La Vie Ordinaire Wallpaper

I was talking to my mother yesterday and she mentioned that she really liked a wallpaper she’d seen on my blog a few months back. She has a shower curtain that’s black and white sketches of London, and thought that this La Vie Ordinaire paper would be a fun companion to it. Naturally, it’s not available in the US, just in the UK. We had to first find the manufacturer of the paper, a company called Holden Decor. As I was searching their website, I found that in addition to La Vie Ordinaire, they had a lot of great looking papers. Once I figure out the dimensions of a roll, I will have my former housemate pick up a roll and post it to me.  However, you can also order here.

Here’s one that is similar to La Vie Ordinaire, but it’s called City. I don’t like it nearly as much, because I hate the I {heart} NY logo splashed on there. I’d be really tempted to have at this with a pack of Sharpie markers!

There are two wonderful Chinoiserie papers in the collection, Pagoda, which comes in several colourways including this pale cream, and Bonsai, which features the tiny trimmed trees on it. The name of this paper cracked me up. It’s called “I Love the 80s” and if you look closely, you can see some roller skates and maybe Jane Fonda doing some jazzercise! Riffing on the same theme, this is called Truly Great and is an homage to HRH QEII.  Gotta love the Union Jack pennants! If you love butterflies, then Trifari is for you! Last but not least, is Pucci, a black and white line drawing. I can think of a lot of rooms where this would look fabulous! Which do you like the best?

Flowers on Sunday & A Blisteringly Hot Weekend

After our earthquake on Friday, we went on to have a blazingly hot weekend, with temps never out of the 90s. The humidity was equal to that, so it mostly felt like you were walking around with a wet, hot blanket covering you. It makes me long for snow days again!We went to the Farmers Market this morning where I picked up two huge bunches of sunflowers. This week, I chose the smaller ones, and have about 20+ stuffed into a vase, which is sitting atop my new shoe storage unit. One unusual plant I saw for sale at the market was a clematis. There’s a saying about growing clematis (clematii?)… First they sleep, then they creep, then they leap. The first year they are planted, they barely do anything. The second year, they grow a bit, and then the third year, they grow like mad. We always had them climbing a trellis outside our back door at the house where I was raised. 

Carded

The other day, my Inner Junque Whisperer® started shouting and stomping its feet. I heeded the call and drove over to the Goodwill near my office.

There, standing with a slight glow around it, was an old steel card catalogue with 30 drawers! I pulled up next to it and got the kid standing there to load it into my car. Then I went in and asked how much it was, and paid up.For all of the classic pieces I have, I also have a fondness for steel items. I have an old stainless steel commercial kitchen counter, two doctor’s cabinets, a barrister’s book case, and now this card catalogue. It measures about 36” high, 30” wide and 12” deep. It fits perfectly just inside my front door.

As soon as I saw it, I knew what it would be perfect for… SHOES! My shoes fit perfectly in the drawers, which are about three inches high, 12 inches deep and 10 inches wide. If the shoes don’t fit like those above, they fit perfectly on their sides. This cabinet will work well where I’ve put it, because I kick my shoes off when I come in the house.

I am trying to decide whether it would be too obsessive to label all of the drawers, or just play “memory” each time I need to find a specific pair of shoes.

Maybe when I move, I will take it to the autobody shop and have them powedercoat it in another colour.

Earthquake!

In the middle of the night last night, Connor jumped up and barked. Then nothing else. When I listened to the news this morning, I found that there had been an earthquake about 35 miles from here. It was only a 3.6, but that’s very rare for Maryland. Here’s this year’s check list…

• Blizzards - 80+ inches of snow
• Intense heat – days of 100F+ weather in June
• Drought – no rain during the month of June
• Earthquake – only a 3.6, but it’s an earthquake
• Tornado – Not yet, but we’ve had several warnings

Ahhh, Maryland, the Land of Pleasant Living, we’re just waiting for the plagues now!

Party for Barry Dixon

I was invited to a party earlier this evening where Barry Dixon was guest of honour. He’s a charming southern man, originally from South Africa, but now from the American South. His designs reflect each of these differing southern sensibilities.The party was held at Gore Dean and it was the perfect venue for an evening event.  The open courtyard in front of their old mill building was tented and there were lots of crisp and icy summer drinks, fabulous foods and a fun band combo playing.  The shop was open for everyone to browse the wares and to take a break in the air conditioning.Each guest received a personalized signed copy of Dixon’s book, “Barry Dixon Interiors”, which was a lovely gift. I am looking forward to spending a lazy summer afternoon examining each of the gorgeous pictures in great detail and learning from a master. Thanks for including me!

New York

Our quick jaunt up to New York yesterday worked perfectly and was just the respite that my friend Julie and I needed. It strikes me that New York now seems to be more like the Jay Z and Alicia Keys song than the Frank Sinatra one.

We started our tour with a stop at M&J Trimmings, which is a veritable rainbow of ribbons, badges, feathers and fripperies. Walls of passementerie in every possible combination of tassel, ball and bobble.and insignia badges enough to start your own army.

