Yeah.

That hasn’t really happened yet.

BUT I CAN EXPLAIN.

Max and I took our caravan of dogs to Buffalo for Christmas, but a four day trip turned into a 6 day trip when we got snowed in! I guess it snowed a bit down in NYC, too, but hot holy damn, Buffalo. You know how to do a snowstorm up right.

Buffalo is really beautiful, by the way. I’ll admit that it took me a few trips to warm up to the city itself, but now I really enjoy going up there to visit. Max’s family is super great, too.

The dogs were not as pleased as we were about the snow, but one thing that made them a little more content were their fancy jackets! After Linus got his adorable little mug on Cute Overload, a really sweet company called D-fa Dogs in New Zealand e-mailed me out of the blue, asked if the dogs needed coats for winter, and offered to send them matching Ice Barkers.* So nice! I took them up on it and the dogs have both been getting a lot of wear out of them all winter. The merino wool is deceptively warm, and if it’s really cold we’ll layer their American Apparel hoodies underneath for extra cuteness points.

*Note: D-fa Dogs didn’t pay me to post about them or even ask for a post in exchange for the jackets. They just wanted my dogs to be warm!

Linus has the black coat, by the way. He’s impossible to take pictures of because he doesn’t sit still unless he’s sleeping, and his paws got too cold to walk so he hitched a ride inside Max’s coat…but I’ll try to get a picture soon. Dogs in jackets are really cute and you deserve to see that FYI.

After we got back from Buffalo, we made a quick turnaround in Brooklyn before heading up to Kingston, NY for a couple of days. A couple of our friends got together and rented a cute house, so we spent two days drinking and eating and drinking and antiquing and drinking, and the whole thing was super fun and relaxing and awesome. Kingston is cute town on the Hudson River Valley, and now I have delusions and yearnings in my loins to find a way to buy a cheap historic house somewhere in that vicinity and make it beautiful and perfect. For the weekends and holidays? It would be so fancy and beautiful? Hashtag goals.

Since nobody seemed to know what they wanted to do while we were up there, I just did what I do best and dragged everyone out thrifting for a few hungover hours of fun times digging through weird old crap. Totally everyone’s idea of a good time by which I mean nobody’s by which I mean my friends probably hate me now and I’m alone and destitute and could really use some new friends?

Whatever. I bought this ENORMOUS enamel tray, which was covered in dirt and rust but totally looks way better now that I cleaned it up. What do I even do with this thing? It’s about 20×30 inches and looks completely dumb on my credenza or dresser. But it’s pretty and I love it and I love trays and it’ll work out.

Oh look, I bought another enamel tray, too! This one is a more reasonable size and cute and good for corralling all the things?

Trays are good because you can group your shit on them and then it looks like maybe you have a reasonable amount of shit instead of too much. They don’t call this a design blog for nothing?

Oh yeah I actually bought two of those trays because they were there and they were cheap and I love all the enamel.

I also bought this tiny little amber glass jar. I don’t know. Exciting fucking stuff. I’m rocking your world right now.

Here’s Mekko to take you through the weekend until we get some real updates happening up in here next week.

Look at her tongue. Look at her nose. Look deep into her eyes. Keep looking. See your future.

About two days before we left, Max floated the idea of giving his childhood bedroom a “quick and easy” makeover while we were going to be there. Trying not to act too excited, I accepted the assignment with grace and class, as I had rehearsed many times whilst daydreaming about this moment. And then I assembled my emergency DIY-superhero traveling toolkit.

I have a lot of tools and bits and bobs I’ve accumulated over the past couple of years, but this is the stuff I see as essential when embarking on a quick-n-dirty DIY job. From left to right: all my assorted drill bits, two types of pliers, lightweight quick-drying spackling compound, the best screwdriver ever with a million different heads, coarse-grit sandpaper, E-Z anchors, my drill, and two spackle knives.

I need to give a serious shout-out to those E-Z anchors, by the way. They are the shit. I only really like the metal ones (they also come in plastic, but I’ve had mixed results with those), but they hold a ton of weight and are just all-around phenomenally easy to use and strong and awesome. Basically you just screw the big metal piece into the wall, then screw a screw into the metal piece. Done! No drilling, nothing. These things are seriously lifesavers for crumbly plaster walls and basically hold my entire apartment together and I trust them with my life.

Anyway.

Max is perhaps the most nostalgic, sentimental person I know, so the suggestion of even touching or moving a single thing in his largely unchanged shrine to angsty adolescence is more than a little out of character. But a combination of getting older, maturing, and—I like to think—living with the controlling lunatic nightmare that is myself, has changed his taste a little, and I think he was ready to appreciate his former bedroom as a thing preserved more in memory and photographs than something that needs to actually exist in real life. It also helps that we stay in this room when we visit, and a twin bed pretty much sucks when occupied by two boys and a 12 pound muppet named Linus.

Additionally, Max’s wonderful mother, Sue, wanted to use the space as a comfortable guest bedroom for the 49 (give or take a few) weeks a year when we’re not staying in it, but not every guest wants to be transported back to Max’s worldview circa 2000-2006.

Twin bed: check. Beaded floor pillows: check. Beaded floor lamp: check. Beaded table lamp: check. Second beaded floor lamp (out of frame): check. Tapestry thing: check. Tiny plastic busts of famous composers: check. Martha Stewart Living casually laying on the floor like it’s an accident: CHECK.

Even though I’ll admit to hating staying in this room, there’s something so adorable about these pictures that I feel a little nostalgic, myself. All those magazine boxes on the shelves are full of Martha Stewart Livings, the little woven basket next to it is full of knitting supplies, and the bottom shelf is occupied by about a dozen Harry Potter books—American and Canadian editions. I mean, come on. 

Up above, this weird candelabra chandelier number from IKEA hung from the ceiling, as well as an artsy photo wall of mostly naked people. There are SUNGLASSES HANGING FROM THAT CHANDELIER THING, PEOPLE. 2006 Max is so weird and cute.

The less cute side of this makeover is this wall of graffiti that Max had all of his friends contribute to with Sharpie over the years. Mostly, it is composed of penises, vaginas, things that look vaguely like penises and vaginas, angsty lines of poetry, drug references, and penises. There are also some penises.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Ani DiFranco lyrics GLITTER PUFFY-PAINTED to the closet moldings, and more glitter puffy paint ON THE CEILING that has something to do with eggs and some dude named Ernie?

Interestingly, Max has never been into drugs.

I always thought that my parents allowed us to be pretty free-spirited when it came to our rooms: we got to pick all our own furniture, paint colors, layouts, and how big of a mess we lived in. But Max’s parents kind of took this to the next level and basically let tiny crazy angsty Max run wild and this is what happened. Take heed, people.

