#1: Metal red tray with autumn leaves and acorns ($12)

#2: Mid-Century Cocktail Mixer ($13)

#3: Vintage Postal Scale ($9)

#4: “Chinese Red” Antique Bowls

P.S. What are you guys up to this weekend? I’m working on a couple of magazine articles that I need to get turned in before Thanksgiving. And I need to get some Christmas shopping done.  I can’t believe the holidays are right around the corner!

Children’s book author and illustrator Lane Smith lives in a charming 200-year old farmhouse in Connecticut. Behind the farmhouse is Smith’s writing studio in the barn, which I’m even more in love with. When I saw his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, I nearly swooned. As a writer, this would be my dream work space.

The bookshelves are filled with Smith’s collection of vintage children’s books.

The bookshelves themselves were built with the wood from reclaimed antique floorboards to give them a rustic look.

This seating area by the stone fireplace looks like a cozy place to sit on a cold Connecticut night, doesn’t it?

The 200-year old farmhouse is worth looking at, too. You can see all the photos at Country Living. (Photography by David Prince.)

P.S. Need help fixing up your farmhouse or turning your old barn into a studio? CalFinder is a helpful (and free!) service that connects homeowners with prescreened home-improvement professionals.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that New Moon, the sequel to the wildly popular Twilight series, hits theaters Friday. Anyone planning to see it with thousands of screaming girls (and women) the first day?

I was disappointed to hear that a different house was used for the Cullen family of vampires in the new film than they used for Twilight. Looks like they tried to find one that was at least similar in style.

The New Moon house is on the market for $3.3 million, so we get to peek inside. According to the listing by Jason Soprovich, the house is “Arthur Erickson inspired,” exquisitely renovated with post-modern design on a half-acre lot.

You can see this staircase isn’t open like the one in Twilight was (see photos of that house here).

This clip from New Moon was filmed in the Cullen house around the staircase:

For more information and photos, check the listing. To tour the house used for the Cullens in the first Twilight movie, click here. Which house did you like better–the one from Twilight or New Moon?

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all of the others I’ve featured, including Bella’s House in Twilight.

P.S. Love contemporary design? Check out this cool Charlie Wire Chair and more beautiful things at My Sparrow, an eco-friendly online shop that believes in “Stylish Responsibility.”

You know I love looking at beach houses–heck, I have an entire blog dedicated to them at Beach Cottage Love! But this one left me cold, so I thought I’d see what you think about it.

That funky French chandelier is made with “splayed copper branches that suggest seaweed.” (If you say so!) There’s one in the dining room, too:

According to the magazine, the wallpaper in the bedroom is hand-painted “with lines as jagged as shattered slate.”  The vintage headboard is bracketed with gilded spirals. On either side of the bed are pyramid-shaped lamps and vintage chairs that are “all about comfort.”

All I could think about was the time that Hildi glued pieces of straw to a poor homeowner’s walls on an episode of Trading Spaces.

Photos by François Halard. You can see the entire gallery of photos in Metropolitan Home. Head over to The Skirted Roundtable to hear an interesting podcast about the alarming number of decor-mag closures.

Visit my Celebrity Houses page for links to all of the others I’ve featured, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Charlie Sheen.

Betty’s bathroom was mocked by the rest of the house for its delusions of grandeur.

When I ran across this photo in the real estate listings today, I did a double-take. Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chandelier quite that big over a bathroom sink, let alone in a bathroom this small. I can appreciate that the homeowner was trying to dress up her bathroom, but she may have gone just a bit overboard with the lighting.

{How would you caption this photo?}

Go to Bad MLS Photos to see more unexpected things I found in the real estate listings.

P.S. Need new kitchen cabinets? Visit Greentree Design for some beautiful inspiration! Check out the “Remodel Interviews” for amazing before and afters.

The story starts in New York City, where the Blandings (Cary Grant and the fabulous Myrna Loy) live with their children in a small apartment:

Mr. and Mrs. Blandings sleep in twin beds in the small master bedroom.

