Rearranged Design

Flea Finds

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:27:00 +0000

Today is the third Sunday of the month and that means it's time for the Long Beach Flea Market! It was nice and breezy when I got there and then I found these four Midwinter 'Sun' plates and hauling them around made it a bit tiresome as it got hotter and then on the last row I found the vintage Le Creuset pot and let me tell you, hauling around cast iron in the sun isn't as much fun as it sounds but at least I got a workout?

The plates are a pattern I've been stalking for a while now. They're easy to find on eBay but they do get expensive. I snagged these four for $10. The Le Creuset is an iron bottom "E" which means it's 4.5 quarts and the bottom tells me it's from the 80s. It's in a great school bus yellow color and the interior was a bit browned with years of use but my trick for that is to soak it in water and a bit of dishwashing detergent. Cleans it to bright white every time. $35 is what I paid for that. I guess this means I have to cook and serve dinner tonight?

Dining Room

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:10:00 +0000

I'm a fickle girl, I admit that willingly. Since we've lived here I've shuffled chairs and tables and I keep doing it. We are now on our third dining room table.

Up until last week we had an Ikea Docksta table. It was OK, just OK. While it looks like a Saarinen table, it's just isn't. It chipped if you looked at it funny, the base was always getting dirty and it wobbled.

To refresh your memory, here's the Docksta. The left photo is for show, the right is how it actually looked on a daily basis here (minus the piles of mail, projects and other crap that would pile up).

Since I don't have a spare $1,700 for the table I really want I have to keep it affordable and inexpensive. Enter Craiglist. For $30 and a quick drive I picked up an Ikea Melltorp table. It is the same exact table we moved into the place with, only a rectangle instead of a square.

I think rectangle works better for the space and it hold all the many chairs I need in my life. The picture on the left is for show, the one on the right is how we've been using it. Here's the view from the kitchen:

The sweet little tealight holder is from J.C. Penney, excuse me, JCP. It's by Design for Conran. It's super cute and super affordable. (Pictures from my Instagram)

Hopefully there are others that are afflicted with the same Table/Chair ADD that I have.

Live Nude Chairs!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:45:00 +0000

I'm a firm believer in the saying (I just made up) that "There's nothing a sheepskin can't fix". They're great for hiding tears, stains or any other flaw. They say "Hey I'm totally casual draped all over your bed" or "Check me out on this bench being all bohemian".

I got my grubby mitts on a gray sheepskin and wondered the way only a person with a sickness can "How would this look on each and every chair I own?" So I lined up all my chairs (actually that's a lie there were two or three that weren't part of this weird parade) and threw the sheepskin on it and photographed it all for you but probably more to indulge my chair hoarding brain.

See how each chairs transforms from "GIMME YOUR BUTT" to "Hey chillax, get groovy on me and we'll wait for Stevie Nicks to come over"?

The winner of this super weird game was the last chair, It works great as my workshop chair for when I'm cutting leather (Have you been to Love & Arrow yet? Go Go Go, Buy Buy Buy!). Also Bruce can't resist putting his hairy behind in any and all chairs, check it out.

Which is your favorite?

Love & Arrow

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:22:00 +0000

I have a secret to tell you. I've been working behind the scenes, planning, preparing and crafting. I've been gearing up to launch a new shop and TODAY is the day!

Living in California, my adopted home state, has given me a love for the desert, brass, cowboys, primitive art and all things simple and rustic. I've been doing some leather crafting and curating of vintage objects and I'm ready to share it all with you.

Come and take a look at Love & Arrow on Etsy, Check it out on Instagram, Like it on Facebook, come chat on Twitter and for extra credit follow on Tumblr.

Soap!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:51:00 +0000

How much do I love my new bathroom? The answer is a lot, a super lot. It's clean and sexy and super rad. One thing less than stellar about it is the sink. It's a pedestal sink with zero space for your stuff. Now, normally I love tiny sinks, like little halfsies sinks but this pedestal business just isn't working for me. It's too narrow to hold pump soap or a soap dish. So I set out to find an awesome wall mount soap dish which is not an easy task. I found one that was worthy of my bathroom. Perhaps the most boring post ever? Who cares, let's look at pictures

This was a temporary solution, I was still using the complimentary soap from the ACE Hotel hung from the bottom of the medicine cabinet by magnet hook.

and then this happened...

