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After sharing some of my favorite little girl rooms, I though it would be fun to do a Before & After of Haven's bedroom. The "before" isn't quite as dramatic as it would have been if I hadn't neglected to take a few pictures of the dirty yellow walls (circa 1970) before we painted it blue, but it's still fun to see the transformation. And since her room is still a work-in-progress, I might come back at some point with an After & After.
Before...
After...
"Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010." (Author: Patti Digh)
Wow! You can really recall a lot in five minutes! Here are just a few memories that came to mind...
And of course New York gets a whole five minutes of it's own...
![New York - Day Two: Central Park](<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rare_birds/5204686891/" title="201 New York - Day Three: Staten Island Ferry by One Rare Bird, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4154/5204686891_4c6f5e4566.jpg" width="334" height="500" alt="201 New York - Day Three: Staten Island Ferry"></a>)
2010. It was a good year after all!
Now that we're settled into our new home I've been going from room to room creating ideas for how to arrange and decorate - with Haven and Brannock's rooms a the top of the list! Of course I can only do as much as our small budget allows, but that doesn't mean I can't go searching for inspiration. So, today the focus is on little girl rooms - with all their sugar and spice and everything nice, I can't not love having a girl.
Apparently there are two people walking the streets of Melbourne Australia who I was separated from at birth - ok, not really, but I'm not giving up hope. The design duo of Able & Game (aka: Anna Blandford and Gareth Meney) first caught my eye when I was on my desperate hunt for a 2011 calendar and I haven't stopped crushing on them since. Anna's illustrations are not only colorfully comical, they are embarrassingly relatable. The hilariously quirky sayings from the oddly endearing characters continue to keep me laughing, and I won't even get into my life-long obession with greeting cards. So, thank you Able & Game for reminding me that being a bit odd and blatantly nerdy isn't something to be shy about - you are all sorts of lovely and I'm positive you're mix tapes would rock my world.
And if my love for mix tapes, organization, the X-Files, and the fact that I own the following t-shirt aren't proof enough that we were separated at birth, then I don't know what is...
"When bright flowers bloom, Parchment crumbles
my words fade, The pen has dropped."
-Morpheus
"What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?" (Author: Victoria Klein)
The first thing that comes to mind is how much I enjoy a good saunter. And not just sometimes, most of the time. I hate being rushed and moving from one thing to another. You could call me a "slow transitioner", or if you're feeling more judgemental, "lazy" or "unmotivated". But I can honestly say when everyone around me is hustling to and fro I have learned to appreciate my strong need for simplicity and downtime. I appreciate a virtually empty calendar and the ability to say "yes" at the last minute if the mood strikes. And I think I can best express gratitude for my love of sauntering by being frivolous and flamboyant with my time, by choosing to saunter when the world around me demands I move faster.
"It is a great art to saunter." -Henry David Thoreau
{images via Elle Moss}
I recently purchased the above image by artist Yellena James, and I can barely find the words to describe how happy it makes me whenever I look at it. I also can't tell you how difficult it was to pick just one of her images - they are all amazing! Yellena's work has been described as "colorful arrangements of organic shapes and tangled lines (which) are at once floral and alien, organic and sci-fi, crafty and fantastic." And Yellena explains further by saying "within each piece [she] tries to create an intimate world that possesses its own ethos and its own emotional range." Well, Yellena, my emotional range just went from giant crush to very fantastical, colorful, and sci-fi obsession. Thank you for being my Crush of the Week.
