Monthly Archives: January 2011

GIVEAWAY: for our birds ‘n blokes

**THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED AND NO LONGER ACCEPTING ENTRIES**

What’s that? Is it GIVEAWAY time again? You betcha! [said in our finest Michigan accents] And just in time for Valentine’s day I might add. Our friends at Bird ‘n Bloke are showering our lovely readers with some amazing swag!

Bird ‘n Bloke is a fantastic ethical company that handcrafts amazing custom cuff links, belt buckles, money clips, jewelry, hair adornments, drawer pulls, and the list goes on! Bird ‘n Bloke has been featured in many wedding magazines and websites because their one of a kind pieces really do make them stand out. Their products are perfect for groomsmen gifts, brides, and for those who like their accessories to show some personality.

So now for the moment you’ve been waiting for.. Bird ‘n Bloke is giving away a $150 gift card for ONE of our lucky readers! That’s right, one winner will get to peruse their website and order whatever they wish, and yes.. we’re super jealous.

Here are the giveaway deets:

PRIZE: $150 gift card
HOW TO ENTER: Comment on this post [yep it's that easy!]

EXTRA ENTRY OPPORTUNITIES:

A. If you tweet about this giveaway with a link back to our blog, you get one extra entry. Once you tweet, come back and comment again with your @twitter name.

B. If you facebook about this giveaway with a link back to our blog, you get one extra entry. Once you facebook, come back and comment again.

C. If you blog about this giveaway with a link back to our blog, you get two extra entries. Once you blog, come back and comment twice with the link to your post.

Any combination of these can gain you up to 5 entries per giveaway, so spread the word!! However, if you comment saying that you tweeted/facebooked/blogged but didn’t, we have the right to remove your entries.

GIVEAWAY CLOSES: Sunday, February 6th at 8pm CST
NUMBER OF WINNERS: One
WHO CAN ENTER: Anyone in the world!
THE FINE PRINT: One entry per working e-mail address, otherwise we can’t contact you. The winner will be selected using random.org and announced first thing Monday morning. Good Luck! :)

*BONUS* Bird ‘n Bloke is ALSO giving all our lovely readers 10% their entire purchase through the end of February with code: SMILE10

Sidenote: We weren’t perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we genuinely love these products and wanted to reward our lovely readers!

Are you interested in sponsoring a giveaway? Go here to learn more! We would love to have you!

dc

dc:finds | typography in the home

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With a new year comes new trends, and one of the biggest interior design trends of 2011 is typography. It’s a new way to have fun, colorful, graphic and modern art in your home. Also, it’s super inexpensive, each of these prints is under $25.

[1] the best things in life [2] andy warhol [3] “k” is for kid [4] alphabet “hi” [5] no place like home [6] dream big

[1] may the force be with you [2] just like you [3] do what you love [4] happy happy [5] work hard

[1] the best is yet to come [2] modern art [3] high heels [4] this too shall pass

[1] keep calm and carry on [2] italian subway [3] my sunshine [4] ode to helvetica

[1] let them eat cake [2] live what you love [3] life is a daring adventure [4] new york cities

[1] keep calm parody [2] love [3] you are here [4] helvetica vowels

These are a all a really easy way to add some color to your space for not a lot of money. Plus 90% of them are in Helvetica which always makes us both weak at the knees :)

dc

reader question: towel rack alternatives

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A while back and old friend from high school asked me to help hunt things down for her new bathroom renovation project:

Hey Catharine! I’m in the process of redoing my bathroom, so be on the look out for a 5 pronged wall mounted hook. I want to use a cute one instead of a normal towel rack. Can’t find one… – Lori

I love the idea of using hooks instead of the standard towel rack, and since you’re sticking with a monochromatic color scheme with black, white, and grey I thought this would be a great way to add some color! Finding a five-pronged one though is pretty tricky. If you do want them all to be connected, here are some options that may work:

I love the Nelson Hang it all, it’s an iconic staple in design and this replica is über cheap. I bought one for Derek’s living room for all of our coats and it’s such a conversation piece.
West Elm has these great colorful knobs, which you could also paint if you weren’t too keen on the colors. Each color is sold separately so even if you went all white it could look really sleek.
I kind of like the rusticness of these hooks from Pottery Barn, they’re a nice contrast to your modern bathroom, but they kind keep with the vintage charm you’re incorporating with your old tobacco jars.
Speaking of modern, these sleek hooks from The Container Store are pretty cool because hey look flush against the wall when not in use and you can decide the hook spacing.