All I can say after sanding glitter puffy paint off a ceiling is that if I ever have children who try to pull shit like that, I will drown them.

As you can see in the above floor plan, this room is really tiny, which made our single-day-makeover plan seem pretty feasible on the surface. In the morning, we cleared out the entire room, then went to do a little shopping. Then I got dropped at the house to commence with the painting, while Max and his mom went to buy a mattress and a few other things we’d need to finish the space. It was some crazy Trading Spaces madness, which is how I like things. Once I get in to projects like this, I’m the sort of person who will basically forego food, sleep, water, and bathroom breaks until it’s done. I get into a zone, push through pain, and annoy every single person around me with demands that they work harder.

Imagine me as a werewolf. Then imagine that a big DIY project is a full moon. It’s like that.

So here is the paint arsenal, in case you’re curious. I started off by prepping the walls, which basically meant scraping old sticky-tack, sanding glitter puffy paint, and spackling about a thousand nail holes. In some areas, the plaster was in really rough shape, which normally I’d get all anal about and repair properly with joint compound and mesh tape and whatnot, but I had to learn to let go and just paint over everything. It was oddly liberating, and matte paint has a way of making uneven fucked up plaster look kind of awesome, anyway.

PSA: never write on your walls with Sharpie. Just don’t do it. If you do, someday your boyfriend will have to come in, paint over all of it with shellac-based primer, which is both expensive and very smelly. He will have to do it twice, all the while losing brain cells and going crazy. Sharpie bleeds through, like, ALL PAINT IN THE WORLD EVER in the most amazing/annoying way, so it really all has to be sealed in with a serious primer. The good thing about the shellac primer is that it dries REALLY fast, but it smells terrible and is super thin, so you have to be extra careful of drips and off-spray.

Max wanted a really dark black/navy color for the walls, and after seeing it both on the outside of Chezerbey and at Anna’s house, I demanded that we use Benjamin Moore’s “Soot.” We used the Aura paint in matte, which is pricey but is basically like painting with velvet and covers completely and easily in two coats. For the ceiling, we just used standard off-the-rack flat white ceiling paint, and for the trim we used off-the-rack white in pearl finish. Usually I do trim in semi-gloss, but I’ve been leaning more toward something a bit less shiny and pearl is a really beautiful, slightly more subtle alternative. All of this action happened so fast, I literally have ZERO process pictures…but really, we all just want to get to the afters, right?

BOOM. Hello super dark, super cozy, super awesome tiny bedroom that I totally love. With cute dog.

So obviously this isn’t really my normal taste, but I really do love this room. It was so much fun to wake up in on that first morning, and I actually didn’t want to leave Buffalo because I loved sleeping in it so much. Maybe it makes me want a black bedroom?

I’m sorry for the low-quality pictures, by the way. The one thing I didn’t pack in my emergency DIY-superhero traveling toolkit was a decent camera, so unfortunately I had to document with my iPhone. This room gets basically no natural light, so a very dark space combined with very dark paint combined with an iPhone camera makes for some subpar photos. Sorry!

Part of the fun of creating this room was reusing things that were already around in the house, including this lamp, the bedside table, the rug, the bed, the flag, and that amazing vintage Hudson Bay blanket. The bed belonged to Max’s mom’s parents (also known as Max’s grandparents), and I believe was a wedding gift in the late 40s-early 50s. It’s mahogany colonial-revival, which is usually not my thing, but I love it for this space. It was sitting in the attic, broken in a few joints, but I was able to repair the whole thing in about half an hour with some J-B Wood Weld, which is an amazing epoxy that cures really quickly and is SUPER strong and awesome. Max’s mom was really excited to see the bed all put back together and looking amazing, which was really fun for me. Aside from repairing the bed, we also got new pieces of 1 x 4 cut at Home Depot to replace the old slats (we got ten new slats for under the mattress, which was perfect).

Also, the flag is pretty amazing. Normally, I’m not a fan of using American flags in home decor, but this flag is old (it only has 48 stars!) and has just the right amount of wear to be super cool and perfectly vintage without straying into hit-you-over-the-head-patriotic territory. It’s being held up by E-Z anchors. Duh.

The vintage Hudson Bay blanket is also from Max’s mom’s parents, and it totally makes the room. I mean, of course it does. I’m a huge sucker for a point blanket.

One of the other projects I really loved in this room was the curtain, which I just made out of a canvas drop-cloth that was inexplicably sitting in the trunk of my car. I hung the curtain rod (this cheap-o one from Target) about 7″ from the ceiling, and made the curtain all the way to the floor, using iron-on hem tape for the side and top (I used existing hems for the side facing the room and the bottom). The iron-on tape worked surprisingly well, and the canvas was a perfect warm neutral color and texture to balance out the bright whites in the room and was also FREE. Free is always good. The curtain rod is hanging with E-Z anchors.

Another HUGE, HUGE improvement in this room was finding and re-hanging the closet door! The closet just had a curtain hanging on a tension rod before, but Max and I managed to find the original door hiding in the attic (it had been removed at some point, I have no idea why), harvest a black porcelain knob from another outcast door in the basement, and hang and repaint the thing like it never left the room. Love me an old door with a couple fresh coats of paint.

Again, normally I’d get a bit more detail-crazy and strip all the old hardware, but there was no time for that. Instead, I just coated everything with a fresh coat of white, and guess what? Nobody died, which makes me question my entire worldview, basically. Sometimes its OK to just take the easy route. Huh.

Along the wall between the entry door and the closet, I hung three plain cheap brass hooks (also held up by—you guessed it!—E-Z anchors), which might be my favorite thing about this room, oddly. Hooks are perfect for small spaces, and we used them for everything from bags to shirts to our jeans at the end of the day. The hooks keep clutter off the small amount of floor space, and the little bits of brass make a really nice complement to the deep blue paint color. And the E-Z anchors mean they have no trouble holding a ton of weight.

One thing we didn’t do anything about was the floor (except scrub it). It’s the only original wood floor in the house, which I think is oak but was painted a rusty red at some point. About half of the old paint has worn off and the wood is in really rough shape, which I’m pretty sure means it needs to just be painted white? I’m looking at you, Christmas break…

OK, I take it back about the dumb hooks because my favorite thing about the room is definitely this amazing art deco pendant light that we picked up at The Antique Man. It was kind of a steal at $75 and is just…so beautiful. There’s no electrical in the ceiling in this room, so I converted it into a plug-in fixture, which is pretty easy to do with the teeniest, tiniest bit of electrical know-how or advice from that old guy at the hardware store who knows what’s up. Basically you can just cut the end of an extension cord off, wire it into the original socket, and it’s a plug-in light. One of the electrical outlets in the room is circuited to a light switch, so we just ran the cord down to the outlet as neatly as possible and now it turns on and off like a real light and everything. This room was in dire need of a good main light source (with no real natural light, a few little lamps just don’t cut it sometimes!), and I can’t really think of a better-looking solution than this sexy vintage 20s thang.