Gorgeous right? All Brassy and perfect. Let's look again!

and again and again, from different angles!

The soap is from Once Upon A Time Soap, and it's so amazing. I just gave some as a Housewarming present. You should buy some too. It might be slightly unnatural for me to love this soap dish as much as I do but it is what it is. Who are you to stand in the way of our love?

Thrifting

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:49:00 +0000

Los Angeles is awesome in a lot of ways, in one way that it's not is the thrift stores. Coming from Seattle, the city who's thrifts are so awesome there's a #1 song written about them, It's a big adjustment to L.A.'s barren stores. So I don't go all that often.

Today I found myself in my local Goodwill and struck gold!

The vase and the trivets are incidental the real amazing items are the two Jonathan Adler ornaments. You have to wonder how those came to the Goodwill. I would think anyone who knows or buys Jonathan Adler wouldn't donate those (his stuff isn't cheap). So someone died? An unwanted gift?

Who cares, I love me some thrifting.

Bathroom Redo

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:53:00 +0000

I have lived in Los Angeles for two years now (crazy right?). In that two years I have had to stare at an ugly bathroom day in, day out. I finally convinced my husband we needed to fix this ugly problem. We have always been renters and have always been obedient tenants and never painted. We've been together twelve years and lived in eight different apartments together and never once picked up a brush. Sure, I wanted to but since we've always been on the move, never staying in one place too long (due to his job) why bother, right? No more, no more could I deal with this shit.

Before we moved in here, the landlady told us she liked design and used "decorator colors" when painting our apartment. I shivered. Those words "decorator colors" are terrifying.

The rest of our apartment is an unoffensive gray, darker in the bedroom which is fine by me. The dining room has a green accent wall which I hate. I hate the green, I hate accent walls. Either commit to a color and do the whole room or don't. The green is easily covered by the dining room curtains.

But the Bathroom, oh the Bathroom. The "decorator colors" our landlady chose were a yellow beige, dark gray and a doo-doo brown trim.

Every single splash of water showed up on it, the paint job was sloppy at best and none of the gaps in the trim were filled in, leaving an opening for the ants that love to come in when it gets too hot.

Here's the whole thing:

I didn't even bother tidying up for this picture, didn't even put out the nice white towels. I hated these colors so, so much. So over two and a half days we patched and filled and sanded and painted and painted and painted. It took about four to five coats of Behr's 'Ultra Pure Bright White' (the most racist paint name I've ever heard) in semigloss. Here's what we ended up with:

Our Landlady also told us we didn't need "Bathroom Furniture" because the bathroom already had it and it had it all right; a wall mount cabinet and a floor cabinet. Nothing terrible about either one but I can do waaay better than that. Enter Ikea PS Cabinet.

The art and mirror above the toilet is from my last Palm Springs thrifting trip.

It's just about a thousand-billion times better. It's a small bathroom and the white just bounces everywhere. With the old cabinet off the wall it seems bigger as well.

The moose was in the old bathroom and he stayed. Previously somebody thought the bathroom needed not only a towel rack but a towel ring directly next to each other. Both were ugly and paint splattered (not from us) so down they went. So this moose and a hook on the door hold all our towels with room for guests.

The sconces are new as well. Scroll on back up to the before shot, see those ugly, cheap sconces? Not only are they ugly, they were put on incorrectly and moved around all the time. I blame whoever installed them and the old plaster walls for that mess. With my new found confidence in switching light fixtures I bought another set of sconces and it was an exercise in futility. The plaster on the walls just crumbled underneath the screws. It was around 2:30am and my husband convinced me to give up on them and in the morning he'd grab my first choice from Home Depot.

