I am in love. A designer whose blog I follow recently referenced this ah-mazing website - 100LayerCake - in one of her posts, and I love it so much that I think I need to share it. Even more than the main website, I am completely in love with the blog portion of the site. Yes, it's a wedding site. And since I'm not getting married at any point in the foreseeable future, and I'm not really one of those "dream all day about my own possible fictional wedding" kind of girls, you may wonder why I have such an obsession with this site. Well, basically, it's because everything in the world that could seem remotely beautiful to me appears here. Forget having a wedding like this... I want my WHOLE LIFE to look like this. It gives me the same feeling of happiness I get when I go to anthropologie. I can't usually afford anything there (though I did recently splurge on some new awesome kitchen stuff) but the whole place just makes me feel calm and inspired and like everything is right in the world. The beauty of 100LayerCake is that the point isn't spending tons of money - it's finding ways to make beautiful and creative things yourself. There is nothing generic or cookie cutter about the weddings they feature on the site. It all seems so personal, and even the stuff that I probably wouldn't personally do (carnival-themed wedding - could be SO scary; heart-shaped stuff - usually makes me barf) ends up being so beautiful and interesting because the people find ways to make it unique and awesome and not cliche. And there are so many little projects and funsies that you could so easily work into designing your home or a random gathering of friends.
It makes me want to do something creative. I think most people I know think of me as a musical person (mostly because the synapses firing in my brain lead to frequent and random outbursts of song), but I've always been incredibly visual more than anything. I guess part of the beauty of music for me is sort of the resulting image I can envision from a particular song. I haven't been doing much singing over the last several months, but it has also given me a chance to take myself out of the equation and completely appreciate the amazing stuff that other folks are creating. It's interesting to me to see how my tastes have evolved as of late, too... In the past, I had a hard time listening to music if I didn't like the singer's voice. I've never been big on over-production, but now more than ever, I appreciate much more the live quality of performance. In a world where auto-tune and a calculated wardrobe malfunction are enough to make a person famous, I find that I'm so much more drawn to the imperfections and honesty of a live performance. If you still sound good enough to evoke a real connection and reaction from your audience, then even if it's not "my taste" I can still find a way to appreciate it.
I'm sure this is a little bit of a stretch here, but I guess what I feel when I hear folks like The Avett Bros or Chris Thile or Ray Lamontagne and countless others is probably the same sense of comfort and awe that I feel when I see something that is beautiful to me, especially when that beauty is organic or handmade and slightly imperfect. It isn't manufactured and sterile. It's natural and a little raw. It's like a field of wildflowers on a perfect pre-dusk evening or watching hundreds of sailboats on the water glistening in the sun. I know it sounds a little ridiculous, but it's that "ahh" factor that I love so much. It makes me want to quit my job and just sit around and make stuff. Of course, the Midwestern practicality takes over and I realize I'm not really willing to suffer for the sake of art. I sometimes envy the people who can do that, but it's just not who I am. There's no reason you can't bring a little of that bohemia into a standard day-job life though. You just have to take the time to break out of the routine. I guess that's the hardest part for me, but it's also the easiest thing to change if you have a little inspiration. Surely 100 layers of inspiration should be enough to do the trick. :)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
movin' on up
... to the east side. Like, really. Not New York or whatever (or was it Philadelphia? I can't remember)... but the east side of my little town here. Okay, well, actually it's downtown, but it IS on the eastern side of downtown. Okay, shut up. Anyway. I'm excited. I've lived in my same boring duplex for almost 3 years now. This boring duplex is a different floor plan but not terribly unlike the place I lived when I was in college, and it's also not terribly unlike the boring apartment where I lived during grad school. These have all been perfectly decent places, and we always did our best to make them look fun (even on a very meager college budget), but there's still something very cookie-cutter and dull about a row of buildings that all look exactly. the. same. I'm pretty fond of most of my stuff now, but I've been thinking for awhile that it would be more fun if I lived in a more interesting place. Not to mention that the quality of my current neighborhood has diminished quite a bit over the past couple of years. I'd heard reports of vandalism, I'd seen some shadiness going on, and I'd started to feel a little out of place there... I had started looking at other options around town, but there just wasn't much that made me want to go through the hassle of moving again. It's actually been nice having the same address longer than a year for the first time since 2003.
Out of the clear blue, I was looking online one day and saw a large historic home downtown that has been split into 4 apartment units. It was super-charming from the outside, but a lot of places like that end up being grungefest on the inside or they've been hacked apart to the point that you feel like you're in a weird little box. So I tried not to get my hopes up as I planned to meet the landlady to take a closer look. When we went inside, I found original hardwoods (a little bowed and crooked but otherwise quite lovely), an original fireplace with original vintage light fixtures, moderately high ceilings, and plenty of space. Sure, there are some "old house" quirks, but that also means there's lots of charm - random little nooks and cubbies to put stuff. Everyone on those HGTV shows always talks about "lots of natural light"... Where I've been living, that means that the rooms get hotter than all hell when the sun is shining in, but the plaster walls and uber-construction of yesteryear means that this historic house feels nice a breezy even with all that light coming in. I also went in there when it was pretty cold and drab outside and found it to be perfectly cozy enough. Amazing.