So where did the money go in this space? Here’s how it broke down:

Mattress/comforter/duvet/sheets/pillows: $676
Bed repair/new slats: $56
Paint/paint supplies: $215
Light Fixture/new wire: $78
Curtain Rod: $10
Hooks: $15

TOTAL: $1,050

Realistically, we probably spent about $50 or so more than that on various supplies and little things that aren’t springing to mind, but in any case—an entire top-to-bottom  room makeover for right around $1,000 including a new mattress? Not bad.

As Mekko clearly demonstrates, this room is super comfortable and a great place for guests (and us!) to stay. Aside from getting to enjoy the final product, I can honestly say that this was one of the most fun, satisfying vacations I’ve ever had, which is pretty much all you need to know to understand that I’m sick in the head and need professional help and guidance.

A big thanks to Max’s mom for letting us have our way with this space. I hope you love it, Sue!

A few hours and several drinks into the ferry ride, we grabbed a table close to the stage at the ship’s casino and settled in for the live entertainment, an act entitled “The Freak Show” and recommended by one of the bartenders on the upper deck who described it only as “really crazy dancing.” Seeing as the New York Club and Lounge on the 12th floor wouldn’t be open for another few hours and  dinner had already ended, there really weren’t many other options for how to kill the time. As beautiful as the Swedish archipelago is, it all becomes a little monotonous to stare at for hours on end, particularly when the alternative is some cultural immersion in what basically amounts to a Scandinavian booze cruise.

Of course I’m generalizing here, but the magical thing about Finns is that they’re a very serious, generally reserved breed of human, who simultaneously hold very few reservations about what constitutes appropriate content for their children. Pair this with “The Freak Show,” and you basically have 100 blonde Scandinavian families watching with the straightest of expressions as scantily clad men and women, faces obscured by exaggerated stage makeup, interpretive danced among dramatic lighting, stage-smoke, and a 6-foot-2 drag queen who lip-synced Lady Gaga and Britney Spears songs and alternated her act with a 90-pound woman who actually sang the covers but might as well have just been another drag queen. Now add a drunk gay couple and a few friends from New York sitting in the front row cheering and clapping and dancing in their chairs and you have 100 very confused blonde Scandinavian families and one incredibly relieved drag queen.

WORK. IT. GURL.

Suffice to say we took full advantage of what the ferry had to offer before disembarking the next morning in Helsinki, hungover dumpy messes as we were, before swiftly being whisked off to our first stop. Nothing like a little amazing design to get you back into the groove, am I right?

I am right when Alvar Aalto is involved.

I mean, come on. Come ON. I’m not the type of person to throw around the word “inspiration” lightly, but this place…wow. Those bright white bricks, the terra cotta floors, the Moroccan rugs, the blonde furniture, the climbing plants—it was perfect.  

And then the house:

Just stop it right there, Aalto. It’s WAY TOO GOOD.

Helsinki is really, really gorgeous, by the way. I was pretty upset to be leaving Stockholm (I LOVE SWEDEN), but Helsinki was a pretty amazing substitute. Sweden and Finland are surprisingly very different countries culturally, but both Stockholm and Helsinki have a really nice sensibility about them.

Aside from a few museum visits and lectures in our first couple of days in Helsinki, which I don’t have photos of, we also got a tour of the Marimekko headquarters and factory from the head of PR at the company. We weren’t allowed to take photos in the *top secret* areas of the production facilities, but seeing how they produce the fabrics and learn more about the company was so cool. Imagine very big machines and a lot of employees in Marimekko clothes. After the tour, we spent a couple hours wandering through the attached outlet store, which is a dangerous place. So much cute. So discounted. Let’s not talk about it.

On our last day, we all boarded a bus and drove out to the Paimio Sanatorium, a hospital designed by Alvar Aalto in the 30s to treat tuberculosis patients. Situated in a gorgeous evergreen forest, the hospital itself is, unsurprisingly, stunning. I would totally pay to have tuberculosis there.

Probably saving the best for last, from Paimio we went to Villa Mairea, one of Aalto’s most famous homes. Again, no interior pictures allowed, but do yourself a favor and run a google image search. OMG.

Like, OMG. *dead*

It’s basically everything that is perfect in the world ever. That is my academic thesis on the topic. Take it or leave it.

Then this impromptu matching-Marimekko-shirts-in-a-field-of-fucking-daisies photo shoot happened, because we’re ridiculous whores.

Workin’ that booty tooch.

With the course officially over and two days left in Helsinki, four of us decided to spend our Saturday taking the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. We walked around a ton and ate a dope lunch and got caught in a rainstorm and had our ferry home cancelled and then almost got killed in a stampede of crazies clamoring to get on the next ferry as if everybody’s entire life hinged on getting a window seat. What started out as a pretty nice day in a beautiful new city turned into an almost funny series of disasters wherein we wondered if we’d ever get out of Estonia or if we’d be stranded forever at the creepily desolate harbor that looked like a landscape from some kind of post-apocalyptic video game.

We did, however, found the hottest new heavy metal group and shot the album cover, so I guess it was a pretty productive day after all:

Buy it at that indie record shop you’re probably not cool enough to know about on 12/21/12. (Photography and graphic design by Maxwell Tielman)

For our last day, two intense weeks of travel kind of caught up with us and we needed to lay low a little bit, which was convenient because basically the entire city of Helsinki is closed on Sundays anyway. We walked around (including a stroll through the beautiful botanic garden) and made our way to a flea market. Of course. What do you expect?

I’m guessing nobody reading this blog is going to be super judgy about my thrifty/flea habit, even when I’m abroad and arguably could be doing other more refined cultural things with my time, but I actually think flea markets are a really fun and informative way to see a city. Especially on a trip like this where we studied the design of this region for two weeks, it’s always interesting to see what kinds of things people choose to sell, what they choose to value above other things, what locals are interested in buying, etc. etc. It’s an easy and accessible way to partake in a standard, rather unexceptional piece of local culture, which you just don’t get traipsing through museums or on the top of a double-decker bus all day. Sure, you might see more, but you’re not talking or interacting or getting a very good sense of the local community.

So I like fleas for more reasons than just being a greedy bastard. (Plus, we went to a lot of museums on this trip and I was a bit museum-d out.)

Obviously I bought some things because I completely lack self-restraint, including that wall-hanging weaving tapestry thingy on the bottom left, which is about 5.5 feet long and will look great once I figure out where to hang it. I like the patterns and the colors and I think it’s an amount of fiber that my apartment can pull off without being an amount of fiber that my apartment could never pull off. It’s probably from the 60s or so and probably handmade by some hobbyist. I love having homespun pieces like this in my home, even if I didn’t make them and have no idea who did.

