them if they got greasy or covered with steam they both looked at us weirdly and said “we have a range hood.” Apparently up-to-date range hoods have better suction than over-the-stove microwaves (which we should know since we had one in the last house but never actually stopped to think about it). So if you use them when you cook they should suck up the steam and grease and all that stuff without any issues of it somehow migrating up and to the left or right around the hood and mysteriously landing on the cabinets.
We also asked about dust. Again they had similarly no-biggie answers. One couple said they use their shelves to store items they use so frequently that they don’t have time to sit around getting dusty (ex: plates are used and washed and then stashed back up there and used again in rapid succession – so they don’t sit for weeks on end without getting touched thereby becoming furry). The other couple said they just like the look more than they hate dusting, so they don’t mind wiping things down with a duster every few weeks for the trade off of a light open look and easy-access to items that aren’t tucked away behind closed doors.
Then we headed over to Layla’s blog since she has open cabinets and read what she had to say about them. Here’s a big post all about it, but this quote at the end pretty much summed up her take: “Think you can’t have open cabinets because it’s too dusty where you live? It’s dusty in Alabama too! (cough, cough) We use the dishes in our open cabinets every day though, so they usually don’t have time to grow sweaters. If something does happen to collect a little dust, we just give it a quick rinse before we use it.”
And because we’re complete weirdos who don’t know when to stop, we also heard from readers who have open shelving in their kitchens and this is what they had to say:
- “We installed open shelving last September and I don’t regret it one bit. I only get up there and dust about once a month and I just crank up the music and make the most of it. In fact, we’re working on building a third row of shelves because I have so much pretty stuff to put out!” – Betsie
- “We have three cats and some open shelving. Hasn’t been a problem.” – Caroline
- “I have open shelving by default, but I’ve come to like it. It shows off how your dishes match your kitchen, and keeps you accountable to only having what you NEED.” – Carrie
- “I only have open shelving in the kitchen and love it. It doesn’t get as dusty/greasy as you might imagine. I love being able to display all the nice kitchen things I have. I have a separate space for the not so nice stuff. “- Debe
- “I have open shelving with regularly used items and closed cabinets with rarely used items and the rarely used items in the cabinets are the ones that get the most dusty and need a rinse before use. So it’s not like cabinets keep things that sit around from getting dusty!”
All of a sudden this post is sounding like an infomercial, huh? Before you know it I’ll be trying to show you just how much water my Super Shammy can hold…
But really the point of sharing our “research” on the subject of open shelving isn’t to convert anyone (we just babble about the choices that we make along the way, DIY-diary-style). So if it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing. I’m sure there are folks out there who hate their open shelving, we just happened to hear from a ton of people who had nothing but great things to say. In the end, when it came down to figuring out what we wanted to do with our kitchen, we just had to… do what we wanted! Haha. So some open shelving and some closed upper cabinets fit the bill. But we hereby solemnly vow to keep it real with you guys. If after a month of use (or a day or a year) we start to hate the choice of open shelving (or anything else for that matter) of course we’ll tell you! And we’ll share whatever we decide to do to change things. Oh and when we make any final decisions about the backsplash tile and the range hood we’ll definitely spill those beans.
Psst- The pretty kitchen images in this post were found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Oh and slightly altered Shamwow pic was from here.
Pssssst- This morning I’m over on BabyCenter keeping you posted (as promised) when it comes to how our house is changing thanks to Clara. Let’s just say we’re adding storage galore for all those toys and blocks and books and balls…
A Quickie To The Carolinas
Last weekend my cousin got married in Brevard, North Carolina. Translation: weekend road trip!
Okay, so it wasn’t on the scale of our road trip to Texas for my cousin’s wedding two years ago (different cousin, btw – I’ve got lots of ‘em) but it was still a good time. Brevard is in southwestern NC somewhere between Asheville and the South Carolina border (so close actually, the rehearsal dinner was in SC). It’s about a seven hour drive from Richmond, though we broke up our ride with a stop in Charlotte to see our pals Matt and Kristin. The wedding was obviously the highlight of the trip (you can see some pics over on Young House Life), but Brevard did offer some other fun “adventures” too.
