the highlow

Tag: DIY

  • Leather, Leather on My Sofa…

    Let me just start by saying that rebellion at 37 looks nary a thing like one at 16.  Case in point:  I have traded climbing out of my window in the dead of night so as to attend the latest glamorous bonfire party being hosted down by the river in my little town for wanting to…wait for it, wait for it…add a BLACK.LEATHER.SOFA to my living room.  I’m baaaaad.

    Now, when I was 16, you didn’t really have to put much thought into being bad / you just kind of did whatever was dumb and destructive and called it a day / no further research necessary.  Unfortunately, the older version of bad kind of comes with a little more baggage.  Like, one must think about what kind of bad they want to actually be. 

    Is it a Portia de Rossi & Ellen DeGeneres kind of bad?  (Check out their living room in Elle Décor below and maybe you can figure out what exactly that means…and let me know if you do.)

    Ellen-EDC-05-13-002-lgn

    Maybe throw in a little Swedish kind of bad?

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    Or perhaps a little bohemian bad:

    Bohemian+Living+Room+Decorative+screens+flanking+8iF7NP93GeOl

    How about Fornasetti bad? 

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    Or, even crazier…rustic bad:

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    Okay, so truth be told, none of these were exactly the kind of bad I’m going for, but they did provide some good inspiration. 

    So off I went to make my own rebellion in this world (btw, I’m guessing my parents are wondering why on God’s green earth they couldn’t have had this version 20 years ago).

    Here were some of my favorite finds along the way (and you can also check out my more extensive/less curated Pinterest collection as well if you’re so inclined):

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    1: West Elm / 2: Talisman / 3: 1stdibs / 4: Cisco Home / 5: Benchmade by Brownstone / 6: 1stdibs / 7: Dering Hall

    But I still hadn’t found exactly that je ne sais quoi bad that I was looking for.  What was a girl to do?  Answer:  DIY.  In other words, comb through the sofa fields ad nauseum, find a silhouette that sings to you, imagine it in leather, decide to do it “COL” (customer’s own leather), go on a leather hunting mission, strike gold, combine the two…and pray that you’ve got it all right in your head. 

    Now the million dollar question becomes…am I baaaaad…or just plain old bad? 

    Tune in in about eight to ten weeks and we’ll have the answer…

    *Note: if you want some other well-researched ideas, check out Victoria Smith’s / aka sfgirlbybay’s piece on the subject. 

     Photos from here, here, here, here, and here. 

  • We All Scream for Teepees!

    As if there weren’t already ten million other things camped out on your parental to-do list, here’s another one to break that ballerina-thin straw barely holding it (and you) together (and we’re talking do or die here).  Do you…for the love of all things keeping up with the Joneses…have the right teepee for your child?!  If you don’t, look no further than Leelee Sobieski’s (aka Leelee Jones’) playroom that has my son already asking to be adopted at the tender young age of two. 

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    I’m not sure whether to be nostalgic for the old days of yore when kids built their own haphazard forts from pillows, mom & dad’s comforter, the dining room chair, and other things that happened to be in optimal grabbing range…or to count my lucky stars that there is now an abundance of pre-fab versions that are decidedly easier on the eyes from an obsessive design perspective.

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    But after seeing these contemporary nods to the Old West pop up with increasing frequency in both shelter mags and my friends’ playrooms (and living rooms and other ostensibly grown-up spaces to boot), I decided to be a good little sheep and get one myself before my son found his way to Leelee’s front doorstep.  Best $130 I ever spent.  There’s nothing like a luxurious fifteen minutes of quiet time to oneself in the morning to brush one’s hair and maybe throw on a little makeup while listening to “Hi, I’m Cad…and you can count on me,” emanating for the 538th time from the bedroom corner where our teepee now holds court.  And when I recently had four kids under the age of two clamoring to claim space in there, I decided that I would become a mini expert on all things teepees in order to share this very open secret with the rest of the world.  So if you would like to join the rest of us arriving late to the party, read on for a few more ideas to get you started.

    Inspiration

    If you find yourself frantically starting to scratch your arms (are those hives?!) while contemplating the above two examples, below are a few more palates that might be decidedly more in the realm of mother earth for the vast majority of us.

    Nothing like going neutral and mixing it up with some fun, eclectic pieces:

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    Ditto here:

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    And a fun pop of color and a nice contrast to the not-so-kid-obvious furniture and rug: 

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    And while this could technically be characterized as a “tent,” it’s kind of hard not to include since it’s of yet another “Jones” family (also frequently referred to as the Herrera family)…and since thinking outside of the box is the name of the game here, I think we can all conjure the below with a little bunching of sticks at the top…and voila, there’s our teepee:

    hbz-december-2012-the-house-herrera-dress-herrera-kids-fYayON-xln

    Execution

    So how to bring the Joneses into your very own home?  Here are some of my favorite picks to get you started.

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    And of course, don’t forget that the sky is the limit and you can ALWAYS come up with your own design and DIY (or find someone else who will!).

    Happy tee-peeing…and please do share with the rest of us any other fabulous finds that I may have missed in my mad scramble to keep up with the latest and greatest…

    Pictures from here, here, here, here, here, and here.

    Update 12/13/13:  Just found this gem from Indoek, check it out! 

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