The dining room is so cramped there’s hardly room for both his daughter’s birdcage and the maid!

So they go looking for a bigger place in the country. Jim Blandings earns a good living as an advertising exec, we’re told–a whopping $15,000 a year! I ran across an old review of the film from when it came out in 1948 that said:

“It’s hard to feel sorry for a man trying to make ends meet on $15,000 a year when most people earn considerably less.”

This is the first place they see, known to the locals as the old Hackett place:

The real estate agent knows a couple of suckers when he sees them. He tells them a story about how the house is an historical landmark because General Gates stopped to water his horses here during the Revolutionary War.

This is how Mrs. Blandings imagines fixing it up:

And how Mr. Blandings envisions it:

Their imaginations are so good that they buy the old Hackett place, only to discover that it’s a tear-down. It can’t be saved. (And that’s only the beginning of their troubles!)

They decide to build on the land instead, but the plans from the architect end up being much more than expected. The new house, he says, will cost $12,500 to build. Jim and Muriel are in shock. How could it possibly cost that much? They already spent $13,000 just on the lot and tearing down the old house.

The architect shows them the rendering of how it will look when it’s finished and the music swells. The Blandings decide to bite the bullet and build it despite the soaring costs.

A real house was built for the film. According to CaryGrant.net:

In 1948, RKO Studios needed a rural setting in which to film exteriors for their comedy “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.” Their neighboring studio, 20th Century Fox, had 2,000 acres of dramatic landscape in the Malibu hills that served as their location ranch, so a deal was made and construction began.

Despite all of the problems, the headaches, the mixups, and the soaring costs, the house is finished and moving day finally arrives:

Jim carries Muriel over the threshold:

And right across the wet varnish on the hardwood floors.

“Oh, Daddy! Look at this!”

The windows on the side of the house aren’t in yet! It’s gonna be a chilly night in the new house. . .

One of my favorite scenes is when Mrs. Blandings gives instructions to the painter on moving day, patiently explaining:

“First, the living room. I want it to be a soft green. Not as blue-green as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodils. Now, the dining room. Not just yellow–something bright and sunshiny. If you send one of your workers to the grocer for a pound of butter and match that, they can’t go wrong.” Etc, etc., with detailed descriptions of each room’s color.

As soon as she leaves the room, the painter turns to the guy next to him and asks, “Got that, Charlie?”

“Uh-huh,” he says. “Red, green, yellow, blue, and white.”

We get a glimpse of the dining room, but we never see the kitchen:

The living room:

Just as Jim is about to give up on ever coming up with a promotional strategy for WHAM (it’s a Whale of a Ham!), his housekeeper Gussie (Louise Beavers, who also played Mamie in Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby–another favorite of mine!) saves the day. When Jim asks for HAM for breakfast instead of WHAM, Gussie says:

So he keeps his job, he keeps his house, and everybody’s happy.

In the final scene we see him holding the book he has published about his adventures in house building:

Here’s the real book, written by the real Mr. Blandings–Eric Hodgins. He based the story on his own trials and tribulations with a house he built. The actual house built by Hodgins still stands in the town of New Milford, Connecticut. It sold in August 2004 for $1.2 million.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Hodgins and his wife began construction in the classic New England small town in 1939, anticipating a budget of $11,000. It ultimately cost $56,000 to finish and nearly drove him into bankruptcy.

After living in their dream house for only 2 years, they were forced to sell and downsize. (Isn’t that sad?)

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Hodgins said, “wrote itself.” It was published in 1946 and was immediately a bestseller. He made $200,000 on the movie rights alone, and the film was a hit. Hodgins wrote a sequel called Blandings Way, published in 1950.

As a promotion for the film, 73 full-scale replicas of the house were built in various locations in the US and raffled off. Here’s one such house in Fresno, California (via the Providence Journal), as it looks today.