Also, more Ultima Thule! Glasses this time! I don’t care that they’re weird sizes, they were 3 euros each and are so beautiful. Eleven pieces of this stuff all for super-cheap is not such a bad haul for one trip, if I do say so.

And then we got home and I got to wake up in the morning to this view. After all the pretty stuff we’ve seen, I think this is still the prettiest.

* * * * *

ADDENDUM: In case you were wondering about me and the drag queen (see above), have just received evidence from unnamed third-party source. (My face got all distorted in the commotion, I don’t really look like the monster from Alien. Or do I?)

I am the wind beneath her wings.

So Stockholm continues to be the most beautiful city ever. (see above)

I love it here, particularly since the weather got incredible and everyone is all cheery and in magical summer-Swede mode.

We’ve had a great last few days here, including on Friday when we got up at the asscrack of dawn to take a special bus arranged by the fabulous Swedish government out to Dalarna, a county northeast of Stockholm. It’s an incredibly picturesque region where Swedes have adorable weekend and summer cottages, where they frolic through birch forests like beautiful blonde nymphs, eating lingonberries from the bush (vine? shrub? tree?), making head wreathes from sapling branches, talking to woodland creatures, etc. etc. They’re like that here.

We started with a tour of Stora Hyttnäs, a 19th-century upper-middleclass home that’s now a museum. Our guide was the kind elderly lady in the first picture who rode up on her bike, earning her the prize of most-unintentionally-adorable-Swede in my book. I mean, look at her go. ”There are 40,000 objects here,” she informed us with an exhausted sigh.

The real impetus for the trip was to see the home of  famed Swedish painter, illustrator, and national hero Carl Larsson—a place that basically inspired all of Swedish residential design since the turn of the century. It was kind of a big deal.

There weren’t any pictures allowed inside, so apparently I took this one of the outside and decided that was good enough?

It looks like this, basically. Larsson paintings are reproduced all over Sweden. Everywhere you look, BOOM. Larsson. Pretty amazing to see in person.

AND THEN THE WEEKEND CAME.

Two days in Sweden, two boys who like to thrift, nothing on the agenda. I’m pitching the reality show now.

Heart racing. Hands shaking. I was BORN to thrift in Sweden. This was to be my moment. This is pretty much how it went:

Saturday morning: “Oh, let’s get haircuts” says Max. “It’ll be nice, we’ll feel all refreshed, and we can always go to the flea markets after.”

“But you have to get there early!” I wail. “And they’ll be over later, and OMG YOU’RE RUINING MY WHOLE LIFE.” *tears*

I might have overreacted. I was hellbent on thrifts and Max was determined to refresh his Hitler-youth hairstyle and—absent my spoilt-child greedy emotions—I had no defense.

I’m not bitter anymore. It’s fine. Our hairs look better. I’m totally so over it don’t even worry I didn’t even want that fabulous ________ I would have found had we started earlier as planned. 

Don’t get in the way of me and my thrifts.

We found some rad stuff though, at a combination of thrifts and fleas, like this weird PH-style light fixture that was marked at all of about $7. I don’t even really know where we’ll put it, and it’s really not worth much (from what I can figure out, I think it’s basically a knock-off of some other “inspired by” design) but SEVEN DOLLARS? That’s less than a Chipotle burrito. Plus, brassy details. I mean come now. No choice.

More stuff? Of course. Clockwise:

1. Old Konica film camera—super bare bones, super cheap, should be fun to shoot a couple rolls on.

2. Three brassy candlesticks! Brassy brassy brassy!

3. Found about a trillion of these wood cabinet door/drawer pulls at Myrorna (basically the Swedish Goodwill) for about 25 cents each, so I bought 24 of them just to give myself the option of using them in my kitchen. I know you’re thinking that it’s a bad idea, but combined with the other stuff I have planned, I think they might look amazing. Might. I’ll sleep on it before I drill any holes.

4. Geode tea light holder. If I have two sets of geode bookends, two geode coasters, and now this, does that make me a rocks and minerals enthusiast? Collector? Weirdo?

5. On Sunday we went against all the advice and visited a HUGE flea market (marketed as the biggest in Scandinavia) in Varberg, which was basically a sprawling dark disaster in the basement of a mall filled with old cell phone chargers and Ricky Martin CDs. As various online sources claimed it would be, it was too junky and generally un-fun, but we did come away with a few good things including this Stig Lindberg teapot pitcher thing from the Bersa Collection (it has no top, so what’s it really for?). The price was really low because there’s a teeny tiny chip up by the spout, but Max really wanted it so we coughed up a little cash to take it home.

6. I’ve been slowly accumulating pieces from the Ultima Thule set, designed by Tapio Wirkkala for iittala in 1968. The tumblers and highballs have long been at the very top of my list of dream glassware, but seeing as they are crazy fancy I don’t dream of actually owning them anytime soon. I have been able to dig up 3 smaller dessert bowls, one larger bowl, and a small sugar bowl and creamer from various places though, which I’m so excited about. The pictures really don’t do them justice but they’re gorgeous.

One of the best finds of the weekend was definitely this sexy Edixa Reflex camera. I did some digging and it looks like it’s from Germany and was made in 1955, a very very early 35 mm SLR. It’s beautifully designed and built and in incredible condition and was only about $30. We’ll see how the film turns out, but honestly—just look at it. It already delivered as a fancy hipster prop when I got photographed by somebody I think was a Swedish street-style photographer? If you see a haggard-looking boy with a good-looking camera floating around the internet, it might be me. So basically now I’m a supermodel. Be impressed.

(the photo of me above was take by Max with Instagram. He’s killing it with photos of our trip, by the way.)

We’re both taking a two-week intensive graduate seminar on Scandinavian design through Parsons, where Max is getting his graduate degree. As an undergrad at NYU, I just weaseled my way in with my mediocre looks and social awkwardness and creepy obsession with the Swedes. That’s just how I do.

Obviously visiting Stockholm is a long-time dream come true, having been infatuated with this country, its people, and its design sensibilities for years. I am not disappointed. Everyone is so lovely, the city is so easy to navigate and get around, and everything looks so amazing that it makes me want to puke.

OH, SWEDES. I love you. You are so efficient and friendly and clean and kind. And did I mention sexy? Because HOT DAMN. Sexy sexy Swedes all around me. Normally I’d be annoyed because good looking people genuinely upset me but not if they’re Swedish.

(Aside: when we checked into our hotel at 2 a.m. after about 24 hours of travel, Martin at the front desk offered us a “sweet snack” or a “salty snack” and gave us a form with two boxes so we could check one. Thinking about this still makes me immeasurably happy. ”Salty snack.”)

