Apt. 11D

Simon Doonan Tells All

I heart Simon Doonan. Just heart him. He's the waifish man who appears in paisley shirts on E! and other frivolous shows which I absolutely never, ever watch and talks about fashion and home decor. Today he's in Slate giving advice to women about office-wear. 

COLOR: Most work environments are a sea of donkey-hued cubicles. This affords two options: First, you may transform yourself into the office bird of paradise and explode with color, thereby enhancing the moods of those around you. Your splashy digital prints—think Erdem orPrabal Gurung—and modernist color-blocking—think Haider Ackermann or Lisa Perry—will garner you rave reviews from colleagues. You will be celebrated for your plumage. Caution: Your flamboyance will have a negative impact on your perceived competence. Nobody wants to trust the company’s future to the wacked-out broad in the Pucci unitard. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Career advancement, and the horrid additional responsibility which comes with it, are both highly overrated.

Book Porn, Part One

This video is perfect because I'm majorly into book porn right now. More posts soon.

Gift Guide 2011 #8: Random Picks

I'm too burnt out to make nice looking, organized gift guides this year. I'm just going to post links to some of the best things that I found (some bought, some not) while shopping. 

LEGO Alarm Clock Radio - Blue, LEGO Coin Bank, LEGO The Calendar, Xbox 360 Kinect bundle (Target gives you a $80 gift card with purchase this week), 3DS, Skyrim, Angry Birds Plush Toy (When did we stop calling them "stuffed animals?"), hoodies (apparently, coats are NOT cool), a coat (I don't care what middle school kids think is cool.), Postcards From Penguin (Drop dead gorgeous cards of old Penguin covers, like Catcher in the Rye and a Room of One's Own. I'm going to glue some of my favorites onto a board and then frame them. If they are sold out on Amazon, Pottery Barn has them, too.) 

But now I'm feeling guilty about sending you to Amazon. 

Gift Guide 2011 #5: Baubles and Bling

As I watched The Kids Are Alright last week, I noticed that I've started dressing a lot like Julianne Moore's character. Lots of T-shirts, jeans, boots, and big bracelets. That's okay. I'm good with looking like a hot, middle-aged lesbian. 

I've been stacking bracelets lately: a Pandora bracelet, a homemade bracelet from a friend (see similar items on Etsy), an anniversary present, and a thrift store find. All with pink and green beads. I like this necklace from J. Crew with the pale pink beads. My date night earrings of choice are hoops from Stella and Dot. I like to arrange the jewelry that is in high rotation on little plates or bowls that I find at Anthropologie. IKEA has cute bowls that would be great for jewelry display. 

Thanks so much for shopping from the Amazon links on this blog. 

Gift Guide 2011 #4: Fireplace Edition

Behind the kitchen and the dining room, we have a TV room. It was probably once a porch that the former owners closed in. When we bought the house, our real estate agent in her never-quite-left-the-Bronx accent told us, "Laura, you'll take out the stove and put in a sectional sofa on that back wall. And then paint everything white."

We are going to paint the room white next week (and get proper chairs), but the stove is staying. My husband the Eagle Scout is having way too much fun building fires. We also have a fireplace in the living room, so we're in fire heaven. After Halloween's freak storm, Steve ran around the neighborhood stealing branches off the neighbors' yards. 

Showing you where our priorities are, our first purchases for the new house were equipment for the living room fireplace: Crate and Barrel's Fireplace Screen and tool set. On a whim, we also got a fireplace candleabra, which actually sits in the middle of our large picture window. Some nights, I light the candles, so Steve can see our house on his walk home from the bus stop. 

After reading this article about a Finnish house full of wood burning fireplaces, Steve and I are now in love with Jotul stoves. Maybe next year. We need more equipment, like a storage bin and a log tote. 

Along with the light coming from the fireplaces, we love decorating with lots of candles and string lights and paper lanterns for the holidays. You'll be able to see our house from space. 

