Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Radical Possibility- The Cliff's Notes

Hello, Apartment Therapy readers!

Thanks for stopping by! Great to have you guys here. You can leave your shoes on.

To make your browsing a little easier...

You can read more about this blog and the family behind it here...

Find a tutorial for the easiest chevron entryway wall here here...

Learn to build a pipe-rack corner closet here...


Get a step-by-step on this giant greeting here...

And find some of the art featured in the apartment here!


A few notes...
  • Our bed unfortunately is in the only place it works in the room. We have tried one million configurations, but  since one wall is closets, and the room is only 4 feet wide in some places, this is all that works! Luckily, we find it more cozy than clausterphobic!
  • I do make the Our Little Family portraits, but the shop is still on hiatus to catch up on orders. I will post in here when it opens again!
  • Thank you for the suggestion to hang the art lower! I'm still getting the hang of all this, so I'm going to try lowering it today! I thought hanging it high would bring the eye up in a small space, haha but I think it may have done the opposite :)
  • The wooden dining chairs are Ikea. As someone else mentioned, they aren't super cozy, but they are fairly sturdy and get the job done, plus are great for moving around when entertaining!
  • Yes, I will be friends with all of you. Sorry, I won't leave Andy and run away with any of you :)
  • The dining room table is from Brown Elephant on Clark! All 10 feet of it only cost me $20, so I highly suggest checking that place out.
  • All are welcome to come pet Lucille Austero. She would love it. 
  • The Riot Grrrrl banner is from Unicorn Parade, and everything I've gotten from her has been stellar. The bowl on the table is another Etsy find, from Della Morte ceramics and is so beautiful in real life, that four separate guests to my house have bought their own when they left!
And don't forget to like r/p on Facebook!

Thanks so much to Apartment Therapy for featuring our humble abode, and thanks to all of you, old and new, for reading and supporting this tiny little blog. It was a great relief to see others interested in seeing more "old school" AT homes. 

xo,
z

Monday, May 13, 2013

Forcing a Green Thumb & DIY Plant Markers


So as you guys may remember, plants are not my thing. Or at least, they weren't.

But since we talked about this subject last, I have made chlorophyll my bitch. I have grown (pun!) past succulents, and moved onto actual leafy plants, and even edible ones. I can't even really put my (newly green) finger on what changed. I have a super sunny apartment, so that helps. And I just really, really, really wanted to be good at it. I often freaked out to my friend Michelle, holder of all plant knowledge, pleading to get her secrets out of her. From time to time, I was even known to talk to my plants. In just a few short months, I went from the Jeffrey Dahmer of the plant world to being that woman with the long silver braid that says goodnight to her "babies". 


I also have a few fake plants mixed in around the apartment, permanently green and lush, to trick and inspire the real plants into being their very best. In other news, I've lost my fucking mind.

In my herb garden, I wanted some plant markers, but as always, the things I want cost more money than I wanted to pay, especially because I'm currently only growing three herbs. Ones that I can keep track of without markers, but hey, it was Sunday, I was feeling restless, and ABC Family was running yet another Harry Potter marathon.

Disclaimer: this plant is actually cilantro and will not give you the ability to breathe under water. Any reader who attempts such a feat does so at ones own risk and r/p assumes no legal responsibility. And you might want to address your increasing disconnect from reality.


To make your own plant markers, you will need barbecue skewers, cardstock and glue. You can decorate the markers before or after you cut, then adhere to the skewers with glue. A piece of tape after gluing helps keep them from rolling around while they dry. 

So don't listen to people when they say one can't just develop a green thumb, because one, fuck those people, and two, you can always learn something new. But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some carnage along the way.

xo,
z

Friday, May 10, 2013

Friday Inspiration and Good Reads

I go through phases of being moderately obsessed with Pinterest to being totally obsessed with Pinterest, and lately I've been totally obsessed. I know it gets a bad rap sometimes for being a fucking wasteland of mason jars and melted crayons and weird dresses made out of flannel shirts and shit, but whatever I love it/can't stop, won't stop/only God can judge me. 

A little round up of favorite pins lately...



1/ looking for curtains for the office
2/ always searching for good prints
3/ if i can't live there, i'll fill my home with shit that just says the name of the city all over it
4/ look man, its just pretty. i cant only pin things i want to buy or i'd be broke
5/ this is not helping my succulent obsession
6/ but really, please do


If you'd like to follow me on Pinterest, I promise I won't post any melted crayon art.

In other internet news...

