Jess’s Picks

• I am currently in a phase of frustration about my hair. I like how it feels after I box dye it (Clairol Perfect 10 is my favorite) but I love how multi-tonal my color is right now. This week, I was really excited that The Beauty Department posted a DIY for Lauren Conrad’s multi-colored tips. They’re so cool.

• Totally excited to see designy temporary tattoos at Tattly feature on Design*Sponge. I might just have to get my own set. Tattlly is a project of swissmiss, who is responsible for TeuxDeux — the life-changing to-do list that is responsible for all of my success in the last ten months.

• In case you’re worried that I’m only interested in personal beauty things, I also fell in love with this palette reading-corner bed at Rusta Upp. I featured the blog a few weeks ago in a Friday Reader Roundup, but it’s so good that it’s worth it just for the pictures even if the text isn’t your native tongue.

• I have to give some love to this write-up about big dogs at Offbeat Home. I love all dogs big and small and I’ve ridden shotgun on a few twelve-hour drives to make sure a dog makes it to a good rescue. If a dog is part of your home, it’s important to understand the commitment and this is a great guide to sharing your home with a dog big enough to have (and lovable enough to deserve) it’s own bedroom.

Mary’s Picks

•  Have you browsed around much on Kickstarter? It’s fun. Recently a friend pointed me to the All Thrifty States project, and now that it’s been completely funded I’m really looking forward to seeing more about it.

• One of my favorite aspects of my sister’s 1950s bungalow in Houston, Texas is that it has the original hexagon white tiles accented with powder blue tiles in the bathroom. It’s lovely. Well, this week Pam Krueber over at Retro Renovation has been revealing her best find yet, World of Tile. It’s truly an amazing store and I really, really wish I lived near Springfield, NJ to go shop here.

• Do you watch Design Star? I really love that show and this year it’s even better with the changes they’ve made. I mean, they’ve produced my crush, Antonio Ballatore and the only designer whose every aspect of their work I LOVE, Emily Henderson. This past Monday was the premiere and here Emily wrote her reviews about the show. She cracks me up and I totally agree with her about the judges focusing way too much on execution. I mean, if you took on wallpaper, you would hire someone.

Jess’s Picks

• I love this road-ready travel trailer featured on OffbeatHome this week. First of all, it’s a great rehab project with some absolutely beautiful results. I personally can’t imagine being cramped into a trailer doing remodelling but this makes it seem totally worth it. Added bonus: adorable love story.

• I’m also excited to print some of this midnight honeybee blooms wrapping paper from web and graphic designer Kellie Medivitz. Like Kellie, I’m totally obsessed with how black, yellow, white, and grey go together. I can’t get enough of it.

• Make sure not to miss the latest Diggers’ List design candy featuring Scrumptious Secret Spaces. I knew a boy in high school who had a secret hiding place off of his bedroom. I never visited it because, hello, only one things happen when high school girls hang out in secret hiding places with high school boys. I love the wardrobe idea the best.

• If you’re in the mood for a more fun DIY, this Polaroid Magnet Frame at 2Modern Blog might be just the project you need to get your fix without over committing to something way too elaborate. We’re in some serious need of magnets so I might have to get on this one quickly.

• I can’t end my Friday Reader Roundup without saying that I adore everything about this feeling like a summer sunset… apparel and decor roundup over at Oh Joy!. I can’t even really pick a favorite — I think it’s all perfect. Really, just like summer.

Mary’s still on an awesome wedding roadtrip with her mom and sister. I’m guessing she recommends sleeping in and recovering from last nights wedding. Take it easy, y’all and have a great great weekend.

Mary’s Picks

• This lovely little photography blog, Yowayowa Camera, is just too cool. She sets up her camera either on self timer or has a friend take the shot (after she’s got the settings where she wants them) and captures shots of herself levitating. It’s so creative and playful. (Thanks Abby for showing me this!)

• If my Google Reader is backed up and I’m just on the computer for a bit, one of the first blogs I check to see if there’s a new post is Under the Sycamore by Ashley Ann Campbell. This week she’s been doing crafts and every single day I’ve loved what she’s posted. On Tuesday she did DIY Paint By Numbers (PBN) and it’s just too cool. I’ve been eying every vintage PBN lately, but I just haven’t found the right one for my house. But after seeing her tutorial, I think I’m just gonna make my own.

