What Do You Think of This (Garden)?

Sometimes, I suspect that my mother doesn't like 84% of my design email fodder because she's crazy. How could it be any other way? The last few years have taught me I am unusual in that I truly cannot imagine that things I enjoy are anything other than objectively fantastic. Of course, I don't generally admit this to people.

Also, not sure about you, but I don't have a lot of chances to mull over art design with people. Maybe if I had more exposure, I'd be all "Oh, I can see how our opinions diverge".  Maybe my style would be more balanced and broader. Instead I'm rather committed to but a few things:

• Cleanness - I need a space to be actually clean-seeming but also visually undistracting.
• Colour - I like neutrals and wood tones but they usually don't cohere without deeper or brighter colours, IMO.
• Warmth - Cuz Canada...
• Architectural Intrigue
• Practicality - Show me some kind of ingenious, attractive space-saver any day...
• Elegance
• Light

I think most people like most of these things - they're all good, no? But maybe now's the time to broaden my horizons.

Question: When you seriously change something up, do you prefer the idea of sticking with what you know (which is naturally appealing) or hovering at the margins of your edgy self?

At any rate, let's move the design to the outside world today:

Landscape Design of Tom Stuart-Smith courtesy of DesiretoInspire

  
Kristin, what do you think of this? Um, simply that it is perfection. I love the controlled wildness. I can't say enough about the colour scheme - purples meet greens and yellows. The water feature is relaxing but also has an industrial feel. It is truly reflective. I think this space is beautifully proportioned given its size which is, admittedly, very large. I love its low profile, how it uses natural topography to find balance. I can smell the cultivated nature.

But what about you? What do you think? PS: Check out that link for some utterly spectacular photos.

What Do You Think of This?

So I'm considering a new blog series called What Do You Think of This? Effectively, it's a ploy to a) look at photos of (what I consider to be) interesting design and b) get myself, somehow, to a place that I can think beyond the pit, I mean, the healthful foundation, of my transforming home. Really, the pit is more metaphoric than anything, she says, trying to sound convincing.

Here's the idea: I'll find and post photos from one of my interior design sites. The photos will not be of one style or palette or room or locale. I will aim to make them relatable, whatever that means. The rooms will likely trend towards cozy and the homes/gardens compact, to resonate with the kind of home I'm building. I wonder if I'll come to regret writing that sentence if the only rooms that appeal to me from here on in are big! (Think: Mood Board, not "this is what I'm working with specifically".)

Then, I'll tell you what I like about the pic in question - and perhaps relate it to some aspect of design I'm thinking about for my own home.

I play a version of this with my mother on a daily basis. Note: She dislikes a full 84% of everything I show her, but I've got her number when it comes to places in Paris and Barcelona. Have I ever bothered to, um, save any of the house tours or photos?!?! Apparently, that would be entirely too structured for my interior-design brain which, I've recently discovered, is a fucking renegade. Do not tell her to organize in the way she does with, well, anything else. Style is a muse, y'all. Disclaimer: There is one other thing I undertake as unstructuredly as interior design and that's cooking. I refuse to follow a recipe. I commune with the food as I commune with spaces and I don't think mathematical structure helps overly, in those instances. Honestly: food and design are the same in that they are entirely associative. That's why there's relatively little, objectively bad design. (I'm going through an open-minded phase.)

So, for our inaugural space - and let's not put too much stock in any one photo - the Paris salon:

Photo courtesy of Apartment Therapy

You can learn more about this photo (and see a very French, full tour) here.

Kristin, what do you think of this? Well, it's in Paris (big city, gorgeous architecture both get points in my book). But in terms of the room itself, I love the light, the height of the windows and the juliette balcony. I love the textured walls and how they allow simplicity to shine. I love gold accents (though I do NOT like that table which one would get injured by routinely, I imagine, and which overwhelms the rug). I love that the only things that bring depth of colour into the room is the couch - and the TV. It's not that I support the overt visibility of TVs but I have a TV in my living space so I like to see versions of rooms that embrace the inevitables of living life. Who doesn't love the floors and the dimensions of the door? I'm fine with animal skin conceptually, but I don't think it's the piece, so much as the neutral layering that makes the rug integral. There are cut flowers - the essence of elegance, IMO, and a sign of nature within urban sprawl. But most of all I appreciate this room's cozy minimalism. It is not cold, even as there's very little in it. It's comfortable. Would go well with a glass of wine and some good music.

