Monday, August 30, 2010

Summer's A-Windin' Down!

It's true. We're now into the last days of August, so this past weekend, sweet hubs, Christina and I decided to make the most of the mini-heatwave and hit up Coney Island for some beachy fun and also so I could play with my new camera.

It was surprisingly un-crowded, especially since it was such a beautiful day! We spent time wandering on the board walk, exploring Luna Park (the new park) and what's left of Astroland and Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park (the old parks), said hello to Lola Star at her namesake shop, Lola Star and peeked into the gift shop of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. Oh yeah, and stuck our feet into the chilly Atlantic Ocean. I adore Coney Island.

I was quite excited on the train to Coney Island. 

We visited the gift shop, but intend to actually attend the show in a few weeks since we didn't get to go on Saturday.  I'm excited!

The Coney Island boardwalk.

The "chefs" of the Coney Island boardwalk.

"Shoot the Freak" - always a Coney Island classic.

Apparently Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement Park has been around for 90 years!

CREEPY Michael Jackson dolls that you can win at Luna Park.  Yikes.

The new Luna Park.

Christina was happy to be at the beach.  (I think!)

As was i.

Sweet hubs enjoys drinking beer on the beach.











Sadly, this was my first trip to the beach this summer. Kind of pathetic since I live a 20 minute train ride from Coney Island, but that's alright. I'll do better next summer.

View more photos here.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Have you seen this?! "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"

Thank you, Christina, for sharing this amazing gem.

If you haven't already seen it, I recommend you watch it immediately. It brightened this rainy Tuesday for me by about 1000%.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Colorful Finds for a Rainy Monday

It's a chilly (yay!) and rainy (boo!) Monday here in NYC, so I thought I'd share some bright and colorful finds to hopefully bring some cheer to everyone's day.

Image courtesy of L.L. Bean.

















This Moonbeam Clock from L.L. Bean is adorable.


Image courtesy of Home Sweet Home.























How cheerful and sweet is this window with sky blue brick and cherry red flowers in the window box!?

Do you read Color Me Katie?  If you don't, you should.  Her blog will cheer you up in two seconds flat. She is the epitome of colorful!  How can you NOT be perked up immediately by a blog that contains images such as this:

Image courtesy of Color Me Katie.

























I'd love to visit Brussels, Belgium one day and stay at the Pantone Hotel.

Courtesy of their website:
"Travel to a Colorific World -
The Pantone Hotel invites you to experience the city of Brussels through a lens of color and a spectrum of comforts. From the moment you arrive, our “hotel of colors” will awaken your senses to an array of delights and playful surprises.

Impeccably designed by Michel Penneman and Oliver Hannaert, The Pantone Hotel, Brussels showcases the color of emotion with a distinctive hue on each colorous guest floor. From vivid to subdued, for business or leisure, our unique boutique hotel perfectly suits your savvy palette and colorful imagination.

From a design perspective, The Pantone Hotel, Brussels is built on an exceptional use of contrast; a white canvas provides clean space for saturated colors to pop. Guest rooms feature unique photography by esteemed Belgian photographer Victor Levy.

Welcome to the center of the color universe."


(Also, all rooms feature "Pantone Universe Shower Gels and Lotions"!)

If you aren't a nerd like me and don't know what Pantone is, learn here.



Images courtesy of the Pantone Hotel website.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

If someone wants to buy me a present...

I will absolutely accept this.

So, if you want to send me a present for no reason at all, that would be lovely and it would look fabulous in my new home.

Thank you.

You can buy it here.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

A New Project: Want Font!

The lovely Christina and I decided to take our love for fonts, typography and excellent typographical design and create a Tumblr blog. If you too are a font dork like us, please check out the blog, follow us on twitter or like us on facebook.


Monday, August 16, 2010

A New Apartment Calls for an Inspiration Board! (Part 3: Bathroom Design)

Onto the third installment of inspiration boards and design for the new apartment: the bathroom!

I'll admit - I always like a somewhat girlie bathroom.  I just can't help it.  In the room which I make myself pretty, I need it to FEEL pretty too.  It helps make my morning a little brighter.  Not much to say about it except I kept the colors bright and clean feeling (always important in a bathroom!) and tried to not make it TOO girly so that sweet hubs will be happy with it too.  Sweet hubs and I love the vintage feel of the bathroom, so we wanted to play up the black and white tile floors and the vintage fixtures, but find accessories that blended in with them.