The Antique Mall downtown was one of the coolest (and cleanest!) antique stores we’ve been to in a long time. It also had a really great architectural salvage place next door. So of course we had to share some of the fun stuff we spotted, like this awesome collection of wooden printing press letters. At two bucks each, I can’t believe we didn’t come home with a full alphabet – but somehow we managed to appreciate them without buying any (check out the ones we already have here).
Similarly tempting was this rack of old skeleton keys for $3 each. Again, it’s a shock we didn’t buy anything. Sherry did mention something about buying a ton of them and making an amazing chandelier- like a giant one for over the dining room. How fun would that be? Maybe next time.
Actually, the thing we contemplated purchasing most were some charming paintings by local artists – like this quaint little covered bridge. It was an original watercolor, but the $49 price tag was a bit more than we planned on spending that day (Why are we so cheap? Now we look back and wish we grabbed it).
And definitely out of our vacation budget ($200+) was this weirdly cool painting of a ram-type creature. Sherry was into it, but for some reason I was even more head over heels in love. Or should I say head over hooves. Miss you, man ram.
Raise your hand if these guys remind you of Jonathan Adler pottery (picture me and the wife raising ours).
Like always, there was plenty of stuff that erred on the side of quirky. Who wouldn’t pay $40 for an inexplicably naked KISS action figure? Or $45 for a light-up stained glass chicken Beyoncé?
I’ve got a soft spot for the look and texture of potato sacks, but I just wasn’t quite sure if this one was for potatoes. If only it had been labelled better… (please tell me the sarcasm isn’t lost). Sherry thought it could make a fun pillow or ottoman (heck people even cover chairs with potato sack fabric these days).
Across the street from the Antique Mall was a thrift store run by the local Humane Society (Brevard is in Transylvania County, no joke). I didn’t get to see much of this store because Clara was obsessed with looking at the kittens so Sherry poked around the back while Clara and I hung out with her new furry friends. Everyone in the store probably got sick of hearing “Hi kittycat. Hi kittycatkittycatkittycat! Buh-bye kittycat! Hi kittycat!”
But Sherry was able to locate a few entertaining items, coincidentally both chihuahua themed. Too bad Burger wasn’t with us to enjoy them (he was back at the pet-friendly rental cottage that we stayed in for the weekend with the rest of our family).
Of all the shops we strolled through, the only place that we bought anything was the local Habitat For Humanity ReStore. This isn’t the store, obviously, it’s just their delivery truck.
Though Sherry thought it would’ve looked better like this (she wants me to note that Edward is on the other side). Women and their vampires… this husband will never understand.
Anyways, back to our purchase. For $5 we picked up the frame on the right, with an intricate paper cut design inside. We didn’t know quite where we’d hang it but figured we’d find a place. Once we got back home we found the perfect spot for it – in a frame in our hallway gallery in lieu of a generic picture of apples (which used to live in our first kitchen).
We had to trim the paper cutting a bit to fit top-to-bottom, but it looks great. We love that it livened up that corner of the wall with some stronger color and an interesting pattern. Plus we got an extra frame out of the deal, which I’m sure will get painted and hung somewhere else.
We feel mildly accomplished for not coming home totally empty handed (you know we love snagging stuff for our house when we’re on the road to keep the memory of our trip alive). But since we barely got a taste of Brevard while there (and even less of a taste of Asheville – we just drove through on the highway) we’re hoping we can make it back there for a longer visit sometime. Maybe when another cousin gets married…
Has anyone else hit the road for a trip lately? Or gone to any beautiful fall weddings? Oh, and if anyone has any Asheville area suggestions for us (or anyone else) we’d love to hear them since it looked like such a cool place.
Psst- Check out some of the cute and creative touches from the wedding (along with some family pics) here on Young House Life.