If you’re willing to compromise a bit, I’m a big fan of using a bunch of single hooks side by side rather than one unit of hooks. This can give you flexibility with color, size, and spacing between the hooks. There are a lot more options out there for individual hooks, so this may be a better alternative all together.

I love this antiqued doorknob idea, but I would suggest painting the hardware white to really help it pop off of your gray walls.
These ceramic numbers are really cute and kind of vintagey and keep with your black and white theme.
I’ve seen these monogramed hooks a lot in bathrooms, people either use their initials or spell out the word “bath” or whatever you want really.
These glass flowerette hooks may be too girly but they come in a lot of colors, or you can keep it simple with the clear glass.
I feel like these ceramic flowerettes are a more modern version of #4. They also come in a wide range of fun colors.

My personal favorite option is to use a grouping of double hooks. This gives you more hanging space, and I also just think they’re really fun.

I know, these are actually triple hooks but I couldn’t resist! I actually own these, and I love how you can easily rotate the hooks. I can’t find them online in the white anymore, but they are at Anthropologie. I found them a few weeks ago.
These glass hooks are a little girly as well, so I wanted to throw them in for good measure considering you are a girl. They come in several different colors and can really add that touch of glam.
I love how simple and sleek these di-cast brass hooks look. They kind of give off that hotel/spa vibe.
These are my absolute favorites! If you’re wanting to stick with black and white then these stripes are perfect!
These are the same hooks as #4 but in a solid version, with lots of fun color options.
These antiqued brass hooks are also a nice contrast to all of your modern finishes and come in several different colors as well.

I hope that this was helpful with your towel hook search, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with! Keep us posted!

If you’re finding yourself in a design pickle shoot us an email and we’d be happy to solve your design dilemmas!

cfs

measure 16 times, nail once

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It’s time to reveal some more progress in my new apartment. To be more specific: the dining room. As I’m sure you saw in this post, my new wall “art” on the back wall of my dining room. Here is the breakdown of how I came up with the arrangement and executed it.

If you can recall, my old dining room looked like this.

But now that I have a much larger dining room I wanted to rotate my dining room table so that it runs parallel with the back wall. That being said, I needed to come up with a new arrangement for my snazzy West Elm Kelly Wearstler-esque medallions.

I originally thought of rotating them 90 degrees [2 high, 4 across] but they needed a little more height to not get lost behind my pendant lamp so I had to get a little creative. Luckily my four Barbara Barry chair plates [shown below] won’t fit above my new living room window so I now have those to mix into my new gallery idea.

Because I’m a big time planner, I whipped out the graph paper and played with a few arrangement options [to scale] to see which look I liked best.

The circles are obviously the plates and the squares are the medallions. A. places the places on diagonals, B. is a random arrangement, C. puts the plates in all four corners, and D. keeps everything in line. After seeing this on paper, I was able to weed out B. the random arrangement. I then moved to the next step of actually laying out the pieces on the table to get a full visual.

After taking pictures on my phone and then holding the phone in front of the wall [I wish I had pictures of how awesome that was] I was torn between option A. and D. And after much deliberation I went with option D because A. was still just a little to crazy ;)

Because we had previously scaled everything out we knew that the overall piece would be 32″ x 44″ [each element was 8" x 8" or 8" in diameter and spaced 4" apart.. yay math]. So we taped out a 32″ x 44″ rectangle on the wall centered with the wall and at the correct height off of the floor.

Next came the scary part, hanging it all. We started with the corners to keep everything level and within the 32″ x 44″ constraints.

Then after a lot of exact measuring and praying we placed each of the inside pieces exactly 4″ apart as we had planned and everything lined right up! The part that was difficult is that the medallions have 4 nail holes [one at each corner] and the plates had one hook almost dead center on the back which made measuring a little difficult, and made me glad that I chose that pattern so that all the crazy plates with their weird hooks would be in a line.

I ended up only using the top two nail holes in the medallions and making sure I left about 1″ of nail sticking out so that I could offset the medallions from the wall to be a little more sculptural and create some fun shadows and depth.

So here it is! as you can see Maggie is pretty pumped about the whole thing. Did you miss the beginning of the dining room redesign? You can read about how to hang a pendant lamp from a can light here.