So, what do you think of this? And, by all means, do my mother proud with your honesty :-)

On the Flipside

I'm good, even when I'm drunk:

Alas, this is what passes for daylight on a cloudy day in October...

No, there isn't any art on the walls because, apparently, I cannot commit.

Here are brochure photos:

Style Garage Delano Chair in White Leather

Gus* Margot Sofa

The couch is spectacular. It is the most luscious velvet ever (and I don't even like velvet). The chair is super modern, but warm.

The old couch (from the back room) was picked up - on the dot of 12:30 - by a darling French woman who just moved to TO and got her apt. on Oct. 1. Craigslist curbside for the win. The living room couch was then unceremoniously (but wall scuffingly) moved to the back room. (Damn that former living room couch is deep. It's kind of eating the back room, not that I have to care cuz soon it will be a whole new room - she says, as if all the leg work has been done.)

So, whatcha think?

Wherein I Caution Against (Or Maybe Promote) Drunk Shopping

Let me tell you a little story... This summer, when I was on vacation (the Toronto part of the vacation), Scott and I explored our neighbourhood "holiday-style". On the very same day we took this lunch (in fact, approximately 10 minutes upon leaving the restaurant), we wandered into Style Garage because there was a cool blanket in the window that caught my eye. FWIW, the blanket was 200 bucks and it was freakin' off-grain?! (Fucking hipsters.)

Scott will not go near a furniture store more frequently than once a decade, so it's a mark of how concerned he was about my mental health - following the Ireland leg of that vacation - that he actually suggested we walk inside.

Once ensconced, however, we decided to sit on all the couches cuz, like, air-conditioning plus mild drunkness. And having sat on all the couches, we found one we liked and 2 minutes later we bought it. Then, as we were buying that, I saw a cool leather chair out of the corner of my eye and, next thing you know, we were buying it too. The SA was, frankly, stunned by all of this cuz he'd spent 20 minutes helping another couple to decide that they couldn't decide on anything (it was their 3rd time looking) and then we spent all the loot and he didn't do more than distractedly say hello when we walked in. Point is, you never know who's gonna pull out the credit card. (And really, staying out of our way is optimal when we're making decisions.)

So the couch needed to be built, which was either going to take 6 weeks or 3 months (or till Christmas - you know, hipsters.) We decided that we'd have the chair delivered at the same time, left empty-handed, buzz fading and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday, a friend asked me if we had our new furniture and I realized I'd not thought about it since early July?! I called Scott - whose name was on the paperwork - to ask him if he'd heard anything, whereupon he cheerfully advised: Yeah, they called a couple of weeks ago to say the order was ready and they took the balance payment. Apparently, the delivery guy was supposed to call me to set up a time but he never did...

In fact, they'd called on September 18, just to clarify. I did ask my husband whether he'd intended to tell me about this but he said he wanted it to be a surprise. I assured him that I was adequately surprised and then he suggested that I look into it. This is how I can tell you that the delivery guy never got notice and the furniture shop didn't follow up and my husband forgot and, really, our couch and chair could be sitting in someone else's house right now and who'd be any the wiser??

On the flip side, when I spoke with Terrence (the delivery guy who was 1 part road-raging on someone and 2-parts scared of me), he told me that the only time he could deliver it would be Friday afternoon. Um, ok. An hour earlier I'd all but forgotten I had a new couch and chair. And delivery before Thanksgiving (when I'm having guests) is pretty sweet.

The only concern I had - and I'm underplaying how concerned I was because, really, I only go into a furniture store once every half-decade so I'm not exactly inspired by this sort of change - is that I have a leather chair (I never liked) and another couch in the back room (the room that's gonna be demolished and recreated, along with a room above it) that I've got to divest myself of by Friday.

Did I mention that everything's happening here, all the time?

So Scott called his friend, who just moved into his first condo, and offered him the leather chair. Sure, I could get a few hundred bucks for it - it's in perfect shape - but I can't be bothered. Apparently  Terrence will bring it to this friend for an extra 80 bucks so, somehow, I'm giving Scott's friend a chair and paying to have it delivered to him. Well played, friend.