The (Joss &) Main Event
So… our afternoon post is a few hours early. Surprise! Fancy meeting you here. Anyway, after teaming up with Joss & Main on one of our most entered giveaways (apparently you guys love you some Joss & Main), they asked us if we’d be interested in curating a sale event over on their site. Which essentially entailed doing some virtual window shopping (sifting through hundreds of items in their database) and telling them everything that we loved, which would then make up a “Young House Love collection” over on their site.
Uh. Let me think about it. YESSSSSSS!
Never in a million years did we think that the title of “curator” would ever be used to describe us. Except maybe Curator Of Too Many Pins On Pinterest for me and Curator Of Too Many Soda T-shirts for John. Of course we screamed yes while holding hands and jumping up and down calmly told them we were game as any proper “curator” would do, and promptly called our parents to beg them to buy something small, like it was some elementary school bake sale that we were worried would flop.
But seriously, getting the opportunity to open up a little virtual decor store of sorts over there for the next 72 hours is the stuff of dreams for me (which usually also involve Nate Berkus, Eric Northman, and fried oreos). And although we didn’t set the prices ourselves, we did our best to find a variety of items in a nice wide price range (from under-$25 accessories to $250+ furnishings). So without further ado, here’s just a part of our little collection that you can find over at Joss & Main through October 6th (there’s a lot more over there). If you’re not already a member, just click here for an instant invite (so you don’t get wait-listed). Then you can find your way to the sale by clicking here:
Oh and because we like to be 100% transparent with you guys, it’s Joss & Main’s protocol to offer a small commission to the folks who curate sales on their site (and a small referral fee, which is actually available to any Joss & Main member). So it’s just like any other side gig that helps pay the bills, like writing magazine columns or our book (more on those here) except more fun. Way more fun. Speaking of fun, what would you select if you could “curate” your own collection? Typographic prints & maps? Punchy fabrics a la Amy Butler? Faux books & magnifying glasses like the “Library Decor” section at HomeGoods?
Oh man, that picture never fails to crack me up. Yes ladies, that man is all mine.
Tele-Photos (& Missoni Spoils)
We get asked pretty frequently about where we find inspiration. The short answer: everywhere. Other blogs, design mags, real life, family and friends, clothing, nature, even reality TV. Yup, I’ll admit it. Who takes pictures of the TV for inspiration slash fun? This girl (points to self with thumbs). And then they get uploaded with all of our other photos and John dumps them into an iPhoto folder that’s aptly named “TV pics.” And every once in a while I come across them and click through and say “oh yeah that was Law & Order, I loved that ceiling” or “that headboard makes me all clammy, in a good way” or “poor actors slash reality stars – I wonder if they hate the fact that they can be paused in such unfortunate and unflattering ways?” (Oprah used to give me the most hilarious faces when I paused her – miss you O!). So here are a few photos of the tube that were sitting in my folder (you know I’m an over-sharer).
The Modern Family house (someday we’d love to use their landscaping as inspiration for our own home):
Here’s another Modern Family shot from the Clive Bixby episode (where they meet at a hotel lobby – best ever). I snapped a photo because I thought the shape of the headboard could be fun for one of those DIYed from plywood and foam ones. Maybe for a kids room someday (in brighter colors/fabric).
This shot from Law & Order LA was taken back when we were still house hunting. And I snapped it (get ready to snort-laugh) because I was hoping to find a house with arches and tall ceilings like this. Yeah, that didn’t happen, but I still love our house (and this photo too, just for the how-deluded-was-I memories). And heck, we did end up with exposed beams (white in the kitchen, and darker in the living room). They even run in the same directions as this photo. So maybe we did buy this house… kind of.
Here we have a shot from America’s Next Top Model (and an example of unfortunate pause-faces). Guess what I was enamored with… yup it’s another headboard lust moment. Isn’t that brown and white fabric awesome?
