Beware the The Ides Of March

In beautiful Austin, spring has sprung. Trees are budding out, the days are getting longer and warmer, and I have turned into a basketcase. There's something about the young, fresh air that drives me to purge every nook and cranny of what I foolishly thought was a clean and tidy home. To that end, we finally purchased a new, non shedding rug. Hooray! Death to the dastardly woolen tumbleweeds that threatened to colonize our corners! Problem is, now we gotta do something with the old rug that's currently rolled into a giant, misshapen lump on the kitchen floor. It's always something.

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I know I should take some pictures of the living room and show you how awesome! and lovely! the new rug is, but I'm tired from all the cleaning and rearranging.

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Plus I'm more than a little annoyed that no matter how hard I work, the entire house seems to be moving towards a state of entropy. How? Why? Physics, you are biznatch.

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It's not all Hoarders up in here, but I'm really unsure of how best to contain the chaos that keeps cropping up. Should I ignore it? Cover up the worst and pray for the best?

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Oh, and since Ike is now mobile, I desperately need to baby proof EVERYTHING. Guess what? Babies love to eat paper. And leaves. And woolly carpet tumbleweeds. So I can either watch sweet baby Ike every. single. second. Or, I can take some preventative measures.

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I suppose I could try to distract him with an awesome custom built playhouse... Dear Child Protective Services, I promise that I am just kidding. Mostly.

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Or maybe I just need to build him a sweet playpen. Joke? Not a joke? I'll decide and let you know later.

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With Ike safely contained, I could finally get some rest.

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And perhaps the new, refreshed me would be more inclined to bring order to the rest of the house, although I'm not sure that Ike and Ben would truly appreciate my unique sense of organization.

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I think I'm going to have to invest some serious time into making our home hospital clean and romper room safe, but there are so many other things I'd like to do besides endlessly endlessly endlessly cleaning. Just the thought makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

So tell me dudes -- and I know I may be asking you to reveal your dirty little secrets -- do you clean your home yourself? How much time do you spend doing it? Or do you hire someone? Is it worth it? Can someone just tell me where the magic cleaning wand is already?

Photos by Matthieu Lavanchy. Check out all his weirdly awesome work here.

My Wedding, Version 2.0

When I got married a couple of years ago I had a bird-themed wedding.  It was pretty cute.  Today I stumbled across sculptures made from feathers by artist Kate MccGwire and have decided these would be the perfect center pieces for a new release of my wedding.  You're supposed to update everything these days, aren't you?

Ok, so my mother, who is severely creeped out by birds, probably would not come to this version of my wedding.  And she would leave a comment in the comments section about how she wouldn't pay for it either but I'm beating her to the punch.  But, whatever, if she wants to miss an alcohol infused soiree that takes place around this awesome sculpture, well, that's her business.

Enough about my mom and my fake second wedding, let's talk about this hot artwork.  I love how the feathers rise and fall to create a sea or a new life form.  In general, I'm a fan of anything en masse, when said grouping forms the illusion of a new object, well, I'm all in.

I can't seem to find any information of the numbers and letters that appear on these feathers.  Go ahead and tell me about it if you know.  I will tell you that I pretty much love this palette and am willing to use it in any room of my home.

Every time I look at these I see something different:  snakes, braids, brains, wild things huddled together.

Look!  A wedding-appropriate one.  Hey, I didn't have any white at my first wedding, maybe version 2.0 should be void of color.

For more of Kate's work, check out here site HERE