Space Age

I bet everything is clean in outer space. You can't really leave crumbs all over the counter, unless you enjoy watching space crumbs fly through the air, swirling about and forming their own little crumb galaxies and nebulae. Now that I think about it, it's probably gravity's fault that I have dirty floors. Maybe I should berate gravity and make her come clean up her mess -- You get over here, Missy, and sweep this up right now! Or I suppose I could just move to space. That would probably be easier than getting an invisible force to tidy my house.

Sadly, I don't think I'll get to move to space this year. It looks pretty far away, and I can't even fly across the country without waiting in lines and removing my shoes and getting delayed and laying over in every city between here and my destination. So what's a girl who wants to live in space now! stat! supposed to do?

OWI

I think I should just pretend that I live in space. That's me, taking a shower in my new pod. Look how clean and crumb free we are! Aren't you jealous?

Shoot Factory

Now I know that showering in a wiffle ball is not to everyone's taste, so I'm just going to go ahead and present you with an extra terrestrial roundup of down to earth proportions. I'm nothing if not accommodating.

OWI

Cote Maison

Shoot Factory

Ngoc Minh Ngo

Elle Decor

Karl Anderson

Ngoc Minh Ngo

Marie Claire Maison

Richard Powers

See? It's so easy to space out. Bust open your white paint cans, dust off your Saarinen and Panton chairs, and start spaceing it up. Personally, I think step one in my new spaceification scheme involves painting the Hunny's fugly speakers shiny gold. The Hunny is a truly peaceable creature, but if I enact said plan, he will probably knock me to the moon -- Bang! Zoom!

Mission Accomplished.

HDR Gone Wild

Dear realtors and designers, HDR is not your friend. I know you think that High Dynamic Range imaging is totally awesome! and the answer to all your exposure problems! But it's not. You are abusing it, and your pictures still look crappy, but now they look fake and crappy. Like they got facelifts way before their time. Hey, I know it's hard to take a decent picture when it's really really bright over here but really really dark over there, but if you don't want your homes to look like they got spraytans and fake boobs and wear spanx even while showering, then STOP IT.

This house is not real, so don't feel bad if your home doesn't measure up.

If there are no areas of black in your picture, it looks flat and janky. Trust me, we don't need to see the detail in every single leaf of ivy over there in the corner. Just let it fade to black.

Photographs are beautiful because they reveal and conceal through light and shadow. Dudes, you gotta remember to employ a little mystery here. Otherwise your pictures look like airbrushed 40 year old strippers.

If you don't know what High Dynamic Range photography is, you can read about it here. And then you can forget all about it unless you are going for an artsy look. And even then, don't say I didn't warn you.

Backyard Inspiration

Ever since the back porch demo last weekend, my mind has been racing with ideas for our backyard.  Seriously, I woke up at 5am Tuesday (thank you Rowdy!) and I could not fall back asleep because my mind was racing with ideas on how to best beautify our new outdoor retreat. Due to an annoyingly intrusive work schedule, I have yet to lay hands on the newly exposed soil but (hooray!) Erin and I have an outing to the Natural Gardner scheduled this week.  I'll give you a full report provided it's the shangri la of landscaping that I envision.  While I'm there, I plan to keep a few images from my outdoor spaces inspiration folder in mind:

Let's keep in mind that it's the feeling of these spaces not the exact look that i'm going for.  Much as I would love a crazy stairwell over my lovely exposed concrete wall, I don't think I'm going to get either structure.

I have wanted  a pergola covered in vines for as long as I can remember.  It had been my plan to build one at this house.  In fact, part of the reason our backyard demo took so long was that I was waiting for my husband to have the time to build one.  Reality finally set in and I realized that my children's children would probably off to college before Matt ever had the time to construct the pergola of my dreams.  I decided the sun sails I bought were almost as good, and the fact that they can go up immediately make them even better.

Oh, but for the record, don't you love this picture?

I can't even find a spot to hang my new chair, much less a crystal chandelier, but I do still love the structured greens in this photo.

I want a pool.

This is my very favorite style of landscaping.  Slightly structured chaos, lots of overlap, mixed textures, native grasses, lush without being tropical, zero shrubs and not too many flowers.  It's pretty much perfect.  Raise your hands if you think a novice planter like myself can recreate this look.

And here are a few more random images I like:

And that is that, I will keep you dudes posted on progress.  But I do promise that this won't become a landscaping blog.