Until next time!

cfs

10 things: curt rollison can’t live without

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We’re continuing with our series featuring some of the creative people that we know. Every Tuesday we will introduce them as they share with us the ten things they can’t live without. Today we are introducing our dear friend and mid-century design enthusiast, fellow blogger [Grizzly Bear Modern], traveling foodie, music lover, photographer [flickr], and DIYer Curt Rollison. [@grizzlymodern]

Location: Los Angeles, CA

[one] jessica

My wife and best friend. She rocks. She’s too good for me. We don’t even have to be always interacting with each other, but the mutual presence is enough to put both of us at ease. Plus she’s a mega hottie watch yo’ self.

[two] tacos

Fish, al pastor, carne asada, pollo, yes please. Being born and raised here in SoCal, tacos are my comfort food and even after 23 years I’m still discovering new and amazing flavor combinations and styles.

[three] burt’s bees

Since taking Accutane my freshman year of high school (yes it was poison, but no more zits – fair trade IMO) I’ve been addicted to chapstick. My weapon of choice is Burt’s Bees original. I’ve been rocking a yellow tube in my right front pocket so long that some of my favorite jeans, more on that in a second, have special wearing and fading in the outline of my tube of Burt’s.

[four] pizza

It’s pizza’s job to be incredible! I could easily fill this list with just food, which is why I weigh about as much as juvenile water buffalo, but I digress. Pizza. It’s the beez kneez. What can I say, I’ll take it anyway it comes, but I most prefer New York style with a west coast flair for unusual flavor combos. One of my absolute favorites is from a chain around here called Z Pizza. It’s got artichoke hearts, mushrooms, and globs of ricotta cheese on top of a regular cheese slice – scrumptious. It might not be the most mind-blowing slice around, but it’s consistent and always hits the spot when called upon.

[five] music

I cannot play an instrument. No patience. I want to be good now! No practice needed – so no guitar solos here. And I’m not quite sure there’s a word that adequately describes the level of suck I bring when I attempt to sing. So no signing either. But, music. I love it. I listen to music constantly, I love live shows, I love discovering new artists, and I love sharing my music with others. I usually listen to at least 4 hours of music a day, but it can easily be 8 or more. It’s always on and I love it – can’t live without it. I’ll lose my crap if I’m the passenger in a car where they don’t play music.

[six] google reader

Just recently I cleaned out my browser’s “favorites” folder, because “Reader’s got that.” There’s no way I’d be able to be exposed to as many cool things on such a frequent basis without my trusty Google Reader. It’s completely changed the way I consume my media. Granted, you lose out on all the window dressing of each blog/site, but hey we all got to make sacrifices right?

[seven] mid-century modernism & scandinavian design

I grew up on IKEA. I remember passing on the “Smaland” play center to continue on upstairs for the two hour maze of economic and design driven mini-homes. So with that context I’ve continued to have a passion for well designed and minimalist furnishings with an extra soft spot for mid century design: Knoll, Eames, Nelson, Saarinen, Wegner they’re my boys. And I’ll most likely only ever be able to afford “replications,” but their aesthetic and ingenuity heavily influences how we go about decorating our home.

[eight] denim jeans

Jeans are God’s second best gift to man. I wear jeans everyday. They go with everything and they are so freaking comfortable. I’ve finally stocked up on a couple of pairs, but I’ve been known to rock a single pair until the wheels fall off. Current quiver: Levis, Joe’s, Quicksilver, Hugo Boss, and Loomstate.

[nine] watches

My dad has always worn a watch, his dad always wore a watch, I’ve always worn a watch. I’ve been wearing a watch since maybe earlier than the 4th grade. In my opinion, it’s pretty much unacceptable for any adult to ask another “what time is it” unless said person has just stepped out of a time machine or UFO. Watches are a guy’s one chance to regularly accessorize and I think they can tell you a lot about a guy. Ladies, you should start checkin’ that out. Anyway, watches let you wear art and that’s cool. I’m pretty picky about exactly which watches I like – going back to the aesthetic stemming from list item #7. Again, for watches too I’m often relegated to knock-offs. But, mmmm maybe someday when I’m old and gentlemanly Jessica will buy me a real watch. Yeah, that’s how it’ll happen.

[ten] jesus

He’s the reason I can sleep peacefully. Understanding what this life is for and what it’s all about takes a lot of philosophical weight off your shoulders and allows you to truly start enjoying the world that was created for us. My salvation through Jesus Christ is the lens that colors all aspects of my life and provides an inner peace that cannot be bought, designed, sold, or truly explained.

Stay tuned for text Tuesday when we feature our dear friend and fellow blogger [Grizzly Bear Modern], creator of Mason Jar Bride, modernist, fashionista, DIYer, and certified scuba diver Jessica Rollison. [@grizzlymodern]

Until next time!