Wallpaper

We recently took a trip out to California and a trip to California wouldn't be complete without a visit with our friends Marc, Busy and their beautiful daughter Birdie.

Espen had a blast at their place, Marc's old office has been converted into a playroom which Espen spent pretty much the entire night playing in.

I snapped this cute picture of him hamming it up for the camera.

Espen certainly looks adorable in this picture but seriously, my favorite thing about this photo is the wallpaper in the background. From a far it looks like a lovely toile, one that might possibly original in the home but take a closer look and the those lovely vignettes turn out to be something quite the contrary but oh so genius!

Wait, are those to guys on a park bench drinking 40's out of paper bags? Why yes they are.



And yes, that's a guy mugging a woman at gunpoint and a bag lady with her dog...






Is that not the most amazing tongue in cheek design element you have ever seen in a home, and in such a beautiful home at that. It just kills me every time I see it or think about it. The scenes are actually scenes of London from design studio Timorous Beasties. Simply amazing.

rising of the setting sun

I picked up my print that I had framed of Wayne Pate's Rising of the Setting Sun yesterday.
I opted not to use any matte and was a bit nervous about how much of the art the frame would cover and although it does cover up the edges including the big yellow sun there is something about the way the black circles blend into the black inner frame that adds just the slightest bit of added depth to it. I think it turned out beautiful.

phoenix in the mailbox

I am super excited! My beautiful Phoenix print from The Heads of State came in the mail yesterday and it is amazing!!

{phoenix:the heads of state}
I know it deserves a proper frame but when I look at it my first reaction is to grab some red thumb-tacks and just pin it to the wall. I don't think I could ever stick little holes in it so it will sit in it's tube till the perfect framing opportunity comes along.

The perfect framing opportunity has come along for another wonderful print that I have been dying to hang up since my mom got it for me for my birthday early this year...


{rising of the setting sun:wayne pate}

I have been waiting for Michael's elusive 60% off coupon. I get 40% & 50% all the time, but, I knew there was a 60% one that pops up every once and a while. Well, it finally came in the mail today. Now, I have a gift card for Aaron Brother’s, not Michaels, but I called Aaron's the other day and they told me that since they are owned by the same company they will honor the other one's offer. What?? I am going to run down to Michael's on Saturday and get a quote and then hop on over to Aaron Brother’s and get this puppy framed! Nothin' fancy, just a super simple frame, maybe a matte. We'll see. Either way, I can't wait to get this one up in our house.

easter eggs, fevers and upset tummies

Saturday was a very long day. Jeremy was out of town and I was busy making the headboard. Espen and I took a long nap and when we woke up he was not feeling well. Espen had been telling me since late Friday that his tummy hurts, but he says that a lot because he thinks we'll give him medicine (he loves children's Tylenol). I checked his temperature and he did have a bit of a fever. I held off on the medicine so I could check his temperature again late and get an accurate read. An hour later and he still had a fever.

I told him to pick out a movie and rest while I prepped the Easter eggs for dying.


{he went with Annie}


{poor little dude}

I'm 31 years old and I have never boiled an egg before. I love hard boiled eggs but have never bothered to make them, ever. Weird. I guess I should have told Jeremy that the eggs in the fridge were for dying because it left us with only 9 after one broke open in the water and Espen & I split one.


{nice lookin' eggs}




{yum yum yum}








{can you believe he wasn't feeling well? look at those skills}








We ended up breaking a few in the process and by we I mean I did. I pushed my thumb through at least three of them but that's okay they turned out cute. So cute that I forgot to take a picture. Well, maybe it's not that I forgot but that I was too busy trying to scrape stickers off of our counter. Espen thought this was a wonderful idea. Yes, wonderful for him, kind of a pain for me.




{so proud of his stickers}




Who knew cleaning up dye could be so pretty or is it just me...

Espen made a popsicle out of one of his eggs. Doesn't that sound delicious?


After our funtimes with eggs we had even more fun with our Happy Meal boxes/viking helmets. Visste du vi er Vikings?