• A floor made up of 340,000 pennies. Wow. Each penny was laid by hand! Can you imagine how long that took? Such a cool idea!

Jess’s Picks

• This week, The Fox is Black shared the work of Toronto-based illustrator and designer Dave Murray, highlighting his beer series. It’s finally starting to get really hot like summer should be in Missouri and an ice cold beer would really hit the spot — Plus, I’m in the mood for prints lately anyway.

• PoeticHome featured a great roundup of 6 DIYable Salvaged Headboards | Poetic Home. I have plans for a salvaged wood headboard in my future so this was the perfect inspiration to hopefully get that going soon.

• On Style Me Pretty, I was wowed by the color scheme of A Beautiful Mess Wedding by Arrow & Apple. I don’t know what it is about that palette (probably that it’s the color spread of pom-poms!) but I think it was gorgeous! Make sure you scroll down to look at the beautifully garlanded pug!

Jess’s Picks

• Obviously, Mary is the real party planner around here, and she has some beautiful results for all of her hard work. I love fancy dinner parties, or fancy any other kind of parties, but I never seem to find an occasion. Mary’s posts on the travel-themed engagement party she planned and her sister’s 30th birthday party combined with these awesome ribbons (pictured) in Somewhere Splendid’s Party Inspo: Book Club Party make for some beautiful inspiration.

• Last week, ReadyMade announced that the magazine is being discontinued by its parent company, Meredith. This week, 2Modern Blog reminded me of this great slideshow of ReadyMade DIY outdoor transformations.

• On Pinterest, I discovered this great chair swing via HGTV that I was able to trace back to a post from the Swedish blog rusta upp. What a fun idea! The whole blog looks beautiful so take a look around when you follow the link. Google does (expectedly) mediocre with the translating, but at least her instructions for this DIY made the transition pretty well.

• If you liked our Hope Chest Tangram map of the United States check out this great roundup of other maps by Rena Tom: A Place for Maps in the Modern World.

Mary’s Picks

• Got paint sticks? Got a cheap barrel shade in need of a makeover? Well, then this tutorial at Enjoying the Simple Things is just for you! It’s really brilliant and so creative. Every barrel shade I’ve seen in a thrift store this week has made me want to load up on paint sticks and hot glue (if I owned a house or wanted to replace my light fixtures).  (via Apartment Therapy)
• These embroidered portraits by Danial Kornrumpf literally made my mouth drop. They are stunning. (via Swiss Miss)
• Have you seen Dear Photograph? This site makes me want to grab up all of mine and my family’s old photos. I love how you can see how much some scenes have changed and how some are completely untouched. Such a cool idea.

 

• This apartment is ah-may-zing. It’s got wall-to-wall oversized parkay flooring with each room having a different color. I don’t think that I could live in it myself, but I’m not so sure that I couldn’t either. I just love the bold choices so much and think the design is fun! I’m also loving how they’ve styled it with all white furniture. (via Ardor)

• I couldn’t be any happier about the new grocery store that’s coming to Austin this Fall. in.gredients is going to be the nation’s first package-free, zero waste grocery store. It works like a co-op grocery and you bring in your own containers. I’m really stoked to check it out!

• Ben Wilson, from London, makes some of the coolest art on pieces of chewing gum left behind on public sidewalks. It’s really quite amazing. (via Design*Sponge on Twitter)

• Before sites like Evernote, Wists, and especially Pinterest came along, anytime I found a pretty picture on the internet I would just save it to a folder on my computer. Well, as you might guess, this means that a practically lost all the sources from where these photos came from. Which is really bad for a blogger and I haven’t been able to share any of my stockpiled images with you all. So you can imagine my excitement when Google released a search by image feature. I’m over the moon about this! So far, all the images that I’ve tried have turned up with a source. Awesome.

Jess’s Picks

• These vintage greens for the kitchen at mint are so beautiful! Our house is based around the concept of blue with grey, yellow with grey, and red with grey so there isn’t a lot of green in our rooms but we recently finished an upstairs bedroom with canary yellow walls and green linens so I’m really into the color now.

• In that same bedroom, we also installed new baseboard. We went with the easier, but less beautiful, 45-degree angles at the corners method. I wish I would have had this tutorial on How To Cope: Baseboard, That Is from DIYdiva just a week earlier. Our house is 100+ years old so we definitely don’t have walls that meet at 90-degree angles in any room.