Here’s a shot from a movie we Netflixed (The Kids Are All Right), which we watched right after moving. We loved the deep-ish blue on the walls and wondered if that was a good color for the guest room (and actually ended up going even deeper).
Here’s another shot from The Kids Are All Right. John and I both fell in love with the large stone paver walkway that sort of curved out from the house in a triangle-ish shape. Maybe someday when we transplant about five hundred bushes we can attempt this clean and open look…
Ah, here we have one of my favorite shows: Flipping Out. I really liked the dark wood doors with the giant pane of frosted glass. So many homes have those ornate oval-glassed double doors, and I loved the clean-lines and chunky frame of these – they just felt so different.
Here’s another Flipping Out picture, and I can’t remember if I loved the tangerine gourd lamps (which could be accomplished with a can o’ spray paint and a Goodwill score) or the cool wavy mirror in the back that looks kind of like faux oyster shells. Probably both.
Last Flipping Out shot. This time I loved the glass pendants and the dark cabinets with the white counters. Of course we don’t have white granite/marble/silestone in our kitchen so it’s nothing we’ll do (we want to work with the mid-toned granite that we have, and don’t want to create a sea of brown) but it was a nice look, so I worked my picture-taking finger to capture Jeff’s design. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll get to stain someone else’s cabinets to mimic the look.
Here we have a shot from The Celebrity Apprentice (did anyone else think that show got boring after crazy Nene left?). Can you tell what I was obsessed with? Yup, the floors. They actually inspired us when it came to building the console table. So yeah, we owe it all to the Celebrity Apprentice.
Here’s a shot from The Big C (does anyone else watch it- it’s so good, we got a free trial of Showtime and got hooked and watched the whole thing in record time). I really liked the board and batten on the wall behind her and still dream of DIYing something similar in our hallway (as recently mentioned here). So I thought you’d like a visual. Preferably with Laura Linney in it.
This shot is from Secrets From A Stylist, snapped because we still have plans to thrift or build a larger, chunkier media cabinet to balance out the giant wood console table that we built on the other side of the room. And we really liked the white frame with the wood fronted doors of this thing:
Oh and occasionally we just see something we don’t think we’re supposed to and it blows our mind. Like this rare angle that John noticed (he’s such a notice-er) on Bachelor Pad a few weeks back. Look how many lights are on the ceiling in that room behind Jake. Isn’t that crazy? The place looks so homey on TV but it must feel like such a set in real life (and probably gets pretty hot).
Who else takes TV pics? I can’t be the only person who does this, right? Or do you try to find screen grabs on the computer instead? Some of my shots are admittedly quite wonky due to TV glare. I know I could mess around with the camera a bit to cut down on that stuff, but I mainly just use them as memory joggers, so it’s ok if they have a weird blue tint or there’s a person or two oddly frozen in the room. Maybe you guys all just watch TV and relax like a normal person? Probably that, huh?
Oh and did anyone else go Missoni crazy at Target? Sorry we’re late to that bandwagon/update. We actually didn’t make it there until Wednesday evening (the collection dropped on Tuesday morning) and of course it was hugely picked over/sold out by then, but I did spot these sweet rain boots (in an extra small) for Clara and couldn’t resist. She already tries to wear them (they’re a bit too big). Very cute.
I also grabbed this pretty geometric vase for the back of the living room console:
It’ll probably migrate around the house over time, but for now I’m loving the bold pattern and the metallic finish that references the chunky silver lamps nearby. Bah-dah-bling.
I also made off with these headbands for myself. They seem like a nice compromise for a ponytail obsessed gal like me. Now I can wear my hair down but still keep it out of my face. Oh who am I kidding, I’ll probably wear them with a ponytail. Update: already did here.
What did you guys buy? Was everything already gone? Was there someone in line buying 2K worth of Missoni stuff in front of you? Word on the street is that happened like crazy on Tuesday and Target’s website even crashed and folks are selling everything for $200 on ebay. Peeps be crazy for Missoni.