{i told espen to make a serious face}

After Vikings but just before bed we played 'shop'. Espen would walk around the house and bring things over to me and tell me in his adult voice, 'uh, hello, i'm buying this for my son, I'm going to need some help out to the car with this'. Everytime he'd approach me he'd have a grin on his face like he was embarrased to act out the part but the next thing you know he would completely become the character. (Future actor?)

diy headboard

Last summer Jeremy and I headed out to Palm Springs for our friends 30th birthday bash. The Parker was taken over by the group of her friends that came out for a hot weekend in the desert.
From the moment we pulled up to the sky high, heavily shrubbed entrance with it's decorative block facade I knew I was going to fall in love a million times over and that was exactly what happened. I would live in that hotel in a heartbeat.
I took tons of pictures of the interior of our room in hopes of someday replicating it. The headboard was one of the most dominant features in the room, and what I thought may be the most fun to try to make. So after talking about it for 9 months I finally got around to giving it a try. The results, not perfect, but also not bad for my first try. I will need to redo some things on it, but I'll probably get around to that next year.



{the headboard at the Parker & jeremy}

Espen and I rounded up the upholstery and padding on Friday night. I had already order upholstery tack strips a few months ago (yes, I procrastinate, I know) so on Saturday morning we headed over to Home Depot to get some plywood and wall mounts.



{this kid loves home depot}



{this is what he calls 'taking a break'}



{please cut this to 62"x40" please}



{ear muffs}

After we crammed the plywood and a bear skin rug and espen's bike...into Big Fancy we were off to see Matt Hibbard of Hibbard Custom Cabinets. A very dear friend and such a talented cabinet maker. Seriously, check out his portfolio. Espen was super tired so after he snacked on his happy meal he pretty much crashed.


{nap time on the hibbard's front patio}

While Espen slept Matt and I worked on the cuts he's was going to make in the plywood. I knew I didn't want a rectangle but I wasn't sure exactly how to draw out the design. At first I had Matt make something that looked more like a butt than anything else. Luckily Matt knows his stuff and after a couple of tries we got the shape that I had envisioned.


{the butt}


{the wonderful Matt Hibbard}


{beginning to take shape}

Getting this huge piece of heavy plywood upstairs was a bit of a challenge, my arms are still paying for it 4 days later. (maybe my body's telling me to do a few more push ups here and there) Once upstairs though me and my little helper quickly began to work.


What you will need:
1. 3/4 inch plywood
2. talented cabinet maker to cut plywood
3. tacky glue
4. 2" foam pad
5. steak knife or other ultra fancy tool to cut foam
6. staple gun
7. upholstery
8. upholstery tack strips
9. cute child in underwear


I laid everything out in the bedroom which was a big mistake since our room is so tiny. I only got around to gluing and cutting the foam before I realized this was definitely a project for the living room. So I dragged everything out near the couch, set Espen up with some online games (Transformers and Star Wars are his new faves) and began to staple away at the material. This part sucked. I can watch a hundred DIY videos on how to upholster things and they make it look SO freakin' easy, it's not. I had the worst time trying to figure out how to pull the fabric around the part I had cut out. Somehow, it came together, but not as nicely as I'd like it.


{foam, cut to shape of the plywood}


{this is where I started to get nervous, looks a little plain jane}

Skip ahead an hour and one bleeding hand, the upholstery tacks were on. I used the kind that give the appearance that you nailed in 5 hundred tacks down when in fact you are only nailing down every 5th one. See, I thought it would be a great time saver, every 5th one would no doubt cut the process of nailing them down in half...what I didn't think about was that nailing them over 2" thick foam coupled with the fact that I was already having a hard time nailing some in to some parts of the plywood, would leave sections that didn't have a nail for about 1/2 a foot. It ended up making it look like it wasn't a straight line not to mention I kinda goofed up along one of the corners. I'm going to order a new strip of tacks that has only one or two fake tacks in between the actual tack. It may take longer but the end result will be ten times better.