• We finished said bedroom so we could host friends this week. We had a great time and I think that our friend Kevin has maybe moved in? He sure seems to be up here a lot since we built him a bedroom. After all of the fun, I’m dreaming about something more permanent like this Summer Haven… at a life’s design. I call dibs on the yellow on grey bedroom!

• This Home Gadgets: Pooch With a View at DiggersList is just what Oats would want if we had a solid fence. Fortunately, we do things small town chic around here and she can see through chain-link just fine.

Jess’s Picks

• The Kim Jong Il Looking at Things tumblog featured a photo of him looking at cookie jars this week (above). This tumblog makes me delightfully happy because I read the new posts and then I think “Ha! Kim Jong Il is always looking at things!” and then I realize that this thought is really very true and I laugh more. I probably don’t even need to point it out: I’m a strange woman. I’ve been enjoying Kim Jong Il Looking at Things for a while and I have to say that these little kitchen wares seem to have him happier than anything else I’ve seen him look at.

• Yesterday, on my way back from lunch, I passed an old man enjoying a cool post-rain afternoon on his front porch. Combined with this Design Candy: Swing’n From the Rafters feature at DiggersList and the tree in my backyard that is begging for some kind of swing, I might be investigating outdoor chairs in the next few days.

• Finally, I want to point your attention toward Joana Vasconcelos’s Contamination in the recent post of Photos from the 54th Venice Biennale, Part 1 on HyperAllergic. The textures and colors are beautiful!

Mary’s Picks

• Remember how awesome friendship bracelets were to make? Well, over at Honestly…WTF they are bringing them back with a tutorial and everything. These are so colorful and pretty, and I love the idea of grouping them together. Also, how awesome would these be as headbands? I think I’m gonna play around with that idea.

• I don’t know when it was that I realized I loved airport art, but on my trip to Japan two years ago I took so many pictures of the art in Houston Hobby on our layover which slowly turned from 2 hours to 5. So you can imagine that I loved this post about the San Francisco International Airport’s new terminal design over on Apartment Therapy. The egg chairs would definitely help deal with a several hour layover a bit better.

• Alright, I admit it. I’m in a relationship with a total nerd, a nerd who loves the idea of planning for what he’d do during a zombie apocolypse. So, when I saw KWK Promes’ safe house featured on Home DSGN, it made me smile. At first it looks like just a stone warehouse, but when the walls are retracted and the large concrete shutters are opened it’s quite stunning on the inside. Also, the lush grounds with the stark contrast of the man made concrete structure is beautiful. (via Apartment Therapy)

Mary’s Picks

• When I saw this post over at Making it Lovely, I knew I had to share it with you all. Mural Arts Project’s Love Letter series in Philadelphia make me want to travel there soon. The murals are so beautiful and I know that if I walked by these everyday there would most assuredly be a smile on my face.

• Over at Happy Menocal they will design a custom heraldry for you and your new partner. They make them for wedding gifts or for invitations. Their designs are so unique and beautiful. Go check them out if you’re about to get partnered up with your significant one! (via Honestly WTF)

• I loved Elizabeth Cline‘s article The History of a Cheap Dress over on Etsy. She highlights how in the past 60 years women’s clothing has changed so much as far as cost and quality. She says, “as prices fell our closets grew.” Living in a post-war house built in the 1950s, has always made me wonder how women organized their tiny closets. Well, after reading Elizabeth’s article it totally makes sense to me now. Also, her and I share a birthday, so that’s awesome. AND, she’s going to be writing up more articles on having a “good closet” which will discuss what it means to buy ethically. I’m really intrigued.

Jess’s Picks

• One of my best friends just launched a great site for Chicagoans, and tourists to Chicago, that creates an easy plan for a day trip around Chicago neighborhoods. Plan your own Chicago Daycation at Daycations.co if you’re planning to be in the city anytime soon. And for those of us not awesome enough to be living near Josh or in Chicago: Check out this recent guide on How to book a staycation and tour your own town at Offbeat Home.

• This week at the DiggersList blog, which is always great, they featured a bunch of repurposed items turned into chandeliers. Junk Drawer Objects Make Treasured Chandeliers has some surprisingly elegant results!

• I find myself really drawn to these all-white, minimalist rooms that appear often on the blogs I read. But, the truth is, I’m not much of a minimalist and I love color so I was excited to find a beautiful marriage between lots of white and lots of pops of color in the  Home of designer Rikke Juhl Jensen posted on DesignAttractor this week.