Problem-solving is not my strong suit this week. We are pon­der­ing mov­ing (nearby, not across the coun­try again), which has put a screech­ing halt to nurs­ery plan­ning, or at least nurs­ery paint­ing. This itch to nest and dec­o­rate has man­i­fested itself as a deep desire to get rid of things. Up for pos­si­ble dis­card is […]

We are fac­ing sev­eral weeks of house­guests start­ing, um, now, which sparked a small major binge-purge cycle in our house. Once I start scratch­ing the Craig itch, I can­not stop. Which is great news for you if you are try­ing to unload Heywood-Wakefield fur­ni­ture in the LA metro. While on this mag­i­cal mys­tery tour of acquiring […]

Back before we moved to LA, when I was in what­ifwe­movein­toas­tu­dioOMG­we­have­toomuch­stuff mode, I sold a lot of our fur­ni­ture. Like our beloved patio set. I checked Circa Who’s site a few times, won­der­ing if our stuff would appear (and, let’s be hon­est, won­der­ing what the retail price would be), but never saw them. Fast for­ward to last week: I’m […]

Shortly after our arrival in LA, I went on a Craigslist­ing spree to get rid of some extra­né­ous fur­ni­ture. One piece, a vin­tage metal cart that I’d bought in New York a bil­lion years ago, was pur­chased by a guy who asked if we were sell­ing any­thing else. At that point, most of the good […]

I keep revis­it­ing this phở­to­graph of Annie Selke’s garage. I showed it to Ryan and his response was, “So you’re look­ing at garage porn now?” Yes. Orga­nized items and hot pink make me happy. Annie Selke is the woman behind Pine Cone Hill, which I always (unfairly, it seems) lumped in with Shabby Chic. (Sorry Annie!) […]

OK, it’s not life. It’s just stuff. But some of it is really good stuff. We sold two of our three sofas, Freecy­cled our com­post bin and started a pile for dona­tion. Once I start—well, I can’t stop. So with­out sell­ing the chair out from under my bum, I looked out­side. Remem­ber these? Cute, right? But the […]

Like the rest of the décor-obsessed, Domino-missing world, I love me some Sara Ruf­fin Costello. So much so that I can say proudly—or per­haps, stalkerly—I have some of her pre-Domino styling work in my inspi­ra­tion files. (Sara, if you’re read­ing this, I promise I am not writ­ing this while watch­ing your home with binoc­u­lars.) Since Domino’s […]

Our house has a cov­ered patio that runs close to the entire width of the house. Since our Kansas house had a busted deck, the whole notion of patio fur­ni­ture is…weird. What I even­tu­ally found, after some intense Craigslist­ing, were these: Spun fiber­glass chairs! I would really like to know a few things about these, because […]

If you are not already read­ing House­martin, the supremely inspir­ing blog of a shopowner/florist, may I sug­gest that you add it to your RSS feeds stat? When I was plan­ning our wed­ding, every photo she posted of a bridal bou­quet made me hope that she would sud­denly aban­don Port­land for KC so I could carry […]

You know how when you’re look­ing for love, you go on a string of crappy dates, but when you’re all “I am dat­ing myself” you meet some­one great? (Dis­claimer: This has not actu­ally hap­pened to me, but I hear it has hap­pened to oth­ers.) That is sort of my new (as of today) feel­ing about […]