Tag Archives: design

Moving In: Kex

Posted on April 18, 2025 | 2 comments

This summer, I spent some time in Iceland. I gave you all the notes for that trip on Monday, but I got to thinking about the hostel I stayed in there, and, well, it is fantasy status. Let’s review, shall we?

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Right, Kex is cooler than your house.

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Moving In: Pushing Daisies

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

Was I the only one who watched the excellent ABC show, Pushing Daisies? I feel like I was.

pushing daisiesThe show was about Pie Maker, the gentle-looking besuited Lee Pace who has a special supernatural talent: he can bring back someone or something from the dead with his touch. The show is about his relationship with Chuck (above, yellow dress, also known as Anna Friel), his weird agoraphobic aunts and their birds (red dresses), Kristin Chenoweth’s being funny, and a sort of complicated relationship with a P.I. (purple shirt). It was inventive, whimsical, and well-written; in short, it was never going to make it and was cancelled after one season. Here’s a quick primer:

The set design and costuming almost stole the show, so to speak. Wouldn’t it be fun to live in the Pie Hole? After the jump, I’ll walk you through making that look your own.

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Moving In: True Stories

Posted on March 28, 2025 | 3 comments

This movie, more than anything else, defined my teenage years.

True confession: I was a teenage hipster dirtbag.

To be fair, I grew up into an adult hipster dirtbag, so I guess this is at least representative. My friends and I found this DVD at the bottom of the Wal-Mart $5 bin and were like, “hey, I’ve heard of the Talking Heads, I wonder what this is.”

And oh, what wonders were contained within. You’ve got John Goodman singing karaoke, you’ve got a lot of broken fourth wall, you’ve got a half-joke about how weird and wonderful Texas is, and a lot of bizarre filler, all set to an amazing soundtrack.

The look is pretty 80s, but the liberal use of colors and weird shapes can be easily updated- check it out after the jump.

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Places I’d Like to Move Into: Prairie by Rachel Ashwell

Posted on March 14, 2025 | Leave a comment

What do y’all know about Rachel Ashwell? She wrote several, several books about her shabby chic aesthetic, had a line with Target, and has this inn in Texas called The Prairie. I first came across this place when I was trolling Style Me Pretty, looking for my friend Kat’s wedding.

Borrowed from Style Me Pretty.

Borrowed from Style Me Pretty.

And Oh. My. God. Shut up. Other than that girl being so pretty, and her dress being lovely, don’t you just want to curl up in that bed and never get out, except maybe to go look out the window at this:

Again, borrowed, but this time from Little House with the White Picket Fence.

Again, borrowed, but this time from Little House with the White Picket Fence.

Seriously, if I lived somewhere like this, I would have to quit my job because I would be so pleased with myself that I wouldn’t be able to leave my home at any time. I would have to just wait for people to come see me, mostly so they could look on in awe.

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Fantasy Life Update: Homebrew

Posted on March 14, 2025 | 2 comments

In my increasing effort not to eat anything I didn’t make myself, I’ve branched in to homebrewing. A couple weeks back, I started a double IPA and it is finally ready. This takes forever and is completely worth it in every way.

Brew Awful Double IPA.

Brew Awful Double IPA.

We bought all our supplies at My Old Kentucky Homebrew, and y’all, they couldn’t be nicer. Your start-up costs on homebrew supplies are going to set you back about the cost of a keg of Bud Light, but once you’re rolling, you have great, handcrafted beer for about 70 cents a bottle. Since I am fancy, we asked Portland-based designer Autumn Hutchins to make our labels for us, and I couldn’t be happier with her fast, prompt work. In the weeks to come, I’ll post some stuff on how to DIY some beer. Invite some friends over, promise to give them half your yield, and get started. I don’t know what I was waiting for.

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Places I’d Like to Move Into: Get Smart

Posted on March 7, 2025 | 2 comments

As I mentioned last week, I was obsessed with Get Smart as a kid. For the uninitiated, this is a late 60s Mel Brooks spy comedy starring Don Adams and Barbara Feldon. Here’s a full episode I found on YouTube.

If you loved Inspector Gadget, you will adore this. Maxwell Smart, the titular character, had this amazing, colorful, very mod apartment in New York that really informed my sensibilities. While the time period in which this show is set is contemporaneous with Mad Men, it’s a lot more exuberant and expressive than you see on those sets, probably because it’s supposed to be a joke about the 60s. I dreamed of an apartment like this when I was little, and even though I now know I can’t have the exploding telephone or the bullet-proof invisible wall. Sigh.

And patriotic.

And patriotic, too.

The whole show is just an explosion of color blocking, sharp lines, fake eyelashes, and Cold War-era humor. It’s a big winner. Fun fact: Agent 99 and Max Smart get married in the fourth season and have kids, and she became the first working mother on television. Like I said: this show was hugely influential for me. Let’s move into the Smarts apartment after the jump.

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Place I’d Like to Move Into: Shakespeare and Company

Posted on February 27, 2025 | 1 comment

About a million years ago, when I was hip and moving around a lot in Europe and feeling generally very good about my life, I visited a dear friend in Paris and she took me to Shakespeare and Company. I remember Paris fondly and I had a great time and everything, but this used bookstore is why I want to go back RIGHT NOW.

The place is every stereotype of a used bookstore exploded. The owner, George Whitman, opened the place in 1951, and worked there until he died at the age of 98. He was behind the counter the day I was there, along with a lot of impossibly good looking expatriates.

Cramped, overstuffed shelves loom over your head, and any false turn could result in your stumbling into some unshaven auteur’s bedroom (there are murphy beds there for people who move to Paris to write and need a place to stay while they get situated). I think we were there three hours until Kristina made us go to eat coq au vin or go look at the Notre Dame or something very French. Continue reading →

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