Safety first!

The joy of living in los angeles is that one has to have metal security screens on the windows. Are they ugly? You betcha. It's bad wrought-iron-styled stuff, where they decided to add in little heart shapes and curlicues so it wouldn't look so depressing - an act which somehow makes the screen more depressing. Mine looks like this:

Le sigh...
But they don't have to be that ugly.



Thanks to ApartmentTherapy for the images, and to Italy, for really getting it.

Yes.

Thanks Eric!

The un-kitcheny kitchen

I regard these un-kitcheny kitchens the same way I think of Martha Stewart: with a mix of admiration and loathing hatred. The feeling of jealousy when something is so perfect that anything you do will never be as good. It's the sort of suspicion that it's too perfect, and you hope like crazy that there's some sort of deep secret. Like that this is their fake kitchen, and their real kitchen is hidden in some dark, disgusting corner of the house.
Image (and resulting feelings of inadequacy) courtesy of Apartment Therapy

ooh, artsy

I have a nasty habit of culling the material for this blog from a couple sources: Apartment Therapy and Desire To Inspire are two that provide most of the material here. Until I get a photo of the changes I've made to my room, here is something completely off the wall.
Erwin Olaf is a photographer based out of Amsterdam, whose photos struck me. I have fallen in love with the interiors he creates and styles for his shoots. Though his work often has a photo-shoot-ish feel, there's a lot here that grabbed me, especially the way that these first two photos have a strong narrative quality to them - like I've stumbled into the room and have interrupted something.


The furniture is what I want soooooo badly.



























Erwin Olaf(it's art, so there's the occasional nude project. Not sure if your workplace is cool with the naked human body if it's in an artsy context.)

We have in fact entered the future

Popular Mechanics and Popular Science have placed loads of their back issues on Google Books. I loved those magazines for their outlandish depictions of what the future was going to look like. We still don't have a flying car, or kitchens that cook for you

but we do have this projector from David Riesenberg:

Holy mother of cheese it is equal parts beautiful and mildly terrifying. It's a projector. It looks like it came from the prisoner or some other 1960s version of the future. It looks like it knows all your secrets. It looks like it could hover. Finally, we have achieved the future that the past wanted us to have.

The problem is, I don't need to own a TV. And this is something I've been thinking about a lot. I do everything on my laptop. Will I be weird if my first house doesn't have a TV in it at all? I feel like if you have a TV you have to have a space organized around that one thing. That's kind of a waste of space, which could be organized to highlight architectural features or to facilitate conversation.
Think you could live without a TV? What would you do differently in your home?

Thanks, Design Milk!

sofa, so (not) good.

Moving away from modern, some are bringing back 70s style because despite all its flaws, it has a homey feeling. We were never perfect people, so why aim for a perfect home? We did the best with what we could, we made things ourselves, and life was still good.

Patterned sofas may be making a comeback. As with any trend, there is a way to do it badly. Yes, different patterns in the same color scheme work together. These patterns are working towards something a bit more sinister. Granted, I have seen worse, but this is (to steal a phrase that YoungHouseLove turned me on to)wayyy to 'matchy-matchy'.

Suddenly, you don't have just a blue and white room. You have the blue and white room. Friends will speak of it in the same tone reserved for exes that we wish we did not have to see again. You don't want that.

bold, daring and wrong, kitchen edition

This kitchen, coming to us courtesy of Apartment Therapy is tonight's Bold, daring and wrong case study. Now is it just me, or does the photo/wallpaper make the room look like its only 6 feet tall? I should probably thank the designer for keeping the cabinet face a light color because anything else would have been sensory overload.
The bench has to go. Small space, awkward layout... yeah, cramming a bench in there is not making cooking any easier. The bench makes me feel like I'm making dinner in an envelope.
A mirrored frame can create visual interest and add a focal point to a room. But only if the frame is reflecting something interesting. Here, it looks to be... more of that print. You might as well have an empty frame.

Getting things done

Ever wonder how I get things done? But Nick,you might respond, you're the least productive person I know. Why should I listen to how you get things done?
Because it looks pretty, that's why.
TeuxDeux is a free, web-based productivity tool. Type what you have to do, and when you have to do it. When you've done it, cross it off. Simple. This is where everything, and I mean everything I have to do goes.

That's my secret. So, fair readers I turn to you: What little trick has helped you be more productive?