Lamp fairy will you please shine down on me?

Sometime ago I was watching the Rachel Zoe show and in her home she had these lamps on her console. I immediately fell in LUST! I tracked it down somehow with the magic that google is and although it is a dream of mine to have the large one or two I don't know if I can justify spending $500 on a LAMP. So the search continues to maybe find a vase that is similar and make it into a lamp?

Kenneth Wingard Truffault Lamp

Large 458., smaller 338. Comes in yellow, white and black.

Unless the lamp fairy wants to leave one behind for me, she can take my dog, even trade.

Minerals and crystals

I need some bling for my home, something sparkly but not fake, and no rhinestones. I'm not a rhinestone kind of girl. I have seen these minerals and agates in several different uses, and I think I might need a new sparkly night table lamp. I currently own the crystals in jewelry form and I get so many compliments on them already. Maybe the agate platters, I really love the black crystal lamp with the spider but way too much out of my price range ($3,500.00). I think I'll have to start with the agate coasters.

And aren't crystals supposed to put people in a happy place? At least that's what Spencer from the Hills claims, although I'm not sure they did him any good.

Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble -Shakespeare

Halloween has never been my FAVORITE holiday but with the influx of non-kitchy decor and I'm starting to like it more than for it's doorbell ringing madness!

I think this year I'll get in the mood and paint my nails and toes in the fab colors from NARS, although purple has always been a staple for me, I don't have this one from NARS yet. And maybe I can order the silk scarf in time for Sunday - although I can see myself wearing it through the season indefinitely. 

1. Skull ring - I know its pretty pricey but a girl can dream right!
2. NARS colors in Versailles and Purple Rain
3. Skull votive - These are pretty large but how cool would they look scattered along the pathway to your door or on a table scattered among other decor, or food.
4. Skull Candle - Don't hate me cuz I like skulls, they just evoke a more grown up halloween instead of pumpkins everywhere. I bet this smells very musky and heavy.
5. Black crepe paper wreath
6. Crackle Balls Lighting - This looks like a full moon, I bet you can use this for a bunch of other occasions too.
7. Vintage Skull Print - BlackBaroque has a bunch of different designs but you know my thing with skulls and all.
8. Dark moody flowers, like flowering cabbage, black calla lilies, monkey tails and ebony leaves - I help my mom doing flowers for weddings so it rubs off.
9. Bat Bunting - How fun!
10. Silk scarf - I couldn't decide which one I liked best, there are several that struck my fancy.

Hope you find some inspiration here to make your own spooky chic halloween.

Brown paper wrappings... These are a few of my favorite things

I remember back in grammar school, at the beginning of the year when the teachers passed out your new school books. They would request that we cover our books with brown paper collected from bags from grocery stores.  But who would have thought that many years later, I would want to cover my books on my own. It looks so uniform and clean, I just wish my penmanship was as pretty as the penmanship on this example.

I walked into Restoration Hardware the other day and they were singing my tune. The books on the shelves were covered in brown paper or linen paper and they looked fabulous. This would be a great way to uniformly have your books stored if the color method doesn't work for you. 

I started the color method but I like keeping categories of books together and so this method... not so much. So do I go ahead and brown paper and label ALL the books. That seems like a lot of work but it might be worth it. Add it to the list of things on my to do.

Junkin' Finds

I swore that I would go junkin' before the summer ended come hell or high water. So it was good for me that my friends mom had a garage sale and I scored on this huge wicker basket/hamper for $2.00.  I probably got the friend discount but everything counts. She had a ton of other stuff but I got there at 4 which for junkin' is like don't even bother. It's the perfect size for all of Ari's toys - we outgrew the small basket that was previously used for toys. A quick coat of white and silver spray paint makes it a bit less country.

I also picked up two ceramic planters and a bottle with a cork top. I will use the bottle for storing the loose sea salt that is currently sitting in a plastic bag. The planters,  at first I wanted to plant some moss in them but with winter coming and the air being very dry in our house it might be hard to keep moss green and fresh. Maybe some maidenhead ferns for the bathroom?

Planters $3.00 each, bottle .72¢, hamper $2.00, left over spray paint free. All in all I think I came away very well on my one junkin' trip.

Ohh here is a good tip, if you need to clean a bottle and don't have a bottle cleaner, fill it with dry rice some dish soap and water and shake it around. The rice will get in all the corners and edges and clean it. Works great on baby bottles with milk that is a bit stuck on. 