When I was designing the bathroom in my head I wanted the porcelain sockets first, I'm not really sure why I went with my second choice. Then the plaster walls intervened and the porcelain sockets were really my only option. They were small enough and light enough to hang. I absolutely love how they came out, especially with the half chrome bulbs and at $1.49 a piece you can't really beat that. I showed my Mom these photos and she asked if I was getting shades for them, Silly Mom.

If you've been to an ACE Hotel recently you know they are trying to make Soap-on-a-Rope cool again, although I'm not sure it was ever cool. You can get your very own ACE Hotel Soap-on-a-Rope for $6 or a chain of five for $45...or you can do what I did and find a soap-maker on Etsy (Once Upon A Time Soap). It smells amazing just hanging there and doesn't break the bank and who doesn't love handmade?

Moving on to the toilet paper. Weirdly this is one of my proudest DIY moments. I removed the wall mount because it was in the way of the new cabinet I brought in. I figured I'd just move it to another wall or get a new one. Then the idea for using the magnet hooks and leather shoelace hit me. I had both on hand and it took two seconds to set up. I love the knot I used. I have no idea what kind it is but I love it. I reinforced the magnets with some super strong ones I had in the junk drawer so some TP happy person wouldn't yank them off as they were...um...getting their supplies?

We didn't spend a whole lot, we had some paint brushes, rollers and supplies on hand. So here's the breakdown:

Paint, Behr's Ultra Pure Bright White Primer and Paint in One $28 (This paint had a lot of mixed reviews online, yes I read paint reviews, I usually buy Benjamin Moore but this was cheaper. It came out ok but I probably wouldn't get it again)

Spackle, $9

Rollers and paintbrushes $11

Dropcloth, $8

Paint Trays, $2

Sandpaper, Had

Rug, Target $13

Sconces $3

Bulbs, Had

Ikea PS Cabinet, Craigslist $40

Soap, Once Upon Time A Soap $5

Everything else you see I already owned; the jars, the shower curtain, the mirror, the print from Inkefx and the moose. So the grand total was $119 ($139 if you count the original sconces I'm returning).

If you're interested in the arrow print, you can get it here and they've kindly offered a discount for my readers. The code REARRANGED gets you 10% off on all their goods until the end of the month. Thanks to Inkefx!

So there it is, I kind of doubt our landlady will even notice, she's weird like that. Even after our first coat it looked better, so as far as I'm concerned we improved the value of our place and I feel zero guilt for not getting permission.

DIY

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:35:00 +0000

Last month I went thrifting and bought some stuff. Among that stuff was two chrome frames for under ten bucks each. The artwork in one of them was...interesting.

That was an easy swap out. I popped in this print from Inkefx. Fancy.

The second frame I used for a button project I saw on Little Green Notebook. I had my Mother and Grandmother send me some buttons (pretty much everyone has a button jar right?). I sorted the buttons by color and picked out my favorites and sewed them on a piece of linen. The idea was that they'd fit behind the glass in the frame but as I was disassembling the frame the glass cracked. It was a blessing in disguise because I had some bulky buttons that wouldn't of fit under the glass anyway.

It was a fun project to do, I remembered a lot of the button's my Mom sent from my old shirts and her old dresses. Nostalgic!

The arrow print is now hanging in my totally redone bathroom, more on that soon. For now, here's a peek.

Thrifting

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:39:00 +0000

Last month when I was in Palm Springs I, of course, crammed in some thrifting.

Nothing huge and spectacular put I did get two frames which I've already used for two different projects. A giant pillow that reminds me of one my parent's used to have when I was a kid, a brass mirror, a Ben Seibel bowl that matches my others and a couple of shakers. It was all dirt cheap.

When I came back to Los Angeles I hit up an Out of the Closet I hadn't been to yet and while it was predictably overpriced I did find this dotted mason jar and this Dansk Bowl for a buck a piece.

Stay tuned for what I do with those frames.