The itinerary is packed but I’m trying to sneak in some thrifting where I can get it and making Max insane with my lunatic antics. Even if he’d rather lay down and die in the street, I’ve been dragging him off down quiet roads and across long bridges and into weird places the internet told me to go only to end up at stores that only sell vintage records or retro women’s clothes. He likes it. That’s what I tell him, anyway.

I love little vintage Dala horses, especially when they look a little rough and tumbled and distinctly handmade like these two. Also, that happy happy tray. Irresistible.

Among some other random stuff we picked up is this little shallow West German bowl with super trippy glazing inside. We’ll use it for something.

Goofy amateur brown studio pottery abounds at Stockholm thrifts and it’s taking all my willpower not to buy it all. But the suitcase is only so big and my chances of successfully transporting everything home are only so realistic so I’m resisting. I know these particular items will be *controversial* (loathed by most) but fuck it, I love these little blobby candlesticks, and for only $2 I’m 100% allowed to. I know they look like alien poops here but once they have candles and are on my mantle you’ll be singing a different tune. JUST WAIT.

I should probably note that the educational opportunities on this trip are totally amazing and, it should shock you to hear me say, totally outshining the whole thrifting situation. We’ve had a couple great days in the NationalMuseum, Drottningholm, Skokloster (AMAZING), the Nordiska Museet, Skansen, a lecture on IKEA—all amounting to the conclusion that Sweden is Where. It’s. At. We have a fantastic syllabus with fantastic readings and teachers and curators around every corner telling us what things are and happy to field questions constantly. Truth be told it’s been a while since I felt quite so enthusiastic about school and learning stuff and doing assignments, but this is different. I’m among the Swedes, after all.

Can I just say, though—these tea towels are fucking cute. If I can’t be renovating my kitchen then at least I can be buying small jolly things for it to use when it’s done? This has been my logic for the past year now. Speaking of, a little progress happened before I left and I even took pictures, so let’s hope I have some time to put together a post or two before I’m back in Brooklyn. Shockingly, I have already hit some unforeseen speed bumps and I need an internet hero to set me on the right path.

What am I saying? I already need that right now in this very moment. The Google machine has been iffy about where the good vintage is at in/around Stockholm. We have the weekend free, so do any beautiful residents of this magical land have any recommendations for a flea market or several? Or any particular stores or areas or things I should really know about and check out? Tell me everything you know! I demand it!

We left two weeks ago with very confused delusions about what the film festival might be like. After all, this is a pretty serious deal for film folk with pretty serious movies being shown to pretty serious celebrities who stand on pretty serious red carpets. When we saw Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany (+ baby!) board our plane out of JFK, we thought to ourselves, damn, this is going to be pretty serious. We had the same thought when we came out of customs to a small crowd of paparazzi. “You came!” I cooed to the expectant cameras, none of which flashed.

The thing about Cannes, though, is that it’s really more of an industry-networking type of event, with lots of producers taking lots of meetings with other producers from all around the world. The ample number of film screenings, day in and day out, are largely incidental to the other things going on. Seeing as we are not technically actual movie-makers or distributors, we did our best to blend in like we totally belonged there and tried to take in some good films. The weather was uncharacteristically terrible most of the week we were there, so sitting in dark theaters seemed like a good idea for a couple of days.

There were no celebrities the rest of the week, and only a couple noteworthy films among a sea of pretty terrible movies. Apparently if you want to make a horrible horror film that’s one part Saw and one part Vacancy with a hefty dose of angry orphans and stupid drunk 20-somethings, all your dreams can come true and that movie can show at Cannes! Albeit with an audience comprised only of me and my family, but still. It was there.

The last movie we saw had been a Japanese horror flick about a ghost that haunted a high school class, the most noteworthy moments of which were the unlikely deaths (impaled on an umbrella, head chopped clean off after running into a steel cable) and the fact that the protagonist wore a shirt simply reading the word “chummy,” spelled-out in rhinestones, during the latter half of the film. It was after this that, the weather finally cleared up, we decided that perhaps the time had come to get out and see the city.

So Max and I split off for a few days to walk around. We didn’t have much planned, we just walked and ate and walked some more. It was hard to decide what to take pictures of because everything was so picturesque. Coming from the States, it’s easy to forget how old Europe is. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was real, since you get the sense that you’re on a very detailed movie set or at Disney World.

Speaking of pictures, I’ve basically taken to using my iPhone camera for everything and running the photos through Instagram on the fly. I still feel a little stupid about intentionally making my photos look unrealistically old with a bunch of filters and a hokey tilt-shift feature, but I can’t help it. I love my Instagrams—these little snapshots that couldn’t be easier to take and edit, and I actually want to look at afterwards…which is more than I can say for the hundreds of digital photos that I used to shoot on trips like this, which then stagnate in my iPhoto library waiting for me to do something with them. (you can check out all of my Instagram photos here!)

On our last full day in France, Max and I hopped the train into Nice without any real intentions or expectations. Beautiful. Even though we maybe  should have been exploring the city in a more all-encompasing, adventurous sort of way, we quickly found the beach and just decided to stay. Bathing suits were quickly located at a nearby shop and we even found perfect inexpensive turkish towels to lay out on that will make excellent summer bath towels after they’ve gone through the wash a few times. Our bathroom doesn’t ventilate well, so these towels should help keep that whole hot-weather-smelly-towel phenomenon at bay.

After about a week in France, we packed up and headed to Los Angeles for the holiday weekend, where my sister lives and the family all flew in to hang out for a few days.

Coming from New York, LA is always a bit of a shock to the system. It’s so huge, and there are so many distinct areas, spread out over very long distances with very heavy traffic in between them. No matter how many times I go, I always leave feeling like I didn’t get to do very much since simple plans always seem to become logistical clusterfucks, each activity somehow becoming an all-day affair. My twin sister Laura lives there, and I stir the turd about this with her constantly. She doesn’t understand why anyone would willingly choose to live in New York, and I have a similar sentiment about Los Angeles.

On Saturday, Max and I took a little trip to the Eames Case Study House. If you don’t know anything about this house, you’re in for some fun reading (you can start with the Wikipedia page, here). Built in 1949 as part of Arts and Architecture Magazine‘s Case Study House Program—essentially aimed at imagining the possibilities for post-war American residential architecture—Case Study House #8 (along with a smaller, coordinating studio space) was a collaboration between husband and wife duo Charles and Ray Eames and was built from pre-fabricated, factory produced parts in a matter of days. The whole program is super fascinating (you can still look at all the original articles on the Arts & Architecture Magazine website), and something that I have spent far, far too many hours researching. But I always seem to come back to Case Study House #8 because it really is perfect.