I'm going old-school with the couch - which is 20 years old and could use recovering - or at least a good wash. It's going on the front walk but I'll up the ante by doing a curbside notification on Craigslist. You know: There will be a free couch on a front walk at @ noon on Friday kind of thing. (I won't put the address of course - peeps need to email me for extra deets!) I'm so hopeful that this will be taken by a happy person who needs it approximately 3 minutes after it leaves my front door.

The hilarity of this situation is that neither Scott nor I (who shared a notably delicious bottle of wine prior to walking into Style Garage) can remember what either the couch or the chair look like*. We know the couch is a deep shade of blue velvet and we think the chair is white. Lord. Who buys a white leather chair? (Note: I already own one that lives upstairs.) So it's going to be an exciting Friday.

Today's Questions: Have you ever bought something big ticket and forgotten about it? Do you think we're insane?

*Yeah, I do realize I can look up deets on the receipt but what's the fun in that??

Why Don't I Live Here?

Here's hoping this aspirational post doesn't make you want to kill yourself. I always feel that I should include a "warning" when I post about design, something like: Potential trigger for people who swoon over stunning interiors but don't have the money, time or wherewithal to live like this. Proceed at your own risk!

But just to bait you, this is the freakin' pool:

Photo from this post at Desire to Inspire...

This Room Is Perfection

I FREAKIN' love this room:

Photo from Remodelista

Victorian meets NYC-academic-circa-1972. It's sexy. It's smart. It's the scene of some fabulous hedonism, I'm sure.

Whatcha think?

Interior Monologue

You have got to check out this site, which I discovered thanks to Desire to Inspire. It's a German tour de force (am I allowed to mix those?). To wit, look at these photos:

Alec, this is my choice for the One Picture Challenge:

Mood Lighting

When first we planned the pergola, the idea was to light it with sconces using, you know, electricity. But the more I've had time to think - and trust me, I've had time to think - the more I wonder if I don't want to get modern lighting the hell out of the picture. Which is why I'm deferring the electrical indefinitely.

Seriously, I'm deferring everything at this point. If only because I cannot bear to watch, wait and pay any longer. The only thing I'm not deferring is relaxing with friends and great food and good booze in copious quantities. And in setting a mood-filled atmosphere as the sun slips behind the houses and the summer night wafts in. (Note to Canadian readers: I realize this is largely a pipe dream given our weather over the last 3 years. Work with me. Let's will it to occur.)

So, back to lighting. I have some lovely candle holders for tea lights and tapers but I felt the need for lanterns. Lanterns just say "backyard party" to me (aka garden-having newbie), yes?

I looked around online and in shops. Of course, I could have bought some very passable and affordable ones at IKEA but that meant I would have had to get my ass there twice in one month. Eeek. Then it hit me: there's a Pottery Barn not 10 minutes from my office.

Disclaimer: I'm not a PB kind of gal. Till this week, I had never actually bought a single item there. Don't misunderstand, I have nothing against the place. Some of my most stylish friends keep the store on speed dial. Well, I do think it's insanely expensive for merch that's extremely available (and hence liable to be seen everywhere). And I do think it tends towards beige in a crazy way. But there's lots of well-appointed stuff. It's like the J Crew of home things. It does American contemporary with exceptional skill.

Anyway, enough of the design treatise. I found these lanterns and bought them (the chrome, not the red)...

I thought they were gracefully ironic - and well made. Not a crazy price, either. And when I showed them to Scott he spit with laughter and squawked: Arrrr matey, them's some fine lights for the prow.

Like they aren't totally germane and adorable or something.

Evil Inspiration

If I were one of those computer wizards, I would seriously consider hacking into Desire to Inspire just to rename it K.Line.

In lieu of that, I am seriously considering taking one day a week and calling it "K.Line lifts great photos from Desire to Inspire post" day.

Is that so wrong?

While you give the moral question some thought, perhaps you'd like to hang in this Swedish "flat" - yeah, they're calling this monster pad a flat:





I just know if I lived here, I'd overwhelm myself with self-important coolness. And I'd be blond.