The Kindness of Strangers

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:59:00 +0000

So about a week and a half ago I started to get cryptic messages from MisterTrueB (Asha) on twitter. Things like she had a Christmas present for me and asking for my address. Naturally I give my address to people who claim they have gifts. After the most agonizing wait (three days) of constantly hitting refresh on USPS tracking. This package arrives...

Here's the kicker Asha didn't even find them, her sister did. So the lesson learned here is that if you bitch and moan and obsess about something, strangers will find it for you to get you to STFU.

Asha refuses to let me give her any money for it so they best I can do is tell you to go to her blog and shop in her Etsy store.

I send a thank you from the bottom of my cold, black heart to Asha and her sister.

November

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:07:00 +0000

November was a great month for me. My Birthday was on the 1st and the mister and I had planned an overnight in Palm Springs. We wanted to check out the Ace Hotel and The "Forever Marilyn" statue that's making Palm Springs it's home until next year. Except Eddie Vedder threw a wrench in our plans.

See, Ed is doing a solo tour. He had some dates scheduled for earlier this year and while I am a hardcore Pearl Jam fan, his prices were a tad too high and the closest he was coming to us was Las Vegas. We had already seen him twice here in Los Angeles last year so we didn't feel the need to drive to Vegas. Except he got an injury and had to reschedule his dates, I didn't pay attention to those rescheduled dates and didn't realize until Halloween night that Ed was doing two nights in Vegas, one on Halloween and one the next night on November 1st, my Birthday...Well shit, I can't miss a show on my birthday can I?

Halloween night we cast some nets to see if we could finagle some tickets. We didn't hear anything so the next morning we set off for Palm Springs per our original plans. Twenty miles after we passed the exit for Las Vegas we got word that not only did we have tickets but they were 10th row. So we backtracked and headed toward Sin City.

We had a great time! Ed was in top form and pulled out some rare stuff. At one point a woman stood up and offered him $5k for charity to play a song he's never played solo. He did it and it was spectacular. He was in tears, we were in tears. Happy Birthday to me! Not every one can say they had Eddie Vedder sing to them on their Birthday.

At the end of November we headed back to Palm Springs to take our rescheduled vacation. We went on the Palm Springs Tram, Checked out the Marilyn statue, ate at Norma's, stayed at the Ace (and got ideas for the bathroom redo I've got in the works) and did some thrifting. A good time was had by all.

You can see more photos on my instagram and flickr.

DIY CHRISTMAS DECOR EXTRAVAGANZA

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:19:00 +0000

So I'm REALLY sorry about the lack of posts but you know, life. I'll make it up to you with some super fancy DIY CHRISTMAS DECOR EXTRAVAGANZA!

So this year I whipped up some super easy, super cheap decorations. A couple of factors were the cause of this:
1) I'm cheap
2) We can't have a real tree our cats climb them and drink the water (see Bruce)
3) All our Christmas decorations are in the garage...ugh the garage! I'd have to walk like, twenty feet and then dig them out...pass.

Let's get this out of the way. I'm going to be using the word 'balls' a lot.

So I started with balls. Well, more accurately I started with wool roving. You can find and use any of the online tutorials how to turn wool roving into felted balls. I will tell you this, while it is easy, it is also tedious and time consuming. Looking back I would totally just buy a felted wool garland. But about a week and some quality time in front of the television yielded me a ton of balls. I used 8oz of wool roving and I'm not sure how many balls I got out of it 100? 17,000? I have no clue. Enough for what I needed.

I strung the balls I needed over the only tree the cats won't terrorize; a tabletop tinsel tree.

Nice right? I used battery operated LED lights from Ikea and plain old white felt for the tree skirt to hide the base and the battery packs for the lights. The wrapping paper is plain white with silver ribbon. Wrapped fancy style.

I then made some stockings with the white felt. Super easy. Just cut out a stocking shape in the felt and sew them together or even you're crazy-lazy hot glue them together. Felt is forgiving and you don't have to finish the edges. I added some bells and vintage stick pins with our initials on them so we can tell who's loot is who's in the blurry haze of Christmas morning.