What to do with 30lbs of shells?

I love shells, but a lot of times when ever I see shell art or things that are done with all shells they tend to get gaudy, fast. While on vacation, in shellers paradise I might add, I thought to myself, yeah these are pretty but what am I really going to do with these things once I bring them home, thats not tacky, or too beachy. I live in Chicago, my furniture is of the dark variety, it doesn't lend itself to the "beachy" theme.

So my plan was to bring shells that I can group into categories and display somehow in a clean way. This is what I came up with, let me know if anyone has any other suggestions because literally I have about 10 more lbs. of different shells.

My first grouping was a plethora of pink shells that I put around my snake plant in a white ikea planter. They seem to contrast nicely with the variegated green spikes and the white geometric planter. I also added the white shells to a dark planter that my ficus is in, I won't show that one since the planter is not to my liking and am currently searching for something more modern. I'll keep you posted once I find something else.

The other thing that I put together was a bunch of these pearlescent shells, almost capiz like but they aren't capiz and grouped them with a few of the white shells in a round short vase. On top was one of the air plants that I grabbed off of a tree that grew all over the area. I checked, I wasn't stealing, I was actually, come to think of it, propagating. 

These air plants grew in clusters all over trees, and they would attach themselves to the trunk and just grow all over. There were a couple of the larger bromeliads on the tree that I think these spawned from.  You can't see on this pic but they have these tentacles that grow and at the ends are seed pods that when the wind blows it carries and "seeds" itself on a different part of the tree.  

I wish I grabbed more but I wasn't too sure if I would have a hard time bringing these babies home. I was able to wet a paper towel and stick them into a plastic baggie filled with air. Wouldn't you know it, they survived the trip home and are doing pretty well. Every few days I just mist them with some water and a bit of fertilizer.

My biggest coup from the trip was a bunch of barnacles, that I thought I might display on my media stand between the stand and the top shelf that the plasma rests on. I don't know what I was thinking, I thought the space was much bigger than it actually was.  When I brought the two barnacles home, they wouldn't fit in the space so I had to figure an alternative. 

Oh and that beauty sitting next to it is a FARM raised coral from Indonesia, that I purchased in Florida. I have been looking to buy some coral for a long time but they all are very fragile and the bigger they get the more unlikely a place will ship. Most of the ones that I looked at before are pickup only.  I know the coral was farm raised, they were too perfect to be something that was found in the ocean, and I paid about the same amount I would have paid for synthetic coral i.e. plaster. Anywho, the barnacle, those things I was told are a nuisance and grow on most anything. I know this to be true since a ton of shells that I picked up from the beach had tiny clusters of barnacles already forming (you can actually see a barnacle growing on the seashell picture of the potted snake plant).

So for now these specimens are on my console table, hopefully curious little fingers won't go trolling while my back is turned. If you notice I have a clear plastic stand to prop the coral on and the barnacles have these felt stickers on them, both of these are really sharp and will scratch up the wood mighty easily.  

As for whats on the media stand between the shelves, well that's a work in progress yet again. I'm hoping to fill it with some objects that are bright that will stand out amongst all that dark wood. Back to the drawing board for now.

New strap - on my camera

Oh get your mind out of the gutter. I ordered a new strap for my nikon cuz I'm hating the way the NIKON shows all bright on the original strap. It's not that I don't want to show that its nikon but I would like to keep it a little low key from people perusing something to take. Ya know.

So I was looking online for some camera straps and there is a plethora that come up, esp through etsy. I didn't want to to with a bright custom strap, not that anything is wrong with that, it's just another way of being loud and saying look at my camera.

I initially wanted one of the old camera straps that you used to be able to get back in the 70's I know my grandfather had a strap like that on his old zenith, this is one that I found but it was a one of a kind.

I also found a few that were leather, and very snazzy. I liked them a lot and the price wasn't bad, they just had something missing. They were all neck straps.

Nice huh?  Yeah I thought so too, except having a neck strap now is not optimal for me. I like to carry my camera on my shoulder or across my torso but with these type of straps your limited to how long you can make them. Doesn't work so well if you're like me and want to pull it across your body at anytime to take photographs and then swing it back.

I have found the solution to this problem, Gordyscamerastrap.com. I chose a sling with a screw tripod connector, and I got an additional lug mount wrist strap with a wrist pad. I can't wait to try this sucker out on a longer day of shooting. I figure that I can detach the body sling easily and just keep the wrist strap on all the time on the nikon d40x.