I expected the place to be overrun with a bunch of tourists, but we were alone for almost the entire duration of our visit. Seeing the house in real life was like seeing a celebrity. It was smaller in person, but somehow more magical too. It was really real, not just a place that exists in photos or short films, but an actual structure with metal and glass and wood and cement. Because I was obviously having a super-geeky-nerd-fanboy-freakout-moment, the very kind and gracious guide thought we’d be best served by just wandering around ourselves, taking in the house in our own private way.

The house is in various states of restoration and repair and right now the ENTIRE living room (furniture, curtains, all of it!) has been transported to the LACMA for exhibit, so I’ll admit that it wasn’t exactly the picture that I had in my mind. But that hardly seemed to matter. I could imagine it all there, just the way Ray left it. Her flowers and plants still line the front walkway. The same housekeeper has maintained the house for 30 years now, so small delicate flower arrangements were randomly placed around the naked interior, apparently just the way Ray liked them.

After probably about an hour of wandering around, our guide approached us again and even let me ring the doorbell, which is a ceramic instrument on a rope pulley-system, custom designed for the house. Then, since nobody was around, she offered to let us watch a few short films out on the patio space between the house and the studio on the office’s iPad. She dragged a couple shell chairs out and we set them up in a corner near the retaining wall, facing the house, under the shade of the eucalyptus trees and a large evergreen. Surrounded by the potted plants and the trees and the weathered wood, our feet planted on the brick pavers and our eyes darting between the iPad screen and the house, as if it might all disappear, for a moment I think I finally got the whole L.A. thing. If it could be like this, well, why would you go anywhere else?

Unless, of course, this was waiting for you back in New York.

I’ve never totally understood the appeal of purchasing those standard-fare types of souvenirs when traveling—the trinkets and tchotchkes that people pick up while wandering around a market or near a recognizable attraction. It seems to me that if you go home, place a small bronze replica of the Eiffel Tower on your nightstand or a Barbie-sized Statue of Liberty on your mantel, you’ve missed the point of shopping while abroad. For one, you go places to see the real thing, so why the need to accumulate mass-produced, miniaturized renderings? More importantly, you’re being too obvious: when people see your artifact, it will be immediately clear to them that you want to be asked about your trip. “Oh, I forgot you went to Australia!” you imagine your guest exclaiming, motioning towards a Lilliputian-sized Sydney Opera House resting somewhere near the TV. “Please, tell me all about it, every last detail!”

Your guests may not say this, but they’ll know you want them to, making them resent you indefinitely.

The same rules apply to presents you bring back for others. When you bring somebody a Terra Cotta Warrior the size of their palm or a totem pole scaled down to resemble the average pepper mill, you think you’re saying “I was thinking about you on my trip, here is an exotic taste of my travels for your enjoyment” but what you’re really saying is “I saw something awesome. Here is a thing to remind you of the awesome thing I have seen that you have not seen. Fuck you.”

And so, it was in my quest to find a good present for my beloved friend and O.G. Chandler that I settled on a small brass bullet, which was being sold for a few shekels at a Kibbutz in Israel. The backstory was that the Kibbutz secretly produced hundreds of thousands of bullets decades ago in an underground factory for use in Israel’s war for independence, but the beauty of the thing was that the context didn’t have to matter in order for it to be a successful gift. Life-sized, shiny, and pierced with a cheap plastic chain, it was as understated, polite, and ladylike as it was unintentionally gangster. Lacking any gunpowder filling, it was not only functionally inert but also lightweight, a plus when you’re planning to travel for another couple of weeks.

It wasn’t until we tried to fly from Jordan to Cairo that the trouble began. As disarming as it is to hear your name spoken clearly, slowly, and multiple times over an entire airport intercom in an Arabic-speaking country, it’s more unnerving when not a single airport security personnel can tell you why. “Go sit down,” they all said, waving me towards a set of benches without another care. Something told me it wouldn’t have mattered whether I explained that my name was being called on the overhead speakers or that my kidneys were rapidly failing, the answer would  still be the same. “Sit down, you can board in a moment.”

Five minutes before boarding, a man in a suit and a security badge came to our gate and found me, telling me that there had been a problem with my suitcase and that I needed to come and claim it. Perhaps my looted bottles of hotel soap had exploded? A zipper had failed? Following him back through two sets of security checkpoints and the length of the duty free area, we got to talking.

“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked lightly, as we navigated the perfume section.

“We need you to open your bag,” he explained, “do you have any weapons in it?”

“Weapons?” I asked, looking down at my skinny jeans and old Pentax swinging around my neck. He glanced at a towering display of cigarette cartons, and I wondered if I should have picked up a few bottles of liquor for the 45 minute flight. ”Me? Weapons?”

“Are you in possession of any firearms?”

“Firearms? As in guns?” I could see how an electric toothbrush might be mistaken for a small dagger on an airport x-ray machine, but guns? Did I look like somebody who carried guns? ”No, of course not,” I replied, “why didn’t they just open the bag to look? No firearms, I’ve never even touched a firearm.”

“It is not our policy,” he explained. “You open the bag.” We walked in silence for a moment, while I weighed trying to explain my anti-gun political opinions against praising his country for their impressive, albeit inconvenient, regard for privacy, such that they can’t rummage around a traveler’s suitcase without express consent. “Bullets?” he piped up.

“Bullets? Of course I don’t have any—” and then it all flooded back. The Kibbutz, the underground factory, the dainty necklace, my lack of effort to smuggle it across national borders. “Well,” I started slowly. “I guess I do have one bullet, but it isn’t real, it’s a fake bullet.” He raised an eyebrow. “What I mean to say is that it’s a real bullet, but just a casing, just a bullet shell—the outside—but no inside. Nothing to make it explode.” He looked at me, skeptical. “It’s not dangerous,” I pushed. “Really, no…ka-boom,” I explained sheepishly, making a hand gesture that inspired a look of deep pity from my chauffeur.

We reached the bag and my passport was taken to another room by one gentleman and my boarding pass handed over to another. The officers crowded around as I slowly unzipped my luggage, pulled some of my clothing out onto the table and located the pendant, still attached to the chain, in a small plastic bag with a pamphlet explaining its significance. The guards looked at each other. A man in a uniform took it from my hands an sat down at the table, slowly. He cautiously removed it from its ziploc and turned it over gently in his hands. He stared at the bullet, he looked at me, he looked back at the bullet, he looked at me. He called the guards over, and they caucused. Five large official Jordanian officers, crowded around my gag gift, whispering about me in Arabic.

At long last, the main officer set about filling out a form, taking down my passport information and continuing to shoot me suspicious glances. “So,” I piped up quietly, turning towards my original captor, “I’m not going to get the bul—I mean, necklace—back, am I?”

“No,” he replied, quickly and without emotion.

“What’s going to happen to it?” I whispered, before I could help myself. It was foolish to belabor the point, but sometimes you need to know.