Then with the balls and bells I just started hot gluing them to a wreath form and strung it up with a wide silver ribbon. Easy Peasy.

Here's the finished look. I hung the wreath up with 3M hooks. I love these hooks. I use them for almost everything on my walls. I'm not being paid to say this (but hey 3M feel free to throw some free hooks my way).

So the total cost breakdown was something like this:
$8 for the tree
$1 for the tree topper
$1.99 X 2 for the lights
$10 for the wool roving
$3 for the ribbon
$4 for the white felt
$10 for the vintage stick pins
$4 for the wreath form

So what is that $44-$45? I don't know, you do the math. I'm happy and we've got some Christmas cheer the cats won't knock over.

Craigslist

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 22:31:00 +0000

Sometimes Craigslist is a gamble. Sometimes you score something really amazing, sometimes you get a fair deal and sometimes you wait for someone who's over an hour late and discover their "Rare Eames Chair" is a cheap knockoff and you drove to Venice for nothing...I hate it when that happens.

Normally I troll Craigslist for chairs, shocking I know. On a whim I started searching pendant lamps and found something amazing.

Huh...is that what I think it is? It was listed as "Fabric Pendant" for $50. After some prodding and questioning I was convinced it was a George Nelson and FYI the pear shape was the one on my "someday" wish list. So we agreed on a pickup day and time. Then it happened, I got an email back saying "Someone pointed out to me it's a George Nelson lamp and I'll have to charge at least $100 for it". Nuts. I countered back with $75, she came back with $80. Everyone was happy.

Well almost. It had some mysterious stains on it. The seller told me she had another one which she cleaned up with some Clorox Bleach wipes. I had done some investigating and found some people who'd successfully cleaned their lamps with lukewarm water and dish soap and sure enough it worked like a charm, all the stains came out with minimal effort and it was clean and beautiful and ready to be awesome in my house.

I've lived here for almost two years and have always hated the chandelier in the dining room but was kind of intimidated to replace it but you know what? I did it and it was amazingly simple and easy. I urge you to go out and change every ceiling light in your house.

On a side note the person selling it was an interior designer and it still had the Modernica sticker on it. I mean...you want to ask...don't they have Google where you're from?

Banjolele

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:49:00 +0000

I used to play the guitar. I spent my adolescence in the 90's in Seattle of course I played guitar. Somewhere along the way I stopped playing. My husband is the only one who plays my guitar now and he's really good so there's no sense in my trying to get my small hands to stretch across the frets in a futile attempt to play.

Earlier this year I got the urge to make music again. I bought a Ukulele and I've had a lot of fun with it. Most pop songs sound great on it. Elton John and Beatles' songs have become some of my favorites to play and my hands have zero problem on the tiny neck. I've been loitering on eBay and at Flea Markets looking for a vintage Uke and in my search I discovered a new (to me) instrument, the Banjolele. The Banjolele is tiny like a Ukulele and has the tonality of a Banjo. They became very popular in the 20s and 30s. Brian May from Queen used them, George Harrison loved them and you can hear one in the theme song to Arrested Development.

I came across one that needed some love and work and was singing it's twangy siren song to me.

Christ, it was Aqua, what was I supposed to do, NOT buy it? Pfftttttt. It needed some love though. One tuning peg was split in half, it needed a cleaning, a bridge and a new head.

I'm 99% sure that it did not come out of the factory this color. It's a 'Dandy Line' brand and the few others I've seen on the interwebs are a natural wood color. So someone painted this my favorite color in hopes that 70 or 80 years later I'd come along and win it on eBay.

Cleaning was easy. My good friend the Magic Eraser took care of most of the gunk. Then I saw that the frets were painted over brass. Be still my heart...Aqua AND Brass...

(Before/After of the frets)

The tuning peg was an easy fix, superglue did the job. The head needed replacing. I don't know what was on it but it was gross. To replace it was a little tricky but I had full confidence in my DIY skills. I had to order a goat skin vellum head and I used this tutorial. I managed to not mess it up and got it right on my first try. There's a trick to the bridge, since it's not actually attached to the instrument it's called a "Floating Bridge".