Julie and I traditionally have lunch in Chinatown at a dim sum joint. If you don’t know what this is, it’s lots of fun – all sorts of delicacies are wheeled around on carts and you pick and choose from each trolley. The selections are marked in Chinese on a card and at the end, it’s tallied up and you pay the tab. From there, we headed to our favourite shops – Muji for the spare Japanese style, and Pearl River for the over-the-top Chinese style. Of course, we bought things at both places, including a  hanger for drying clothes and fabrics, which will be handy, and a pig kitchen timer for my chef friends, Cat and Dog, who took care of Connor, the most stubborn dog in the universe!

We then headed to ABC Carpet and Home, one of New York’s most interesting stores, with its ever-changing display of mini-shops and its in-house Conran store. No offense meant to ABC, but as a non-profit professional, I had to laugh at their mission statement, which is nearly incomprehensible:

abc home’s mission is to serve by manifesting a retail paradigm shift in which we compose a revolutionary platform for offering cause related product through beauty, experience, and magic, in order to guide you to creatively express your individuality, values and to actualize home as sacred space…

It sounds like it was written by an MBA candidate for a creative project in 2001. Some of the bad buzzwords include manifesting, paradigm shift, platform, product, and actualize. ABC… no one talks like this and furthermore, no one really understands what this means. {End of rant}

Here are some of the things I liked at ABC. The wall of cashmere scarves, mirroring the ribbons we saw at M&J earlier in the day. Lots of old hotel silver, priced a lot higher than my pieces! A book by fellow bloggers, 1802 Beekman, along with some of the products from their farm. This dresser for my friend I Love Lime Green!  Fabulous butterflies made from old maps. They were commissioned by Conrans. I was very excited to see some beautiful napkins made from Thai Silk. Since I now have yards and yards of this fabric, I’ve been pondering what I can do with it. This is one good idea! From ABC, we headed diagonally across the street to Fishs Eddy. It was jammed with china and glassware, and since we were carrying both umbrellas and bags, we were both a little worried that we’d make a wrong move and take out a stack of china plates! I couldn’t decide whether I was amused or creeped out by these hands. They were miniature glove models. There’s something sinister about these, don’t you think? We ended the day meeting up with fellow blogger, Central Bark Design, sans her pal, Abbey. We had a lively dinner at a small French bistro in the theatre district before we headed back to Baltimore.

It was a wonderful day, but a long one. However, it was just what the doctor ordered!

Long Day

It's almost midnight and we just got back from a great day in NYC! The weather was mostly cooperative and it only rained (hard) once. We had an excellent lunch of dim sum, then did some shopping, including a chunk of time at ABC Carpet & Home. Fun dinner with fellow blogger, Central Bark Design, and then a three hour trip back to Baltimore.

Pix to follow!

Bastille Day

It’s Bastille Day today, and I am going to be in New York City to celebrate it… not really for that reason, just because it was time to take a day in NYC again.

Over the past few years, I’ve written about France time and time again.  Herewith are some of my favourite stories that I’ve posted. Click on the image to view the post that it’s from.

I love the colour of the shutters on this house in Brittany. The Turgot Plan de Paris from 1734 always creates a lot of interest. I had adhered to my wall, but then I took it down and Connor chewed on it. Bad dog. Of course, one of my favourite French exports is their fabulous Hermès scarves. Earlier this spring, I managed to score two of them at a local thrift store. Nothing is prettier to me than old stone houses with blue-grey shutters, like these two French farm houses. First, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s country house, La Moulin de la Tuilerie in Gif-sur-Yvette. Then this château in Dordogne with its walled property and stunning farmhouse. I am excited to have lunch in a French-style cafe in New York and to visit a French inspired shop or two.

Ayez un jour brillant!

Holding Court

I got a phone call late on Saturday night from Eddie Ross, looking for the phone number of a mutual friend of ours, Michele at My Notting Hill. Calls at that time of day are never good news, and from Eddie’s voice, I knew this was the worst kind of news. The lovely Marija who wrote the stylish blog, Holding Court, had been killed in a car accident, while she was in Atlanta on an antiquing trip. You should take a few minutes to read the lovely tribute Marija’s husband wrote in her memory.She leaves two young children and her husband, as well as a wide array of devoted readers, all of who adored her and her classic style.  She will be greatly missed by all.

Auction Fever!

After attending the auction yesterday, I remembered how much I like going to them.  There’s always some treasure to be found!  I used to attend auctions down in Southern Maryland and in the suburbs outside of Baltimore before I moved to Wales and was doing a lot of buying and selling in my capacity as one of the founders of Second Chance, an architectural salvage company.

Yesterday’s auction yielded a lot of what I had hoped for – fabulous fabrics. There were about 10 box lots of fabrics from an old estate where the family had been bankers in Hong Kong before moving back to Washington, DC. There were Thai silks, Indian Saris, Honk Kong textiles, all folded, sorted and marked. Many of the pieces still had their original shop tags on them, some had their Hong Kong manufacturer woven into the selvage,  and one piece had a folded slip of paper from the Office of Commodity Standards in Bangkok. It took until this evening to really have a chance to look through the boxes of silks and inspect what I’d gotten for my three bids, the average price of which was $5.00!  There were fabulous raw silks in pale straw colours, beautiful paisley patterned silks, plain silks in every jewel colour you could imagine and plaids of the most wild variety. Many thanks to I Love Lime Green for her super work as the auctioneer and to Mandy who writes the blog, AngloFiles, for having me to lunch as the very last minute!