“It will be destroyed,” he said, handing my passport back to me and turning around to usher me back to my gate. On one hand, I shouldn’t have cared. I wanted to get back to my family, and I wanted to make my flight, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Chandler—the sparkle in her eye I had imagined during the gift’s presentation, the joy I had anticipated feeling, with the knowledge that I had found a good present. All of this happiness, so swiftly dashed. It wasn’t just the bullet that was destroyed that day, but also my dreams.

Luckily, there is a middle ground between useless trinkets and things that can be mistaken for explosives, so I focused the remainder of my travel-shopping energy on items that fit within that category instead.

First up on the agenda is this handwoven kilim runner that I picked up in Jordan, which is looking a bit more saturated in pictures than it does in real life, but you get the idea. It’s long, at about 2′ x 10′, and I’m not totally sure what to do with it yet, despite that I carried it MILES AND MILES through the ancient city of Petra to get it home. I thought it would make a great rug in the kitchen, but it seems a little narrow and a little long, and Max isn’t a fan. Maybe for the hallway? Maybe we’ll just throw it on the floor in the bedroom during the summer or something, just to change things up? Even with one closet between two people and a dog, keeping a bunch of extra rugs around still seems totally logical, right?

Okay, I kind of blew my figurine rule in Egypt, but only because I thought these little southern-Egyptian carvings were cool and I liked the way they looked a little worn down and chippy.

Aside from a replacement present for Chandler (a table cloth, flamboyantly decorated with fake egyptian gods and fake hieroglyphs, with matching napkins), that’s basically all I bought on my travels. And then I came home and did this in my kitchen in a day and a half, remember?

And then I flew off to Portland to visit Chandler. Having been exactly one year since I’d been there the first time, it was really great to see her, Winifred, and catch up on all the great stuff she’s been doing in her place since I left! Look how big that kitty got!

Of course, we had to stop at some of the fun Portlandilicious spots. And by “spots,” I mean places old ladies frequent. I really like visiting the Rejuvenation store when I’m there, just to scope out the clearance section (no dice), but this little black porcelain hook caught my eye. They’re even part of the “Chandler” collection.  For $10, it was fated. Oddly, this tiny tiny little thing is incredibly motivational towards working more on the kitchen, since I can just see it looking all amazing with this hook hanging a cute towel next to the sink. I really want to hang it. Now.

Chandler and I promised to relax and have fun, but we ended up falling into a couple house-project traps, as we tend to do. On a hunt for curtains for her bedroom, we stopped in Urban Outfitters and I found a nice little hand towel, designed by Elizabeth Dunker of Fine Little Day. It is triangles! It is blue! It is nice! It is mine!

I knew I couldn’t skip the Pendleton Woolen Mills factory, and stopped in to check things out. They didn’t have much I was interested in the first time around, but on Thursday morning, I heeded the store manager’s advice and pulled a Grandma’s Funky Furniture (ye olde readers might recall that moment of coming unhinged), stole the car, and waited outside until opening with baited breath.

Oh joyous day! Double-runs of this fabric on discount! I ended up buying about two yards for myself, and playing Pendleton-mule for Anna, who needed a couple of yards flown back to NYC. I can’t decide what the hell to do with it, but when I do it will be incredible. Like, beyond incredible. Trust.

AND I GOT A DOGGGGGGGGGG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG. (just in case you, you know, forgot.)

We love our Miss Mekko. She’s the best dog. She is putting on weight and seems to be getting more happy, content, and confident everyday, which is pretty great to watch. She is still all I know how to talk about to anybody with at least one working ear.

Okay, so here’s what happened: The last few weeks of school were crazy with assignments I didn’t want to do and books I didn’t want to read and papers I didn’t want to write and exams I didn’t want to take and classes I didn’t want to attend. But I did, because I’m a role model. Note to self: ideally, you only do college once, so stop taking classes that suck. Bitchfest, over.

Anyway, before school was technically even wrapped up, I was whisked away on a big family vacation. Israel, then Jordan, then Egypt. It is epic. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’re probably already privy to these developments. If you don’t, shame on you.

Photos of my apartment keep mocking me, waiting desperately to be spun like gold from straw into glimmering new blog posts—but shit, I’m tired. I think I walked somewhere between 2 and 47 miles today and my weary bones just don’t want to write about my bathroom. Soon, you gorgeous impatient thing. Soon. I finally took the pictures and everything.

Israel was totally beautiful and amazing and full of hot Jews who know their way around a hummus recipe. That leg of the trip was full of boatloads of incredible history and impossibly heavy and very old stones. I dug up really old pottery shards and floated around in some super salty water and slathered mud all over my semi-naked flesh.

Also, saw a skinny Santa Claus parading around some foxy lady in blue who I can only assume is his mistress. Slut.

Israel has a lot going for it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t put the discovery of my new favorite animal/future pet high on the list: the rock rabbit, also known as the Hyrax. Bear in mind that this is a real thing that exists in nature but is also a stuffed animal of my dreams, come to life in the form of fuzzy round cuteness. Get a load of this thing:

OBSESSED.

Oh right. The trip has also been full of family—my dad, mom, brother, and sister, along with four cousins, two aunts, and two uncles.

All of the cousins are younger and cuter than we are, and suddenly I am feeling very old. Nothing like explaining how a film camera works or what Tower Records used to sell to make your 22 years feel more like 23 and a half. The agony.

You know what helps with that? HYRAX.

Look at that majestic motherfucker. Look at that nose and the little rounded ears and the fluffy blonde fur and those crazy little pudgy toes.

Fun fact about the Hyrax: it’s not a rodent.
Funner fact about the Hyrax: it’s more closely related to the rhinoceros. Oh, scientists, you crazy fuckers.

Anyway.

My second-oldest cousin Reese even got Bat Mitzvah’d in Israel! AT THE WESTERN WALL. Yeah, we’re not messing around. She did a beautiful job, by the way.

And lest you doubted our piety as Jews, we also made sure to get Chinese food on Christmas in Tiberias, a task that was neither easy nor terribly appetizing, to be honest. But important all the same.

So I guess you’re wondering: if Jews eat Chinese food, what do Hyrax eat?

Looks like leaves? I’m going with leaves. Who cares! Look at that little round furry nugget nomming away! The snaggleteeth! The wide suspicious eyes! The crooked mouth!

Ugh, it kills me. Kills me dead.

So Israel was amazing. I had a great time and already want to go back and do totally different things and see more and stuff my face with falafel even more than I did. Someday.

I know I kind of missed the whole holiday train, but if you did Christmas or you’re wrapping up Chanukah or you’re celebrating something else altogether, I hope it was/is great.

And in case I don’t chime in before the New Year: 2011 was an amazing year for a lot of reasons, but if you’re reading this blog, then one of those reasons was you. I can’t offer money or gold or the elixir of youth, so as a token of my gratitude, please accept this Hyrax butt instead.