(Banjolele Before/After)

Now she plinks and plunks and is a load of fun to play. Here she is in her restored glory:

Also, check out this awesome video I found of George Harrison and Jeff Lynne playing around on some Banjoleles. I'm a huge Traveling Wilburys fan and incidentally their songs sound great on both the Ukulele and Banjolele.

Vintage Finds

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:59:00 +0000

This Sunday I hit the Long Beach Flea Market. The past few times I'd been leaving empty handed but this time I found some goodies.

It seems I was buying all gold items without realizing it. I got great deals on all of them. My favorites are the Whiting-Davis Mesh purse and the little German vase. The owl salt and pepper is pretty neat. It's joined together. The seller thought because of the hole it might be a napkin ring.

Before/After/Before

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 20:11:00 +0000

It's hot here in Los Angeles. A gross, oppressing, thick heat. It's been like wearing a second skin of sweat for a few weeks now and sadly there's no end in sight. Don't get me wrong I really love it here, especially in the winter when on Christmas you can eat outside in a light hoodie and it's awesome.

So this disgusting heat has gotten the better of me. I've been reduced to a hermit. I stay inside where there's A/C. However, even in our place where there are not one but TWO A/C units it gets gross. Yesterday I took yet another fan out of storage and suddenly it became a project.

Ten years ago I was at a flea market and I picked up a vintage fan for $5. At the time I couldn't appreciate an aged patina. So I painted over it, not once but twice. Sigh...I know, I know. The first paint job I did on it I tried to match the original aqua color but it came out green. So then I painted it white.

I took to the internet on how to remove layers of paint and Easy-Off was mentioned several times. I had it on hand because I used it to remove old grease from my vintage Le Creuset. You really have to wonder what kind of fumey ball of death is in these cans if it takes off paint. So of course I used NO protection on my hands or face. That's how rebellious/lazy I am. Sadly I took no before photos, I'm a terrible blogger. You're going to have to imagine it all white, you can do that I have faith in you.

Luckily it was tolerable outside and there was a breeze. I took the fan apart and sprayed a thin layer of Easy-Off on each piece. Let it sit for about ten minutes and voila! The top layer of paint disappeared. I repeated and got most of the second layer off.

In some spots it took off the paint completely exposing the cast iron on the base and metal on the motor compartment but I'm totally fine with that. I vaguely remember what it looked like before I messed with so as far as I'm concerned this is a vast improvement then they "restoration" job I had originally done to it.

It's loud and dangerous to fingers but I love it. Towards the end of my clean up job on it. I may or may not have heard my Dominatrix landlady at work. If there's any justice the Easy-Off fumes I inhaled will erase this from my memory.

Oh...Hi There!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:07:00 +0000

So wow, Summer is over and this place is like a ghost town. Sorry about that.

It's been a busy Summer. I've been cleaning house and selling stuff and baking things. My baked goods are now being carried here in a local restaurant. If you're in Los Angeles stop by Heywood Grilled Cheese and have the best grilled cheese of your life and a S'mores bar from motherfudger. If you're not in LA you can still order from my etsy shop!

The mister took me to my first baseball game. He was kind of stumped by that fact. Well for starters I am not a sports person at all (neither is he) and also I lived on a small island for most of my childhood. The only sports I saw were ones that my brother was playing in. An added incentive was that it was Star Trek night at Dodger Stadium. All you can eat food and a Federation Baseball shirt, I'm in.

I've been tinkering on some tumblr sites as well you can check out my tumblr namesake Ana Herda and my tumblr for motherfudger.

photos from my Instagram

When it rains, it pours.

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Thanks to a bookmarked search on Etsy (when will they create saved searches?) and a tip from MidModMom I hoarded myself two more Taste Setter plates.

These are in much better shape than the other ones I have. I'm thrilled to add them to the fold. Pretty soon I'm going to need a cabinet or something for this collection.

