Navigating all of the wedding and party planning themes, ideas and DIY projects out there is a bit daunting. There are so many great ideas in magazines and online that I’m afraid I might just go completely mad when it comes to my wedding. I don’t want to have a hodgepodge of things. I want [...]
Archive of posts tagged DIY
Check out my new $20 “Hollywood Regency” Lamps
About a year ago I bought some ginger jars at Pearl River Mart in Manhattan. I think they were about $10 each. And recently after seeing some lamps on ebay with similar ginger jar bases (selling for a few hundred dollars!) I decided to make my own cheap-o version. (Both of these lamp sets are [...]
Contact Paper – The Answer to All Your Prayers?
When I was a kid, I had a marker problem. I LOVED writing with them so much that I would write all over things. Sometimes I would just write my name a hundred times on a random clipboard. Or there was the instance of my polaroid camera (those were the days) which was covered in [...]
The Kitchen – Finishing What I Started
We have been in our new place for a month now and we are still very much in the process of setting up everything. The living room, after much debate (and thanks for all your votes!) is painted a solid gray BUT will have molding added in the next few weeks. I’ll be sure to [...]
Decorate With Bunting…(Lame Title But All I Could Come Up With Were Stupid Baseball Puns)
(Photo of Cheri Messerli’s Wedding by Jame Ryang) Bunting is a trend I have seen all over the internet and for good reason. Its really cute! These flags/banners are a combination of kitschy and sweet, and they look especially nice outdoors. I had no idea what “bunting” was before, but apparently the term comes from [...]
Mantel Envy & How To Fake It If You Don’t Have One
If there is one thing I could add to my apartment aside from more space it would be a fireplace. I don’t even care if it works, I just love the way a fireplace becomes the focal point of a room. More specifically I love the possibilities of a fireplace mantel for displaying stuff. There [...]
Behind The Curtain…Turning a junk space into a work/storage space
And the saga continues! As you might remember, a couple of weeks ago I made a curtain to hide the messy bookcase over our desks. So last weekend it was time to tackle the wall opposite to our desks. Historically this wall has always been a problem area…a magnet for the random junk that we [...]
Lack Hacks: building on an IKEA classic
Oh the IKEA Lack side table. Chances are you either have this table in your apartment or you know someone who does. At $7.99 each, these tables are hard to resist. And their clean and simple shape guarantee that they will fit in pretty much anywhere. As it turns out, the Lack side table has [...]
Designing with Personal Photos
No matter what our age or our budgets, there is one thing that we all have…personal photos, old birthday cards and various other mementos. These sentimental objects are usually stored away in a shoebox or a scrapbook, but don’t you think you would enjoy them much more if you could experience them everyday? So why [...]
Be afraid of what lurks behind the curtain!
I have a personal problem and I’m going to be honest about it. Half of my apartment is slowly turning into a junk zone. My apartment’s living room and bedroom are separated by a curtain. So on one side we have our lovely living room and kitchen and on the other side is our bedroom [...]
Advice from the book arranger to the rich and famous
In December I wrote a post about attempting to rearrange my bookcase. A day after that post, I learned that Madeline Donahue of the screen printing duo FakeDog is a professional book arranger! She works for a large book store in Manhattan and is hired to put together private libraries for people who can…well, afford [...]
After picking up the pieces (literally), I have a new beginning. The kitchen catastrophe follow-up!
By now, you probably have heard about the heart-wrenching incident that took place in my kitchen late last week. A wall-mounted shelf broke and I lost all but three of my plates in the crash. True to my word, I spent the weekend fixing up the kitchen and thanks to IKEA, I was able to [...]
Is my kitchen catastrophe a blessing in disguise?
Last night something crazy happened. I had just finished washing all of my dishes (including some new ones I just bought last week) and about 5 minutes after putting them away the shelf they sit on collapsed! I’ve been keeping my plates on a wall mounted shelf and it totally went kaput. Bottom line, it [...]
I killed an art book to save a wall.
I have always felt guilty about cutting up art books, but here was my dilemma… Laurie Simmons is one of my favorite artists and while she does have a few books of her work, she doesn’t have any posters or prints mass manufactured. Months ago I bought one of her books and since then I [...]
