Chevron Mania, or 'Chevrania'

For the past year, I've been preoccupied with chevron, so preoccupied that I consulted my desktop thesaurus and came up with a name for it: Chevrania. This barely beat out 'Chevsession,' which is arguably just as void of wittiness. Celebrity tabloids have taught me many things, but one of the biggies is that if you want to coin a term for something, just awkwardly merge two words or names that are associated (e.g. Brangelina, TomKat) and force feed it to people until it sticks.

Chevrania started when I saw this dress on BurdaStyle. Since then, I've been saving images of anything in the shape of a zig zag.

Dress by michelleiswell. The asymmetry really makes it. I could pass on the collar, but who am I to critique?


Vintage chevron dress from Elizabeth Wren


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My Chevrania has been mainly focused on interiors lately.

The combination of the herringbone parquet and overlay flooring is pretty awesome / Roman and Williams

Aside from the flooring, this is just a really amazing kitchen / Roman and Williams

Shot from Remodelista

Erin Adams Herringbone for Ann Sacks

Really expensive rug by Madeline Weinrib
And I know it's expensive because they don't even list the price. You have to 'contact to inquire'

You Make Me Feel Like a Grown-up

Rob and I recently bought our first piece of adult furniture. I was so excited that I just stared at it for a couple days. Then I progressed to taking a lot of pictures of it -- a reaction more appropriate to the birth of one's child.

The baby

Ruscle Melaxers... yawn

Something sinister has been going on with my neck this week. I can't move it due to muscle spasms and am forced to walk around like Herman Munster in a drug-induced haze.

me; minus the smile, plus the drugs

In my 48-hours of being a user, I've learned that muscle relaxers are for serious. So my goals for this work day are just to 1) not drool in front of anyone, 2) avoid heavy machinery and 3) paint with all the colors of the wind* ...this client needs a mascot -- something magical like a gnome riding a griffin bareback. That's funny... This palette should be rainbow-colored... I need a sixth cup of espresso... I crave Arby's... These thoughts make sense for fleeting moments.

But I truly wish I could take my psychedelic-self to the room scene below (or really any place that's conducive to nap taking). Our user-testing room is the only place in our office where I could take an emergency nap, but that lacks a bed and waking up to a fresh pot of french-pressed coffee in a world without neck pain.

room scene via Design Sponge -- world without neck pain

*While we're on the topic of drug-induced haze, who thought this was worth making?

Williams, Vanessa (1995). "Colors of the Wind"

Photographs and soap

I found Anna Williams via 100 Layer Cake, one of my favorite wedding-related blogs. She has such beautiful work.

from her France series

I love that staircase, from her People series

from her Interiors series, also on Marthastewart.com

Upon closer examination, I also recognized some of her interior shots from Martha's* Home Tours. I don't think she shot this one, but I really love the Country Cottage one.

But back to 100 Layer Cake. I admire their style and ideas a lot. They have this simple recipe to make your own soap as favors. I want to try the lavender oatmeal this weekend. I'll take pictures if I'm successful. I have some pretty brown bakers' twine that I've been wanting to use.

photos via 100 Layer Cake

The Weekly Weird, introductory edition

In my apartment, I like to offset a room with something curious, such as the plastic dinosaur on our fireplace mantle, the alligator head on our bookshelf, or the line-up of dry wishbones on our kitchen sink window. I don't feel like my living space is complete if it's too normal, conventional.

I gravitate toward the weird and I realize that I come across a lot of weird in the course of a week. I revel in the strange details in life, so I'm creating "The Weekly Weird" as an excuse to document some of it.

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So what's weird this week? This freakish twin egg, that's what.

free-range chickens are into some freaky shit

I still used the egg, but I got sort of suspicious when the next two eggs had two yolks as well (and annoyed during the separation process). Nevertheless, all three freak eggs went into the graham cracker cake I tried to make for Rob's mom.

Alas, the cake in its intended form was not to be as I forgot the baking powder. I passed it off as a tort instead and it was actually tastier than it had any right to be given its density.

freakishly dense cake-tort made with the freakish twin eggs

I was interested in the whole twin egg thing and wondered if it was common. A basic Google search confirms that it is somewhat weird and further tells me that I will either give birth to twins or have a morbid death in the family, depending on my choice old-wives tale. I'm hoping neither and that the ruined cake-tort will appease the gods.

It really tied the room together

White vinyl venetian blinds have no place outside of a heroin den, but they've been in our bedroom for seven months.

I prefer that my windows and the light that was intended to come through them are left unviolated even if it creates some awkward moments with the old guy next door who's always outside smoking on his porch. But I can deal with the knowledge that my neighbors see me naked on a regular basis -- it's the price I'm willing to pay for maximum natural light.

In the past, the first thing I did in a new apartment was to get rid of the dreaded mini blinds, but Rob values privacy more than I do and also needs a dark room to hibernate, so I've had to compromise a bit. I'd gotten away with hiding the blinds in almost every room but the bedroom, where they continued to assault the finer senses.

Well, we found these awesome curtains last weekend, so the problem is solved. And they really do tie the room together.

Ann Sacks' latest lovelies

Man, am I ever loving tiempo, the new hand-painted terra cotta at Ann Sacks.

gitanos 3 in robin's egg, ochre, off white and antique green

moroccan field in banana

la spezia 2 in off white and royal blue

gitanos 5 in paprika, vanilla and honey

gitanos 7 in off white and dark stain

I could deal with having a country home

I really enjoy the NYTimes Great Homes and Destinations section. It enables my guilty pleasure of peeking in the windows of other people's dwellings.

I'm fascinated by homes that deserve names other than their street address. It doesn't need to be grand in size or have luxurious amenities to be christened; it just has to have a pulse of its own and the ability to influence the way you live and interact with others in a positive way. I appreciate homes that bring people together and ease socialization.

The Beekman is grand in size (and kind of ridiculous looking on the outside), but it demands its own name because you get the sense that it's living. I can picture myself spending hours in that kitchen everyday.

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A weekend of productivity and supreme destruction

I can't help but insult the taste of the previous tenants of our apartment: every room had been painted the same lackluster color that lived somewhere between yellow and beige, but never made up its mind as to where it was -- it lived in a no-mans land with its indistinctness. It depressed me and was repainted before we even moved in.

But the bathroom had been left unassailed by their non-color. It was instead painted in a stark white -- not the kind of white that has a subtle hint of another color that casts a certain glow, but a white that is devoid of emotion and has no purpose being anywhere but a psych ward. While we managed to right the wrongness of the rest of the apartment, the bathroom had remained untouched for some time and was a source of some embarrassment for me.

I finally did something about it last weekend:

Before; blech

After; much cheerier!

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Notice that the missing light bulb in the 'after' shot. It was one of the many casualties from the painting operation. What this picture doesn't show you is a hole in the wall, and various fixtures laying on the ground in shambles around the corner.

During the second coat, I started to get lazy with adjusting the ladder and found myself stretching to get some final trim. I fell and took the towel bar, toilet paper dispenser, and part of a shelf with me. And then the light bulb exploded (yes, exploded!) while I was in the shower cleansing my wounds. At that point, I decided to give up on life for the day: I left everything, tiptoed around the shattered glass and made my way to the couch where I confined myself for the rest of the evening.