Check out my jugs!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:07:00 +0000

So maybe you've noticed my obsession with this pattern. I may have mentioned it a time or two in the past. I managed to get my hands on another piece. I had to set my alarm for 3:45am to snag this off of ebay.

I know have two. Yes I'm a glutton. But what was I supposed to do? No one bid on it at all. It NEEDED a good home.

A lot of folks have commented on twitter and the blog how they've got an eye out looking for these pieces for me. I can't tell you how much that warms my cold heart. A very big thank you to those folks even if you never see one, just that you looked means a lot.

Bedroom

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:17:00 +0000

I haven't really been in love with the bedroom since we moved it. Last time I showed it to you there were some things I liked and some things I didn't. It's an odd layout. It's a square room but since it's connected to a hallway we're missing part of a wall where the door opens so there's this large area of space eaten up by the hallway/door. Hard to explain, harder to live with.

I wanted something better for my bedroom. I was heavily inspired by the Ace Hotel. If you've been following my Pinterest 'Bedrooms' board you know I favor heavily masculine rooms. There's something very sexy about a masculine bedroom. Which I categorize as having dark touches, clean lines, no frills but sexy details. I don't really care for feminine anything. I can't stand florals or polka dots anywhere near my sleeping area. It's fine for crafts but stay out of my bedroom. In there it's sexy time.

So here's what I did without spending gobs of money. In fact I only bought new curtains and spray paint for the mobile; Starting with the TV, I finally won that war. The TV went into storage and we compromised with a Kindle Fire and instant Netflix. The bed got flipped to another wall and new curtains made their way in.

The bed is working for us better on this wall so we aren't directly below the A/C unit. It's an eyesore but when it's hot and gross we have air conditioned comfort. I masked the ugly side panels in gold duct tape so it's not *so* hideous.

The updated mobile is strutting it's sexy self with it's fancy new color. Super exciting "Primer Gray". I bet you're wondering why that chair is in the corner. That chair hasn't seen a human butt in some time. It's officially Lola's bed. So while it looks a little strange in that corner it keeps her happy and as a human slave it's my job to keep the cats happy at all times.

The new drapes let in a lot of light, too much in fact. Since I took these photos I hung up black out curtains and now it's super dark and cavernous, just like I like it.

The trunk went from being a nightstand to blanket holder/cat bed. Bruce is growing rapidly (he's still got about three more years until he'll be full grown. Right now he's weighing in at 15lbs) and he's on his third cat bed. That guy needs ROOM.

Here are some of the details. I swapped out our wedding photo for some photobooth pictures of us over the years. I'm not a huge fan of framed photographs all over the house. This is the only one in our house.

The awesome new drapes and an amazing candle; I searched high and low for a candle that was perfect. I was in the direction of leathers and sandalwood and I found myself at Target, like you do, and I found this Black Orchid and Amber candle. It's a Target brand so there's no company name and it's new so I hope it's not limited because this candle and the others in this line smell AMAZING. This candle is perfect. Go out and buy a thousand so they don't discontinue it.

So that's my super sexy, manly new bedroom. I'm really happy with how it came out and happier I didn't spend a ton of money.

New Curtains

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Here's another small bit of the Bedroom makeover. The curtains that were in there were some run of the mill Merete panels from Ikea. They were fine, just boring. I don't know about you but I don't like spending a lot of money on curtains. Why are they all so expensive? Why is it like eighty bucks to curtain a room even if you're being cheap?

So being the ~~cheap~~ resourceful girl that I am I went about this project trying to use only what I had. I dug out an old US Navy wool blanket. It was perfect! But I only had one of them and needed two. I scoured the interwebs and came up empty handed for a match. Then gave up and just looked for something that I could find multiples on. On a side note, isn't it ridiculous what some people are trying to sell vintage wool blankets for?

After I struck out there I headed to my local Army/Navy Surplus. It was a exercise in futility. They weren't much better in prices. It was a total 'LA' surplus store. Fancy Displays, Clothes on mannequins. Definitely unlike any other surplus store I've been in. Their lowest priced blanket was pretty much just a moving blanket and I wasn't too excited about the prospect of that being on my windows. So back to the internet drawing board. I finally found these. "Wool Utility Emergency Blanket" Sexy, no?