We talked price - more than I'm paying now for rent, but with some utilities included, my net "living cost" will be equal to or less than what I'm paying now overall. We talked terms and conditions. It all seemed great. And then I saw the stove. A tiny, tragic little dollhouse stove. It was like my Easy Bake Oven from childhood. Like... so small that my expensive pots and pans wouldn't fit inside the oven. So sad. But I made a ballsy suggestion that they move a cabinet over 5 inches to the right and put in a real stove. And holy home improvement, Batman, they agreed! One cabinet move and brand-new-stove later, I signed a lease, picked up my keys, and started the fun.
I feel like I should post pictures because I think this place is going to be super fun when I get all my stuff in there. Maybe that'll be an exciting project. My style tends to fall somewhere between clean classic and vintage-festive. I like color, but I rarely get to live any place where they'll let me paint the walls, so I like having color in my stuff. I love black-and-white photographs just as much as the bright colorful pop-y art nouveau posters I picked up for like 1 euro apiece at the market in Paris. (That makes me sound like I just pop over to Paris on a regular basis. I don't. I went once. I loved it. And I carry that stuff with me everywhere.) And I'm also in love with lightly aged, sometimes lightly floral or natural vintage touches. I have a need for symmetry (I'm a midwestern girl after all), but I also think a home shouldn't be all matchy. It should be a collection of everything you love in order to reflect who you are or who you want to be. I don't think it has to be expensive (I just bought a living room rug for $19, and I have a full wall of flea market picture frames for less than $100 total), but I also think I've outgrown super cheap dorm-quality stuff. Chairs are worth $600 each if they last forever. And mine had better. So I feel like this place is going to end up being a nifty blend of what I believe it should be in order to be me, at least until I take the leap to buy a house. So. This should be fun. Yay for new places.
Out of the clear blue, I was looking online one day and saw a large historic home downtown that has been split into 4 apartment units. It was super-charming from the outside, but a lot of places like that end up being grungefest on the inside or they've been hacked apart to the point that you feel like you're in a weird little box. So I tried not to get my hopes up as I planned to meet the landlady to take a closer look. When we went inside, I found original hardwoods (a little bowed and crooked but otherwise quite lovely), an original fireplace with original vintage light fixtures, moderately high ceilings, and plenty of space. Sure, there are some "old house" quirks, but that also means there's lots of charm - random little nooks and cubbies to put stuff. Everyone on those HGTV shows always talks about "lots of natural light"... Where I've been living, that means that the rooms get hotter than all hell when the sun is shining in, but the plaster walls and uber-construction of yesteryear means that this historic house feels nice a breezy even with all that light coming in. I also went in there when it was pretty cold and drab outside and found it to be perfectly cozy enough. Amazing.
We talked price - more than I'm paying now for rent, but with some utilities included, my net "living cost" will be equal to or less than what I'm paying now overall. We talked terms and conditions. It all seemed great. And then I saw the stove. A tiny, tragic little dollhouse stove. It was like my Easy Bake Oven from childhood. Like... so small that my expensive pots and pans wouldn't fit inside the oven. So sad. But I made a ballsy suggestion that they move a cabinet over 5 inches to the right and put in a real stove. And holy home improvement, Batman, they agreed! One cabinet move and brand-new-stove later, I signed a lease, picked up my keys, and started the fun.
I feel like I should post pictures because I think this place is going to be super fun when I get all my stuff in there. Maybe that'll be an exciting project. My style tends to fall somewhere between clean classic and vintage-festive. I like color, but I rarely get to live any place where they'll let me paint the walls, so I like having color in my stuff. I love black-and-white photographs just as much as the bright colorful pop-y art nouveau posters I picked up for like 1 euro apiece at the market in Paris. (That makes me sound like I just pop over to Paris on a regular basis. I don't. I went once. I loved it. And I carry that stuff with me everywhere.) And I'm also in love with lightly aged, sometimes lightly floral or natural vintage touches. I have a need for symmetry (I'm a midwestern girl after all), but I also think a home shouldn't be all matchy. It should be a collection of everything you love in order to reflect who you are or who you want to be. I don't think it has to be expensive (I just bought a living room rug for $19, and I have a full wall of flea market picture frames for less than $100 total), but I also think I've outgrown super cheap dorm-quality stuff. Chairs are worth $600 each if they last forever. And mine had better. So I feel like this place is going to end up being a nifty blend of what I believe it should be in order to be me, at least until I take the leap to buy a house. So. This should be fun. Yay for new places.
Friday, March 11, 2011
on being 30.