1. Las Vegas
2. Chicago
3. Washington, D.C.
4. Buffalo
5. Washington, D.C. (again)
6. Pittsburgh

Oh yeah, I also moved. As you well know. And I’ve also had an abnormally heavy stream of house guests. And I’m getting on another plane tomorrow.

It’s been busy times around here, folks, what with all the planes, trains, and automobiles. All of these little jaunts have been fun, really, but between them all getting this apartment in order has been slow-goings at best.

First, this place had to go through an extensive cleansing process—to say that it was dirty would really be doing my hard work a disservice. Think filth. Think grime. Think… this monstrosity lurking beneath the stove.

When time is tight and the days are short, you switch into survival mode. The goal becomes not one of beautification, but instead a strained task, geared towards minimizing your houseguests’ impression that you’re a squatter.

Which is all to explain that not much has been done here. And everything’s looking a little crappy. Every room is bursting at the seams. There is so much to be done that my head spins, and yet nary a paint brush has hit the walls. It’s kind of intimidating, but really just annoying that I’ve technically been here a month and things still look like this. Let’s do a run-down, shall we?

This is my hot mess of a bedroom. The desk is covered in miscellany, I hung up the Calder litho on an existing screw left in the wall, and the upholstery on my bed needs some repairs after it had to be taken apart in the move.

This is the sorry state of the bathroom. The walls are still lavender. The medicine cabinet is packed. I had to move two existing shelves from the bedroom into the bathroom to replace that tiny ledge. Trust, all this is temporary.

The kitchen. Oh, the poor kitchen. It’s packed to the gills and crying out for more storage. I haven’t been able to get the oven to work, the refrigerator leaks, something’s wrong with the window. And it’s still super fug.

The living room looks the most moderately-okay. Taking down those weird little shelves between the windows and the horrifically dusty venetian blinds went a long way towards making me feel better, but the red paint and the stacks of art and the half-assed vignetting are making me crazy.

The only thing I’ve really accomplished are these milk-crate bookshelves, which I think we can all agree is a good example of what happens when DIY goes awry.In the right space, executed well, I can actually see some version of this looking pretty good. Not here. A coffee shop around the corner gives these crates away for free, so in a fit of omg-what-do-I-do-with-all-these-books, I grabbed nine of them (including the three in the kitchen) …

…and drilled some holes around the edges and stitched them together with kitchen twine.

Yeah, they’re glamorous. No, they’re not staying any longer than they have to.

I know I’m a whining, complaining disaster, but I’m actually loving living here—when I’ve actually been here. The neighborhood is great and the apartment has so much potential. I can’t wait to really get going.

For those of you wondering, I got my security deposit from my old apartment yesterday. They knocked off $100. I’m okay with that. 

That’s right people, I have a secret apartment past. It’s sordid. It’s dirty. There was some cheating.

I started off my year in a rental owned by my boss, which was furnished. By all counts it was nice enough. But I hated feeling like I was living in somebody else’s house for an extended period. So I did things to make it my own, like take down some art and rearrange the furniture (nothing I hate more than an angled sofa) and buy a dish set at the Salvation Army. It helped mildly. Then I found out that I was living on the edge of an unsafe park. On the ground floor, no less. In fact, that’s where my car, Roxanne, got her name: from the portly woman at the corner gas station who told me I was liable to get stabbed if I went out after dark. Welcome to the neighborhood. But for real, thanks Roxanne.

What sealed the deal for getting out on my own was that the rent I was paying turned out to be about triple market rate. It was a nice apartment. But trust, it wasn’t that nice.

I had seen my next apartment building while driving by and loved the 60s retro-ness of it. It was also orange, an enormous plus. I saw a unit, fell in love, and the next day went back and signed the lease. Crappy iPhone picture that doesn’t really help things at all:

I should just say, the vintage shopping in Regina, Saskatchewan would wipe its ass with New York City’s vintage shopping. I figured out pretty quickly that nobody within a 100 mile radius was interested in anything that might be prefaced with the words “retro” or “mid-century.” That’s right, the entire city’s mid-century discards were mine for the taking, and boy did I take. And cheaply. Those were the days.

There were two stores I frequented: The Salvation Army and the Value Village. Both were enormous and well-priced. I went every Tuesday after work. And sometimes on weekends. There was also another store, Retrovise, that sold mid-century furniture and housewares, mostly at prices about on par with these stupid bourgie Upper East Side thrift shops that never have anything fun to begin with.

Those stores, combined with a couple of used furniture dealers, stuff I found for free, and some estate sales furnished my entire apartment. And some weirdo couple on Craigslist who traded Erin’s old futon for a mattress for me. Did I mention that Erin and Adrian are the best friends in the world? They are.

Here’s what the ole place looked like.

Living Room

Dining Nook

I loved this strange little thing in the entry, so I painted it bright robin's egg blue. I used the color again on the inside of the display case in the dining area. Walls were repainted in BM Moonlight White (eggshell).

Bedroom- why did I ever leave those lamps behind? No, I did not paint this room. Unfortunately, I never got around to repainting it either.

If Roxanne were a bigger car, I would have kept more. But I basically got rid of everything. I saved most of my kitchen stuff and most of the needlepoints, but beyond that almost nothing else. But because most of it was so cheap to begin with, I just about broke even when I sold it all marked up like a crook on Craigslist.

Now, I’m not really lamenting the loss of that aesthetic, necessarily. Firstly, because I didn’t really have to live with it for too long, I kind of just went a little kitschy-nuts. Which was fun, but might be too much for the long term. That short time frame also made it easier to spend very little money because I wasn’t too concerned about investing in pieces that would last. For example, all the living room furniture was, literally, $100 combined (discounting the rug, art, and television). The place was also huge, comparatively, so I didn’t have to worry as much about how things would fit.

I was also uber-crafty. See those roman blinds in the living room? I made them. THREE of them. I bought a roll of the fabric at Value Village for like $7 and thought, “Hey, this is sort of awful, isn’t it? Perfect!” It was a weird year.

Now that I’m not facing any enormous purge in the foreseeable future, things are a little different. Like, I didn’t enlist Erin to help drag my $20 plaid couch out of the basement of the chain-smoking-cat-owning-woman-who-worked-in-the-thrift-store. I bought it from Ikea. And without sounding too ridiculous, I suppose I want things here to be a little more… refined? Ew, that word. Adult? I don’t know. But I do really, really miss that selection. There’s so little of it here that hasn’t been snatched up. And every time I see something I do want, it’s way too expensive. The prices in Manhattan (and Brooklyn) are just outrageous, I’ve found. I miss being un-trendy. But not enough to make me find a new un-trendy style. I can’t control the things I like, even if other people think they like them as much as me.