Blanket Fort Birthday

Here are a few snippets from my Blanket Fort Birthday. Bill and I spent our Saturday turning our entire living room (and half of the bedroom) into a giant blanket fort. Using only rope, binder clips and eye-hooks we constructed a frame and draped the walls to form our tent. It worked out quite nicely, I think it is going to be semi-permanent fixture of our home.

"We spent our whole lives being told that blanket forts are 

only for special occasions like sleep-overs 

and when uncles die. That's a lie, Annie. 

You can live in a fort of blankets all day, every night."

Troy Barnes 

Community 3.07 - Studies in Modern Movement

she is cute when she is sleeping...

totoro cards from darcy ♥

beer pong in a blanket fort - two nostalgic past times collide.

you know... just lighting dandelions on fire

Thanks to my lovely friends for coming over to cuddle and celebrate in the fort!

Plümo

I just discovered this adorable site plumo.com. It is full of eclectic items for the house and simple but unique clothing... just my style. Below are a few of my most coveted items.

Although I am taking a break from shopping since I recently purchased the iPad 2, (and paid extra for the super soft and gorgeous tan leather smart cover) so for now I can only admire...

Undecorate

I just ordered the book Undecorate from by favorite bookstore Hennessey+Ingalls at Space1520. This book is so lovely, I adore the light and airy rooms. That is one thing I like about having large windows in our living room. 

I love these trees painted on the walls. They remind me of my good friend Darla's house who recently passed away. She used to give me art lessons and hang out with me when my mom was working. She painted cracks in her walls with vines growing out, and fake bookcases on her cabinets. This painting looks so much like the one in her dining room.

 

I love this room so much. It is so bare and clean, yet looks cozy and lived in.

 

These chairs remind me of Chairy, my orange chair that it got at the flea market in Tulsa for $25. This was one of the first pieces of furniture I bought for myself. It  stayed in my apartment all through college. And she now lives with some good friends.

Yes it is named after Pee Wee Herman's chair.

These floors are great. I currently have fake hardwood floors. Wood is wonderful. It looks pretty, smells nice. It feels cool and warm at the same time. I have been thinking of ditching life in LA and moving to the country quite a lot recently. This photo is making a good argument for a log cabin.

 Can't wait to get my book and see more!

In the Dog House

Bill found some really sturdy poster boards in the dumpster recently and we have been discussing a use for them. One idea is to build a dog house for Bijou. I've been researching some of the coolest pet dens and found most of them on http://dog-milk.com. Here are some of the best..

Click the photos to learn more about these crazy cool dog houses.

Spice Rack

Last night I designed a shelf using Google SketchUp. It was my first time using the program and its awesome! I am going to be using this all the time.

Three New Succulents

recently acquired plants for our growing collection.

Privacy Windows (for free)!

My boyfriend and I recently moved into a new apartment in Hollywood. One of my favorite features of the new place is the enormous picture window that takes up one wall of the living room. I love my great view of the sunset over the Sunset strip, but I DON'T love that all of my neighbors can see everything I am up to inside. We had been keeping the curtains closed, but it was getting a bit dark and depressing in the place.

Since we are short on cash as usual, we came up with this idea to cover the bottom half of our windows.

We needed to give ourselves some privacy, but without sacrificing the light, our view, or any money. We wanted to stay away from window film, an obvious solution, since a) no money and b) we are renters, I don't really want to be scraping and scrubbing goo residue from the windows when we move. We were inspired by this post on Manhattan Nest, where a cornstarch mixture was used to affix fabric over windows. Fabric was more opaque than we wanted, and I've heard bugs can be attracted to the cornstarch. And again this needed to be a free project.Finally after some testing we came up with the solution for us.

We cut stripes from a roll of white tissue paper we had around the house and attached them to the window using very very diluted Elmer's Glue.  Elmer's School Glue is non toxic and washable, exactly what we needed for our project. We did a few test strips on the glass and after it dried, I was able to peal it off in one piece.  We dipped the paper into the glue/water mixture (about 1 part glue to 6 parts water) and smoothed it on to the glass using a sponge. It took a bit of care to remove all the air bubbles, but I enjoy doing things like that.

It turned out quite nicely in the end, it only took about 2 hours and it was all from things we already had in the house. It's so nice to keep the windows open :)

Decked Halls

It is my second
favorite time of
year...
Immediately
following
Thanksgiving,
I am ready to
play christmas
music non-stop,
make dozens of
cutout sugar cookies
and watch
All I want for Christmas
while I eat the
cookies.
The apartment also
got a wintery
makeover.
Bill, Megan and I
made an evening
of paper wreath making, building a faux fire and trimming the tree.

vintage coasters in christmas colors

reindeer keeping warm by the fire

the old man shows off his prized lamp