Hey, have a lovely weekend guys. You all deserve it.

xo,
z

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Anatomy of an Apartment Therapy Tour


This post is a week late, but I realized I never really wrote about the Apartment Therapy tour! Forgive the long-windedness, I know I don't usually do text-heavy posts. But since people have asked how this all came together, and then how it went, I wanted to give a rundown of the process, as well as my neuroses / some thoughts on living in your home and design blog culture in general.

Last Sunday, a photographer from Apartment Therapy (the lovely Carolyn Purnell) came to shoot my place. It was totally a bizarre, but wonderful, experience. 

Apartment Therapy first contacted me about four or five months ago, asking if I'd be willing to do a tour. I was supremely flattered, but just didn't feel like I had the kind of house that people would really want to see.  I politely declined, and passed on word about some friends that have a great home for them to feature instead. I just wanted to settle into my home a little bit more, because while I love it so, eight months just wasn't enough time to really make it feel like ours. Especially when everything you own is thrifted, it takes a while for things to start coming together, to hit a good stride.

A few months later, at the nudging of a few friends who were like "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?", I finally emailed Carolyn back. I was just resisting at that point because, honestly, I was afraid. I was afraid of putting my home out there, something so personal, to a crowd so critical. Like, every design choice might not be flaw-free, but its still my home. The aesthetics might not be revolutionary, but its a real, normal person apartment. But even though I was still nervous about putting everything out for public consumption, I was like, "You know what? Fuck it. I want some professional photos of our first place together, and I don't want fear to be the only thing holding me back from a cool opportunity."

The funny thing is, I thought I would kick into overdrive, stressing about the house a ton, trying to keep things perfect, buying new things, working day and night on projects. I even set aside a budget of $350 from my tax return to treat myself to all those home things I'd been wanting, all those projects to be done... and then I barely spent any of it. I spent $75 cleaning up our fucking disaster of a bathroom, then $15 on a new plant. That's it. Things I probably would have done anyways. Instead of stressing about keeping things perfect, I threw a big party for a friend's 30th, where we broke dishes and spilled wine, because that's what you do in a home. 


The weekend of, we did clean a lot, which was really our only prep. Andy and I are not naturally tidy people, and when you start looking at your house knowing thousands of people will see it, you realize just how not-tidy you are (for instance, door jams get fucking nasty from you touching them every.single.day. Around all of our doorknobs was a halo of smudgy black fingerprints.) Then I started checking the weather about once an hour (rain was in the forecast, and we needed good light for the shoot.) And finally, we ran to the grocery store to buy some $4 bouquets, just for one fancy touch.


Then the day arrived. Sure, I shoved some shit in closets, because when you live in an apartment and don't have a storage space or a basement, shit accumulates that just doesn't have a home (Andy's old boxes of tapes, my bags of clothes I never get around to donating, lamps I love but don't match any of our rooms anymore, elements to DIYs that haven't happened yet) I basically had my very own Monica Closet:


We debated moving and hiding some of the parts of our every day life, like Luce's crate, or Andy's bike that currently resides in our living room (you can see both here, the crate is next to the couch, and the bike by the guest room):

But ended up vetoing that because those things are a part of our lives. It wouldn't really be a tour of our place if we hid everything that we actually use and staged it like a model home. My favorite homes to see inside are ones that I can relate to, ones that look like people live in them, and are allowed to put their feet on the coffee table. I admit though, I did unplug the cable so that we wouldn't have an unsightly cord running through the middle of the house. Let me have some smoke and mirrors. 

So Carolyn came, and was impossibly sweet. Luce jumped all over her, licking her face, and not letting her take one shot without trying to be a part of the process somehow, and she was totally okay with it. We talked about past tours, how she is living my dream of getting to go into stranger's homes and look around, and how I wished there was some version of the Small Cool Contest, but for just like, normal people on normal budgets who aren't designers and don't own any $500 chairs. Broke Cool? I don't know man, I was doing a lot of nervous talking. I wasn't sure if I should talk to her a lot, or if that would distract her? Or if not talking was super awkward and cold? Again, she was cool with whatever, and I was a total weirdo.


Anyways, because this post just isn't long enough yet, after all was said and done, a few friends came over for lunch, because why not have people over when my house is at its cleanliness pinnacle? We shared a big meal, planned out the summer, and then, very embarrassingly, toasts were given. My friend Megan started with a congratulations, and Andy then thanked me for all my hard work and "for giving me a home for the first time since I moved away." Megan then started crying, but she does that a lot. This time I didn't blame her, I was getting a little misty too.