Gift Guide 2011 #2: On My Desk

My desk is the control center of the house. It must be organized and full of happy stuff, like pictures of my kids and gadgets. Here are some gift ideas:

1.  Rolodex Envelope Pink Ribbon Card Case (With my green and white business cards, I'm in prep school heaven.)
2. I'm not happy with my iPad case. It's a boring Target model. Etsy has some cute ones. Check out the elephants! Maybe it's better to go with a pink model to match the cardcase. Or olive green with bubbles with bubbles. 
3. Tech girl needs to go old school sometimes with an excellent pen and a notebook. A Moleskine Ruled Notebook Pocket is cute. I love these pens, but the kids keep stealing them. 
4. My lamp is 70's vintage. I found it in a dumpster outside of an apartment building in New York City. I could be pursuaded to trade it in for a vintage-ish lamp with newer wiring. This green one from Crate and Barrel is lovely. 
5. Nice mouse pads are surprisingly hard to find. They are either tacky or boring. This faux-leather one is from IKEA. Amazon has a real leather one. 

Gift Guide 2011: Kids, Part 1 of Many

I'm still figuring out what to get for the boys and their cousins, so I'll do several gift guides for kids this month. 

1. Xbox 360 4GB Console with Kinect (We've been fighting this one. We already have a wii; we didn't want another game system. But we had to balance our thriftiness with Jonah's pariah status amongst pre-teens. Still, no Call of Duty. If you are wimping out and caving into teen demands, then at least buy it here.) 
2. LEGO City Advent Calendar (The kids loved their calendar last year.)
3. Pocketdoodles for Boys (Ian drew in this book all summer at the swim club. Since it was such a big hit, I'm thinking about getting him Do You Doodle? or  Pocketdoodles for Kids.
4. The new Alien Lego figures figures are adorable.
5. Jonah really, really needs to lose a day during winter break reading the latest Rick Riordan book, The Son of Neptune.

Apt. 11D Gift Guides

The Apt. 11D Gift Guides are back! The Apt. 11D Gift Guides are back!

Do I give you guilt trips? No, I do not. Do I try to sell you tote bags? No, I do not. Do I post obnoxious ads that slow down your browser? Well, ok. I do that. But  you guys never click on them, so I don't make any money off of them, and I'm not quite sure why I keep doing it. Anyway.

Amazon Associates does bring in some dough for this blogger every year. Here's the deal:

1. I'll post some gift ideas over the next couple of weeks.
2. If you are planning on buying anything on Amazon (that product or anything else), please go there via an Amazon link on this page. 
3. I get a little kickback. 
4. I buy myself a bitch' pair of boots that I would be too guilty to buy ordinarily. 
5. You get what you wanted. I get some serious kickass boots. Win. Win.

White Walls

I'm absolutely obsessed with white paint right now. Obsessed. White and a particular brown-ish white. 

This is an interior from T Magazine. 

For lots and lots of white walls, check out Remodelista. I have their iPad app, which is fabulous. 

Modernizing Mid-Century

The previous owners of our new house were in their mid-80s. The woman, known as Bix, felt that they needed to move to one of those graduated old age homes where you are moved to apartments with more helpers, as you gradually fall apart. Ludlow, the husband, wasn't too happy about that. But Bix insisted. 

Ludlow and Bix were waspy types who lived in this community since it went up in 1960. He was a Harvard educated lawyer. Probably with a combination of old and new money, they did quite well for themselves and, by the time they moved on to the old age home, they owned several homes. Bix was a traditional housewife for the most part. The house is traditionally girlie, but she had an bohemian edge. The basement was devoted to her art and she put in sky lights and drying racks everywhere. 

While these eccentric old folks are amusing enough, we really do need to update this house. And we need to do it very cheaply. Here's the kitchen:

As much as I would love to rip out these old cabinets and fading tile, we're stuck with it for a while.  God, I hate that tile countertop. And there's a black oven, a white fridge, and a stainless steve stove. People, you must pick one finish on your appliances and stick with it. 

Get a closer look at the wallpaper border in this room. 

Nice, huh? Bix really loved wallpaper. Here's what I'll be peeling off the walls for the next three years. 

 

The fish wallpaper border is in the bathroom, because fish, water, bathroom, water. GET IT? 

The first project is going to be the kitchen. I'll peel off the wallpaper, paint the walls a green-based white to neutralize all that orange, and then add some black hardware.