I won't get into the fact that I think I am super woman and thought I would be able to drill into concrete correctly then lift this gigantic headboard two and a half feet off of the ground to hang it on two French cleats. Ya, it was a disaster that left 6 nice size holes in our wall. My back was breaking so I ended up propping it up on a plastic bin that was under our bed and smushed it between our bed and the wall.

In the end, I think it turned out, well, okay...actually, better than okay. Not perfect but really, not bad for not having a clue what I was doing.




{done & done, kind of}

our new old chair

While my parents were in the process of purchasing the cabin a couple of years ago my mom had emailed me a few pictures. The upstairs area was cluttered with all sorts of strange things but one item caught my eye. I called my mom and asked her if the seller's were willing to include said item with the home. The seller's agreed and hauled everything off except for the beat up, worn, tattered but totally fabulous Plycraft Lounge Chair.


My dad brought it down just a couple of days ago and I picked it up from my sister's house late last night, while Jeremy and Espen were finishing up foosball and sausages at a friends house I lugged the beastly chair upstairs and in to our bedroom.

I took the cushion off of the back yesterday and was amazed at how easy it was and also by how simple it looks to reupholster! The wood will need to be sanded and re-stained and the leather will need to be replaced so now we have to figure out what color leather to use. I’m not a big fan of the black leather version. The white is way to stark. Jeremy and I both thought cream would be a good fit for the chair and our home. I stumbled upon these two photos this morning while trying to get ideas.


{photo from Mandi’s blog}
Okay, this photo I didn’t just stumble upon. I’ve been following this blog for a while now. I've written about this girls home before and how much I just love it. I knew she had the same chair so I immediately went to her sight to look up a photo. Wouldn’t you know…I love the color. Not too creamy not to tan. Close to perfect for our place if you ask me. So, not only do I love the color of the chair in this photo but, (this is weird and internet nerdy of me, see if you can follow)DesignSponge ‘tweeted’ yesterday about a story she found on Rebranding Playboy, after reading the story (which was REALLY interesting, go read it) I started poking around the site, starting at Scott’s portfolio page. I clicked on his print work and stopped at the first image for about 10 minutes. Everything about it I loved from the colors to the dimensions to the way the blue in the background fades into the boys headphones. I was instantly transported to Baranca Elementary school sitting in front of those weird old computers. I googled for a good 15 minutes or so trying to find out anything about the computer to see if it was the one I remembered. I somehow got stuck on a site with a history of computers. If you follow me on twitter you may have seen a couple of tweets that were inspired from what I was reading in the timeline. Anyway, back to the poster…so I email a copy of the poster to Jeremy as well as a link to this site and told him I was in love. I had to stop myself from shelling out $65 right then and there for it. Did you notice the poster in the photo from Mandi’s website. It’s the freakin’ poster. Less than 24 hours later the poster came into my life and in one of my favorite bloggers home! Weird, right? The chair, you see the chair a lot…it’s a pretty popular style, but the little poster in the background. WEIRD.


{photo: here}
Now this photo I did just stumble upon. Again, similar color not to light or dark. I think this is the look we will go for. Not much else to say about this photo since I didn’t research bricks or cows yesterday, hardy har.

I put the chair in our room last night next to our new dresser…this morning when Jeremy was scrambling around trying to find a pair of jeans he asked me, ‘how am I supposed to open these drawers?’. Ha, looks like I put it next to our new dresser but right in front of our old one. It was late, I was tired, I guess I didn’t think the placement through. Now the huge chair is on the other side of the dresser right as you walk in, bam! I don’t care, I love it.

the cabin

My parents cabin, or so it's called is not quite a cabin. What it is though is an amazing structure that makes no sense and a whole lotta sense all at the same time. For the most part you can understand what was going on in the previous owner's head as he built it but then a sideways piece of colored rock jutting out of the wall will catch your eye and you think to yourself 'what the heck?'.

My parents have done an incredible job fixing it up and making it even more impressive than it already was. While we were up there on Sunday I took a moment to walk around and snap some photos of the groupings of 'junk' that dot the landscape. Junk that will someday be turned into something wildly fantastic or are the groupings wildly fantastic themselves.




























{the cabin}