At the end of the day, I just kind of felt like this:

Very lucky, very tired, very loved. 

Exposed dog crates, stuff jammed into closets, and all.

xo,
z

Monday, April 29, 2013

A Bathroom Makeover

So I'm warning you now, you're about to see some janky ass photos of my bathroom. In the spirit of keeping it real, I am showing you true Befores. Like, not safe for life. We were slowly making our way through the apartment, kind of going room by room decorating and getting settled. The kitchen and bathroom are so outdated, with ugly tile and stained floors and peeling linoleum and walls that are so dingy...ugh they are the worst.

So rather than put even more effort into the bathroom to make it better, we just treated it like the redheaded stepchild of the apartment. It got the old, ugly shelf that I didn't want to display anywhere else, the cheapest tension rod from the hardware store, an old storage space rug instead of a bathmat. Storage was an issue, but rather than figure out real solutions, I just threw shit in tupperwares and called it a day. So what you're about to see is just real life of two people who need to clean their bathroom more. I do wish I had at least taken out the garbage, which is piled with what seems to be three years worth of face wipes and Valley of the Dolls pill bottles strewn about.




To be fair, I took these on an ESPECIALLY bad day, because that was the day I decided I just could not do this anymore, and it was time for a bathroom overhaul. Normally it was really ugly, but not quite in this state of chaos.

Aaaaaaahhh

First step was taking out that trash. Next, I replaced all the mismatched bulbs with nice round bulbs. The medicine cabinet got a quick hit of black acrylic paint I had lying around. The space above the toilet got a small shelf a friend gave me from Urban Outfitters, and a Guided By Voices print in a thrift store frame repurposed from when the gallery wall came down. An Ikea mirror was added to the medicine cabinet too, for days when I feel like obsessing over whether or not my wrinkles are deeper today than they were yesterday. 

The most dramatic change was the installation of a new shower curtain. Instead of the tension rod that fell on us once a week while we were showering, we installed a piece of piping instead. Hanging it nearly at the ceiling, and going from wall to wall, really makes the room feel MUCH bigger than the short, stumpy one we were working with before. It also hides the storage space next to the shower, which is helpful so that people don't have to see my excessive amount of hair products or our dirty laundry hamper. We installed it the exact same way we did the corner closet in the guest room, but this time we didn't have to use elbow joints. The pipe is 86", and was $11 at Home Depot. The shower curtains (yep, plural, since two were needed to go wall-to-wall) are extra-long shower curtains from Amazon for $13 a piece.

That monstrosity of a shelf up there got a few coats of white paint, so now it looks a little less like the shelf my old neighbor left in the hallway when he moved out (thanks, Steve!), and a little more like we actually want it in our house. The clear tupperware unfortunately just showcased the disorganization of my makeup (yep, that's makeup filling up all of those. I have a problem), so instead I bought a cheap set of vinyl black storage containers from Ikea to organize everything.

Jewelry gets sorted in little green dishes from the thrift store, and all makeup brushes are living in mason jars on a "cake stand" (aka a plate glued to a candlestick, again from the thrift store.) The print is one of my favorite LCD Soundsystem songs, so I just typed it out in Word and had it printed on an Engineering Print (my favorite!) over at Staples before throwing it in a $7 frame from Joanns. (Update: I forgot I still had the original image! You can save this and upload it to Staples.com to print yourself! I got the smallest size, 18x24,  which normally runs about $1.50)



Because everyone loves a good old fashioned budget breakdown:

Pipe shower curtain - $11
Flanges to attach to wall - $7 for two
New extra-long shower curtains - $26 for 2
Extra long shower curtain liner - $8
Ikea FRACK mirror - $5
New lightbulbs - $3
Frame and print - $0 (already owned)
Black Paint - $0 (already owned)
White paint for shelving unit - $0 (already owned, used Rustoleum Paint+Primer Spray Paint)
Ikea SKUBB boxes - $8
Green dishes - $1 for 3
"Cake Stand" - $1.50 ($1 for the candlestick, $.50 for the plate)
Dance Yrself Clean print - Free (they messed up my order three times, so I got it comped!)
Frame - $7
Total: $77.50

It's a little bit more than we usually spend on room face lifts, but fuck if it didn't need it so bad. For around $75, I feel like we were able to spin the room into something a little less....disgusting. Granted, just the act of cleaning it up helped too, but hey, I got more dramatic before-and-afters from our slothfulness, so just go with it.

xo,
z
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