Patricia Shackelford (aka Mrs. Blandings, who named her popular blog after Myrna Loy’s character in the movie) wrote an interesting post about it and the movie promotions here.

The house from the film is still standing. In 1974, Fox sold the ranch to the state of California. The land is now part of Malibu Creek State Park, and the house is used for the administrative offices for park employees. Here’s how it looks today:

But maybe it’s best to remember it as it was. . .

Visit the TV/Movies page for links to all of the ones I’ve featured so far, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Marley & Me.

Here’s how it turned out:

I love the idea of creating a book ledge from a rain gutter. You can read all about her project here.

Moments after finishing the room, Beth’s boys were already checking out the space–and the books!

Visit The Stories of A to Z to see photos of the rest of the room and read about all of the individual projects that went into the makeover: the wainscot wallpaper, restyled barn stars, transformed nightstand, men’s shirt lampshade, and rain gutter bookshelves.

Thanks to Beth for letting me share her boys’ room with you! I’m joining the Metamorphosis Monday party at Between Naps on the Porch. If you love before & afters, that’s the place to go. Susan is hosting a fabulous giveaway courtesy Lisa Leonard Designs today, too, that you won’t want to miss!

P.S. Learn how to make these red apple cupcakes at Party Cupcake Ideas. So cute!

Have you shopped at Heather Bullard’s Boutique? Here are a few of the things I’m swooning over right now, starting with the elegant Louis XV chaise (above). I can easily imagine myself curled up there with a good book this winter–and I think that just sitting there would make any novel better, wouldn’t it?

This Vintage Songbird is part of a collection of hand-painted reproduction oil paintings that are created to look like antiques.

I think this Mercury Glass Votive Cup would be a pretty way to store makeup brushes on the vanity (they also come in pink mercury glass!).

I have never been a good sleeper, but if I was lying in this Antique Reproduction Louis XV Corbeille Style Bed, I don’t think I’d mind insomnia nearly as much.

I’ve been a fan of Heather Bullard’s style for a long time (she has a beautiful blog), so I’m thrilled to have her as one of my newest sponsors. Have you shopped her boutique? What’s your favorite thing?

Congratulations to the winner of the $50 Sticviews Giveaway: Sherry Elsberry! In her comment, she wrote:

I enjoyed looking at all the Sticviews. I would order the laptop cover and something for my nephew Caleb’s room. Caleb is 13 and a cool kid who has had 4 open-heart surgeries. He lives with my brother who has been a single dad for 9 years. They need some decorating help.

I’m happy that we can send some decorating help their way!

What fun things could you do with Sticviews?

Upload your own images or use one of theirs. They’ll stick to just about anything (like this cute ballerina on the fridge). It’s easy to create a unique, personalized look for a room.

When you’re ready for something else, just peel them off and presto, change-o! They’re easy to hang and easy to remove (no residue gets left behind). They’re reusable, too. Can’t beat that.

Visit Sticviews to browse their Gallery of Ideas!

When I went on a rant about laundry rooms earlier this year, telling you how I hate when they’re in an inconvenient spot near the garage or kitchen, some of my readers from Australia commented that they wouldn’t want them anywhere else. They don’t use dryers as much as we do in the States, so they need their laundry as close to the back door–and clotheslines–as possible. My second-floor laundry room wouldn’t work for them.

Hanging clothes out to dry isn’t even an option for me. My neighborhood has a strict Home Owner’s Association (HOA) that will send you unpleasant letters, followed by a fine. A lot of communities believe that a neighborhood filled with clotheslines will look so bad, it’ll affect their real estate values.

Look how much fun this couple has with their clothesline!

The LA Times’ article “Is Your Clothesline Illegal?” reports that some homeowners, calling themselves “right-to-dry” activists, are fighting back. They point out that clothes dryers hog 6% of the electricity used by U.S. households, which isn’t great for the environment or utility bills. Do you use clotheslines? Do your neighbors?