Posted by Samantha on March 23, 2010 – 12:26 am
I am taking the plunge into the wild wild world of Etsy! You see, I’ve stockpiled my vintage treasures for toooooo long and there is just no room in our small apartment or time in my schedule for me to appreciate them all, so off they go. (Hopefully.) I’ll keep you updated for the first 30 days of my Etsy adventure, sharing the trials of amateur photography, staging, writing descriptions, tagging, figuring out shipping (whaaaaa???!) and my general clumsiness in the whole endeavor… hope you’ll come along for the ride!
Take a sneak peak and see what I have listed so far at www.shedabbles.etsy.com
Posted by Samantha on October 21, 2008 – 11:22 pm
Just wanted all 7 of you to know that I will be back with a vengeance next week! And oooooh, do I have a lot to catch up on… pumpkin patch outings, doughnut hunts, before and after pics of decorating our new apartment and more fabulous fabulous finds! (See fabulous find below) Tighten your seatbelts…
Fabulous New Dining Room Chairs
Posted by Samantha on August 1, 2008 – 12:30 pm
Hey guys! Just wanted to let you know that we’re still here (meaning alive, but just barely) after a hellish moving week involving crazy ex-landlords trying to steal our money, 90 degree weather with almost 100% humidity, 10 hour deep cleaning yesterday with no air-conditioning, and today we’re forgetting it all and celebrating Blinn’s 2nd birthday!! 
Can’t wait for life to get back to normal and to show you pictures of the new place and hopefully some great before and afters as I purge all of the stuff cluttering up our beautiful new apartment! (Painted lovely shades of grey thanks to my wonderful parents!!) Hope to be back up and running next week once our internet connection is back up- see you then!
In the meantime, check out these great sites:
www.etsy.com for all things beautiful and handmade
www.modernseed.com for all things mini and modern
www.doseofdesign.blogspot.com for all things inspiring and noteworthy
Posted by Samantha on July 21, 2008 – 5:36 pm
So, starting this week we are painting the new apartment and hopefully moving a lot of our stuff over there. (It’s just across the street, remember…) So of course I’ve been thinking a lot about the place and how it’s going to function for our family. And I tend to be a dreamer and have high aspirations. Combined with a love of new experiences, new spaces, new places… I can spend hours a day just THINKING about these things! There are a lot of changes we’ve been wanting to make in our home anyways, and a move is the perfect time to do that, so here are a few broadly stated dreams for our new home. And I’ll be blogging about each topic more in detail it the next week or two, with more great links and tips that I have found to be helpful and inspirational!
- Simple Living. Switch to a decluttered and more simple way of life. I want to be able to spend time and energy on people, not dealing with stuff we own. The easier to clean and take care of, the better! (Which will require more discipline on my part… ouch!) Simplemom.net is great site for helping simplify your home!
- Natural Living. We would like to start recycling and being more aware of how much energy, water we are using, food we are wasting, etc. Besides being better for our pocketbooks, I think this will be a good step to help us be more mindful of what we are consuming and why. I’ve linked to her site before, but Sara’s walkslowlylivewildly.com is my go-to site for ideas and resources on natural living. Thanks Sara! One of the changes I want to make is to start using bags like these from baggubags.com when I shop for groceries instead of discarding dozens of plastic bags each month. (plus they’re cute!)
- Creative Living. We want to be surrounded by beautiful creative art that inspires us to make artwork, craft, play music, write music and read more. And in our new place we can put holes in the walls! How revolutionary! Which means I am especially looking forward to putting up pictures, scriptures and artwork that have been stored underneath our bed for the past few years. I love the collage of family pictures at http://tarawhitney.com/justbeblogged/page/6/
- Hospitable Living. We want this to be a welcoming and comfortable place for others to visit. I grew up knowing that family and friends could stop by anytime during the day and I still miss that “culture” that is pretty absent here in the suburbs. (Although it will mean having a relatively clean house most of the time- which points back to item #1!) I haven’t found a specific site that just talks about this. If you know of a good one, let me know!
- Healthy Living. We will now begin to eat meals at a table like real families and not in front of the TV like poor college students! We would also like to switch to more organic food (especially meats) and cut out white flour/white sugars, and eat a LOT more fresh fruits and vegetables. Happyfoody.com is great. The Organic Center has just released a free pocket guide, which lists fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risks from pesticides. And the Eat Well site is a free online directory of farms, stores, restaurants, bed & breakfasts, and other outlets that offer local, fresh and sustainable food in the US and Canada.
These are just some things I dream about. I am looking forward to talking about these more in depth in the next few weeks!
Posted by Samantha on July 17, 2008 – 2:41 pm
Artecnica has some great products but this one might take the cake as far as form/function is concerned! Behold the most beautiful electrical cord the world has ever seen. I’ll take 5 of ‘em.
Posted by Samantha on July 17, 2008 – 2:36 pm
Go over here to download some beautiful Marimekko wallpaper for your computer desktop. Even technology deserves to be beautiful!
Posted by Samantha on July 16, 2008 – 10:11 pm
Another great art installation by Anthropologie. A “coral reef” of coffee filters and cupcake baking cups!
Posted by Samantha on July 14, 2008 – 3:20 pm
The living room in the new apartment has vaulted ceilings. So if we want to paint in there we’d need to paint the ceiling too. In addition to buying a neck brace, we’d also have to buy a lot more paint. One idea is a doing a wall mural that add drama for less money. These two are great.
Posted by Samantha on July 14, 2008 – 3:17 pm
I like the idea of a clean modern grey with pops of citrusy neon colors. Here’s some eye candy.
Posted by Samantha on July 14, 2008 – 2:58 pm
I stumbled upon this great website a few weeks ago that is helping me try to decide an allover color scheme for the new apartment, or at least the kitchen/diningroom/livingroom space since they’re all open to each other. My top color scheme right now is this….
based on this picture I found.
And this pendant lamp is now in the running…
So obviously I’m not painting the walls dark plum (although if I owned my own home…) and unfortunately I do not have that wonderful mustardy couch. But I like the colors. I’m pretty set on light grey walls and these colors would work well with it. Also, I like the small accent of the cobalt blue. The bathroom has new cobalt blue tile in it that you’ll probably see most of the time with the door slightly open, so I need whatever color scheme we use to be able to work with that color. And I like that there’s no red. I kind of hate red right now. I’m shunning red. Shun. Unshun. Reshun. (The Office anyone??)
A few more color schemes to come!!