Progress wise for the rest of the apartment, this past weekend was spent finishing the last bit of painting and LOTS of unpacking, so hopefully we'll be finished getting all set up soon.  It's definitely starting to feel like home, which is nice.

Here we go!



(Clockwise: Behr "Ice Folly" - 1 qt. of paint, Lenox Chirp Shower Curtain, Wamsutta Palace Classic Bath Accessory Collection, Ikea Grundtal Glass Shelves)

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

A New Apartment Calls for an Inspiration Board! (Part 2: Bedroom Design)

Well folks, our move is complete.

Last weekend was spent with my parents, since they so kindly offered drive up from Virginia and let us use their muscles to help us move and paint the new apartment. I am so thankful - if they hadn't, sweet hubs and I would be painting for the next month and I'd be one tired and cranky lady.

My step-dad and sweet hubs spent their days moving things, running to Lowe's and Home Depot as well as various other stores while my mom and I hunkered down at the new place and painted. And painted. And then painted some more.

The end result is GORGEOUS. I'm so proud. We scrubbed and polished the floors, painted all the walls, trim, radiators and cabinetry. It was so worth the time and effort. And let me just mention that I adore Behr paint. We didn't need a second coat on anything. Amazing stuff.

I was pleasantly surprised that we even managed to fit in going to a fancy dinner at The Good Fork in our old neighborhood as a well deserved treat on Saturday evening. It was a great and productive weekend, to say the least.

Now that my parents have gone back home, sweet hubs and I have the tasks of unpacking, organizing and decorating. We've done quite well so far. We managed to luck out on quite a few deals on things we needed to buy or to replace and only have a few more big purchases to make.

Obviously its not quite time for us to do a big reveal of the final product, so instead, I'll share my inspiration boards for decor which includes the furniture and accessories we currently own, what we've purchased so far and what we intend to purchase, just to see how things will work together.

Here's the first edition, our bedroom.

The bedroom is quite large (12ft x 16ft), at least compared to our previous bedroom, which was approximately 8ft x 9ft.

Here are the photos from when we viewed the apartment. Apologies on their grainy quality, but you can at least get an idea of what we're working with. We've got a HUGE closet and two really nice sized windows.



This is what we've decided to do, decor and color wise, with the bedroom. I'm not an overly girly girl, and my style is more clean lined and mid-century modern inspired, which works well since I can't picture sweet hubs being a happy man living in a frilly apartment. That being said, we decided to paint the bedroom Behr's "Bon Voyage", which is a beautiful, rich and deep blue with a little bit of a muted grey tone to it. We painted the trim and doors bright white which really makes the wall color and the beautiful hardwoods pop.

We found that one thing that seemed as though it was going to break the bank was buying rugs. As most of you know, once you go above a 5ft x 7ft rug, the price usually doubles or triples. Yikes. Well we did a lot of researching and managed to score some great deals. For this room, we found a pretty awesome, and really quite soft diamond textured 8ft x 10ft brown rug ($70!!), which nicely compliments our brown throw pillows.

For our bedding, we went with a simple textured charcoal gray quilt with square european pillows. We didn't want to get too crazy, so we kept our bedskirt and curtains white.

(Clockwise) Behr Ultra Premium Satin Paint, Ikea "Hemnes" 8-Drawer Dresser, Cream Colored Barrel Lamp ShadePortfolio Rustana/Satin Nickel Table Lamp BaseCasual Home Grommet Top Window Collection, Brown Diamond 8' x 10' Rug, Brown Felicia Cushion Cover, Charcoal Alina Bedspread and 2 cushion covers)

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Random Post

Hey! Look at that - it's my half birthday! Which means... nothing really.

30 and 1/2.

I am working on a nice big post, its just not quite done yet, so I didn't want to leave my blog unattended for too long. Haha.

Sweet hubs and I are almost finished moving - we will officially be in our new apartment as of Sunday night, which is awesome.

I can't wait to come home to my new apartment!

Also, let me take a moment to do a shout out to sweet hubs. He really has been a trooper in taking care of everything with regard to setting up utilities, moving things and lots of other things that we should be doing together for this move that I just haven't been able make time for. He's the best. I'm really lucky to have such a rad dude for a husband.

Sweet hubs and I in the subway.  Photo courtesy of Wes Hargrave.