Wow, it's been awhile, eh? I'm surely among the most inconsistent bloggers on the world wide web. It isn't that my posts aren't consistently wonderful (don't pretend like you're not amazed by me, okay - I mean, who can double-negative like that? yes, double-negative is a verb now), but I have a hard time remembering to come here and say my stuff... or maybe it's more that I have a hard time finding the time to say everything I'd want to say. I don't want to shower the web with meaningless fluff about what I ate for breakfast (cold strawberry no frosting pop-tart this morning) or what I'm wearing (all black with magenta shoes today)... I want what I say to mean something, even if it only has meaning to me.
I'm in the midst of a lot of stuff right now - working a lot but hopefully doing good work, trying to get myself organized to move, and upgrading some things in my life (just bought a shiny new MacBook Pro, but I've yet to transfer anything from my old computer to it.) I've also managed to successfully turn 30 since my last blog. Saying it out loud or writing it down still makes it feel a little surreal. Thirty years is a long time, relative to the average human life span. But at the same time, in many ways I feel like my life is just beginning. While the pain of seeing those gray hairs, recognizing that my vision is getting just a little worse, and feeling just a little bit more achy and creaky is a little tough to bear, I also feel incredibly blessed to have made it this far. There are many people who did many wonderful things without being able to finish three full decades of life. I haven't done very many of the things I thought I'd do before turning 30, and I went through a time of feeling a lack of accomplishment as a result. But another part of me is starting to realize that the best is probably yet to come. And now I've lived enough to see beyond the basics of a given life moment and actually appreciate the real significance of the people, places, choices, events that I encounter along the way. I somehow feel much more in charge of what's happening in my life now, while also having a much deeper understanding of the old cliche (which I happen to fully support) that everything happens for a reason. I guess it's an interesting place to be in... young enough not to be tied down with tons of commitment but also old enough and with just enough wisdom to appreciate it. As much as it hurt that first time I had to put a check in the box next to "30-34" instead of "25-29", I feel like this next bracket is going to be much kinder to me than the previous one.
I think I'm going to celebrate this new-found place of clarity by making a list. Because, hey, that's what I do. Like really, I basically get paid to make lists and check things off. Seriously. I digress. I'm going to make a list. There are so many things that I think I'd like to do but somehow never get around to doing. Some bit of work or life gets in the way. I guess now more than ever, I appreciate that maybe 30 years isn't really that long, and there's no time like the present to make the most out of all the blessings I've been given. I feel so fortunate to be educated and aware, living in a place where I have the most basic of human freedoms that so many don't have, with wonderful people in my life. I still live with uncertainty about the future, knowing that where I am now probably isn't where I always want to be, but it is time to revel in that freedom instead of seeing it as a hindrance. So, it's time to whip out that new checklist template in my Word 2011 for Mac and get on it. Time to rock out. With my, err... yeah. Nevermind. (Some of us get older without really ever growing up.)
I'm in the midst of a lot of stuff right now - working a lot but hopefully doing good work, trying to get myself organized to move, and upgrading some things in my life (just bought a shiny new MacBook Pro, but I've yet to transfer anything from my old computer to it.) I've also managed to successfully turn 30 since my last blog. Saying it out loud or writing it down still makes it feel a little surreal. Thirty years is a long time, relative to the average human life span. But at the same time, in many ways I feel like my life is just beginning. While the pain of seeing those gray hairs, recognizing that my vision is getting just a little worse, and feeling just a little bit more achy and creaky is a little tough to bear, I also feel incredibly blessed to have made it this far. There are many people who did many wonderful things without being able to finish three full decades of life. I haven't done very many of the things I thought I'd do before turning 30, and I went through a time of feeling a lack of accomplishment as a result. But another part of me is starting to realize that the best is probably yet to come. And now I've lived enough to see beyond the basics of a given life moment and actually appreciate the real significance of the people, places, choices, events that I encounter along the way. I somehow feel much more in charge of what's happening in my life now, while also having a much deeper understanding of the old cliche (which I happen to fully support) that everything happens for a reason. I guess it's an interesting place to be in... young enough not to be tied down with tons of commitment but also old enough and with just enough wisdom to appreciate it. As much as it hurt that first time I had to put a check in the box next to "30-34" instead of "25-29", I feel like this next bracket is going to be much kinder to me than the previous one.
I think I'm going to celebrate this new-found place of clarity by making a list. Because, hey, that's what I do. Like really, I basically get paid to make lists and check things off. Seriously. I digress. I'm going to make a list. There are so many things that I think I'd like to do but somehow never get around to doing. Some bit of work or life gets in the way. I guess now more than ever, I appreciate that maybe 30 years isn't really that long, and there's no time like the present to make the most out of all the blessings I've been given. I feel so fortunate to be educated and aware, living in a place where I have the most basic of human freedoms that so many don't have, with wonderful people in my life. I still live with uncertainty about the future, knowing that where I am now probably isn't where I always want to be, but it is time to revel in that freedom instead of seeing it as a hindrance. So, it's time to whip out that new checklist template in my Word 2011 for Mac and get on it. Time to rock out. With my, err... yeah. Nevermind. (Some of us get older without really ever growing up.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)