They were big enough, grey enough and cheap enough so I bought. They're about half wool, half other material. Probably newspaper or hair trimmings. I dug out my bag-o-scrap leather and cut enough tabs for drapes. I used a simple zig zag stitch on them. With the material and the raw end of the leather I thought a simple stitch like that would be best. I was right.

Here's the finished product. A super textural, super easy DIY and super cheap:

They let in a lot of light which is great for pictures, bad for sleeping past 5am. I bought some blackout fabric (also on the cheap) and solved that problem with a quickness.

On Friday I'll show you the whole bedroom.

Before/After

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I grabbed this (presumably) unfinished loom project when I was in Seattle last month. I knew it could be much better so I went about 'fixing' it.

The first thing I did was cut off the bottom dowel. Wait that's not true, the first thing I did was spray it with hot water and Febreeze...After I sprayed the Heebie Jeebies off of it and cut off the bottom dowel. I knotted the loose ends. Observe.

After the knots I then took some embroidery thread and braided a length of it and knotted around the top dowel. Much better.

Now I have the problem of not knowing what to do with it. I've never had the problem of having too much wall space. I have art coming out of my ears. I may just end up selling it.

Freedom! Nature! Thrifting!

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 00:05:00 +0000

Today my better half and I took a mini road trip into the California wilderness. Ok well not really, we went about 40 miles out of Los Angeles to Vasquez Rocks. It's a beautiful part of Canyon Country where 25 million years ago two mountain ranges were having a tug of war with the tectonic plates and these rock formations were all "Hey, you're crowding us, we're outta here. Peace Broham".

I know, I missed my calling as a Geography teacher.

It was a fun day trip and we got to reference Star Trek and Bill and Ted (both filmed there) the whole time. It was a win-win for everyone.

On the way home we grabbed lunch and stumbled upon a Salvation Army and since it's July 4th, everything was half off. Hurray!

We came home with a wool blanket, a flannel shirt, a baseball shirt, an older version of Battleship and a awesome platter (Empress Suzuka by Haruta) all for $7.90. Yay America!

If you want to see more pics of the trip check out my Instagram and Flickr.

PCC Flea & Thrifts

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:31:00 +0000

This weekend the Mister and I took a thrifting tour of Pasadena. We stopped at six thrift stores on Saturday then came back on Sunday to go to the PCC Flea Market. Out of the thrift stores I only grabbed two items and then I only bought one thing at the flea market.

How color coordinated are these guys? The answer is very. The glass and pitcher are from the thrifts and the Kobenstyle is from the PCC. The pitcher has no name but such an amazing shade. The glass is Pierre Cardin. Sadly it was the only one. The Kobenstyle is a tiny one (but not the tiniest one) that holds two quarts.

Later in the week I'll be posting a Pasadena City Guide over at the Thrift Collective if you're interested in my reviews on those thrift stores.

Things are happening.

noreply@blogger.com (Ana Herda) — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 01:37:00 +0000

Hey remember that mobile I bought over a year ago? I was flip-flopping on painting it and I left it for a year. Well things are happening in the bedroom...I mean things always happen in there nudge nudge, wink wink. Anyway, I finally got some motivation/inspiration for how the bedroom should look. More on that next week.

So the mobile, I thought the blue and green would grow on me but it didn't. I finally decided to paint it. First I was thinking white, then thought that might be too plain. Then I thought brass and I am always pro-brass but all the brass spray paint looks so cheesy and all 'hey I'm not really brass just faking it'. So then I was back to white but decided against it because it still seemed plain and the trim is already white and I didn't want too much of it. So I picked and committed to primer gray. Exciting no? Oh just you wait.

So here's the Before/During/After:

and the traditional Before and After:

Wait until you see it in context. The room is really coming together and I'm pretty damn pleased.